Human labor is one of the many factors that make global agriculture a highly complex system.
Photo: AFP/Piero Crutiiatti
If someone raises the question of future world nutrition, there is usually skepticism. Because then, for example, it is about selling a technical solution in view of the growing world population, climate crisis and ecological crisis, such as the development of new plants and animals using biotechnological interventions. Which does not mean that these could not help partially – for example in breeding drought -resistant varieties. But the world nutrition system is far too complex to ensure human food supply by implementing one or more new techniques.
“Who will feed the world?” Is the subtitle of the book “bottomless” by Matthias Martin Becker. This question, soon becomes clear in the book, must remain unanswered due to its complexity.
A complex system
Becker starts with a personal, the discussion with a friend about the climate crisis: “He is afraid of an ecodictics, me in front of the climate,” writes the author, and “He can no longer hear it, I can no longer think of anything else.” But the climate crisis and the associated ecological crisis, which Becker describes in the book together as a “hot season”, is just one of the aspects of the future. take effect global agriculture.
Agriculture is shaped by the economic system, the natural environment but also geopolitical interests and worldviews. Although all of these aspects in turn influence each other. The analysis of conditionality explains why the system change, which is urgently needed in view of the ecological crisis, does not want to succeed so far and why even farmers, who depend on the natural resources, take to the streets for lasmer environmental regulations – in other words, to continue to undermine the basics of their own production.
The current state that is described in the book with impressive figures is well known: a multiplication of the cattle stock for meat production since the 1960s, the replacement of local nutrients by global, which are dependent on industrially generated fertilizer and the strong decrease in employees in agriculture-according to Becker, 200 million people per year move from the country. The conclusion: “The intensification and rationalization of agricultural production have achieved a scale that overwhelm natural resources, soil fertility and their ecological renewal.” In addition, there are new pests and illnesses, droughts, soil erosion. Even if the development is not linear, a decline in productivity can be expected.
When people speak of “agricultural industry”, this is usually critically meant and denotes a system that does not offer a solution to the world nutrition. However, under the conditions of the capitalist economic system on the one hand, a return to the small -scale agriculture and subsistence, as partly demanded by critics, cannot be realized on the one hand, on the other hand it is most likely unable to ensure the world nutrition under the conditions of the hot season, Becker.
Self -exploitation and subsidy
To make it understandable how the (industrial) agriculture has become what it is, the author takes a look at the conditions that distinguish them from industrial production in the factory. On the one hand, there is always the autonomy of nature, which cannot be completely eliminated. The production on the field remains depending on weather conditions and the organic means of production. The latter is on the one hand, on the other hand, a habitat of soil creatures and not simply a nutrient substrate in which the desired arable plants thrive. As on the assembly line, production can only be limited – the field fruits need time to ripen. (Wage) work cannot be organized as in the factory in the clock of the machines and the hourly wages that can be achieved remain low. Becker sees these factors responsible for the fact that family businesses still play an important role in agricultural production. They use little foreign workforce to work at low hour wages, monitor themselves – in short: they operate self -exploitation.
Family businesses still play an important role in agricultural production. They operate self -exploitation.
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Despite their ability to suffer, family businesses are also dependent on government subsidies for agriculture that flow into millions in many countries in the world. But why don’t the states leave agriculture to the free forces of the global market? Recently, geopolitical interests have come into play to be able to take care of your own country yourself in case of doubt, but the subsidies are older than these interests.
Becker explains that states have said that food is not too expensive so that the labor costs are not too high. The fact that in Germany only around 15 percent of the diet income is issued instead of around 50 percent in 1950, also boosts the rest of the consumption and thus the economy. At the same time, food must not be too cheap or are generated in subsistence, because then wage labor becomes unnecessary at some point and people have no need to sell their workforce anymore. In this regard, the state must represent reluctant interests in this regard: it wants to keep food prices cheaply and at the same time maintain production in Germany (which is dependent on a certain price level). On the way to the market, it gets even more complicated, because very few producers market their products themselves to a larger scale.
In this system, farmers remain only limited scope. In order to be able to live from the sale of their products, they are forced to rationalize – which does not always mean greater efficiency – and environmental requirements tend to make production more expensive. The investment in “green” technologies is also only worthwhile if production can be increased by it. Becker argues that investments that only serve to maintain the status quo make little sense from a capitalist perspective. But how does agriculture come to new mode of production adapted to the hot season?
Lack of planning
The (state) promotion of research and development plays a role in the innovation. Interesting technologies here are a wide range of spectrum, from agroforal systems to breeding of insects and algae to the genomeditation of plants and animals and meat from cell cultures. Some of the technologies and their advantages and disadvantages as well as the conflicts of interest with conventional food production are presented in more detail in the book.
Becker focuses special on agricultural industrial circular economy. This appears if you do not attach a romanticized idea of a small -scale agriculture above all, as a sensible adaptation to limited resources and planetary limits. Becker describes animals and plants in closed systems, Becker describes, the excretions of one serve as food for others. He refers to real examples such as the once planned “DeltaPark” in Rotterdam, the fish, poultry and pig breeding and the cultivation of fruit and vegetables on several floors of a huge building. The project failed due to the resistance of local politics, which could not really make friends with the “pig high house”, in which up to 300,000 pigs were to be held.
From an animal welfare perspective, the circular economy only becomes economical in such an agropark from certain order of magnitude. Whether it is about guiding carbon dioxide exhaled from animals to greenhouses or producing biogas from their excretions – such systems only expect certain quantities. But could circuits or a so -called sector coupling could also be achieved without designing closed agricultural abrasions? There are many potential to make waste products usable: residues, sewage sludge, manure, waste heat, waste water etc. The problem is primarily to organize this sector coupling, says Becker. Such an exchange is only interesting for companies if it is directly reflected in black numbers. The sector coupling, on the other hand, requires a planning for society as a whole, which is recorded, which is unused where, which is too little. »But the capital is unable to open up these synergies. The state is not forced it through commandments and prohibitions, standardization and standardization, «writes Becker.
Despite the unexplained organizational question, the sector coupling is one of the ways out that Becker devotes his own chapter. However, none of this is the panacea for future world nutrition within the framework of the planetary load limits. A way out, the design of which remains open, is an international exchange of goods beyond capitalist globalization. Because this is becoming increasingly important under the difficult growing conditions of the hot season, with regional climate -related crop failures. So who will feed the world? Becker discusses the complexity and contradictions of both the existing system and an ecological transformation. He cannot convey hope for simple solutions.
Matthias Martin Becker: Bottomless – who will feed the world? Papyrossa 2025, 295 p., Br., 19.90 €.