Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

CAN ORGANIC FARMING FEED THE WORLD?
http://www.resurgence.org/selection/egziabher1005.htm
Traditional farming practices in Ethiopia Photograph: Kate Eshelby
Traditional farming practices in Ethiopia Photograph: Kate Eshelby

A lecture given in July 2005 on behalf of the Soil Association discusses
the potential for a sustainable future in agriculture

A short extract from this lecture was published in Issue 233

1. Introduction

The term 'organic farming' was coined in the second half of the 20th
century to qualify the food production system that has nourished the world
for 10,000 years. The term was needed to contrast the farming that has
always been, with its new chemical-based modification, industrial
agriculture. Since organic farming has thus established its credentials,
the real question I think we should be addressing this evening is, "Can
industrial agriculture continue to feed the world?"

You can, of course, legitimately ask if organic agriculture can feed the
population of our world today, which is much larger than the population
before industrialisation. The question of whether organic agriculture can
produce as much food as industrial agriculture is legitimate, and it must
be answered. But an even more legitimate question is, "Can this newcomer,
industrial agriculture, continue feeding the world for the coming 10,000
years and more?" We should, therefore, answer all these questions
simultaneously if we are to ensure our future. To do that, we need to look
at agriculture and ecological stability first.

2. Agriculture and Ecological Stability

A natural terrestrial ecosystem is approximately stable because its
functional components, the producers, consumers, decomposers, soil, water,
air and temperature respond to negative feedbacks caused by changes from
outside. In the agricultural ecosystem, the crop plants and their weeds are
the producers. Human beings, domestic animals and at least some wild
animals, including many in the soil, are the consumers. Soil fungi and
bacteria are the decomposers. The humus binds the inorganic particles into
units that determine the soil's structure. Air and water become optimally
available in the crop plant root zone because of the soil structure. The
soil particles, especially the humus, also maintain the pH and supply
plants with nutrients [1]. I hope I am not underestimating you when I talk
of this elementary ecology. I think it is important to remind ourselves of
the simple elements of ecological stability to enable us to answer these
serious and complex questions.

2.1 Agriculture and Niche Simplification

Unaided by informed ecosystem management, even organic agriculture does not
obey these elements of ecological stability fully. All forms of agriculture
cause niche simplification. But industrial agriculture does so the most. It
is also in its market-oriented nature to reject comprehensively informed
ecosystem management.

In agriculture, our interest is the maximization of biomass production in
the crops and/or domestic animals that we use for food or for other
purposes. Therefore, agriculture reduces the number of species growing in
the farm. [2] In nature, species that grow together often exploit fully or
partially different niches of the same ecosystem. This is clearly seen in a
forest in the adaptation to differing light intensities by plants of
differing heights as well as differing sizes, shapes and angles of leaves.
Similar niche specialisation occurs in adaptations to various other
environmental factors as well, for example to soil depth. In an
agricultural monoculture, only one niche is used, and all the individuals
of the crop or animal species compete absolutely for that same niche while
there remain other niches fully or partly unoccupied because species that
could use them have been excluded. Though intensive inputs may make
agriculture productive in a given season, sustained productivity over years
is not possible with monocultures, [3] i.e. when only one of the green
plant niches is occupied. The occupation of a critical minimum of green
plant niches is necessary to achieve homeostasis - an equilibrium within
the growing environment which makes it sustainable. The minimum number of
complementing species needed for maximizing production is small, but that
needed for homeostasis is much larger. [3]

The species of crops and domestic animals whose biomass we want to maximize
are smaller in number than those that naturally grow in that ecosystem.
This means that even when based on a polyculture, agriculture reduces niche
utilization. Therefore, it also correspondingly reduces yields and the
positive responses to negative signals induced by disturbances of the
natural homeostatic processes. For this reason, the agricultural ecosystem
fails to adjust as effectively as the natural ecosystem it has replaced and
deterioration sets in. That is why losses of structure and fertility of the
soil occur. [4] The hydrological cycle then gets disrupted, often resulting
in soil salinization, [5] and even more often in soil erosion. [6]

Many civilisations have been eclipsed by such agriculturally induced
devastations, e.g. owing to salinization in the Tigris and Euphrates
Valleys, and owing to soil erosion and sedimentation in Ephesus [7] and the
rest of Asia Minor.

2.2. Techniques Used by Farming Communities for Compensating for the Loss
of Ecosystem Components

Over the thousands of years of the history of agriculture, farming
communities have learnt various biological and physical methods of coping
with the problems of loss of components of agricultural ecosystems, for
example, terracing and fallowing. But perhaps the most significant are
those that make the conscious use of species with special traits to provide
positive reactions to the agricultural ecosystem's negative feedbacks. For
example, mixed farming, [8] that is combining crop and animal production,
enables manuring, which balances biological production and consumption
effectively. Manuring enables decomposition to provide crops with nutrients
optimally, beginning at the start of the growing season. It also enables
the placing of the decomposing organic matter precisely where it is needed
the most in the agricultural ecosystem. The use of human waste freed from
disease-causing agents as manure reduces organic matter and nutrient
leakage from the agricultural ecosystem. Composting clears manure of weeds,
pests and parasites. Deep-rooted crops return leached nutrients up to the
surface soil from where they become available to the next generation crop.
Leguminous plants, including crops, fix nitrogen to replace what is
denitrified and lost to the atmosphere. Sorghum and similar crop species
are deep rooted and, besides bringing up nutrients to the surface, they
withstand dry spells which agriculture exacerbates by deforesting the land.
Deforestation exacerbates waterlogging as well. Teff and similar species
slow down growth to survive waterlogging, and rice even grows optimally
under waterlogged conditions. The positive impacts of agricultural
biodiversity can be made to occur simultaneously by planting the species in
polycultures and/or sequentially by crop rotation in monocultures or even
in polycultures.

The physical methods developed by farming communities reduce or prevent
soil erosion, loss of water, excess water, or even bring water from afar or
from under the soil for irrigation. Both irrigation and drainage can
influence the physics and/or chemistry of the soil, by causing
salinization, for example. [5] They have thus caused much loss of good soil
and biodiversity. But, in combination with appropriate biodiversity and, as
needed, physical structures, they can be used sustainably.

Combinations of these methods keep the humus content of the soil high and
thus maintain a stable soil structure and fertility. High humus also helps
crop species remain resistant to diseases and pests [9]

2.3 Industrial Agriculture: Creating the Ecosystem Market

Industrial agriculture abandons trying to bring about homeostasis. Instead,
it tries to produce a homogenous environment of marketable components,
irrespective of the diversity of the pre-existing ecosystems. To achieve
this, it uses irrigation extensively even where it is not needed. It thus
creates a captive market for its pumping and irrigation equipment. It also
creates contracts for building dams and irrigation and drainage canals. In
this way, it geographically extends the age-old problems associated with
irrigation. It divorces animal production from crop production. It disposes
of both animal and human wastes and plant residues as if they were
poisonous. It plants single variety monocultures as a continuum over very
extensive areas. Ecological disruption thus becomes inevitable.

One indicator of such a disruption is the regular and quick collapse of
crop varieties owing to emerging vulnerabilities to diseases and pests.
[10] This keeps breeders specially trained to keep out diversity and
produce uniform monocultures employed. It also gives chemical companies
that produce and supply pesticides and herbicides a captive market. Both
the breeders and suppliers of agrochemicals are now increasingly the same
multinational companies. [11] This is understandable, since combining both
sectors enables the breeding of varieties that can be relied upon to need
the agrochemicals. To enable them to dictate how farmers use the seed and
the agrochemicals, the companies patent both. The aggressive push of the
patented package results in extensive monocultures and erodes biodiversity.
By so doing, it marginalizes the farming community breeders [12] who have
been maximizing diversity and have thus given humanity the various crops
and the thousands of varieties of each crop as well as the ecological
methods of using diversity to forestall diseases and pests.

Thus marginalized, they lose confidence in their proven and customarily
acquired systems and become dependent on the monocultures and helpless when
confronted by the diseases and pests they used to prevent effectively.
Nutrients are leached out and washed away and have to be replenished
externally at regular intervals. This gives chemical companies that produce
and supply fertilizers a captive market. Soil structure deteriorates and
compaction becomes a serious problem. This gives agricultural machinery
companies a captive market. The natural components of the ecosystem are
thus replaced by tradable artificial components that are bought and sold in
the market. The farming communities lose their confidence in their proven
and customarily acquired, but now thus disrupted, ecological systems of
restoring and maintaining soil quality and fertility. In Ethiopia, they
state: "The land is corrupted; it has acquired the taste for bribes. We
have to bribe it with chemical fertilizers in order to produce anything."
This is the way that globalization is entering into farming community
agriculture.

The replacement agricultural ecosystem that these purchased replacement
ecosystem components constitute is not stable. Unlike the natural
components, these replacement components do not respond to feedbacks
effectively. Therefore, the more they replace the natural components, the
less balanced and sustainable the agricultural ecosystem becomes. This is
because of their inability to replicate the complexity of interactions in
the natural soil. [13] In this way, they steadily destroy the natural
components of the agricultural ecosystem and make themselves indispensable
in the steadily deteriorating farm.

The suppliers of these replacement components want to increase their profit
and they often come up with highly simplistic quick-fixes to the
market-making fundamental agricultural ecosystem flaws which they have
created. The most recent quick-fix, genetic engineering, is being
championed not as a means of increasing homeostasis and yields in stable
agricultural ecosystems, but as a means of producing crops that will grow
in degenerating agricultural ecosystems. [14] The logical end result of
degeneration is destruction. If transgenic crops can grow in an environment
under destruction, it were bad enough since they would lull us into
accepting the situation until it is too late to reverse it. As it is, so
far, genetically engineered crops have been used only to put more
disruptive factors into the agricultural ecosystem: poison to some
invertebrate animals in the case of Bt transgenic crops, and universal
poison to some other plants in the case of herbicide-tolerant transgenic
crops. No transgenic crops with other traits have been cultivated
extensively. Transgenic crops with other traits are so far merely a hype.

The quick-fix in the making to follow genetic engineering is
nanotechnology. We cannot as yet say how lulling a quick-fix it will
become. What, then, is the solution?

3. What is the Solution?

Over the past few weeks much attention has been focused on encouraging the
governments of the G8 nations to 'make poverty history' by ensuring fairer
trade, increasing aid and cancelling debt. While the aims are clearly
laudable, insufficient attention is being given to what form the aid should
take and what model of economic and agricultural development countries in
Africa should pursue. A fairer and more equal distribution of resources
will not be enough if we do not fundamentally rethink the way we farm, in
richer and poorer countries alike. The culture that has given us industrial
agriculture is changing climate globally and destabilizing even the little
that remains of the biosphere's natural ecosystems. If this trend is not
checked, the likelihood of the re-emergence of sustainable agriculture that
can continually feed the world will be drastically reduced. The Kyoto
Protocol is a timid attempt to reduce the impact of climate change. But
even that timid attempt has been rejected by the United States of America,
which is the country that causes a quarter of the total magnitude of
climate change. What chance has life got of continuing as we now know it?
Very little.

Assuming that we could curb climate change, we can solve the problem of
achieving sustainable food production only by adopting agricultural systems
that can maximize the biomass that we require, while at the same time
strengthening the homeostasis of the agricultural ecosystem. Will organic
farming do this for us?

The answer is yes, but only if we take it seriously and do all the
necessary research and development as well as management to bolster rather
than shunt the natural cycles that improve the functioning of the ecosystem
as a whole, including those parts of it that are not cultivated.

Can this be done? Why not? Previous farming communities have been doing it
for thousands of years. With our increased knowledge, we should do better
than they had done.

We have started doing this with some farming communities in Tigray,
Northern Ethiopia, and obtained reassuring results. These communities
started working with us on degraded land. They carried out physical soil
erosion control activities (terraces, check dams across gullies and trench
bunds). They restricted free range grazing to small areas and cut and
carried grass and other leaves to feed their animals. Trees and grass cover
then returned fully to the land. This was all traditional to them, but the
breakdown of their local community organization had prevented them from
acting collectively to use it. We encouraged them to revive their community
organization. They agreed a set of bylaws to enable them to do that. We
obtained recognition of those bylaws by their district governments. We
trained them on how to prepare and use compost. And they got on with it.
Latterly, we have introduced transplanting their long season crops (finger
millet, sorghum, maize) to ensure a long enough growing season even when
the rainy season becomes short. And the rainy seasons are getting shorter
and more erratic owing to climate change.

The change in their life and environment has been dramatic. The contrasts
in the following photographs can show this change.

I also have two tables that reflect more precisely what the photographs
show. These tables show clearly that, in the degraded environment of
mountainous Ethiopia, organic farming gives better yields than chemically
based farming. The tables also show that there is no depression of yields
as farmers take up an organic approach.

Unfortunately, research in the last five or so decades has focused
overwhelmingly on selecting varieties that maximize yields under irrigation
and chemical fertilizers. If a commensurate amount of research were
conducted on selecting varieties that maximize yields under increasing soil
fertility from organic management, I have no doubt that the results would
be comparable. But of course, in contrast to those of industrial
agriculture, they would be sustainable.

Organic farming, I am sure, will feed the world. I am also sure that unless
organic farming re-expands, the human component of the world will
eventually shrink. And, if climate change is not curbed, there will be no
biosphere as we now know it, let alone food as we now have it.

Endnotes

1. Heywood, V. H., and R. T. Watson, 1995, Global Biodiversity Assessment,
Published for UNEP by Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, p. 443.

2. Ibid, pp. 402-405, and p. 448.

3. Ibid, pp. 326-452 give additional information on how this soil
deterioration occurs.

4. Salinization as a consequence of irrigation, especially when water
drainage is not properly carried out, is a well documented phenomenon.
Therefore, even though it may at first sound counter-intuitive to associate
excess salts with excess water, it is lack of proper drainage that causes
simultaneous waterlogging and salinization, and land lost to both is
usually lumped together. Brown, L. R., and C. Flavin, 1997. Vital Signs,
1997, World Watch Institute: Washington, p. 42 state that 2 million
hectares of irrigated land are lost annually to waterlogging and
salinization. Pretty, J. N., 1995. Regenerating Agriculture, Earthscan
Publications Ltd.: London, pp. 126-127, gives the lower estimate of 1.5
million hectares per year. But either figure is equally frightening.

5. World Resources Institute, United Nations Environment Programme, United
Nations Development Programme and The World Bank, 1998. 1998-99 World
Resources- A Guide to the Global Environment, Oxford University Press:
Oxford, p. 157, state that soil is being eroded globally at a rate of 16 to
300 times than it is being formed. This shows that we are eating up
nature's investment and investing in death for future generations.

6. On 24 September 1995, the participants of the "Revelation and the
Environment, AD 95-1995" symposium visited the ruins of the ancient city of
Ephessus. While in the ruins of the city, dug out by archaeologists, we
were told that it was soil eroded from the surrounding hills that had
sedimented out and buried the city. The hills were now mostly rocky.

7. Howard, A., undated. An Agricultural Testaments, The Other India Press:
(Reprinted. First published in London in 1940), pp.1 and 32-38 describes
the system Note that there is no mixed faming in industrial agriculture. It
is, however, extensively used by farming communities of the South,
including Africa.

8. Unless it is owing to our lack of access to the complete literature,
modern papers and books on soil science do not deal with the health
implication of soil organic matter (humus). But it may also be because
modern authors are so engrossed with ecosystem replacement agrochemicals
for dealing with crop diseases and pests that they do not focus on natural
cures. However authors that published before agrochemicals were as widely
used as now wrote on the issue. Howard, A., Ibid, pp. 143-174, shows the
importance of high humus content and a balanced agricultural ecosystem in
keeping crops physiologically fit and thus not succumbing to diseases and
pests. He argues that the use of agrochemicals for fighting diseases and
pests is of limited efficacy since the diseases and pests adapt to the
chemicals. More recently but still before agrochemicals became so
ubiquitous, Russel, E. W., 1961 Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, Longman,
Green and Co. Ltd.: London, has repeated the same basic theme, with more
precise information, pp. 210-221 on how a balanced soil microflora helps,
and pp. 523-534 on how soil organic matter by keeping plants healthy and
resistant to pests and diseases helps.

9. Fowler, C., and P. Mooney, 1990. Shattering: Food, Politics, and the
Loss of Genetic Diversity, The University of Arizona Press: Tucson,
Arizona, p.135, report that between 1974 and 1977, new barley varieties in
the U. K. were losing their resistance about every 3 years.

10. Fowler, C., and P. Mooney, 1990. The Threatened Gene: Food, Politics
and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, The Lutterworth Press: Cambridge, pp.
115-139.

11. The specially trained plant breeders who produce the homogenous
varieties for industrial agriculture have been denying that farming
communities are breeders and that they merely select what nature provides.
This is indeed true, however not only of farming communities, but also of
plant scientists. That is why to conjure up a distinction, the industrial
agriculture breeders call the varieties produced by farming communities
"land races", connoting that it is the land and not the farming community
that produced the variety. Albeit grudgingly, even industrial agriculture
plant breeders are now recognizing farming communities also as breeders,
e.g. Duvick, D. N., "Plant breeding and biotechnology for meeting future
food needs," in: Islam, N., (ed), 1995. Population and Food in the Early
Twenty-First Century: Meeting Future Food Demand of an Increasing
Population, International Food Policy Research Institute: Washington D. C.,
pp. 221-222, recognizes both as breeders and distinguishes their
contributions as "professional plant breeding" and "plant breeding by
farmers".

12. The specially trained plant breeders who produce the homogenous
varieties for industrial agriculture have been denying that farming
communities are breeders and that they merely select what nature provides.
This is indeed true, however not only of farming communities, but also of
plant scientists. That is why to conjure up a distinction, the industrial
agriculture breeders call the varieties produced by farming communities
³land races², connoting that it is the land and not the farming
community that produced the variety. Albeit grudgingly, even industrial
agriculture plant breeders are now recognizing farming communities also as
breeders, e.g. Duvick, D. N., "Plant breeding and biotechnology for meeting
future food needs," in: Islam, N., (ed), 1995. Population and Food in the
Early Twenty-First Century: Meeting Future Food Demand of an Increasing
Population, International Food Policy Research Institute: Washington D. C.,
pp. 221-222, recognizes both as breeders and distinguishes their
contributions as "professional plant breeding" and "plant breeding by
farmers".

13. Pretty, J. N., 1995. Op. Cit., pp. 26-93, Conway, G. R. and Pretty, J.
N., 1991. Unwelcome Harvest, Earthscan Publications Ltd.: London, pp.
17-369, Heywood, V. H., and R. T. Watson, 1995 OP. Cit., pp. 326-452,
Shiva, V., 1991. The Violence of the Green Revolution, Third World Network:
Penang, Malaysia, pp. 103-150, among many others, have described the
specifics of how this loss of homeostasis occurs.

14. The United Nations Development Programme, 2001, Human Development
Report 2001, Oxford University Press: New York, p. 35, states,
"Biotechnology offers the only or the best 'tool of choice' for marginal
ecological zones... home to more than half of the world's poorest
people..." In the next paragraph, the UNDP states, "There is a long way to
go before biotechnology's potential is mobilized." In so saying, the UNDP
admits that biotechnology as 'the only tool' has not been tested in
marginal areas to prove itself as the best tool, or even as any tool.
Therefore, it is only a dream to state that it is "The only tool". Each of
us can dream, of course, including those manning the UNDP. But dreams
cannot become food. We know that there has not been even one successful
transgenetic crop developed for the marginal areas of the poor and used
extensively enough to prove itself. Assuming that biotechnology could
indeed produce adequate food in marginal areas, how are "the world's
poorest people", who are mostly not even monetized, nor even literate in
their own languages let alone in English, going to deal with the intricate
negotiations with patent holders, who will most probably be all foreign and
from the North, in order to use patented transgenic varieties, and how are
they to pay the royalties? In spite of a discussion on IPRs (see pp.
102-109) the UNDP is silent on the issue. This certainly turns its dream
into a nightmare!

    Tewolde B. G. Egziabher is Director General of the Environmental
Protection Authority of Ethiopia, and co-founder of the Institute of
Sustainable Development.

    Susan Burnell Edwards is a botanist and author. She teaches in higher
education and has worked in the Institute of Agricultural Research. She
takes an active interest in the work and cultural background of women and
children in Ethiopia.