A QUEENSLAND university professor has suggested greater environmental and farming collaboration will help feed the world in the future.
In his recently released book, Food Production and Nature Conservation, James Cook University scientist Professor Iain Gordon said feeding the world’s growing population could work if environmental sustainability and farming worked closer together.
He said the need was pressing.
“Feeding the world's growing human population is increasingly challenging, especially as more people adopt a western diet and lifestyle,” Professor Gordon said.
“It’s thought that meeting the food needs of nine billion people in the future will require over 120 million hectares of land being converted to cropland in developing countries alone.”
Professor Gordon said that means things have to change.
“We’ll end up with lose-lose if we continue on as we are,” he said.
“Nature will be relegated to a small percentage of protected areas. Agriculture will have to be highly intensified relying on large amounts of inputs of fertiliser, herbicides, pesticides and water, with significant negative impacts on nature.”
He said there are substantial political barriers to change, with environment a lower priority than agriculture within all levels of government, but alternate ways of operating are available.
“We could, as one example, provide habitats for pollinators on agricultural land,” he said.
“We’d avoid the situation they have in China where, because of the large amounts of pesticides used, much of the fruit grown in that country now relies on people hand-pollinating the trees.
“That’s a massive labour investment when nature could do the job for free.”
Professor Gordon said what the book proposes is different from ‘nature-friendly farming’ where farmers instigate practices such as setting aside farming land for biodiversity.