Sustainable Farming

The total-ecosystem-management view of agriculture put forward in Permaculture and Natural Farming are increasingly gaining acceptance as a legitimate academic research subject, often called Agroecology. Almost all major universities in the US now have agroecology research and education programs: UC Berkeley, Penn State, UC Santa Cruz, NCSU, UIUC, and Iowa State, to name just a few.

Miguel Altieri (UC Berkeley) and Stephen Gleissman (UC Santa Cruz) are probably the leading academic researchers in this field.

Despite this activity, true sustainability in agriculture is faced with multiple challenges. From the "Barriers to Implementation" section of Prof Altieri's article* Modern Agriculture: Ecological Impacts and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming:

...some well-intentioned groups suffer from "technological determinism", and emphasize as a key strategy only the development and dissemination of low-input or appropriate technologies as if these technologies in themselves have the capability of initiating beneficial social changes. The organic farming school that emphasizes input substitution (i.e. a toxic chemical substituted by a biological insecticide) but leaving the monoculture structure untouched, epitomizes those groups that have a relatively benign view of capitalist agriculture. Such perspective has unfortunately prevented many groups from understanding the structural roots of environmental degradation linked to monoculture farming.

...

On the other hand, the large influence of multinational companies in promoting sales of agrochemicals cannot be ignored as a barrier to sustainable farming. Most MNCs have taken advantage of existing policies that promote the enhanced participation of the private sector in technology development and delivery, positioning themselves in a powerful position to scale up promotion and marketing of pesticides. Realistically then the future of agriculture will be determined by power relations, and there is no reason why farmers and the public in general, if sufficiently empowered, could not influence the direction of agriculture along sustainability goals.

* The whole article is a must-read. In just under 4000 words, Altieri gives an excellent overview of

• the effects of industrial agriculture
• the anticipated (and current) effects of genetic engineering
  
• the alternative offered by Agroecological approaches
  
• and the barriers to implementation

Do go and read that article now. If you are interested in getting a deeper understanding of the subject, there are some very well written books, esp. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture.

Food, Inc. is a new documentary by Robert Kenner that examines the state of food, and particularly "Big Food" in America. Doesn't look like it has been released widely yet, but should be certainly worth watching. Check out the trailers below:

Along with the illusion of abundance, supermarkets create an illusion of choice (40 types of breakfast cereals! 60 varieties of juices!). However, if you look at the ingredients, this illusion breaks down rapidly.

The illusion of the package:

Each year, more than 15,000 new food products come to market in the U.S. ... However, these introductions rarely represent an increase in food choices for the consumers. The packages attempt to hide the fact that we are essentially increasing the same set of ingredients over and over, even though they go by different names. ... a full 95% of the calories we eat come from only 30 varieties of plants.

The loss of diversity:

By growing all our crops in monoculture, industrial agriculture not only limits what we can eat today, but also reduces the choices of future generations. ... a study of the seed stock readily available in 1903 vursus the inventory of the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory... found an astounding loss of diversity: we lost nearly 93% of lettuce, over 96% of field corn, about 91% of field corn, more than 95% of tomato, and almost 98% of asparagus varieties.

"Big Food" dictates what we eat:

A handful of companies own most of the food brands in the market. For example, Kraft Foods, (the second largest food company in the world, after Nestlé) owns around 150 brands worldwide. Large food manufacturers have also been acquiring and introducing organic brands.

Why does this matter?

The goverment, bending under pressure from agribusiness, has never required labels that inform consumers about pesticides and other chemicals used on crops, or the residues still left on those foods at the time of purchase. ... "nuked" processed foods are not labled*. ... under pressure from the biotechnology industry, [the U.S. FDA] has decided not to require genetically engineered foods to be independently safety tested or labled. ... Agribusiness not only uses its political muscle to prevent food labling, it also has pushed through laws to stop critics from getting importnat information about food to consumers ... [by pressuring] 13 states to pass "food disparagement" legislation.

What's the alternative?

By choosing ... local, small-scale organic farming ... we could not only give ourselved the choice of safe and healthy food and a cleaner environment, but we could also incorporate literally thousands of ddifferent varieties and tastes into our diets.

*For the latest on food irradiation labling, see here.

The Farm as Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems With Ecosystems is written by a group of professional farmers, journalist, ecologist and biologists, most of them from the mid-western United States. This is somewhat surprising, since this area is the "corn belt" of America, with vast monoculture plantations of corn and soy-beans, factory farmed animals, and little else. Even most environmentalist consider this area an environmental sacrificial zone, since these vast monocultures are purportedly critical for "feeding the world".

The Farm as Natural Habitat critically examines this status-quo from various angles, and gives numerous examples of eco-friendly and sustainable farming operations in the corn belt that conserve the local land, improve water quality and wildlife habitat, and are highly profitable. Not all of these farms are completely organic, and since they are on the order of hundreds of acres, most of them use machinery to some extent.

The book covers the issue of protecting and promoting biodiversity on farms in four parts:

1. Agriculture as Ecological Sacrifice
2. Restoring Nature on Farms
3. Ecosystem Management and Farmlands
4. Steps Towards Agroecological Restoration

The first part reviews the current necessary-evil approach to the monocultures and factory farming in the corn belt, and demonstrates that this is not necessary, and is not sustainable in the long run:

• We should conserve biodiversity not just due to ethical and aesthetic reasons, but also because the natural ecology of an area provides us with tremendous value in natural resources that can not be replaced artificially at any cost once the ecosystems are damaged.
• While the sacrifice is made in the name of "feeding the world", in reality, about 80% of the grain produced is used as animal feed benefiting only the first world. In fact, world hunger has consistently worsened despite increasing monoculture in the corn belt.
• And of course, there are numerous catastrophic effects on human health and on the environment due to the industrial approach to agriculture and the associated diet and lifestyle.

The second and third parts review several examples and approaches used by farmers to run highly profitable farms by incorporating biodiversity and eco-friendly practices. The key here is active and unbiased observation of natural systems on the land, and working with the natural ecosystems rather than imposing the latest agri-science fashion. Part four examines the conceptual, social and regulatory shifts necessary for making large scale eco-friendly agriculture a reality. (Perhaps some of the shifts are now happening, like the proposed low-carbon agriculture subsidies.)

The book is written for the lay-person, and most of the data is presented in terms of direct examples, but at the end of each chapter there are a large number of references to books, academic and policy publications, etc. Certainly worth reading for anyone interested in the future of agriculture in the coming low carbon economy.

The US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in an interview with NPR:

Vilsack: You can foresee a future where farmers are paid for reducing our carbon footprint, much in the same way we're currently paying them for conservation. We're concerned about water quality, we're concerned about preserving the soil, and so we're willing to pay people to do things on their land that would be helpful not just to them but to us.

Q: Are you saying you would want maybe someday to pay farmers for doing fertilizer-free farming, or for putting up a windmill that generates electricity in a renewable way, that sort of thing?

Vilsack: Well, there are a whole host of things, but I think it will be tied to the whole notion of offsets .... [there might be a] central distribution system that basically sells these offsets and contracts with the farmers... eventually the farmer gets benefited for doing what is right for the country as a whole and for the globe as a whole, which is to reduce the carbon footprint.

Listen to the entire interview here.

From Reuters:

Cuts to U.S. farm payments will be directed at farmers and ranchers with large incomes and big sales, and could affect 3 percent of farmers in the United States, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday.

Good news for small(er) farmers everywhere, but it seems unlikely that Obama can get this through the Congress.

Related news.

Farm Size versus Output in the United States, 1992

---

Median Farm Size Category (Acres)	Average Gross Output ($/Acre)	Average Net Output ($/Acre)
4	7424	1400
27	1050	139
...	...	...
694	249	51
1364	191	39

---

Since I briefly mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I've been trying to get a handle on the inverse relationship between farm size and output. The effect has been observed in all regions of the world, and is consistent across all farm sizes (page 8, in the .pdf).* Looking through the 2007 US Agriculture Census, I found that the effect still exists, though the difference in output seems to be smaller than in the table above (perhaps due to a difference in methodology?). Data from Table 58. Summary by Size of Farm: 2007 (.pdf) According to the Food First policy brief, the high productivity on small farms in the developing world is due to:

1. Multiple cropping
2. Land use intensity
3. Output composition
4. Irrigation
5. Labor quality
6. Labor intensity
7. Input use
8. Resource use

(for detailed explanation of each, see page 7 in the .pdf) On the other hand, larger farms are typically cultivated as monocultures, usually yield a single crop per year, use heavy machinery and significant chemical inputs, and produce low value commodities. The environmental costs of large mechanized agriculture is a different issue altogether! Since in the developing world the vast majority of farms are small, and the availability of farm labor is high, it makes sense to improve the efficiency and profitability of these farms by switching gradually to natural farming methods which are even more profitable due to

• near zero input costs
• low labor requirement
• a diversity of high value (and organic) crops

The conservation and enrichment of local resources is of course an excellent added bonus. These will also make the ecosystems more resilient in the face of a fluctuating climate in the next few decades. * Browsing through current academic literature, I got the impression that among economists, this effect is viewed as somewhat of an artifact; i.e. economics research papers tend to explain the effect on the basis of inequalities (in labor etc.) between small and large farms, rather than as a real farm productivity difference. I have tried to get some clarification from professional economists, but haven't heard anything yet. If you have any opinions one way or another, please let me know.

From the New York Times article - Crop Scientists Say Biotechnology Seed Companies Are Thwarting Research

The growers’ agreement from Syngenta not only prohibits research in general but specifically says a seed buyer cannot compare Syngenta’s product with any rival crop.

This unprecedented level of openness and honesty will certainly reassure everyone that GM crops are

1. safe
2. effective

Michael Pollan (Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley) talks about* the need to change agricultural practices in the context of changing energy and environmental realities. Highlights:

• After automobiles, agriculture is the largest carbon emitter in the US
• Policy changes in the '70s took the closed nutrient loop solution to farming - small multicrop farms with animals on them - and divided it into two enormous problems - giant fossil fuel fed farms, and cattle feedlots that are animal waste producing factories.
• In the coming expensive-energy era, this industrial farming model is going to be unfeasible, and more people are going to have to return to farming in the US. For this to happen, the status of agriculture needs to be elevated.
  

Michael Pollan also wrote an open letter on the same theme to the president-elect a while ago.

On a similar note, watch this TED Talk by Mark Bittman:


Compared to US agriculture practices, developing world farming is far more sustainable and at the right scale. However, to improve the long term survival of small farming, we need to act now. Improving the profitability by reducing material and labor costs, and improving stability by enhancing biodiversity will prove to be the key factors.

* Hat-tip to Rachel Nisselson bringing the Michael Pollan interview to my attention.