A UCD lecturer predicts that modern methods of agriculture can not be sustained and will be insufficient to feed our needs in 20 years' time, writes Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent
Ask John Feehan, senior lecturer in the Faculty of Agriculture at University College Dublin, where he thinks Irish farming is going and he is humble enough to admit that he does not know for sure.
However, Feehan, who has just written what is probably the most comprehensive history of Irish farming ever, is convinced the current model of farming worldwide cannot survive because modern agriculture is enormously productive in terms of yield, but not in terms of environmental sustainability.
"The increased yields of farming depend largely on high inputs of artificial fertiliser from natural gas and petroleum, but these resources are running out and will cost more from now on," he says.
In addition, the burning of these fuels are partly responsible for global warming, and this is coming under intensive scrutiny internationally. "This kind of dependence puts intensive agriculture in an impossible situation from the standpoint of environmental sustainability," Feehan says.
Another factor is the growing worldwide scarcity of water - only 60 per cent of the world's population has adequate water supplies.
Furthermore, the abundance of relatively cheap oil, coupled with technological advances, has allowed a regional specialisation of agriculture on a world scale which has undermined national and local food production.
"Lamb from New Zealand, beef from Argentina, wheat from North America, timber from Scandinavia and roses from Columbia can reach our shelves more cheaply than the same products grown and harvested in our own fields," he says.
The binding rules of world trade and ever-increasing globalisation is undermining the ability of individual nations to protect themselves through import tariffs or other safeguards, which is destroying the livelihoods of many farming families.
But what really concerns Feehan is that the increased concentration of crops in a few areas of the world, based on a shrinking genetic base, exposes them to the danger of new pests and diseases to which science may be unable to find a solution quickly enough to produce enough food to keep world hunger at bay.
"I cannot see modern agriculture being able to feed the world's population of 10 billion people in 20 years' time," Feehan says.
However, farming based on older methods of production which pre-date the chemical age, he says, can provide sustainable farming that is also environmentally sound.
"I am not talking about going totally organic. I am talking about using traditional knowledge and science and technology to get integrated mixed farming that maximises the natural capital of the land. This would mean that nothing would be wasted and external environmental costs would be absorbed and accounted for," he says.
"The mainstream farming that we have come to think of as the norm over the last 50 years may be seen as an experiment from which we learned much, but at too high a price."
That cost for Ireland, he believes, includes the reduction of the number of grasses we use for fodder from dozens to just one - ryegrass.
"The same is true in relation to our favourite vegetable, the potato. We now grow about five varieties but I have notes on trials carried out on just over 100 varieties of potato carried out in 1904 at Albert College in Glasnevin," he says.
Feehan points to the breeds of farm animals, where there were once many breeds of cow which were suited to local needs, now there are really only two types left in intensive dairying.
"It is terrifying to note that in Asia there used to be 10,000 varieties of rice. Now that has dropped to 1,000," he says.
But the highest cost of all, he says, has been the loss of farming families who were forced off the land because they could not make a living.
In the book, written to celebrate the centenary of the faculty of agriculture at University College Dublin, Feehan deals with the future role of the faculty in the new order.
"I would like to see a critique of the faculty to determine our role in what is going to be a very dramatic future."
Feehan highlights a need for a new kind of agricultural science graduate to serve the farming of the future.
"These graduates will have to use all the traditional skills of farming alongside new sciences such as genetics and conservation biology, in pursuit of environmental integrity without agricultural compromise."
The first 50 years of the faculty was spent teaching farmers to become viable using traditional methods. The last 50 years was "the chemical age", when fertilisers drove farming.
One area being looked at in Europe's future agriculture is a concentration of food production in large agri-production parks based on the principles of ecology situated in large cities served by seaports, and large-scale, intensive and heavily specialised rural farms.
That would mean Europe more or less abandoning the countryside as a place for farming - and farmers would become ecological managers of the 70 per cent of land not required for these enterprises.
The future is certainly a lot more complicated than the past 10,000 years of organised farming worldwide, the history of which Feehan details thoroughly in this book.
The first farmers learned to grow grain and vegetables and, 9,000 years ago, began to domesticate animals. They began to make tools for farming, driving the primitive technologies forward.
Farming began in Ireland between 4200 B.C. and 3000 B.C. and developed down the centuries in tandem with the various waves of people who settled here.
The book has an utterly fascinating chapter on cattle in Gaelic Ireland and how they dominated the farm economy from the Iron Age down through the centuries. The publication also looks at plants and domestic and wild animals in the Irish landscape.
It deals too with the heritage of the farmed landscape and how farmers down the ages changed the landscape to suit their needs. There are also chapters on archaeology and folklore and on farm buildings since farming began.
Feehan is an acknowledged expert on the Irish countryside and received a Jacob's Award for his television programmes in 1987.
A former Offaly Person of the Year, Feehan says the book is the fruit of 10 years' hard labour to cover the areas he needed to make the 600-page publication as comprehensive as it is. He hopes it will not just end up in Irish libraries but will find its way into Irish farmhouses.
Farming in Ireland: History, Heritage and Environment is available from the faculty of agriculture at University College Dublin, price €90