Poverty, Food Security and the Environment

Are poor people forced to degrade their environment in order to cope with food insecurity?

When hard times threaten poor people’s food security, they employ coping strategies to meet their immediate food needs, increase their disposable income, and preserve their asset portfolios. Some of these strategies are: over harvesting wild foods (leaves, roots and game meat); cutting trees to make charcoal for sale; clearing forests for cultivation; draining swamps and encroaching on other marginal areas; and over grazing. These activities have detrimental effects on the environment, particularly causing soil erosion and degradation. These problems are worsened by population pressure.

Are the poor people unaware of the consequences of their actions on the environment? They are most likely aware but often have no better alternative. For example a poor person who has to choose between selling his livestock and cutting trees to make charcoal will choose the latter. To the poor person, meeting an immediate need takes preference over a longer-term one.

Is it possible to create a sustainable food secure environment without undermining or destabilising the natural environment and resource base? Are the tradeoffs between food security and the environment reconcilable? Can environmental protection be achieved without destabilising the livelihoods of the poor people who depend on the environment for their survival?

Intensive and Extensive farming and the Environment

Agricultural systems can either be intensive i.e. where agricultural yield is increased on a limited or on the same acerage of land by increased use of inputs such as fertilizers, irrigation, or can be extensive, where agricultural production is increased by bringing more land under cultivation and relying on natural soil nutrients. Both these agricultural systems increase agricultural production to meet the demand for food and reduce hunger and poverty. However, if not properly managed, both have detrimental effects on the environment.

A notable example of intensive agriculture is the green revolution in Asia, which doubled cereal production between 1970 and 1995, with only a 4 percent increase in cultivated land. By slowing the rate at which land is reclaimed for agricultural purposes, intensive agriculture conserves wetlands, forests and biodiversity. Extensive agriculture on the other hand, which is the most common agricultural system in Africa, leads to the degradation and loss of forests, wetlands, soils, through nutrient depletion and soil erosion.

Despite the benefits of intensive agriculture, intensification causes several environmental problems not only on the farm but also in the surrounding areas. Inappropriate use of agrochemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, etc pollute water sources, interfere with soil chemistry, disrupt ecological systems, kill important soil flora and fauna, and poison people.

The environmental effects of intensive and extensive agriculture vary between regions. Overcoming these problems in order to make agriculture more environmentally sustainable may be achieved through measures such as information and sensitization of farmers through extension officers, improving land tenure systems and through policies that reduce poverty (because poverty is a likely driver of environmental degradation).