2:36pm Wednesday 27th January 2010
The field of food production is filled with problems.
In the next 40 years, as natural resources dwindle and our environment becomes less stable, there will be 2.5 billion more mouths to feed.
Few farmers are as acutely aware of this problem as TV’s Jimmy Doherty. Best known for his series on breeding rare pigs, and that all-important childhood friendship with a certain Naked Chef, Jimmy has spent the last three years exploring more complicated matters. Namely, the science of producing food.
Unlike Heston Blumenthal, Jimmy doesn’t stand in lab-like kitchens plunging last night’s leftovers into liquid nitrogen – but rather focuses on the bigger picture.
His new show, Jimmy’s Global Harvest, currently on BBC2 on Thursdays, looks at large-scale farming techniques.
Although Jimmy made his name turning a derelict smallholding into a workable pig farm, he’s aware that there’s more to feeding the world than producing sausages on a tiny scale.
“We’re looking at the biggest problem that our population faces. It’s terrifying, really,” he says, frankly.
“We’re going to be just over nine billion people in 40 years time and yet we have the same amount of land to produce twice as much food.”
Just this month, the Government produced a 20 year strategy to address these problems. But according to Jimmy, it’s not enough.
“Our Government has slashed funding [for food research] by 40 per cent. But I think this problem is even more of a threat [to the planet] than terrorism.
“You can’t treat agriculture like the car industry. Farmers are very efficient, but they need backing because they’re the ones looking after the countryside and under pressure to produce food at a price that we want to pay.
“We’re all worried about what kind of phones we’ve got, what kind of shoes and that kind of thing, and food comes low down on our lists.”
During his new series, Jimmy travels to Brazil, America, Kenya and Australia, to look into the scientific secrets behind industrial-style farming.
“I was totally a fish out of water. But I can’t shy away from what’s going on,” he says.
“I’ve got a friend who is quite a large farmer and he once said to me, ‘Do you want flowers or food?’.”
He’s got a point, says Jimmy. But he wants to know if large-scale food production can be done without using up all the planet's resources.
“What is important is that the gap is bridged between two different worlds of farming.
“My way of farming is niche and often that's how people imagine they’d like their food produced. But there’s a cost to the way I produce my food. My sausages are more expensive, because of rearing the pigs free range.
“But I’ve discovered that if people want food at a certain price then there are other ways of doing it. You can’t necessarily ostracise mega-farming. There needs to be a bridge.”
“What people want is to understand the problems that we face,” he says, “And also to be given hope.”
He adds: “That encourages them to ask, ‘How else can we help?’ and, ‘What helps exactly?’. Because it’s not necessarily about farmers saying, ‘I’ve got the right methods or the wrong methods’, but how we spend our money.
“If everyone bought free-range eggs there would no longer be a market for battery eggs. So let’s look at how we spend the pounds in our pocket.”
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