The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has just released its 2011 assessment of the state of the world‘s agriculture and it is not a pretty picture. In fact, its down right grim:

ROME (AP): December 1, 2011 — The United Nations has completed the first-ever global assessment of the state of the planet’s land resources, finding in a report Monday that a quarter of all land is highly degraded and warning the trend must be reversed if the world’s growing population is to be fed.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that farmers will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s expected 9 billion-strong population. That amounts to 1 billion tons more wheat, rice and other cereals and 200 million more tons of beef and other livestock.

But as it is, most available land is already being farmed, and in ways that often decrease its productivity through practices that lead to soil erosion and wasting of water.

That means that to meet the world’s future food needs, a major “sustainable intensification” of agricultural productivity on existing farmland will be necessary, the FAO said in “State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture.”

Things appear to be getting worse and worse, as year after year, the climate continues to change at an accelerating rate, and adverse weather events continue to increase as the result of that acceleration, despoiling huge tracts of arable land and rendering them unusable for the foreseeable future. How much more of this environmental insult must we endure before the world’s agricultural communities stop what they are doing and adopt new methods for growing most of our soil-based crops? Of course, I am referring to vertical farming.

I have been advocating for some years now for all the richest countries to pool a small fraction of their trillions of dollars of resources (ten billion would do the job nicely) and support the establishment of a global urban-based agriculture that takes advantage of the fact that we can easily grow most of what we need inside controlled environment structures. In fact, The Republic of Korea is already ahead of the rest of the world in this regard, having established a vertical farm and nearby seed bank in March of 2011. Successful commercial ventures in Japan (Nuvege), have shown that this method of food production can be highly profitable. A few other vertical farms have been established in other places, but there needs to be a much large investment in this kind of farming if we are to stave off a world food crisis that may already be starting.

In the developed world, trying to save traditional agriculture by allowing large argo-businesses to have their way with the soil has done nothing more than to allow these companies to reap more profits, as food prices increase due to the increase in the price of oil. We need a national policy shift to give a voice to the consumers who continue to demand safe, health food choices that are available year round. This can only be achieved by production schemes that employ high tech greenhouse methods – hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics.  Locating large-scale indoor farms next to the largest urban centers solves many problems that now plague the current food system – harvesting before the produce is ripe, shipping and handling, food spoilage – at every step of the food chain from farm to table.

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Robert Shope was a highly respected virologist who discovered, among other things, the causative agent of warts, the Shope papilloma virus. He also worked on parasitic worms, and in particular Metastrongylus, a parasitic lung worm often found in farm-raised swine. Pigs get infected by ingesting the embryonated eggs found in fecally-contaminated soil. Shope demonstrated that these long-lived, environmentally resistant ova were capable of harboring swine influenza virus, serving as its “Trojan Horse”. This finding led him to speculate that Metastrongylus might play a role in the transmission of the virus from pig to pig, and perhaps even to people, as well. Swine flu is a life-threatening respiratory infection, so knowing how it is maintained in the environment was an important step in the design of public health programs to limit its spread. The fact that Metastrongylus is found everywhere that pigs are raised is a testament to its simple strategy for transmission. As it turned out, this parasite was not responsible for transmitting swine flu, but Shope’s studies did re-enforce the fact that fecal contamination of pig farms was impossible to control.

Shope was feisty and notorious for his tell-it-like-it-is attitude and “to hell with social protocol”. His laboratory was located at the prestigious Rockefeller University in New York City on the third floor of Theobald Smith Hall. But despite being recognized as a venerable charter member of that “ivory tower” of science, he was compelled to plainly announce to the world his findings regarding the transmission of his now favorite virus, swine flu. Shope created a rather rude saying in bold, easy-to-read lettering and posted it prominently above the entrance to his lab for all visitors to see (much to the chagrin of university officials leading tours of that famous institution, I might add). It read:

“The Earth Is Covered With A Thin Layer of Shit”

In principle, the World Health Organization agrees with Shope. They state flatly that over half of the world’s farms still use untreated animal waste as fertilizer, and most of it is of human origin. Feces are easy to get and cost nothing. It is also a very good fertilizer! But this creates a real problem, because like the pig parasite story, this unsanitary practice results in the transmission of many fecally-transmitted infectious diseases of humans, as well: a wide variety of dysentery-causing microbes, geo-helminths (intestinal worm parasites that include Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, Strongyloides stercoralis, and hookworm), and several life-threatening water-borne parasites, the most serious of which is schistosomiasis. These two groups of fecally-transmitted worms infect some 2 billion individuals, and cause serious illness in millions of children, world-wide. Hookworm, alone, infects some 1 billion people. To acquire hookworms, all one has to do is walk around barefoot on ground that is contaminated with human feces that contain the eggs of these parasites. The simple act of swimming in fecally-contaminated fresh water exposes people to the schistosomes. In both of these cases, the parasite does the rest by penetrating our unbroken skin.

Farming facilitates the spread of these parasites, albeit unbeknownst to the farmer. Other microbial infections of animal origin regularly piggy-back on fresh produce, causing outbreaks of serious diseases such as listeriosis, salmonella, and E. coli strain 0157.  The prevention of all of these health risks is to isolate our crops from outside sources of fecal contamination. Indoor controlled environment agriculture is the answer. The more we become victimized by preventable outbreaks of food-borne or water-borne illnesses, the easier it is to convince the public as to the value of creating another way of raising food.

Less developed countries are the most affected by these parasites. Eliminate these parasites and the world would be quite a different place. Literacy rates would go up, infant mortality rates would plummet, and the economic picture would go from grim to self-sustainable.  Eventually, birth rates would also drop, and people would now be able to afford so-called “luxury” items like TVs, homes, and cars.

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