Zero Budget Natural Farming

How to fix our broken food system and stop its collateral damage on Nature

- Pavan Sukhdev

The world’s food system is broken...

An estimated 0.8 billion people still go to bed hungry, two billion people suff er from malnutrition. On the other hand, almost 1.9 billion people are overweight, of these, 0.7 billion are obese. Pesticides cause endocrine disruption, leading to widespread neurological ailments. Glyphosates, widely used as herbicides are causing cancer. Type-2 diabetes, a lifestyle disease related to our diets, now has over 400 million suff erers (four times the number in 1980) and the global cost of diabetes type 2 is more than 850 billion USD per year. Not surprisingly, the Global Nutrition Report 2016 states that “Diet is now the number-one risk factor for the global burden of disease.” Furthermore, food systems globally are now the source of 60 per cent of terrestrial biodiversity loss, 24 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, 33 per cent of degraded soils and 61 per cent of commercial fi sh population depletion. Food systems consume over 80 per cent of our freshwater supply, and are the main reason why the planet’s vital rainforest cover is declining.

This broken food system severely damages Nature

Agri-commodities (palm oil, beef, soya, cash-crops) are now the largest direct drivers of nature loss on land, causing losses of forests and wetlands through continuing changes in land use, as well as through the damage caused by agrichemical inputs. Fossil fuels – through climate change eff ects on forests and wildlife and through ocean acidifi cation have the largest indirect impacts on nature. Deforestation in most biodiversity hotspots – from Brazil to Indonesia to Australia – is attributed to the expansion of conventional farming. Furthermore, leachates and run-off s from conventional farming pollute river systems and coastal waters and damage coral reefs.