Bountiful table: feeding everyone--not just the rich world--will depend on small farmers and careful cultivation.

Juan Manuel Martinez is a Latin American version of Johnny Appleseed. Last year, he traveled to eight countries in Central and South America to demonstrate an organic gardening method called Grow Biointensive, which increases crop yields two to six times over conventional agriculture while using less land and water. He plans to travel to seven more countries this year to train small farmers, agricultural students and nongovernmental organizations before both land and time runs out.

By mid-century, the Earth is expected to host an additional 3 billion people--mostly in developing countries. Arable land is being gobbled up worldwide by cities and roads or spoiled by overuse. Grain production has fallen behind population growth. The average amount of land dedicated to crops is now down from 0.23 hectares per person in 1950 to 0.11 hectares now. Experts predict it could fall to 0.07 hectares by 2050 if population growth continues as anticipated.

Water is becoming scarce and wind erosion, increased insecticide use and mechanized farming use up farmland faster than nature can replace it. Deserts now cover at least one-fifth of the earth's surface, and nearly two-thirds of Latin America's dry land is now moderately to severely desertified.

Martinez is founder of a nonprofit organization in Veracruz state in Mexico called Ecology and Population. Through workshops and demonstration centers that he hopes to create in every Latin American country, Martinez shows farmers how to use only local resources and as much as 88% less water compared to conventional farming methods. Grow Biointensive--also known as sustainable mini-farming--requires no petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Just 405 square meters per person can yield that one person a balanced diet.

Most importantly, once poor farmers learn the technique, thousands choose to stay on their land rather than migrate to urban slums, Martinez says. "It represents a feasible alternative to make a decent living out of their small plots by using the available resources they have for their everyday work," he told me. "The only thing they have to invest is their own effort."

Biointensive techniques are an important skill at a time when most governments are focused instead on large-scale farming and, consequently, devote their nation's best lands to growing food for export. The biointensive method is an alternative for farmers and small-scale producers left out of free trade, says Martinez.

The key to Grow Biointensive is good soil, without which there can be no effective gardening. When compost, cover crops and other organic matter replenish soil, plants get the nutrients they need, require less water and produce higher yields. The planet loses 24 billion tons of topsoil annually, according to the United Nations.

"Soil is one of the most undervalued resources in the world," says John Jeavons, director of Ecology Action, a nonprofit group in Willits, California. Jeavons is an internationally known expert on growing food who mentored Martinez and whose research facility attracts a steady stream of international visitors anxious to see Grow Biointensive methods in action.

Fortunately, some Latin American leaders are also eager to learn.

In 2006, then-Costa Rica President Abel Pacheco declared workshops led by Martinez and Jeavons to be in the national interest. Ecuador's Ministry of Agriculture has set up programs to teach farmers the method and a Colombian university and state agricultural institution are working with Jeavons to devise a plan that would reduce that country's dependence on imported foods. Thousands of farmers are also using biointensive gardening across Mexico, as well as in Argentina and Paraguay.

Dedicated instruction on how to grow more crops on less land in an environmentally friendly way couldn't come at a better time. Jeavons says current agricultural practices will feed only 64% of people in developing nations by 2014 as the Earth reaches its peak food-producing capacity. Whether or not his deadline is accurate, it seems inevitable that the planet will eventually reach a point where populations outstrips food supply--especially among the poor and disenfranchised. One need only look at any number of African disasters to see how this could happen.

Learning to do more with less, especially for the millions with no access to capital, export markets or scale, is a good solution. It will meet increasing food needs now while softening the blow on the world's poor when the crops fail to fill the shelves.

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