UN Report Says Organic Farming Is Solution To World’s Food Needs

Small scale organic farming is the only logical solution to the world’s food needs, according to a report from a United Nations organization.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, recommends in a 341-page report the world turn to sustainable organic agriculture to meet its food needs.

The report, Wake Up Before It’s Too Late, includes a number of conclusions that justify popular arguments for organic agriculture. It says the world must shift to sustainable organic agriculture or face food shortages and environmental catastrophe

It also refutes the argument that corporate industrial agriculture is the only way to feed the world. That means at least one UN agency is now publicly endorsing and backing organic agriculture.

The report states that “organic agriculture is an ideal solution” for the world’s food problems. Among other things it recommends: government policies that promote organic agriculture.

“Meeting the food security challenges is thus primarily about empowerment of the poor and their food sovereignty,” the report says.

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It further says: “This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production toward mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers.”

The UN’s conclusions about agriculture

Some of the conclusions about agriculture in the UNCTAD report include:

• The problem is not a lack of food around the world, but the inability to get that food to the people who need it. Wars and conflicts are a big culprit.
• The lack of self-sufficiency and the inability to grow food are the world’s main causes of hunger and malnutrition.
• Industrial agriculture is unstainable and incapable of meeting the world’s food needs.
• Agricultural production around the world is slowing. Some regions will face food shortages and high food prices because of falling food production in the near future.
• Only a paradigm shift to sustainable organic agriculture will prevent a worldwide food shortage.
• If the situation is not changed there will be more food crises like the one in 2008.
• Free trade agreements are undermining traditional agriculture and making the situation worse by making prices more volatile.
• Government policies such as subsidies for synthetic fertilizers make the situation worse by financing industrial agriculture at the expense of organic production. Synthetic fertilizers damage the soil and make it less fertile.
• Synthetic fertilizers should be replaced with organic fertilizers and traditional farming methods such as crop rotation which can restore the fertility of the soil.
• Many areas of the world will face serious water shortages in the near future.
• Food shortages will cause large scale migrations of people between nations. This could lead to wars and political instability.
• The amount of land used for food production is falling as populations are rising.

Even United Nations bureaucrats now realize the value of organic farming. Maybe it is time for everybody else to get the message.

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