Technology will not solve the massive loss of land

Technology will not solve the loss of land, the UN says. We don't need to create food anymore, we need to stop spoiling them. Failure to comply with these requirements could mean the loss of agricultural land by 2050 the size of Brazil. This is what the new UN report on the topic “Assessment of Global Land Use" says. Production technologies such as GMO crops and vertical farms can be an important link to provide our planet with products, but first we must learn how to preserve a third of the products we produce. There are various methods - pest control, improved warehousing and less wasteful processing and consumption. All this was expressed by the lead author of the report Stefan Bringezu from the Wuppertal Institute in Germany.

Approximately 5 billion hectares of land is used in agriculture. Of these, one third is used for growing crops and two thirds for pastures. Meanwhile, cities are expanding due to agricultural land and arable land. They are expanding at the expense of pastures and forests, resulting in huge losses of biodiversity.

According to forecasts, by 2050, the Earth's population will be added to about two billion people. This means that another 850 million hectares will be destroyed. According to the report's estimates, this is the size of Brazil. But this can be largely avoided. To do this, poor countries need to increase agricultural yields, while rich countries need to reduce meat consumption. This is especially true for Americans and Europeans, says another lead author, Robert Howarth of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. There is not enough land on the planet for everyone.

The report also recommends restoring degraded lands, limiting urban growth, reducing the number of food crops that are in little or no demand and curbing the expansion of biofuel production. If not, the forest will disappear, biodiversity will be reduced, and hunger and social chaos will result. Food prices are already on the rise, which has caused bread riots in some areas. Bringezu recalls that the so-called Arab Spring was caused by a sharp rise in bread prices.

The report notes that the massive seizure of world agriculture by a handful of corporations is unacceptable: 10 seed corporations, five grain traders and 10 pesticide manufacturers. All of them account for more than half of the total global sales. Are they part of the problem or part of the solution? Bringezu does not give an unambiguous answer. So, this question remains open. gk8 indonesia