Agriculture: Chemicals GMO Failing - Try Organic, Sustainable
CategoriesA recent discovery presages production of hydrogen - not by electrolysis but by the effects of catalytic action and sunlight on water. In the ensuing discussion on this post, the question turns to what would be needed to afford economically decent conditions to the billions of people in developing countries. It appears that both water and energy will be important, but even more decisive than these factors will be low-input (not-wasteful) sustainable traditional and organic agriculture. The point is argued well in an article published by the Institute for Science in Society, adapted from a Third World Network briefing paper:
The Institute of Science in Society Science Society Sustainability
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
Sustainable Agriculture: Critical Ecological, Social & Economic Issues*********************************************
Various ecological, social and economic challenges must be addressed if agriculture is to be truly sustainable. Martin Khor, Director of the Third World Network, discusses the choices facing developing countries and policy makers, and suggests some ways forward.
Urgent action needed on agriculture
Agriculture is perhaps the most outstanding issue and challenge for sustainability. To attain the 'sustainable development' goal requires urgent actions on three fronts -the ecological, the social and the economic. There is a looming crisis and possible calamity developing in this all-important sector that must be urgently addressed, as it impacts on the livelihoods of most of the world's people and everyone else's food needs.
Agriculture is facing three major problems and choices:(a) Ecology/Technology: Which technology to base the future of world agriculture on? As the chemical-based model is faltering, the private sector and global establishment are looking to genetic engineering as the way ahead. But all the signs are that ecological farming is superior, not only for the environment, but also for gains in productivity and farmers' incomes. It has not been given the chance to prove itself. It should be.
(b) The global economic framework: The economic environment has turned extremely bad for developing countries' small farmers. International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank structural adjustment has put pressure on poor countries to liberalise food imports and abandon subsidies and government marketing boards. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) enables rich countries to raise their subsidies and set up astonishingly high tariffs, while punishing developing countries (which cannot increase their subsidies, and which have to liberalise their imports further). Commodity prices have slumped. These three factors are threatening the survival of developing countries' farms and farmers. The entire framework of global and national economic policies for agriculture has to be thoroughly revamped.
(c) Land for the farmers: Many small farmers are poor and some are becoming poorer. A main reason is unequal land distribution, where small farmers have little land security or access and lose a large part of their income to landowners. Land reform is urgently required and landless farmers are fighting for their rights. But the landowners in most countries have political clout and are resisting change.
All three issues have to be resolved, and in an integrated way, if sustainable agriculture is to be realised. Otherwise there will be an absolute catastrophe, especially if the wrong choices are made.
Ecology & choice of technology
A review of aid practice is needed to correct past mistakes to lead up to 'sustainable agriculture and rural development'. Important choices have to be made in technology. Aid and technical agencies, including the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) have supported the transfer of environmentally harmful technology models, which have contributed to tropical deforestation, depletion of fishery resources through trawl fishing and to the inappropriate chemical-based 'Green Revolution'. Besides ecological damage, these models have also caused great social hardship to forest dwellers, to rural communities whose lands and water supplies are affected by pollution and soil erosion, and to the millions of small fisherfolk whose livelihoods are threatened by trawl over-fishing.
Aid flows for destructive forestry and fishery projects should cease. So too should aid and loans for destructive commercial aquaculture projects which are ecologically harmful and economically unsustainable, and which harm farmers and fisherfolk whose lands and waters are affected. Instead, there should be support for small-scale community-managed and environmentally-sound forms of aquaculture, aimed at augmenting local food supply, and as have been traditionally practised in many countries.
In the past, most agricultural aid has promoted the Green Revolution model, which uses seeds that respond well to large doses of inorganic fertiliser and chemical pesticides. These few seed varieties have displaced a wide range of traditional seeds, thus eroding crop biodiversity. There is also mounting evidence of, and growing concern with, other ecological problems, such as increasing soil infertility, chemical pollution of land and water resources, pesticide poisoning, and pest infestation due to growing pest resistance to pesticides. These are not ad hoc problems, but symptoms of a technological system in decline. The ecological and health hazards should no longer be considered as the necessary costs to an economically and technically superior system, because the system's most important claimed benefit, high productivity, is itself now in question.
In areas where the model has operated for a longer period, there is evidence of declining yields and rising costs. In 1993, the FAO chief for Asia Pacific declared the Green Revolution era over. There is increasing deficiency of trace elements in the soil because of intensive use of mineral fertilisers, while continued high dependence on pesticides is not technologically sustainable. He revealed a yield decline of 1 to 3% per year in some fields using the Green Revolution technique, a situation described as "a recipe for disaster within one generation" by the FAO regional officer for integrated pest control, Peter Kenmore. Developments in some of the best-managed experimental farms have added to the pessimism. In International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) test plots, varieties that yielded 10 tonnes per hectare in 1966 were yielding less each year and produced less than 7 tonnes per hectare by the mid-1990s. IRRI scientists attributed the declines to environmental degradation, with irrigated land unable to cope. The detrimental changes included a reduction in the period when the soil was dry, the substitution of inorganic for organic fertilisers and a greater uniformity in the varieties grown. These factors are all intrinsic components of the system.
With disillusionment setting in on the Green Revolution, there is a danger that agriculture aid will turn to genetic engineering. Companies, universities and foundations have already pumped enormous funds into biotech research. But the claimed benefits of genetic engineering are far from proven, while there is increasing evidence of real and potential risks (see the Independent Science Panel (ISP) report, www.indsp.org). Scientists now point to scientific flaws of the genetic engineering paradigm, showing why it is impossible to predict the consequences of transferring a gene from one organism to another in a significant number of cases. This calls into question the value or usefulness of genetically engineered (GE) crops.
Moreover, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may migrate, further mutate and multiply, and in some cases the stability of affected organisms and ecosystems could be disrupted and threatened. The more specific risks in agriculture are that some transgenic crops could become noxious weeds, and others could transfer new genes to wild plants, which themselves could then become weeds. The new weeds could adversely affect farm crops and wild ecosystems. Similarly, GE fish, shellfish and insects could become pests under certain conditions. There is also a possibility of new viral strains giving rise to new plant diseases. Of particular concern is the risk that transgenic crops may pose a threat to wild plants and traditional crop varieties and thus accelerate the rapid loss of agricultural biodiversity, especially in developing countries, many of which are world centres of crop origin and diversity.
Finally, there is growing evidence of the hazards to human health of consuming foods containing GMOs. Cons
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