In an interview on Inequality

Your next book looks at inequality in a different context. Tell me about Stuffed and Starved.

Stuffed and Starved considers international inequality rather than how inequality is manifest amongst the billion richest, as in the other books. Raj Patel is looking at the role wealthy nations play in causing poverty in the developing world. The most dramatic example to have occurred recently is that in 2005 hedge funds predicted a crash in various commodities; speculations which later caused grain prices to hike. For the first time in recent decades, we saw an increase in the number of children starving. This happened not because the rich people got together and said, ‘How can we make poor people starve?’, but because hedge funds pursue profit and pay little attention to how their actions affect the rest of the world.

Do you think international institutions such as the UN are capable of counteracting these problems?

I’m optimistic about the UN particularly because when the UN was formed in 1944 it didn’t even mention the poor - it was established purely to stop another world war. However, it has transformed so much in its 50 years that now its essential purpose is to try and end world poverty. These problems have to be solved collectively and so the UN is the right sort of institution to look towards, alongside acting locally.

In an interview on Food Production

Your next choice continues with this idea of how our current diet is causing obesity in many areas of the world. But Raj Patel also points out in his book Stuffed and Starved that many people still don’t have enough food. So you get the two extremes provided by the global food system.

Patel is a very smart man, a scholar in the true sense of the word. He takes this huge global picture. The book goes everywhere from India to Brazil to southern Africa looking at how the global impact of industrialised food has led to this scandalous situation where there are a billion people who get too many calories a day and a billion people who do not get enough. Again, it often has a lot to do with economic choices made by government agencies and non-government organisations.

But do you really think that an efficient and healthier way of providing food to an ever-expanding world lies with locally produced food? Is that really viable?

I absolutely do and so do the United Nations. The Food and Agricultural Organisation did a study a few years ago that shows that it is the way to do it. What there hasn’t been is a real study on how the current system leaves a billion people today starving. How is that happening?

Locally produced food might work where you are living in Vermont but how about somewhere like war-torn Somalia?

Yes, Vermont is a small agricultural state which is very food conscious, so it is relatively easy for me. Even though we are a northern state right up against Canada without a long growing season, we can still manage. The growers and the people here are very tuned into the whole idea of sustainability. War-torn Somalia has so many problems I think it would be better to take another example.

OK, how about Namibia?

What has happened lately is that they have adopted some new crops, some of which are genetically modified. They are primarily cash crops, so crops that are meant to be sold and they are encouraged to do this. These crops require huge inputs as far as fertilisers go, which is an added expense. So you get the situation where you have taken people from producing food for themselves and turned them into producers of cotton or wheat or whatever it may be. That is true in other countries like India and much of agricultural Africa.

And all of sudden they are finding that things have changed. In the past they could at least farm from a subsistence basis but now they have stopped doing that and they are not making enough money because of the expense of growing these GM crops or hybrid crops that are designed to be used in connection with chemical fertilisers. You get situations in places like India where there is an epidemic of suicides from farmers. These were countries that used to feed themselves and now they no longer can. The United Nations study pointed to the idea that if they went back to smaller food crops they would be fed.

Some people would disagree with that and say the only way to feed an ever-expanding population is through GM crops and big cash crops.

I can reel off half a dozen major academic studies, including the one that I just mentioned from the United Nations, which show that not to be the case. Organic is probably the only way we are going to be able to feed nine billion people. I read about it all the time, people asking how are we going to feed all these people organically. Well, there is plenty of evidence that we can. What is lacking is evidence that we can feed more people under the current system.

It is a system that is based on petrochemicals. Fertiliser is nothing but natural gas turned into ammonium nitrate and things like that. It is basically natural gas.  Many of the pesticides are derived from petrochemicals. Nearly all the fuel used for growing and transporting is based on inputs of petroleum products and we all know those are not a long-term solution.

But many people complain about how expensive organic is. Do you think we have to be prepared to spend a bigger proportion of our income on food, just as we did in the past?

I think with places like Europe and the United States there are two things at play. One is subsidies, which we talked about earlier, and the other is economies of scale. If you get more organic it will become cheaper.