By Wylie Harris
Harper’s Magazine
April 2004
Richard Manning ["The Oil We Eat," Essay, February] suggests a return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a panacea to the dominant industrial system of food production, but a widespread adoption of his "one elk a year" solution would be worse, in terms of both human suffering and ecological havoc, than agriculture's current ailments.
Few of the world's hungry people have access to herds of wild game, and those who do typically eliminate them rapidly. This slaughter of "bush meat" is a major factor in the endangerment and extinction of wildlife both without and within protected reserves in many parts of the world.
Hope lies with the small farmers currently capitalizing on their natural advantages by intensifying inputs of human labor, diversifying and rotating crops, and integrating livestock, which have consistently led to yield increases of 50 to 100 percent. By channeling small farms' higher productivity into feeding their occupants, with only surpluses sold at market, poor populations gain food security. And since less-developed countries' populations still dwell predominantly in rural areas, there is widespread agreement among economists that emphasis on domestic agriculture is a vital step toward sustained economic development.