Passage One 

Among the problems afflicting a burgeoning world population, over crowding, poverty and environmental degradation are combining to put at risk the very essence of our survival-food. “If by the beginning of the next century we have failed to satisfy the very basic needs of the two billion very poor and four billion poor, life for the rest of us could be extremely risky and uncomfortable, ” predicts Dr. Klaus Lampe of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. This is a highly threatening, even terrifying prediction for Asia, where 70 percent of the world’ s poor live but where reserves of good quality arable land have practically run out. Although the world regards Asia as the focus of an economic and industrial miracle, without adequate supplies of food, Lampe says, chaos could easily result in many countries. And the impact will be felt widely throughout the region. In the 1990s alone, he says, the cities of Asia will be swollen by a further 500 million people-nearly equal to the population of the United States and European Community combined. The only growing population in Asia is that of the poor. Prime productive land is being used for city expansion and building roads, while thousands of hectares are being taken out of production each year because of salinity or alkalinity. 

From the mid-1960s’ when the Green Revolution began, Asian food production doubled through a combination of high- yielding crops, expanded farming area and greater intensification. From now on, growing enough food will depend almost entirely on increasing yield from the same, or smaller, area of land. However, a mysterious threat is emerging in the noticeably declining yields of rice from areas that have been most intensively farmed. Unless scientists can unravel why this is so, food output in Asia may actually stagnate at a time when population will double. Such issues, Lampe argues, while seen as remote by many countries and international corporations will strike at their economic base as well. Societies that are too poor or driven by internal strife and civil war will be bad for investment or as markets for goods. Pressure from a rising tide of environmental and political refugees may also be felt. 

One significant factor undermining agricultural economies of developing countries has been the farm trade war between the U. S. and the E. C. “We talk about environmental degradation and dangerous chemicals, yet spend billions of U. S. dollars and ECUs producing things we don’ t want which ruin local production systems and incomes for poor people, ” Lampe says. And instead of developed countries helping struggling nations to develop sustainable food production systems, their policies tend to erode and destroy them. 

When world grain prices are bad, farmers in Asia’ s uplands turn from rice to cash crops to supplement falling incomes, or clear larger areas of rainforest with catastrophic environmental consequences within just a few years. Cleared rainforest soils are highly erosive; even where they are not, they rapidly become acid and toxic under intense cultivation and plants die, forcing the clearing of ever large areas. Research at the IRRI has indicated that intensive rice production-growing two or three crops a year on the same land-is showing signs of yield declines as great as 30 percent. 

Evidence for this comes from as far a field as India, the Philippines and Indonesia. At the same time, agricultural research worldwide has been contracting as governments, non-government bodies and private donors reduce funding because of domestic economic pressures. This means, Lampe says, that at risk is the capacity to solve such problems as rice yield decline and research to breed the new generation of super-yielding crops. Yet rice will be needed to feed more than half the human population-an estimated 4. 5 billion out of 8. 3 billion people by 2030Compared with the building of weapons of mass destruction or the mounting of space missions to Mars, Lampe says, the devising of sustainable farming systems has little political appeal to most governments: To them I say: I hope you can sleep well at night.