Food Security and the future
There are no simple solutions to food security, and there are many actors and industries associated with future food production, consumption and understanding.
However, if we take climate change science seriously, even on average, we are facing the need to adapt, as the climate will impact food production, not to mention growing populations and more mouths to feed. See what the FOA have to say about this topic.
The past
Old ways of mono-cropping and cash cropping (subsistence farming) do not have a sustainable future. So, what can be done to shift focus? How can we use the land more efficiently, ensure greater smallholder and farmer prosperity and healthier, more diverse and more productive growing?
What we are doing now
Even if we cannot alter the priority of the system, at
5EyesFarm in Bogor Regency, Indonesia, we have been doing hands-on R&D for the past four years to develop methods and techniques that can assist the general population with food security and long term solutions. The following are key points from what we are learning. We
conclude after touching briefly on some key points including three examples.
Our Learnings
5EyesFarm is a research and learning centre developing natural responses to food security needs at a local level. We are learning to grow a wide range of foods organically and to use diverse systems like aquaponics, making animal feed and practising bio-conversion: harnessing nature to improve the production and health of primary (small scale) production. Producing a range of primarily fruits with support produce (vegetables, herbs, roots, vines, eggs, chickens, ducks, fish).
Green-Ed – learning naturally
We offer practical teaching on ways of producing food at low input cost with maximum production and health. Farmers and other learners adopt our strategic plan to transition their small holder mono crops to more diverse production. The learning also includes more about food consumption and balanced diets and priorities about making adjustments around the normally high consumption of sugars, salt and carbs.
Community engagement
The goal is to develop trainings for regional farmers with practical hands-on offerings that cover the whole scope of translating the use of land and the integration of natural systems (see below). 5EyesFarm is seeking funding for this implementation in order to offer free training broadly throughout the region.
Passing on discoveries
Our R&D is hands-on
Creating integrated ways of harnessing nature and increasing production sustainably based on techniques from Natural Farming, Permaculture and Integrated Farming we are devising systems that are mutually beneficial, have the least energy inputs with the greatest productivity returns, are healthy and safe and low cost to establish and run.
A miracle of nature
By devising models to share and multiply we offer to empower others to grow naturally and make small holder agriculture bigger and better.
We are not inventing anything. It’s already there. We are just learning how to use it properly. The real solutions have been staring us in the face for ever.
We are what we eat
‘We are what we eat’, but most of us have become disconnected from the food we consume and have lost touch with how it is produced and what is in it. We may be heading for difficult times ahead with population growth, climate change and greater need for (healthy) food.
A new market
There are inexpensive ways to harness nature and set up integrated systems which rely on practical learning and application. We can change the very nature of consumption, reduce packaging, reduce damage and costs of transportation and establish more local, cooperative markets exchanging food for food and services.
New systems
Current models are unsustainable, including the supermarket, mass production and mono-crop farming. We are creating grass-roots systems for future food security that will bring greater diversity, production and health as well as awareness.
