The following news media clip offers agro-industries the option of chopping down miles of serene boreal ecosystems to support the rising global demand for food production. Having ridden a train across Siberia some years ago, I can say that what I saw was more development than I expected, though I was comforted by the fact that beyond the factories along the railroad, there was vast unspoiled wilderness. This news source promotes destroying more of our land’s precious resources for our selfish (”business as usual”) needs and that really disturbs me:
Among the many things wrong with this idea:
- the Siberian climate would only support the production of certain seasonal crops and is unlikely to sustainably meet the demand for food in this global economy — most of our food is grown in the tropics where most people live, but is then shipped north, where less people, but more money lives. Using the Russian land for large-scale agro-industry will not solve the problem year-round — it would just create a surplus in seasonal food over the summer, while we would still be facing the same crisis over the winter
- “Ok, well the guy specifically mentioned the possibility of Russia becoming one of the largest grain, poultry and dairy exporters — those industries are better suited for northern climates anyway, right?” — Right. But we are forgetting that when a nation’s economy expands their animal products sector, that requires more land to grow food for the poultry and cows they raise, which halves the efficiency of the system and increases the cost (both on the people and the land)
- There is more than enough land devoted to growing food already — it is the rules surrounding distribution of land rights and crop yields from which stems the poverty.
- The food grown in Russia would go to waste once it becomes more expensive to access/transport it due to the price of oil!
The only answer to feeding a specific society is local self-sufficiency. Humans have been doing it for thousands of years before this era of hyper-globalization. Now that we’ve got some “civilizational street cred” and industrious technologies, it’s time we bring these concepts back to the Earth and a possible abundance of food into the bellies of our children.
Let the regeneration begin!
