International Conference at Tutzing

Organizers

 Soil Campaign, Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, Paris (F)
 European Soil Bureau, EC-JRC, Ispra (I)
 Schweisfurth Foundation, Munich (D)
 Tutzing Protestant Academy (D)

Food Security and Soils

Relevant questions
 What are the estimates of the increase in world population??
 Do the soils of the world have the potential to feed all human beings/humankind?
 What kind of agriculture may feed the increasing population? What are the relevant alternatives?
 Are these lines of sustainable agriculture?
 What is the potential for food security in changing nutrition in the North?
 What could be the solutions for food security??

Background

The issue of food security will be urgent within the next two to three decades since world population is still on the rise to 2030 and then will eventually reach its peak in 2050 or close to that. The main part of the world population is expected to be urban, not rural. Soils will degrade in that time on a big scale if no countermeasures are enforced.

Food habits are a big part of the problem. Increasing income is still regularly related to a high consumption of animal proteins: meat, eggs etc.; unhealthy excess nutrition is another part of the story. What is the adequate answer in farming? How to maintain and to enhance soil fertility and soil productivity? How to preserve soil fertility for food production?

Besides conventional farming a new emphasis on GMOs is one major line in the topic. Another one is organic farming. Subsistence farming is assumed to maintain an important role as well. The various lines and alternatives have to be evaluated according to sustainability criteria (impacts on biodiversity and on soils, and their future potentials, demand on non-renewable resources, specifically crude oil, etc.).

Main theses of the undertaking related to soils

 There is a relationship between human poverty, soil poverty, and soil mismanagement. But this close connection is not unavoidable.
 Soils may have the potential to feed people if solidarity is not just a word but reality.

Report

From April 1 to 4, 2001, at the offices of the Evangelical Academy of Tutzing-Germany, a conference was held on "People Matter: Food Security and Soils," co-organized by: the Soil Campaign of the Alliance for a Responsible Plural and United World, Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation, Paris (F); European Soil Bureau, EC-JRC, Ispra (I); Schweisfurth Foundation, Munich (D) and the Protestant Academy of Tutzing (D).

This conference attempted to answer the question: "Have the soils of the world the potential to feed all human beings?" The conference was attended by about hundred participants, most of them German, but several countries were represented (Germany, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Italy, Morocco, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Senegal, Slovakia, and Switzerland).

The debates were intense and fruitful, showing on the one hand, how much the future of the humanity is linked to the future of its soils and, on the other hand, how much world resources in soils, and particularly reserves for a possible expansion of agriculture, are badly valued. It was underscored that human poverty is above all in the farming sector and among women! It therefore affects directly those who depend on soils. To fight against soil deterioration, to increase the chances of world food security, we must inevitably fight against the human poverty in the farming sector. The SC (Soil Campaign) affirms that international solidarity is necessary to decrease the pressure on soils, which are greatly solicited for food production. This solidarity implies two priorities: informing everyone on knowledge of soils; world economic and political choices in favor of the development of domestic agriculture (small-scale farms).

The conference proceedings will be published by the Éditions Charles Leopold Mayer.