The hungry won't live if farms die

Biofuels, global warming, commodity derivatives, energy prices, prosperity in China and India... the plate seems full when it comes to nailing the culprits for the raging global food crisis.

But as food riots break out from Egypt to Haiti to Bangladesh and over 100 million people across the globe stand on the brink of being hurled deeper into poverty and hunger, there is one possible ingredient to the emerging human tragedy that we appear far less inclined to discuss - industrial agriculture. And the reason why it has not had as much bad press as eco activists would like is that industrial agriculture is widely seen as having kept our bowls full and cheap for long. Now that the bowl is running dry, it's time to look deeper into its pros and cons, as any long-term solution to the food crisis will essentially depend on either reinforcing industrial farming or reversing the process altogether.

"Green Revolution", or the introduction of modern farming techniques, formed the bedrock of rapid economic growth, food security and poverty reduction in many Asian countries including China. Higher agricultural productivity has not only helped millions climb out of poverty and provided cheap and abundant food, it has also freed up farm labor to propel industrial progress. For a country like China, tasked with the responsibility of feeding a fifth of the world's population with less than a 10th of the world's farmland, the appeal of industrial agriculture is thus obvious.