Solutions for a hungry planet

George Monbiot gets close to the solution for a world divided between outright hunger and a seeming surplus of foods on the shelf (Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat, April 15). However, what he fails to recognise is that the practice of feeding farm animals on grains such as wheat and barley is a new and unsustainable development in agriculture.

The vast majority of peasant farmers in the world follow the traditional time-honoured practice of feeding their ruminants on grass, hay, leaves and root crops. Pigs are raised on household food scraps, various mashes and, when on outdoor systems, the edible elements of the soil which they root in.

Meat for the masses is a luxury, available at the price of industrial farming fuelled by high-protein feeds, and end products purchased on the world market by grossly inflated supermarket buying power - at the cost of snatching away the diet of millions of world citizens. If we wish to do something about this, we can choose to purchase meat products from local farms that produce their meat similarly to the ways described above.
Julian Rose
Whitchurch-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

If people in Britain take George Monbiot's advice and eat less meat and milk, prices to farmers will go down. In that eventuality, grassland in the lowlands will be ploughed up to grow corn, while large parts of the uplands could be abandoned. The environmental damage would be serious; the net effect on greenhouse gas emissions probably negative; and the impact on the world food supply situation negligible.

Rather than arguing for simplistic token gestures that completely ignore the entirely understandable aspiration of people in other parts of the world for a richer and more interesting diet, we should address the root cause of the problem, which is 30 years of neglect of agricultural development.
Anthony Gibson
Director of communications, National Farmer's Union

George Monbiot is right to say that our appetite for meat from grain-fed animals will contribute to world hunger.

However, the good news for non-vegetarians is that if they eat meat from organic grass-fed animals they can do so with a clear conscience on climate change as well. Land in grass takes a large amount of carbon out of the atmosphere every year and stores it as organic matter in the soil. Bacteria in the soil under unfertilised grassland also break down a large proportion of the methane emitted by grazing livestock. Plough up the grass to grow more crops and you lose both these benefits.
Richard Young
Policy adviser, Soil Association

Simon Jenkins (The cost of green tinkering is in famine and starvation; Change in farming can feed the world - report, April 16) contradicts the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development reported elsewhere in the same edition. He states: "The GM ban is denying the developing world the swiftest path to productivity", despite the fact that the IAASTD does not support the biotech industry's propaganda by acknowledging that there is no evidence that GM increases crop yields. The report is clear that agriculture must embark on a new direction. Scientific research will be crucial, but this does not mean support for GM crops.
Clare Oxborrow
Food campaigner, Friends of the Earth

The UK's food trade gap is widening at an alarming rate (down from 85% self-sufficiency to 60% today). No doubt Simon Jenkins thinks that is a "good thing" as it conforms to the view that food trade should be governed by markets and that such food imports into the EU assist farmers in the developing world. However, in a world that is rapidly running out of food and land on which to grow it, he may not have noticed that the reaction of developing countries to rises in their food exports and the prices they receive for them has been to limit or ban them outright. Perhaps it is only when Jenkins is unable to fill his basket at Waitrose that the penny will drop.
Stephen Carr
Jevington Place Farm, East Sussex