Model Farm Principle 1 - it must be able to feed a local community on its share of a nation's available agricultural land

The first principle of the model farm is that it must be able to feed a local community on its share of a nation's available agricultural land.


It has become an accepted truism that food production must double if we are to feed the 10 billion people in the world by 2050.  The assertion was first made by Noble Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution (Borlaug, 1970).  The argument presented by Borlaug was rather simple as good arguments often are.  He noted that 95% of the world’s food is produced on 17% of the available land, so that if the population doubles by 2050, the amount of food produced must double between the year 2000 and 2050 if deforestation is to be avoided.  The product of the green revolution, the agro-industrial complex has, however, not stopped deforestation, it has continued apace.

However, by 2012 we were already producing enough food for 10 billion people  (Holt-Giménez et al, 2012),  with more than 1 billion people still hungry, even though wheat yields in countries like the UK exceed their agro-ecological potential. Global industrial agriculture has failed to equitably distribute land and food. 

            Average wheat yields for various countries relative to potential yields (The GovernmentOffice for Science, 2011)

The very simple first principle of the model farm is naive but perhaps no more so than Borlaug's assertion.  If all local communities in a country can be fed by a local farm, then the country will be fed.  It follows that every local farm must produce food for its community on a share of available land such that there is sufficient land in a country to feed every community.  This project, The Model Farm, is an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible for a local farm in the UK to feed a community on its share of available land within boundaries that can be drawn based on duties of care for the planet, human beings and animals.


References

Borlaug, Norman. ‘The Nobel Peace Prize 1970’. NobelPrize.org. Accessed 11 April 2021. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/article/.

Holt-Giménez, Eric, Annie Shattuck, Miguel Altieri, Hans Herren, and Steve Gliessman. ‘We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People … and Still Can’t End Hunger’. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 36, no. 6 (1 July 2012): 595–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/10440046.2012.695331.

The Government Office for Science. ‘Future of Food and Farming’. GOV.UK. Accessed 11 April 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-of-food-and-farming.


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