The inherent problems farmers face in their quest to feed the world

Most of the meat that we consume comes from animals raised on feed made up of grain (60 to 70 percent) and genetically modified (GM) soybean (20 to 25 percent), animal and vegetable fats (three to five percent) and other products such as salts, vitamins, flavor-enhancing additives and thickening agents, among others (three to 17 percent)." So says Jorge de Saja, director of the Spanish Confederation of Compound Animal Feed Producers (CESFAC), when asked about the diet of the animals that we eat. The same diet applies to fish that are grown in fish farms.

In Spain alone, 700 factories produce around 20 million tons of feed. This is devoured by the domestic animal stock, which totals 300 million animals (Spain ranks fifth in terms of production in the European Union). But, as Joaquim Brufau - coordinator of the animal-nutrition program at the Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology of Catalonia (IRTA) - is quick to point out, "each species has different dietary needs. Feeding a chicken or a pig, which require cereals and soybeans, is not the same as feeding a ruminant, which also need fiber-rich ingredients such as hay and fodder."

The outbreaks of mad-cow disease marked a turning point in the way in which animals are fed. "Now it's completely controlled," says Adolfo Alcalde, a livestock-breeding expert from ASAJA, the Spanish agrarian employers' association. Yet there is still the occasional food alert.

"In Germany and the Netherlands, they recently had a problem with dioxins in fats used to feed pigs, which was detected due to the effectiveness of the European system of quality and safety controls," according to CESFAC. Other substances, such as antibiotics, are only permitted if the animals get sick, and a certain amount of time must go by after their use before they are sacrificed.

Another issue is the growing uniformity of products. Piles of perfect-looking tomatoes, apples, lettuces and melons shine in the produce section, without a trace of those bothersome bugs of yesteryear. The agrochemical industry has taken care of that. These are the effects of the industrialization of the sector. Some producers insist on defending a more organic kind of farming closer to the end consumer. But their products are not usually found on supermarket shelves, and when you do find them, they are typically more expensive.

Champions of the current system argue that they are only giving consumers what they want. According to José Ramón Díaz, in charge of agriculture for ASAJA, "people don't want bananas or golden apples that have spots on them - even if they're organic. At the same time, they demand seasonal produce all year round, which means that it must be put in cold storage or imported from abroad."

But there's a price to pay for that. Vegetables, fruits and grains are brought to the market with traces of pesticide residue: herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. "There is pesticide residue both in what we eat and in the soil," says Antonio Abad, a scientist from the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology at the National Research Council (CSIC).

The latest report from the European Food Safety Agency, from 2008, analyzed 70,000 samples of 200 different types of food for pesticide residue. Residue was found in 35.7 percent of 11,610 samples from nine types of mass-produced fruits and vegetables. Of these, between two and three percent exceeded the maximum permitted limits; in the rest, no residue was detected. The majority of these substances was found in spinach, oranges, rice, cucumbers, mandarin oranges, carrots, pears, beans without pods and potatoes. The wide variety of pesticides used makes these tests complicated. A total of 862 different substances were used in the EU, and residue from a total of 365 pesticides was found; in grains, 76 types of pesticide were detected.

Is that a little or a lot? "It depends on how you look at it. For me, the biggest problem is that of 45 percent of the samples, around 25 percent contain two or more residues. Each pesticide doesn't exceed the limits individually, but if you add them all up, you're swallowing a cocktail, and there's a legal loophole that doesn't take the total into account. In strawberries and grapes, for instance, the mixture is explosive," says Abad.

Fungicides are the most commonly detected type of pesticide. "That makes sense, because they're substances that are used at the end of the harvest or after harvesting to avoid fungi, and to keep the fruit from rotting right away... The insecticides don't show up because they're used earlier," says Abad. There are no studies about the long-term effects of consuming pesticide residue. According to Abad, "toxicity reports are short-term, and individual for each product." He thinks that testing can be improved, because instead of looking for hundreds of compounds, it would make more sense to look for the most common ones. Big fruit-and-vegetable producers should also be involved, he argues, because they know what they've used.

Advocates of the current agricultural system say that if more traditional methods were used, most people wouldn't be able to afford to pay their weekly grocery bill. Not only would the raw ingredients be more expensive, but there would also be problems of time and space. As the person in charge of livestock breeding for ASAJA points out, "you can't feed an animal on one type of grass; it wouldn't get the nutrients it needs. What's more, it would grow very slowly and there wouldn't be enough room for the current animal stock."

The lack of fodder is another one of the big reasons behind feed consumption. It would be impossible, they say, to feed 255 million free-range birds, 27.8 million pigs, 18.5 million sheep, six million cows and 2.9 million goats. Nothing could be further from the truth for the NGO Friends of the Earth, which argues that in Europe, animals have become totally disconnected from the earth.

"They never go out to graze and the law allows them to be fed GM cereals, because we've got 70,000 hectares of genetically modified corn that mainly goes to feeding them. And there is no limit to it: you can use as much transgenic feed as you want," says Blanca González, a Friends of the Earth spokeswoman.

"Soybeans, which are the source of protein, are 100-percent transgenic and are imported, because they're not produced here. Another GM source is corn. But we're the only industry that is required to say on our labels that the product contains genetically modified foods [GMOs]," says the president of the feed confederation. According to González, however, meat is not labeled as transgenic and the consumer has a right to know - "because we eat what is given to animals. Now you can find out where a cow was born thanks to the tracing system that exists, but you can't get any information about what it has eaten." ASAJA is in favor of GMOs, because they are permitted and therefore, should be used. What happens if we eat meat from animals fed with transgenic plants? "It's not clear whether or not they are hazardous to human health, but their cultivation is destroying the Amazon rainforest and they contaminate nearby crops that are trying to produce more organic food," says González.

Environmentalists aren't the only ones to question current farming practices. The Coordinator of Farmers and Livestock Breeders (COAG) thinks that we must analyze the intensive, large-scale crop production model, since "it destroys social agriculture on a human scale, and it has not been demonstrated that it is safer in terms of preventing health risks, despite all the regulations that must be complied with."

As for transgenic organisms, it calls for Europe to stop the entry of GMOs and products contaminated by them. "The precautionary principle should be applied."

Andrés Góngora, who grows hothouse tomatoes in Almería and is in charge of fruit and vegetables for COAG, explains how things have changed. "We're spending half as much as we did a few years ago on agrochemical products. Not because they cost less, but because the formulas are better." Now they take advantage of all the trimmings, branches and leaves from the plants to make compost and have started using predators to control certain pests.

"We are subject to exhaustive European controls; samples are taken of the soil and the product we're growing," he says. Góngora thinks these controls are sometimes excessive, and wonders if tomatoes from Morocco, or green beans from Kenya, for example, are held to the same standards. "For instance, a product that was eradicated here 30 years ago, such as methyl bromide, a soil fumigator, is still being used in Africa and South America. It's very harmful to the environment, but it can't be detected in the end product.

At Friends of the Earth they say that it's a myth that traditional methods aren't as productive as their modern equivalents. "Livestock breeders grow their own corn and buy alfalfa for their animals, without the need to use genetically modified plants. We are convinced that another kind of agriculture and livestock breeding, one that is closer to the consumer and easier to control in the event of disease, is possible."