Balancing Food & the Environment: Local Strategies in a Global Food System

By 2050, the world’s two billion farmers must grow enough food to feed nine billion people. And this must be accomplished in the face of degrading and eroding soils, water shortages, and the effects of climate change. Such a feat is only possible if global efforts are made to support and balance dynamic agriculture-environment-livelihood systems at the local level. Currently, half of the world’s vegetated land is used to grow food, with agriculture rapidly replacing forests in tropical regions. Agriculture accounts for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of total freshwater use. Maintaining the natural resource base used to produce food for a growing population requires an integrated and sustainable approach to agricultural intensification at local level. I will examine three cases where agroecological principles can be used to inform local land management strategies: coffee farms in Costa Rica, subsistence maize in East Africa, and grain production on Maryland’s eastern shore. I will show that tracking the fate of nutrients through these systems is a useful tool for determining where and how inefficiencies occur. By identifying the “leaks” in the system, we adapt local management strategies to “plug the holes” and strengthen the human and environmental dimensions of agricultural systems.