2 Agriculture and Food Systems
As a result of these transitions towards calorie-rich diets, obesity, hypertension
and type II diabetes have emerged as serious threats to health in most industrialized
countries. A total of 20–25 per cent of adults across Europe and North America
are now classed as clinically obese (with a body mass index > 30kg/m–2). In some
developing countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Ghana, Mexico, Peru and Tunisia, overweight people now outnumber the hungry.
Diet-related illness now has severe and costly public health consequences. Accord-
ing to the comprehensive Eurodiet study published in 2001 (http://eurodiet.
med.voc.gr/first.html), ‘disabilities associated with high intakes of saturated fat
and inadequate intakes of vegetable and fruit, together with a sedentary lifestyle,
exceed the cost of tobacco use’. Some problems do arise from nutritional defi-
ciencies of iron, iodide, folic acid, vitamin D and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty
acids, but most are due to excess consumption of energy and fat (causing obes-
ity), sodium as salt (high blood pressure), saturated and trans fats (heart disease)
and refined sugars (diabetes and dental caries).
An important driver of change in the world food system will arise from
increased consumption of livestock products. Meat demand is expected to rise
rapidly with economic growth, and this will change many farming systems. Live-
stock are important in mixed production systems, using foods and by-products
that would not have been consumed by humans. But increasingly animals are
raised intensively, and fed with cheap though energetically inefficient cereals and
oils. In industrialized countries, 73 per cent of cereals are fed to animals; in devel-
oping countries, some 37 per cent are used in this way. Currently, per capita annual
demand in industrialized countries is 550kg of cereal and 78kg of meat. By con-
trast, in developing countries it is only 260kg of cereal and 30kg of meat.
At the same time as these changes, farmers in many parts of the world are find-
ing it increasingly hard to make a living. One reason why they struggle is that the
proportion of the food pound or dollar returning to farmers has shrunk. Fifty years
ago, farmers in Europe and North America received as income between 45–60 per
cent of the money consumers spent on food. Today, that proportion has dropped
to just 7 per cent in the UK and 3–4 per cent in the US, though it remains at 18
per cent in France. So even though the global food sector continues to expand,
now standing at $1.5 trillion a year, farmers are receiving a relatively smaller share.
In recent decades, the value of food has been increasingly captured by manufactur-
ers, processors and retailers. Farmers simply sell basic commodities, and others add
the value. As a result, less money gets back to rural communities and cultures, and
they in turn suffer economic decline. But if farmers are receiving such a small pro-
portion of the food pound and dollar, what happens when they sell direct to con-
sumers? Do their farms and landscapes change for the better?
The basic challenge for a more sustainable agriculture is to make best use of
available natural and social resources. Farming does not have to produce its food
by damaging or destroying the environment. Farms can be productive and farmers
earn a decent living whilst protecting the landscape and its natural resources for
future generations. Farming does not have to be dislocated from local rural cultures,