讓我們養活世界 填飽90億人的肚子不是問題

At dinner with a friend the other night, I mentioned that I was giving a talk this week debunking the idea that we need to grow more food on a large scale so we can “feed the nine billion” — the anticipated global population by 2050.

不久前和一位朋友共進晚餐時，我提到自己要在本週發表演講，揭穿這樣一個誤解：只有大幅提高糧食產量，才能“填飽90億人的肚子”——90億是預計中的2050年全球人口。

She looked at me, horrified, and said, “But how are you going to produce enough food to feed the hungry?”

她非常錯愕地看着我，說道：“但如何纔能有足夠多的糧食，讓餓肚子的人吃飽飯呢？”

I suggested she try this exercise: “Put yourself in the poorest place you can think of. Imagine yourself in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. Now. Are you hungry? Are you going to go hungry? Are you going to have a problem finding food?”

我建議她試着感受一下：假設你呆在你想得出來的最貧窮的地方。比方說，假設你正置身於剛果民主共和國(Democratic Republic of Congo)。那麼你感覺餓嗎？你將會食不果腹嗎？找起食物來會有什麼問題嗎？

The answer, obviously, is “no.” Because she — and almost all of you reading this — would be standing in that country with some $20 bills and a wallet filled with credit cards. And you would go buy yourself something to eat.

答案顯然是否定的。因爲她——以及幾乎所有正在閱讀這篇文章的人——置身於那個國家時，都會揣着一些面值爲20美元的鈔票，以及一個塞滿信用卡的錢包。你會自己去買點吃的。

The difference between you and the hungry is not production levels; it’s money. There are no hungry people with money; there isn’t a shortage of food, nor is there a distribution problem. There is an I-don’t-have-the-land-and-resources-to-produce-my-own-food, nor-can-I-afford-to-buy-food problem.

你和飢餓人口的不同之處不在於生產水平，而在於錢。不存在手裏有錢卻在餓肚子的人；不存在糧食短缺；也不存在分配問題。真正的問題是，我既沒有自行生產糧食所需的土地和資源，也買不起糧食。

And poverty and the resulting hunger aren’t matters of bad luck; they are often a result of people buying the property of traditional farmers and displacing them, appropriating their water, energy and mineral resources, and even producing cash crops for export while reducing the people growing the food to menial and hungry laborers on their own land.

貧窮以及因貧窮而導致的飢餓不是因爲不走運，這一切的源頭往往在於：有人攫取了傳統農民的土地；佔用了他們的水資源、能源和礦藏；他們甚至一邊生產經濟作物用於出口，一邊讓糧食生產者在自己的土地上成了卑微、飢餓的勞工。

Poverty isn’t the only problem, of course. There is also the virtually unregulated food system that is geared toward making money rather than feeding people. (Look no further than the ethanol mandate or high fructose corn syrup for evidence.)

當然了，貧窮並非唯一的問題。另一個麻煩是，當前的糧食體系幾乎沒有受到任何監管，其目標爲賺錢，而非養活人。（乙醇定量生產指令和高果糖玉米糖漿足以證明這一點。）

If poverty creates hunger, it teams up with the food system to create another form of malnourishment: obesity (and what’s called “hidden hunger,” a lack of micronutrients). If you define “hunger” as malnutrition, and you accept that overweight and obesity are forms of malnutrition as well, than almost half the world is malnourished.

貧窮在製造飢餓的同時，還和當前的糧食體系一起製造了另一種形式的營養不良：肥胖（以及所謂的“隱性飢餓”——缺乏某些微量元素）。如果你把“飢餓”界定爲營養不良，並且認爲超重和肥胖也是營養不良的表現形式，那麼世界上幾乎半數的人都處於營養不良的狀態。

The solution to malnourishment isn’t to produce more food. The solution is to eliminate poverty.

解決營養不良問題的方法不是生產更多的糧食，而是消除貧困。

Look at the most agriculturally productive country in the world: the United States. Is there hunger here? Yes, quite a bit. We have the highest percentage of hungry people of any developed nation, a rate closer to that of Indonesia than that of Britain.

來看看世界上農業生產水平最高的國家：美國。這裏有人捱餓嗎？有，而且相當多。我們國家的飢餓人口比例是所有發達國家中最高的，更接近印尼，而不是英國。

Is there a lack of food? You laugh at that question. It is, as the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler likes to call it, “a food carnival.” It’s just that there’s a steep ticket price.

美國缺少糧食嗎？這是一個讓人發笑的問題。就像美國食品藥品監督管理局(FDA)前局長戴維·克斯勒(David Kessler)喜歡說的那樣，這裏簡直是在舉辦“糧食嘉年華”。只不過門票價格太高。

A majority of the world is fed by hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers, some of whom are themselves among the hungry. The rest of the hungry are underpaid or unemployed workers. But boosting yields does nothing for them.

世界上的大部分人口所需的糧食，是由數億小農戶生產的，有些農民自己也在捱餓。其餘的飢餓人口是報酬過低或失業在家的工人。提高產量對他們毫無幫助。

So we should not be asking, “How will we feed the world?,” but “How can we help end poverty?” Claiming that increasing yield would feed the poor is like saying that producing more cars or private jets would guarantee that everyone had one.

所以我們就別再問“該如何養活世界人口”了，還是問問“該如何終結貧困”吧。主張通過提高產量來養活窮人，與宣稱生產出更多汽車或者私人飛機就能做到人手一輛(架)是一回事。

And how do we help those who have malnutrition from excess eating? We can help them, and help preserve the earth’s health, if we recognize that the industrial model of food production is neither inevitable nor desirable.

我們又該如何幫助因爲吃得太多而營養不良的人呢？如果能夠認識到糧食生產的工業化模式既非不可避免，也非理想選擇，那我們就可以在幫助這些人的同時，幫助維護地球的健康。

The best method of farming for most people is probably traditional farming boosted by science. The best method of farming for those in highly productive agricultural societies would be farming made more intelligent and less rapacious. That is, the kind of farming we can learn from people who still have a real relationship with the land and are focused on quality rather than yield. The goal should be food that is green, fair, healthy and affordable.

對大部分人而言，最好的耕種方式或許是藉助科學知識得到改進的傳統農耕方式。對農業生產水平很高的一些地區的人而言，最好的耕種方式則是知識含量更高的、不那麼貪得無厭的那種。即，我們可以從依然和土地真正連結在一起、依然關注品質而非產量的人們那裏學到的耕作方式。目標應該是產出綠色、優質、健康，而且便宜的食物。

It’s not news that the poor need money and justice. If there’s a bright side here, it’s that it might be easier to make the changes required to fix the problems created by industrial agriculture than those created by inequality.

窮人需要金錢和公正，這已經不是什麼新聞了。如果往好的一面看，那就是解決工業化農業帶來的問題可能比解決不公正帶來的問題更容易一些。

There’s plenty of food. Too much of it is going to feed animals, too much of it is being converted to fuel and too much of it is being wasted.

世界上的糧食已經足夠多了。多到可以拿很大一部分來飼養動物，可以拿很大一部分來製作燃料，可以拿很大一部分來浪費。

We don’t have to increase yield to address any of those issues; we just have to grow food more smartly than with the brute force of industrial methods, and we need to address the circumstances of the poor.

我們不必靠提高產量來解決上述任何一個問題，只要摒棄使用蠻力的工業化模式，更巧妙地生產糧食就可以了。我們還需要改善窮人的境遇。

Our slogan should not be “let’s feed the world,” but “let’s end poverty.”

我們的口號應該是“讓我們終結貧困”，而非“讓我們養活世界”。