This is part (more to come) of a new Greenpeace briefing that was part of the 2020 info pack at the 'Feeding or Fooling the World' debate.
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The future of farming

"Modern agriculture is intrinsically destructive of the environment. It is particularly destructive of biological diversity." ””The Royal Society

“For some,talk of ‘sustainable agriculture ’sounds like a luxury the poor can ill afford.But in truth it is good science,addressing real needs and delivering real results.For too long it has been the preserve of environmentalists and a few aid charities.It is time for the major agricultural research centres and their funding agencies to join the revolution.” ””New Scientist,3 February 2001

Today ’s agriculture industry is more like mining than farming. Its system compromises the very earth on which all our future food needs depend.

Only about 16% of the world’s farmland remains free of problems such as chemical pollution.

Rather than growing food to meet the needs of local communities for a healthy, diverse diet, industrial agriculture produces crops to sell on world markets. This agriculture uses costly farm chemicals and machinery. While world crop production has trebled since the 1950s, more people go hungry now than 20 years ago. Small family farmers are driven off their land and local people cannot afford to buy what is grown.Too often,the result is a downward spiral of environmental destruction, poverty and hunger.

Greenpeace aims to ‘ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity ’.That includes human life ?and meeting people ’s food needs, through sustainable farming practice,is at the heart of our survival.Farming methods that undermine people’s food security affect more than just those who go hungry.They undermine the environment.Forest wilderness and wildlife are destroyed in the search for food and land to  farm.

Hunger and poverty go hand-in-hand.Technological ‘solutions ’like GM overshadow the real social and environmental problems causing hunger. These issues include who grows our food,how and where it is grown,how it is distributed,and who has access to it.Simple practical changes such as improving rainwater collection can increase harvests dramatically. Basic social measures are also critical.Between 1970 and 1995,provision of basic health care and improvements in women ’s status and education were responsible for nearly 75%of reductions in childhood malnutrition.

So how can we reverse the devastation caused by the agriculture industry and ensure that the world can feed itself in the future?Funded by Greenpeace and the UK Department for International Development,Essex University researchers undertook the largest ever study of sustainable farming practices.The study includes projects on more than four million farms in 52 countries. It explores how the world ’s poor can feed themselves using cheap,locally-available technologies that will not damage the environment.

The findings:

Switching to sustainable farming methods increases harvests for these farmers by an average of 73%.

Greenpeace works for real solutions.The future for farming lies in recognising its role not only in the production of food,but also in providing us with the clean water,diverse wildlife and plants,and the fertile soil on which all our futures depend.

There is a fundamental conflict within agricultural research and development between an agenda that caters to private industry demands and one that addresses the real needs of the poor and the environment.

The argument that GM technology is vital to feed the world is based on the assumption that hunger is the result of too little food.The truth is that although about a third of the world’s children suffer from malnutrition, nearly 80% of them live in countries with food surpluses.

In India (which accounts for more than a third of the world ’s hungry and where 53% of children are undernourished), grain silos overflowed with nearly 50 million tonnes of surplus grain in 2000. In a world where free trade has higher priority than people’s right to food, the existence of 1.1 billion undernourished people is inevitable.

Solutions lie not in feeding the world but allowing the world to feed itself.

Food security -- the ability of a community to feed itself consistently on a diverse diet -- is a complex problem that will not be solved overnight: it depends on people having access to land and money. GM provides neither.

Not only do GM crops not provide the solution, they also pose a threat of irreversible harm to the environment -- the real basis of people’s food security.GM technology,and the industrial system it maintains,increases dependence on expensive farm chemicals and single food crops,denying people a balanced diet and destroying the environment on which we all depend.It increases dependence on the companies that supply the technology and the countries that supply the loans to pay for it.Far from a solution, GM crops extend all the worst practices of industrial agriculture. Perversely,its widespread adoption would lead to more hungry people -- not fewer. The time has come to reject the false promise of GM and the agriculture industry and to support the real revolution in farming that meets the many needs of local communities and the environment,restores the land degraded by the agriculture industry, and helps the poor to combat their own poverty and hunger.