Feeding Our World
A
Of all the major revolutions in human history, there was none more influential than the Agricultural Revolution, also known as the Neolithic Revolution. Beginning around 12,000 years ago, the Agricultural Revolution marked the wide-scale transition from a hunting and gathering lifestyle to an agricultural one. Although the domestication of plants and animals evolved in isolation in various locations and human cultures around the world, the phenomenon occurred quite suddenly during the beginning of what geologists term the Holocene epoch.
B
There are several competing theories as to why this shift occurred. Some of the first theories proposed suggested that an increasingly dry climate forced tribes into limited geographic areas with no choice but to turn to agricultural domestication to survive. But notions of such a climatic shift have been shut down by more recent scientific discoveries that paint a different picture of the climate at the time. In fact, most theories now point to increased fertility as a causative factor of the Agricultural Revolution. Lush, resource-laden land eliminated the need to hunt and gather, and this resulted in the establishment of more permanent settlements and the domestication of plants and animals alike.
C
But regardless of the cause, the transition into an agricultural lifestyle had massive implications for the trajectory of human society. The Agricultural Revolution didn’t just change how people obtained their food; it transformed the very fabric of human societies. Using agricultural food production techniques meant living a sedentary lifestyle as opposed to the traditional nomadic one of hunter-gatherers. It also meant for the first time having a surplus of food that could feed a larger population. The combination of more established communities and increases in food production resulted in the formation of high population density settlements with formal social and political structures. By harnessing their natural and human resources, established communities were able to generate abundance, and the human species proliferated.
D
Ironically, the agricultural way of life that at first proved so fruitful has in more recent times been the cause of global food insecurity, in part due to its sedentary nature. Most human cultures now live attached to geographical areas that are limited by political boundaries. If bad weather or climatic changes affect agricultural production in a certain geographic region, people are largely left to suffer the consequences, as the free movement inherent to a nomadic life is no longer a viable option.
E
In addition, increased life quality has had equally ironic consequences. The Agricultural Revolution gave rise to advancements in science and human technology that have improved our understanding of reproductive and general health. As a result, humans are not only producing more healthy offspring but people are also living considerably longer. This population boom has burdened food systems across the world and resulted in the rapid depletion of the earth’s resources. In a globalised economy, such scarcity means inflated food prices that exacerbate an already difficult situation for the most vulnerable sectors of society.
F
Thus, how to feed the world’s ever-growing population is perhaps the most pressing concern for contemporary world leaders, and a formidable challenge at that. According to the United Nation’s World Food Programme, 870 million people in the world are without adequate amounts of food, with the vast majority of those people living in developing countries, mainly in Asia and the Pacific. Particularly troubling is the fact that children suffer the most from food insecurity, with poor nutrition resulting in around 45 percent of deaths of children under five each year.
G
Efforts have been underway for quite some time to tackle these challenges. One solution has been the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are more robust than regular crops and can therefore withstand greater environmental