Another from Yahoo! Answers:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20080716023212AA2930M&cp=11

Question:  As we appear to be on the brink of a global food crisis, is it time to rethink farming methods? How?

Given that we appear to be on the brink of a global food crisis, should we be making the world’s farms even bigger and more efficient, or should we be making them smaller? Is it time to dismantle the industrial food machine, or should we be cranking it up to the next level?

My Answer:

Source(s):

Post Script:
Some of the answers other people presented were quite interesting.  It’s fascinating to see how nearly everyone can see that there is a problem, not many are identifying the same problem.  For example, some people seem to think the problem is with the distribution of food, rather than the production of it.  Honestly this seems a litlte strange to me.  The countries that would seem to have the highest levels of malnutrition tend to be the ones with the highest mortality rate.  However these are the same countries with the highest birth rates.  This stands to reason and makes perfect sense.  If you live in a region where only 20% of children born reach the age of 20, it makes perfect sense to have as many children as you can.  If you have 10 children, chances are two will reach adulthood.  If we flood the region with imported food to the point where 40% of children survive, that will result in a population explosion in a region that is incapable of sustaining an increased population.

Don’t believe me?  Canada and the US share a population growth rate of approximately 0.9% per year.  This means our population will double in approximately 78 years.  Ethiopia, the world’s stereotyped “hungry country” has a population growth rate of 2.7% per year, resulting in a doubling every 26 years.  And what are all these extra people made out of?  You guessed it, food.

So if the region can’t sustain these extra people AND we keep sending them more food, what happens in the event of a drought, a decrease in aid, etc?   It won’t be pretty.  The ecological reality is that more food equals more people and more people require more food.

We need to break the cycle.  Next year, instead of producing more food as we always have, why don’t we try something different?

Surely you remember Smokey the Bear who told us, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  It is widely acknowledged as being one of the most successful public relations campaigns in history.  Smokey taught us to respect the forest and make sure we put out our campfires, etc.  The campaign worked wonders as the number of human-caused forest fires saw a sharp decline in the 70′s and 80′s.  The campaign was one in a series of programs since 1908 designed to execute their strategy of preventing all forest fires at all costs

Of course, not all fires are caused by humans.  Probably 50 per cent of them are caused by lightning which is something we can’t control.  The important thing to note here is, fire is a naturally occurring event in a forest.  The Forestry Service’s program was thus included to prevent all fires at all costs, and immediately extinguish all fires at all costs.

Into the 60′s and 70′s, the US Forestry Service found they were having to spend less money each year in fighting forest fires.  This indicated to them that their fire prevention programs were working very well and everyone was overjoyed.  Though strangely enough, from the 80′s to the present, the costs have skyrocketed as the number of forest fires have increased, as have their intensity.  In California, the Redwood trees have been around hundreds, if not thousands, of years having survived many forest fires.  Now, they are threatened as much as anything else.  Many people are quick to blame this on drought and global warming.  Only now are we starting to see a different picture of why forest fires are more devastating now than ever before in history.  Only now is the Forestry Service (and others like it around the world) starting to realize the real reason, even though it is extremely simple.

In a forest, life and death is something that happens every day.  Branches are felled and trees die.  This kind of stuff piles up on the forest floor.  Some is used by various animals and some rots away.  Every few years a fire breaks out and clears this stuff away, returning the nutrients to the soil and helping new trees grow.  These fires rarely destroy the entire forest, only what is on the ground.  The larger trees are healthy and resistant enough to be able to handle these fires.  Actually, in many cases, these fires actually help the forest keep its natural cycle.  Some trees like the Lodgepole and Jack Pine have evolved to a point where they can only reproduce in the event of a fire.  Their pine cones have a thick resin that protects the seeds.  At 60 degrees Celsius, the resin melts and the seeds drop to the forest floor allowing a new tree to grow.  Without the odd and regular fire, the natural cycle of the forest is interrupted.

Something else happens without the odd and regular fire in a forest.  All that falls to the forest floor accumulates.  You can imagine that a 100 years worth of dead branches and leaves is a much bigger pile than 20 years worth of the same.  What does all this extra stuff end up becoming?  Kindling.  When the eventual fire does come, (as it is impossible to prevent all fires everywhere,) the flames burn higher, hotter, and faster because of all the extra fuel.  The fire burns so hot and high that the giant redwoods or sequoias are burned to the ground.  The fire spreads fast engulfing a very large area in flames resulting in massive damage.  Very large fires can create their own weather systems as the superheated air rises rapidly sucking in cooler air as it goes.  One result of this is high winds, which makes fighting the forest fires much more dangerous and difficult.  Another result is what happens when a warm front meets a cool front — lightning!  This can cause a new fire or otherwise keep the existing fire going.  The end result?  A completely destroyed forest as well as a high likelihood of deaths and destruction of homes.

So what can be done about this?  Well, the Forestry Service has changed their tactics slightly.  They have begrudgingly allowed for controlled burnings to clear out the undergrowth.  This can be problematic as a few years ago, one of these “controlled” fires killed 100 people in New Mexico after it got out of control with all the fuel that was available to it.   With all the cottages and homes being built in “cottage country” near, or in, these forests, there is a huge public resistance to allowing these controlled fires to be set.  These people living in the area are also a huge incentive to continue trying to extinguish all fires at all costs.

Smokey the Bear, now says, “Only you can prevent wildfires,” to distinguish between controlled burns and accidental ones.

Another possible solution is to mechanically remove the undergrowth periodically.  It has been estimated that it would take 77 years and upwards of $350 Billion just to undo the damage that all this “fire prevention” caused.  By then, of course, the forests will have to be cleared again.

So in our infinite wisdom, what we’ve done in the past 100 years with our “fire prevention strategy” is cause worse fires and disrupt the natural ecosystem of our forests.  Natural selection had kept these forests thriving for hundreds of thousands of years, and we killed them in 100.  We should have left them alone, but we can’t now…  In many forests, a fire with all the extra underbrush would completely destroy the forest and wreak havoc.  Now we have to manage these forests, and that means managing the ecosystem, to the tune of many billions of dollars a year.  If we didn’t have the foresight to leave things be, what makes anyone think we’re going to be able to manage the thousands of diverse ecosystems in forests all over the continent?   Do we really have the bureaucratic wherewithal to devise programs for every individual forest and every species living in them?  How many species will die off because of our inadequate management?  Can we really trust the government (a foreign one at that!) with this?

We’ve royally screwed up and we’ve only just begun starting to pay for it.  We screwed up because we think we know best and we think the planet is ours to do with as we see fit.  We screwed up because we took management of the forest (and their ecosystems) out of the hands of “the gods” and into our own greedy grubby little paws.  The natural selection that has worked so well for hundreds of thousands of years has been replaced by artificial human selection which has a very shoddy record.

If we can screw this up so royally, what else are we screwing up just as bad?

Food for thought.