Why sustainable agriculture
The debate over sustainable agriculture has gone beyond the health and
environmental benefits that it could bring in place of conventional industrial
agriculture. For one thing, conventional industrial agriculture is heavily
dependent on oil, which is running out; it is getting increasingly unproductive
as the soil is eroded and depleted. Climate change will force us to adopt
sustainable, low input agriculture to ameliorate its worst consequences, and to
genuinely feed the world.
But in order to get there, important changes have to be made in
international agencies and institutions, which have hitherto supported the
dominant model of industrial agriculture and policies that work against poor
countries, where farmers are also desperately in need of secure land tenure.
This mini-series is a continuation of many articles that have appeared
in our magazine, Science in
Society since 2002.
- Feeding the World under Climate Change
- Sustainable Agriculture: Critical Ecological, Social & Economic Issues
- Restoring Degraded Soils a Matter of Urgency
- Food for Thought
ISIS Report 06/10/04
Why sustainable agriculture
The debate over sustainable agriculture has gone beyond the health and
environmental benefits that it could bring in place of conventional industrial
agriculture. For one thing, conventional industrial agriculture is heavily
dependent on oil, which is running out; it is getting increasingly unproductive
as the soil is eroded and depleted. Climate change will force us to adopt
sustainable, low input agriculture to ameliorate its worst consequences, and to
genuinely feed the world.
But in order to get there, important changes have to be made in
international agencies and institutions, which have hitherto supported the
dominant model of industrial agriculture and policies that work against poor
countries, where farmers are also desperately in need of secure land tenure.
This mini-series is a continuation of many articles that have appeared
in our magazine, Science in
Society since 2002.
Feeding the World under Climate Change
Industrial agriculture contributes enormously to global warming, it
is increasingly unproductive and heavily dependent on oil that’s fast
running out. Nor can it feed us once climate change really gets going. A very
different agriculture is needed, says Edward Goldsmith
References for this
article are posted on ISIS members’ website.
Details here.
Climate change is happening
Climate change is by far and away the most daunting problem that the
human species has ever encountered. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) in its last assessment report expect a temperature change of up
to 5.8 degrees within this century. However, the IPCC did not take into account
a number of critical factors including the annihilation of our tropical forests
and other vegetation. These contain six hundred billion tons of carbon - almost
as much as is contained in the atmosphere - much of which is likely to be
released into it in the next decades by the increasingly uncontrolled
activities of the giant logging companies. The Director General of the United
Nations Environment Programme recently stated that only a miracle could save
the world’s remaining tropical forests. Nor does the IPCC take into
account the terrible damage perpetrated on the planet’s soils by modern
industrial agriculture with its huge machines and arsenal of toxic chemicals.
Our planet’s soils contain one thousand six hundred billion tonnes of
carbon, more than twice as much as is contained in the atmosphere. Much of this
will be released in the coming decades; unless there is a rapid switch to
sustainable, largely organic, agricultural practices.
The Hadley Centre of the British Meteorological Organisation, by
contrast, has taken these and other such factors into account in its more
recent models, and concluded that the world’s average temperature will
increase by up to 8.8 rather than 5.8 degrees this century [1]. Other
climatologists who take into account often largely neglected factors are even
gloomier [2].
The IPCC says that we can expect a considerable increase in heat waves,
storms, floods, and the spread of tropical diseases into temperate areas,
impacting on the health of humans, livestock and crops. It also predicts a rise
in sea levels up to eighty-eight centimetres this century, which will affect
(by seawater intrusion into the soils underlying croplands and by temporary and
also permanent flooding) something like 30% of the world’s agricultural
lands [3]. If the Hadley Centre is right, the implications will be even more
horrifying. Melting of the secondary Antarctic, the Arctic, and in particular,
the Greenland ice-shields is occurring far more rapidly than was predicted by
the IPCC. This will reduce the salinity of the oceans, which in turn would
weaken if not divert, oceanic currents such as the Gulf Stream from their
present course [4]. And if that continues, it would eventually freeze up areas
that at present have a temperate climate, such as Northern Europe (see also
"Global warming and then the big freeze",
SiS 20).
It is indeed ironic that global warming could lead to local or regional
cooling. If this were not bad enough, we must realise that even if we stopped
burning fossil fuels tomorrow, our planet would continue to heat up for at
least 150 years, on account of the residence time of carbon dioxide, the most
important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, while the oceans will continue to
warm up for a thousand years at least. All we can do is take those measures -
and very dramatic ones are required to slow down the warming process - so that
when our climate eventually stabilises, our planet remains partly, at least,
habitable.
Climate change is proceeding faster than predicted. This is becoming
apparent, among other things, by the prolonged droughts in many parts of the
world. Four years of drought in much of Africa have resulted in thirty to forty
million people facing starvation. At the same time, drought in the main
bread-baskets of the world: the American corn belt, the Canadian plains, and
the Australian wheat belt will seriously reduce cereal exports. The climate in
Europe in 2002 was dreadful. Massive floods in Germany are costing at least 13
billion dollars. Terrible storms in northern Italy, with hailstones the size of
tennis balls, destroyed crops over a wide area, and drought in southern Europe
drastically reduced harvests.
I was driven through endless olive groves in the southern Italian
province of Foggia and did not see a single olive on any tree. Climate related
disaster have been even more destructive in 2003 and 2004.
All this is the result of no more than 0.7 degree rise in global
temperature. What will things be like when we have to grow our food in a world
whose average temperature has increased by 2 or 3 degrees, let alone by 5 to 8
degrees as we are told later in this century?
Emissions of nitrous oxide and methane
It is becoming clear that climate change and its different
manifestations mentioned above will be the most important constraints on our
ability to feed ourselves in the coming decades. We cannot afford to just sit
and wait for things to get worse. Instead, we must do everything we can to
transform our food production system to help combat global warming and, at the
same time, to feed ourselves, in what will almost certainly be far less
favourable conditions.
Modern industrial agriculture by its very nature makes and must make a
very large contribution to greenhouse gases. Currently it is responsible for
25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60% of methane gas emissions
and 80% of nitrous oxide, all powerful greenhouse gases [5].
Nitrous oxide is generated through the action of denitrifying bacteria
in the soil when land is converted to agriculture. When tropical rainforests
are converted into a pasture, nitrous oxide emissions increase three-fold. All
in all, land conversion is leading to the release of around half a million
tonnes a year of nitrogen in the form of nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide is up to 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a
greenhouse gas, according to the European Environment Agency, though
fortunately atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide are currently less than
one-thousandth that of carbon dioxide - 0.31ppm (parts per million) compared
with 365 ppm. Nitrogenous fertilisers are another major source of nitrous
oxide. Around 70 million tonnes a year of nitrogen are now applied to crops and
contributing as much as 10% of the total annual nitrous oxide emissions of 22
million tonnes. With fertiliser applications increasing substantially,
especially in developing countries, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture
could double over the next 30 years [6].
In the Netherlands, which has the world’s most intensive farming,
as much as 580 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen in the form of nitrates or
ammonium salts are applied every year as fertiliser, and at least 10% of that
nitrogen gets straight back into the atmosphere, either as ammonia or nitrous
oxide [6].
The growth of agriculture is also leading to increasing emissions of
methane. In the last few decades, there has been a substantial increase in
livestock numbers - cattle in particular - largely as the result of converting
tropical forests to pasture. Cattle emit large amounts of methane and the
destruction of forests to raise cattle is therefore contributing to increased
emissions of two of the most important greenhouse gases.
Worldwide, the emissions of methane by livestock amount to some 70
million tonnes. With modern methods of production, cattle are increasingly fed
on a high-protein diet, especially when fattened in feedlots. Such cattle emit
considerably more methane gas than grass-fed cattle. Even the fertilisation of
grasslands with nitrogen fertilisers can both decrease methane uptake by soil
bacteria and increase nitrous oxide production, thereby increasing atmospheric
concentrations of both these gases [7].
The expansion of rice paddies has also seriously increased methane
emissions. Rain-fed rice produces far less methane than inundated rice
fertilised with nitrogen fertiliser.
Industrial farming is energy intensive
The most energy-intensive components of modern industrial agriculture
are the production of nitrogen fertiliser, farm machinery and pumped
irrigation. They account for more than 90% of the total direct and indirect
energy used in agriculture and are all essential to it.
Emissions of carbon from burning fossil fuels for agricultural purposes
in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per hectare,
compared with only 0.007 tonnes in non-mechanised agricultural systems, i.e.,
more than seven times lower [8].
This ties in with the estimate of Pretty and Ball [9], that to produce
a tonne of cereals or vegetables by means of modern agriculture requires 6 to
10 times more energy than by using sustainable agricultural methods.
It could be argued that a shift to renewable energy sources such as
wind power, wave-power, solar power and fuel cells would avoid having to reduce
energy consumption to protect our climate. However, this necessary substitution
would take decades; about 50 years according to some estimates.
A radical reduction in gas emissions is needed right now if we are to
take on board Hadley Centre’s prediction that rising temperatures within
thirty years will begin to transform our main sinks for carbon dioxide and
methane - forests, oceans and soils - into sources. If that occurs, we shall be
caught up in a ‘runaway’ process, i.e. an unstoppable chain-reaction
towards increasing temperatures and climatic instability.
Sustainable agriculture a matter of urgency
We must develop an agricultural system that does not cause these
terrible problems, and which on the contrary, helps to revitalise and hence
build-up our soil resources. Such an agricultural system would have much in
common with those once practiced by our distant ancestors and are still
practiced by those communities in the remoter parts of the Third World. They
may be "uneconomic" within the context of an aberrant and necessarily
short-lived industrial society, but they are the only ones designed to feed
local people in a really sustainable manner. Significantly, the most respected
authorities on sustainable agriculture, among them Jules Pretty and Miguel
Altieri, and there are many others, increasingly use the term "sustainable
agriculture" as synonymous with "traditional agriculture".
If traditional agriculture is the solution to feeding people under
climate change, one might ask why are governments and international agencies so
keen to prevent traditional peoples from practising it anymore and to
substitute modern industrial agriculture in its place. The answer is that
traditional agriculture is not compatible with the developmental process we are
imposing on the people of the Third World, still less with the global economy,
and less still with the immediate interests of the transnational corporations
that control it all.
That this is so is clear from the following quotes from two World Bank
reports. In the first, on the development of Papua New Guinea, the World Bank
admits that, "a characteristic of Papua New Guinea’s subsistence
agriculture is its relative richness". Indeed "over much of the country
nature’s bounty produces enough to eat with relatively little expenditure
of effort" [10]. Why change it then? The answer is clear, "Until enough
subsistence farmers have their traditional lifestyles changed by the growth of
new consumption wants, this labour constraint may make it difficult to
introduce new crops", i.e., those required for large scale production for
export.
In the World Bank’s iniquitous Berg report, it is nevertheless
acknowledged [11] "that smallholders are outstanding managers of their own
resources - their land and capital, fertiliser and water". And it is also
acknowledged that the dominance of this type of agriculture or
‘subsistence production’ "presented obstacles to agricultural
development. The farmers had to be induced to produce for the market,
adopt new crops and undertake new risks".
Industrial agriculture is on the way out
Whether we like it or not, modern industrial agriculture is on the way
out. It is proving ever less effective. We are now encountering diminishing
returns on fertilisers. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United
Nations (FAO) admitted in 1997 that wheat yields in both Mexico and the USA had
shown no increase in 13 years. In 1999, global wheat production actually fell
for the second consecutive year to about 589 million tons, down 2% from 1998.
Fertilisers are too expensive and as McKenney puts it [12], "the biological
health of soils has been driven into such an impoverished state in the
interests of quick, easy fertility, that productivity is now compromised, and
fertilisers are less and less effective".
Pesticides too are ever less effective. Weeds, fungi, insects and other
potential pests are amazingly adaptable. Five hundred species of insects have
already developed genetic resistance to pesticides, as have 150 plant diseases,
133 kinds of weeds and 70 species of fungus. The reaction today is to apply
evermore powerful and more expensive poisons, which in the US, cost 8 billion
dollars a year, not counting the cost of spreading them on the land [13]. The
farmers are losing the battle, the pests are surviving the chemical onslaught
but farmers are not. More and more farmers are leaving the land, and the
situation will get much worse.
Today we are witnessing the forced introduction of genetically modified
crops by international agencies in collusion with national governments, as the
result of the massive lobbying by an increasingly powerful biotechnology
industry. Genetically modified crops, quite contrary to what we are told, do
not increase yields. They require more inputs including more herbicides, whose
use they are supposed to reduce significantly, as well as irrigation water.
Also, the science on which they are based is seriously flawed. No one knows for
sure what will be the unexpected consequences of introducing, by a very
rudimentary technique, a specific gene into the genome of a very different
creature. Surprises are in store and some could cause serious problems of all
sorts [14].
Oil is running out
Another reason why industrial agriculture has had its day, even without
climate change, is that it is far too vulnerable to increases in the price of
oil; and more so, to shortages in the availability of this fuel.
If three million people starved to death in North Korea in the last few
years, it was partly the result of the collapse of the Russian market which
absorbed most of its exports, so it could no longer afford to import the vast
amount of oil on which its highly mechanised, Soviet inspired, agricultural
system had become so totally dependent. Its ‘farmers’ had simply
forgotten how to wield a hoe or push a wheelbarrow.
The UK could have been in a similar plight if the transport strike of
2000 had lasted a few more weeks. In an industrial society, oil is required to
transport essential food imports, to build and operate tractors, to produce and
use fertilisers and pesticides and process, package and transport food to the
supermarkets - a more vulnerable situation is difficult to imagine at the best
of times - but it is suicidal today.
It is not just temporary oil shortages associated with temporary jumps
in the price of oil that we are destined to face but the steady decline in the
availability of this commodity. Consequently, oil is due to become increasingly
expensive. The truth is that worldwide oil production will peak within the next
four to ten years. Oil discoveries have been very disappointing and much of the
oil we are using today was discovered some forty years or so ago. The Caspian
Sea area which many people in the oil business expected to contain as much as
200 billion barrels of oil; but according to Colin Campbell [15], one of the
world’s leading authorities on the oil industry, it is more likely to
contain as little as 25 billion barrels and no more than 40 or 50 billion. The
world uses 20 billion barrels a year and consumption is increasing at an
alarming rate.
Although the US has tried desperately to reduce its dependence on the
Middle East and succeeded in doing to a certain extent, alternative sources of
oil are drying up more quickly than expected. Iran for instance is unlikely to
produce more oil than it requires for its own use in ten or fifteen years.
Indeed, in the next twenty years the US will have become more dependent on the
Middle East than it is today as oil production of countries like Angola,
Nigeria, Venezuela, and Mexico also begin to fall. This explains why the US oil
industry, which is now in effect the government of the USA, is so fanatically
determined to conquer Iraq. Iraq has 11% of world known reserves, of which only
a fraction is exploited, and whose oil is the cheapest in the world. The
economic consequences of the coming world oil crisis cannot be over-estimated.
Conclusion
Industrial agriculture contributes a lot to climate change; it is
increasingly unproductive and heavily dependent on oil that’s fast running
out. Our only option is to switch comprehensively to sustainable, low input
agriculture, which not only feeds the world, but also ameliorate the worst
manifestations of climate change.
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