Regenerating Agriculture

An Alternative Strategy for Growth

Jules N. Pretty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134165575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

For the past 50 years, the main goal of agriculture has been to increase production at any price, using high amounts of fertilizers and pesticides and intensive industrial methods. This has caused damage to the environment and widespread rural depopulation. This study shows that there is a viable alternative - a form of agriculture which conserves resources, maintains rural employment and minimizes the external costs, without loss of productivity. Using case studies from industrialized and developing countries, the author describes the new technical, institutional and policy options available.

1

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

André Gide, 1925, Les Faux-Monnayeurs

A VISION FOR AGRICULTURE

This book is about a vision of what can be achieved to make agriculture productive, environmentally sensitive and capable of preserving of the social fabric of rural communities. It is a book about the skills and ingenuity of local people and communities; about innovative agriculturalists who have sought to create an alternative agriculture; about the struggle for success in the face of huge odds.

There is now strong evidence that regenerative and resource-conserving technologies and practices can bring both environmental and economic benefits for farmers, communities and nations. The best evidence comes from the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the emerging concern is to increase food production in the areas where farming has been largely untouched by the modern packages of externally supplied technologies, such as pesticides, fertilizers, machinery, and modern crops and livestock. In these complex and remote lands, some farmers and communities adopting regenerative technologies have substantially improved agricultural yields, often only using few or no external inputs.

But these are not the only sites for successful sustainable agriculture. In the high input and generally irrigated lands, farmers adopting regenerative technologies have maintained yields while substantially reducing their use of inputs. And in the very high input lands of the industrialized countries, some farmers have maintained profitability, even though input use has been cut dramatically and yields have fallen. These improvements have occurred in initiatives focusing on a wide range of technologies, including pest and predator management, nutrient conservation, soil and water conservation, land rehabilitation, green manuring, water management and many others.

Such sustainable intensification emphasizing internal or available resources has been accompanied by indirect social and economic benefits. There is less need for expansion into non-agricultural areas, so ensuring that valuable wild plant and animal species are not lost. There is reduced contamination and pollution of the environment, so reducing the costs incurred by farming households, consumers of food and national economies as a whole. There is less likelihood of the breakdown of rural culture. There is local regeneration, often with the reversal of migration patterns as the demand for labour grows within communities. And, psychologically, there is a greater sense of hopefulness towards the future.

The Scale of the Challenge

As yet, the benefits of sustainable agriculture have been experienced by perhaps only a few thousand communities worldwide (see Chapter 7). They are potentially the pioneers for a new age in agriculture, pointing the way for the rest of the world. The scale of the challenge is huge and differs for different types of agriculture.

In the industrialized countries of the OECD and eastern Europe, some 1.2 billion people are supported by agriculture relying heavily on external inputs. In these regions, agriculture is highly productive, but also too often degrades and damages natural resources. An alternative and sustainable agriculture is unlikely to match current yield levels, but its reduced use of inputs lowers costs which means it can be financially viable. A subset of this type of industrialized agriculture, similar to the Green Revolution lands in terms of yield levels, occurs in the former countries of the eastern bloc. There is considerable reliance on modern technologies, but yields are relatively poor compared with countries of the OECD.

In the countries of the Third World, some 2.3–2.6 billion people are supported by agricultural systems characterized by modern technologies brought by the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution was characterized by the advent of new, high-yielding cereal varieties which, when cultivated with modern fertilizers and pesticides, transformed many agricultural systems. These systems have good soils and reliable water, and are close to roads, markets and input supplies. The area of these lands is some 215 million ha, and they currently produce 60 per cent of the grain in Third World countries. Alternative sustainable systems in these regions have been able to match their yields and profitability.

After these types of agriculture, this leaves some 1.9–2.2 billion people largely untouched by modern technology (based on estimates from FAO and World Bank data). They tend to be in the poorer countries with little foreign exchange to buy external inputs. Their agricultural systems are complex and diverse, and are in the humid and semi-humid lowlands, the hills and mountains, and the drylands of uncertain rainfall. They are remote from services and roads, and they commonly produce one-fifth to one-tenth as much food per hectare as farms in the industrialized and Green Revolution lands. It is in these regions that sustainable agriculture has had the greatest impact on local food production so far, with yields doubling to trebling with little or no use of external inputs.

The emerging evidence now shows that regenerative agriculture is possible and can have wider benefits. But this does not in itself indicate how it may be adopted by farmers worldwide. It suggests there can be many winners, but it is not clear who will be the losers in the short term. All successes have had three elements in common and there is much to be learnt from these. First, all have made use of locally adapted resource-conserving technologies. Second, in all there has been coordinated action by groups or communities at the local level. Third, there have been supportive external (or non-local) government and / or non-government institutions working in partnership with farmers.

Almost every one of the successes has been achieved despite existing policy environments. Most policy frameworks still strongly favour ‘modern’ approaches to agricultural development and at the same time discriminate against sustainability. They also tend to have an anti-poor and pro-urban bias. When policies are reshaped so as to support a more sustainable agriculture, and all three local conditions are present, then sustainable agriculture will be set to spread widely.

The Record of Modernized Agriculture

The impact of modern agriculture has been remarkable. About half of the rice, wheat and maize areas in Third World countries are planted to modern varieties, and fertilizer and pesticide consumption has grown rapidly. Nitrogen consumption, for example, increased from 2 to 75 million tonnes in the last 45 years, and pesticide consumption in many individual countries has increased by 10–30 per cent during the 1980s alone. Farmers have intensified their use of external resources and expanded into previously uncultivated lands. As a result, food production per capita has, since the mid-1960s, risen by 7 per cent for the world as a whole, with the greatest increases in Asia, where per capita food production has grown by about 40 per cent (FAO, passim).

Between 70–90 per cent of the recent increases in production have been due to increased yields rather than greater area under agriculture (World Bank, 1993). This has been described by Donald Plunkett (1993), scientific adviser to the CGIAR, as ‘the greatest agricultural transformation in the history of humankind, and most of it has taken place during our lifetime. The change was brought about by the rise of science-based agriculture which permitted higher and more stable food production, ensuring food stability and security for a constantly growing world population’.

A major problem is that these benefits have been poorly distributed. Many people have missed out and hunger still persists in many parts of the world. In Africa, for example, food production per capita fell by 20 per cent between 1964–1992. Estimates by the FAO and WHO (1992) and the Hunger Project (1991) suggest that around 1 billion people in the world have diets that are ‘energy insufficient for work’, of whom 480 million live in households ‘too poor to obtain the energy required for healthy growth of children and minimal activity of adults’ (The Hunger Project, 1991). The causes are complex and it is not entirely the fault of Green Revolution technology. These have had an undoubted positive impact on the overall availability of food. None the less, the process of agricultural modernization has been an important contributing factor, in that the technologies have been more readily available to the better-off.

Modern agriculture begins on the research station, where researchers have access to all the necessary inputs of fertilizers, pesticides and labour at all the appropriate times. But when the package is extended to farmers, even the best performing farms cannot match the yields the researchers get. For high productivity per hectare, farmers need access to the whole package: modern seeds, water, labour, capital or credit, fertilizers and pesticides. Many poorer farming households simply cannot adopt the whole package. If one element is missing, the seed delivery system fails or the fertilizer arrives late, or there is insufficient irrigation water, then yields may not be much better than those for traditional varieties. Even if farmers want to use external resources, very often delivery systems are unable to supply them on time.

Where production has been improved through these modern technologies, all too often there have been adverse environmental and social impacts (see Chapter 3). Many environmental problems have increased dramatically in recent years. These include:

• contamination of water by pesticides, nitrates, soil and livestock wastes, causing harm to wildlife, disruption of ecosystems and possible health problems in drinking water;
• contamination of food and fodder by residues of pesticides, nitrates and antibiotics;
• damage to farm and natural resources by pesticides, causing harm to farmworkers and public, disruption of ecosystems and harm to wildlife;
• contamination of the atmosphere by ammonia, nitrous oxide, methane and the products of burning, which play a role in ozone depletion, global warming and atmospheric pollution;
• overuse of natural resources, causing depletion of groundwater, and loss of wild foods and habitats, and of their capacity to absorb wastes, causing waterlogging and increased salinity;
• the tendency in agriculture to standardize and specialize by focusing on modern varieties, causing the displacement of traditional varieties and breeds;
• new health hazards for workers in the agrochemical and food-processing industries.

Agricultural modernization has also helped to transform many rural communities, both in the Third World and industrialized countries. The process has had many impacts. These include the loss of jobs, the further disadvantaging of women economically if they do not have access to the use and benefits of the new technology, the increasing specialization of livelihoods, the growing gap between the well-off and the poor, and the cooption of village institutions by the state.

Modernist Perspectives

Despite these problems, many scientists and policy makers still argue vigorously that modern agriculture, characterized by externally developed packages of technologies that rely on externally produced inputs, is the best, and so only, path for agricultural development. Influential international institutions, such as the World Bank, the FAO and some institutions of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, have long suggested that the most certain way to feed the world is by continuing the modernization of agriculture through the increased use of modern varieties of crops and breeds of livestock, fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. Remarkably, these international institutions often appear unaware at policy level of what can be achieved by a more sustainable agriculture. However, there are some signs of change, mostly limited to small groups of individuals, plus some small modifications in policy.

Box 1.1 contains examples of the types of perspectives brought to debates on the future of agricultural development that support modernist, high-external input themes. All make the point that the route to food security is through modern agriculture and external inputs. Some, such as the Nobel Laureate, Norman Borlaug, do so by vigorously putting down all alternatives, suggesting that unrealistic claims are made on behalf of alternative or sustainable agriculture. Others predict that if widespread starvation is to be averted, then ‘soil fertility management based on anything other than increased chemical fertilizer would lead to massive increases in food imports’ (Vlek, 1990). This is echoed by Yudelman (1993), who more recently said ‘there is no way short of unforeseen technological breakthroughs [that] raising yields in the future can be achieved without substantial increase in agrochemicals’. The FAO has estimated that over 50 per cent of future gains in food crop yields will have to come from fertilizers. This calls for massive increases in fertilizer consumption by poor countries.

At the same time, traditional agriculture is presented as environmentally destructive, so needing to be modernized; or as efficiently managed systems which have hit a yield ceiling, so again needing modern technologies. Even where there have been recent shifts in emphasis, both in rhetoric and substantive policy, the Green Revolution model tends to be widely believed to be the ‘only way to create productive employment and alleviate poverty’ (World Bank, 1993).

Clearly these quotes do not necessarily represent the exact position of these individuals or institutions. People and institutions change and adapt, and there are distinct signs of change illustrated in the box. These quotes do, however, show how value-laden is the debate. It is also true that the modernist perspectives are not the only ones that are value-laden. Those who promote an alternative or sustainable agriculture are equally value-laden. This book, for example, is explicitly about how a sustainable agriculture might be achieved, and how such a vision is blocked by current thinking and practices. The intention is to demonstrate its worth and value. This is not hidden.

Box 1.1 Modernist perspectives on future strategies for agricultural development

Technical Assistance Committee of the CGIAR (1988):

‘Indigenous farm populations have learned to manage their systems quite efficiently, making it difficult to increase their production without resort to external inputs’.

FAO (1991):

‘It seems likely that much of the growth in agricultural production will take place through increased use of external inputs’.

Norman Borlaug (1992):

‘Some agricultural professionals contend that small-scale subsistence producers can be lifted out of poverty without the use of purchased inputs, such as modern crop varieties, fertilizer and agricultural chemicals. They recommend instead the adoption of so-called ‘sustainable’ technologies that do not require fertilizers and improved varieties... The advent of cheap and plentiful fertilizers has been one of the great agricultural breakthroughs of humankind... The adoption of science-based agricultural technologies is crucial to slowing – and even reversing – Africa’s environmental meltdown’.

Norman Borlaug (1992):

‘Development specialists... must stop ‘romanticizing’ the virtues of traditional agriculture in the Third World. Moreover, leaders in developing countries must not be duped into believing that future food requirements can be met through continuing reliance on... the new complicated and sophisticated ‘low-input, low-output’ technologies that are impractical for the farmers to adopt’.

International Fertilizer Development Center (1992):

‘Higher yields per hectare produced by fertilizers will be the most persuasive argument to coax developing country farmers to abandon their environmentally destructive farming practices’.

The World Bank (1993):

‘Experience such as obtained with the Green Revolution in parts of Asia has shown that broad-based agricultural growth, invo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1. Sustainable Agriculture
• Chapter 2. The Modernization of Agriculture
• Chapter 3. The Environmental and Social Costs of Improvement
• Chapter 4. Resource-Conserving Technologies and Processes
• Chapter 5. Local Groups and Institutions for Sustainable Agriculture
• Chapter 6. External Institutions and Partnerships with Farmers
• Chapter 7. Linking Process to Impact: The Transition to Sustainable Agriculture
• Chapter 8. Agricultural Policy Frameworks and Institutional Processes
• Chapter 9. Policies That Work for Sustainable Agriculture
• References
• Index