By William Park

作者：威廉·帕克

Five food and agriculture experts share their plans for safeguarding our crops for future generations.

五位糧食和農(nóng)業(yè)專家分享了他們?yōu)樽訉O后代保護(hù)農(nóng)作物所作的計劃。

With queues at food banks, produce rotting unpicked in fields and empty supermarket shelves, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown both that too many people live below the breadline around the world and our food networks are stressed to their limits.

新冠病毒疫情期間，食品銀行門口排起了長隊，農(nóng)產(chǎn)品在田地里腐爛，超市貨架空空如也……這一切表明世界上有太多的人生活貧困之中，同時也表明我們的食品網(wǎng)絡(luò)面臨著壓力。
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Last year was incredibly difficult for those working in the food industry. But, where there is uncertainty there are also opportunities, and the pandemic has encouraged many of us to take stock of what we do. If we could reimagine our global food system, is there a way to make it more resilient should there be another global crisis? And if so, can we fix some of the other problems with agriculture, like mitigating its climate impact, at the same time?

去年對于那些在食品行業(yè)工作的人來說是非常困難的一年。但是，有不確定性的地方也暗藏機(jī)遇，流行病鼓勵我們許多人應(yīng)該對我們所做的工作進(jìn)行反思。如果我們可以重新構(gòu)想我們的全球糧食系統(tǒng)，是否有辦法在可能發(fā)生的另一場全球危機(jī)中使它更有彈性呢？如果可以，我們能否解決諸如減輕農(nóng)業(yè)對氣候的影響等農(nóng)業(yè)的其他問題呢?

Those were the questions we posed to five experts and industry leaders in the fields of food security and sustainability. They identified a common theme – farmers, and the choices we make alongside them as consumers, will have a meaningful impact on climate change. And in turn, better farming will improve global health.

這些是我們向糧食安全和可持續(xù)性領(lǐng)域的五位專家和行業(yè)領(lǐng)袖提出的問題。他們確定了以農(nóng)民以及我們作為消費(fèi)者與農(nóng)民一起做出的選擇作為共同的主題，這一主題將對氣候變化產(chǎn)生有意義的影響。反過來，更好的農(nóng)業(yè)也將改善全球健康。

Farmers are important custodians of much of the world’s land. They manage “almost three-quarters of the land in England, producing food for people today and protecting land for the next generation”, says Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the UK’s Environment Agency. Globally, half of the world’s habitable land is currently used in agriculture. “A lot of responsibility for managing these issues falls on their shoulders, they need more support from wider society to make good decisions and keep going.”

農(nóng)民是世界上大部分土地的重要保管人。英國環(huán)境署主席艾瑪·霍華德·博伊德說，他們管理著“英格蘭近四分之三的土地，為今天的人們生產(chǎn)糧食，同時更是為下一代保護(hù)著土地”。 從全球來看，世界上一半的可居住土地目前都用于農(nóng)業(yè)。“管理這些問題的很多責(zé)任都落在了農(nóng)民的肩上，他們需要更廣泛的社會支持才能做出正確的決定并繼續(xù)前行。”
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Howard Boyd identifies extreme weather – being made worse by climate change – as an example of how farmers are pushed to the limit. The UK, for example, experienced its wettest February on record in 2020, followed by the sunniest spring. In California and Australia, wildfires decimated enormous areas of parched land.

霍華德·博伊德指出農(nóng)業(yè)因為氣候變化而變得更糟。極端天氣是農(nóng)民被逼到極限的一個原因。例如，2020年英國經(jīng)歷了有記錄以來最潮濕的二月份，接著是最陽光明媚的春天。而在加利福尼亞和澳大利亞，森林大火燒毀了大片干旱的土地。

“The climate emergency will increasingly shift us from one extreme to the other, and water, whether too much, too little, or its quality, will be a big concern,” says Howard Boyd.

“氣候突發(fā)事件將越來越多地把我們從一個極端轉(zhuǎn)移到另一個極端，水無論是太多還是太少還是質(zhì)量優(yōu)劣都將是一個大問題?！?霍華德·博伊德這樣說道。

While the effects of drought on soil quality and risk of wildfires are more obvious, too much water brings its own problems. Increases in rainfall contribute to more pollution from farms washing into the wider environment, particularly in the dairy sector. The solution, says Howard Boyd, needs to be multidisciplinary, including financially incentivising sustainable farming practices, creating habitats for nature recovery and establishing new woodland.

雖然干旱對土壤質(zhì)量的影響和野火的風(fēng)險更明顯，但過多的水也會帶來自身的問題。降雨的增加導(dǎo)致了更多的污染，因為農(nóng)場的污染會被沖刷到更廣闊的環(huán)境中，這在乳品行業(yè)更為嚴(yán)重?；羧A德·博伊德說，解決方案應(yīng)該是跨學(xué)科的，甚至在財政上也應(yīng)該鼓勵可持續(xù)的農(nóng)業(yè)實踐，為自然恢復(fù)創(chuàng)造條件，同時建立新的林地。

“When we think about innovation, we usually think about new technology, but I’m hoping to see a more integrated approach with the natural resources we already have,” says Howard Boyd. “The Environment Agency works with farmers to tackle the root causes of pollution and to help environmentally sustainable, and profitable, agriculture.”

霍華德·博伊德說：“當(dāng)我們想到創(chuàng)新時，我們通常想到的是新技術(shù)，但我希望看到一個通過利用我們已有的自然資源設(shè)想出的更綜合的方法。環(huán)境署與農(nóng)民共同協(xié)作解決污染的根源，并幫助構(gòu)建環(huán)境可持續(xù)、有利可圖的農(nóng)業(yè)?！?/b>

For those farmers working in drier climates than Britain, climate change is resulting in land degradation – the quality of the land being farmed is decreasing. Land degradation affects almost half of the world’s population, as soil erodes away and nutrients are depleted. The challenge for farmers is to reverse this trend while feeding a growing population.

對于那些在比英國更干燥的氣候下工作的農(nóng)民來說，氣候變化正在導(dǎo)致土地退化，更確切地說是正在耕種的土地質(zhì)量正在下降。由于土壤侵蝕和養(yǎng)分枯竭，土地退化影響到了世界上幾乎一半的人口。在這種情況下，農(nóng)民面臨的挑戰(zhàn)是在養(yǎng)活不斷增長的人口的同時扭轉(zhuǎn)這種趨勢。

“We are still degrading more land and we are still harvesting more water, so where are we going?” asks Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

“我們?nèi)匀挥懈嗟耐恋卣谕嘶?，我們?nèi)匀辉诳是蟾嗟乃俏覀儗⒑稳ズ螐?”聯(lián)合國防治荒漠化公約執(zhí)行秘書易卜拉欣·提烏問道。

“There is no continent in the world that is spared by climate change, by land degradation, by drought and by degradation of ecosystems,” he says. “Africa is probably the largest continent in terms of the amount of land that is affected by land degradation. But if you go to Asia, because of the size of the population, you have more people in Asia affected by land degradation than anywhere else in the world.”

他說:“世界上沒有一個大陸能幸免于氣候變化、土地退化、干旱和生態(tài)系統(tǒng)退化。就土地退化所影響的土地數(shù)量而言，非洲可能是受影響最大的大陸。但在亞洲，因為人口數(shù)量巨大，亞洲的土地退化影響的人口比世界上任何地方都多?！?/b>

The good news is that there are solutions to land degradation, too, says Thiaw. “We can still restore degraded land into productive land.” Thiaw is inspired by high-tech offerings in other sectors, including the use of blockchain to track goods across the world, but believes land degradation could be solved with the comparatively low-tech “regenerative agriculture”.

提烏說，好消息是人類有解決土地退化的辦法。“我們?nèi)匀豢梢詫⑼嘶耐恋鼗謴?fù)為肥沃的土地?！?提烏是受到了其他行業(yè)包括使用區(qū)塊鏈追蹤全球商品在內(nèi)的高科技產(chǎn)品的啟發(fā)，但他認(rèn)為通過技術(shù)含量相對較低的“再生農(nóng)業(yè)”就足以解決土地退化問題。
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This style of agriculture encourages the use of cover crops ensuring the land is covered with one crop or other the whole year, both of which help to prevent soil erosion by wind or rain, maintain water and help to sequester carbon in the ground through their deep roots.

這種農(nóng)業(yè)方式鼓勵使用覆蓋作物，確保土地全年覆蓋一種或另一種作物，這兩種作物都有助于防止土壤受到風(fēng)或雨的侵蝕，同時土地還保持水分并有助于通過其深根固存地面的碳。
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“We don’t think it is enough to sustain the topsoil that we have now – we think we need to regenerate it because the world has lost about a third of its topsoil,” says Jeff Harmening, president of food producer General Mills. “And only the first few feet of soil on the Earth are responsible for all the food we produce.”

“我們認(rèn)為這不足以維持我們現(xiàn)在擁有的表層土，我們覺得我們需要對土壤進(jìn)行再生，因為世界已經(jīng)失去了大約三分之一的表層土了?！笔称飞a(chǎn)商通用磨坊總裁杰夫·哈蒙寧說?！暗厍蛏现挥凶畋韺訋子⒊叩耐寥朗俏覀兩a(chǎn)的所有食物的營養(yǎng)來源?！?/b>

General Mills has set a target of transforming one million acres of farmland (an area a little larger than Yosemite National Park) using regenerative agriculture by 2030. It might sound like an enormous area, but there are 915 million acres of farmland in the US alone. For regenerative agriculture to have a transformative effect, it will need buy-in from masses of farms.

通用磨坊公司已經(jīng)制定了這樣一個目標(biāo):到2030年他們要利用再生農(nóng)業(yè)技術(shù)改造100萬英畝的農(nóng)田(面積比約塞米蒂國家公園略大)。這聽起來可能是一個巨大的區(qū)域，但僅在美國就有多達(dá)9.15億英畝的農(nóng)田。再生農(nóng)業(yè)要想產(chǎn)生變革效應(yīng)的話，需要大量農(nóng)場的支持。

“One company the size of General Mills is big enough to make a difference but it is not big enough to make the difference,” says Harmening. “It is just a start but it is a good start and a big start to prove the theory of the case. If we do not get started now we are not going to like the result. We really can’t wait.”

哈蒙寧說:“一家像通用磨坊這樣規(guī)模的公司足以做出一些改變，但還不足以改變現(xiàn)狀。這只是一個開始，但這是一個良好的開始，也是證明這一理論的一個重要開端。如果我們現(xiàn)在不開始，那最后可能就無力回天了。我們真的不能再拖了。”

Future global pandemics, similar to what we are living through now, could be more likely because of some existing farming practices. “The intensification of agricultural production has come with unsustainable exploitation of natural resources,” says Pierre Ferrand, an agroecologist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the Asia-Pacific region. “This combined with the increasing impacts of climate change and global uncertainties, exposes communities to more hazards. Large-scale livestock production has been driving natural habitat loss and has pushed the agricultural frontier into wilder and less-arable lands, potentially contributing to creating the conditions for viruses circulating, mixing and spreading to humans.”

因為一些現(xiàn)有的農(nóng)業(yè)現(xiàn)象，我們現(xiàn)在所經(jīng)歷的全球性大流行病在未來很有可能再次發(fā)生。聯(lián)合國糧農(nóng)組織(FAO)駐亞太地區(qū)的農(nóng)業(yè)生態(tài)學(xué)家皮埃爾·費(fèi)朗解釋說: “農(nóng)業(yè)生產(chǎn)的集約化伴隨著對自然資源不可持續(xù)的開發(fā), 再加上氣候變化和全球不確定性的影響日益增加，這些使社區(qū)面臨著更多的災(zāi)害。大規(guī)模的牲畜生產(chǎn)導(dǎo)致了自然棲息地的喪失，并將農(nóng)業(yè)邊界推到了更荒涼和更少耕地的土地上，這可能為病毒的傳播、混合和向人類傳播創(chuàng)造了條件?！?/b>

Agroecology is the specialism of looking at farming’s place in the natural world to reduce its impact on biodiversity and improve the quality of crops. Ferrand says it is getting more and more traction in the Asia-Pacific region – mostly because it has already experienced past zoonotic disease outbreaks such as the Sars outbreak in 2003 and the H5N1 bird flu in the 2010s.

農(nóng)業(yè)生態(tài)學(xué)是著眼于農(nóng)業(yè)在自然界中的地位，以減少農(nóng)業(yè)對生物多樣性的影響并提高作物質(zhì)量為目標(biāo)的專業(yè)。費(fèi)朗德說，農(nóng)業(yè)造成的病毒在亞太地區(qū)的影響越來越大，這主要是因為亞太地區(qū)過去已經(jīng)經(jīng)歷了人畜共患病的事件，例如2003年的非典和2010年代的H5N1禽流感。

The Asia-Pacific region is home to nearly 75% of the world’s small-scale family farmers, fishers and livestock producers, who between them generate 80% of the region’s food. “It is very important to acknowledge it since they have been playing a critical role during the pandemic as ‘front liners’ supplying fresh food to urban centers,” says Ferrand.

亞太地區(qū)擁有世界上近75%的小規(guī)模家庭農(nóng)民、漁民和牲畜生產(chǎn)者，他們生產(chǎn)了該地區(qū)80%的糧食。費(fèi)朗德說:“承認(rèn)這一點(diǎn)非常重要，因為作為向城市中心供應(yīng)新鮮食品的‘前線’，它們在大流行期間發(fā)揮了關(guān)鍵作用?！?/b>

Family farmers will continue to play a very important role in the future, he says. “Family farmers are about much more than just production, they are also about stewardship – stewardship of the soil, seeds, biodiversity and human-animal interactions that make up a family farm – which is a fundamental dimension to consider in order to prepare for the next global food crisis.”

他說，家庭農(nóng)民在未來將繼續(xù)發(fā)揮非常重要的作用。“家庭農(nóng)民不僅僅涉及生產(chǎn)，他們還涉及管理，他們管理組成家庭農(nóng)場的土壤、種子、生物多樣性和人與動物的相互作用等，這是為下一次全球糧食危機(jī)做準(zhǔn)備的一個基本方面。”

However, there is a problem looming in the not-too-distant future if we keep putting so much responsibility at the booted feet of farmers: farming is an increasingly unfashionable job.

然而，如果我們繼續(xù)讓農(nóng)民承擔(dān)如此多的責(zé)任，那么在不久的將來就會出現(xiàn)一個問題:務(wù)農(nóng)會越來越不受歡迎。

It’s one thing making farmers custodians of our land, but what happens if no one wants to do the job? “I think that farming has a very, very bad image problem,” says Kimbal Musk, co-founder of urban farming company Square Roots. “If you’re talking about corn, if you are talking about soybeans no one wants to do that – it’s a really miserable business.”

讓農(nóng)民管理我們的土地是一回事，但如果沒人愿意做這個工作怎么辦? “我認(rèn)為農(nóng)業(yè)有一個非常非常糟糕的形象問題。如果你談?wù)摲N玉米或大豆，沒人想這么做，這是一個非常悲慘的行業(yè)?！背鞘修r(nóng)業(yè)公司平方根的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人金巴爾·馬斯克回應(yīng)道。

Musk hopes that he can make farming more attractive to young people by answering two of their major concerns with the job: firstly, that farming is remote and labour-intensive work and secondly that much of it is done unsustainably. Corn, for example, is one of the most important agricultural products in the US, yet 40% of the harvest goes towards biofuels in the form of ethanol. Biofuels, already a niche fuel, will soon be replaced with electric motors, says Musk. The rest of the harvest largely goes towards animal feed with only a small fraction making its way into the diets of Americans (in the form of high-fructose corn syrup – hardly a healthy food).

馬斯克希望通過解決年輕人對農(nóng)業(yè)工作的兩個主要擔(dān)憂來讓農(nóng)業(yè)對他們更具吸引力:首先，農(nóng)業(yè)是一項遠(yuǎn)程且勞動密集型的工作，其次，很多農(nóng)業(yè)工作都是不可持續(xù)的。例如，玉米是美國最重要的農(nóng)產(chǎn)品之一，但40%的收成都用于生產(chǎn)乙醇等生物燃料了。馬斯克說，生物燃料已經(jīng)是一種利基燃料，不久將被電動馬達(dá)取代。剩下的收成大部分用于動物飼料，只有一小部分(以高果糖玉米糖漿這種不太健康的形式)進(jìn)入了美國人的飲食。

Young people are motivated by meaningful jobs, says Musk, and at the moment agriculture doesn’t seem to offer that. “If you are a young person and you want to work in farming that’s just a terrible, horrible, horrible job,” he says.

馬斯克說，年輕人的動力來自有意義的工作，而目前農(nóng)業(yè)似乎無法提供這樣的工作?！叭绻闶且粋€想在農(nóng)場工作的年輕人，那對你來說只是一個非常非常非常糟糕的工作。”他說。

But Square Roots is offering an alternative in the form of indoor farms in the centre of Brooklyn and Grand Rapids Michigan. At Square Roots, young farmers are given their own modified shipping container in which they can grown healthy foods, like kale, herbs and salads. Much of the work can be done from home using an app that upxes the farmer in real time with information about the climate inside their container. Younger farmers much prefer this lifestyle, says Musk.

但平方根公司提供了另一種選擇，該公司在布魯克林和密歇根州大急流城的中心地帶開設(shè)了室內(nèi)農(nóng)場。在平方根農(nóng)場，年輕的農(nóng)民會被分配到他們自己的改裝集裝箱，他們可以在里面種植如羽衣甘藍(lán)、香草和沙拉等健康的食物。很多工作都可以在家里通過一款應(yīng)用程序完成，該程序可以向農(nóng)民實時更新容器內(nèi)的氣候信息。馬斯克說，年輕的農(nóng)民更喜歡這種生活方式。
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“We have 10 positions for young farmers and I think we have had over 2,500 applications over the past couple of years for those positions,” says Musk.

馬斯克說:“我們有10個招聘年輕農(nóng)民的職位，我想過去幾年已經(jīng)有超過2500人申請這些職位?！?/b>
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Whether it is high-tech, app-powered, urban farms, or family businesses handed down through generations, the people who produce the food we eat have an opportunity to arrest climate change, and consumers, in turn, can shape that through the choices they make. If we all make the right choices, we might avert the next global crisis.

無論是高科技、應(yīng)用程序驅(qū)動的城市農(nóng)場，還是代代相傳的家族企業(yè)，生產(chǎn)我們所吃食物的人們都有機(jī)會阻止氣候變化，而消費(fèi)者反過來也可以通過他們所做的選擇來塑造這一趨勢。如果我們都做出正確的選擇，我們可能會避免下一場全球危機(jī)。