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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Why sustainable agriculture
  • Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:20:38 -0600


Why sustainable agriculture
ISIS Press Release 06/10/04
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FTWUCC.php

The Institute of Science in Society Science Society
Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk

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
(http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews.php).

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 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/FTWUCCFull.php. Details
here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/membership.php.

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.


========================================================
This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FTWUCC.php






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