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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Farmers in the Future of Sustainable Agriculture
  • Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:05:15 -0600


[I've got my own answer to that question at the end. You don't ask to take
part - that's what losers do. You ignore the clueless experts and grow your
own way]

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Making a Place at the Table for Farmers in the Future of Sustainable
Agriculture
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/09-6
by Katy Mamen on Friday, July 9, 2010 by Civil Eats

Interest in how our food is grown has been rekindled in recent years, with
particular focus on sustainable agriculture. But what exactly is sustainable
agriculture? Recently, everyone from certifiers like the Food Alliance, to
resource groups like the National Center for Appropriate Technology, to
producer groups like the California Farm Bureau Federation, to
multi-stakeholder efforts like the Keystone Alliance for Sustainable
Agriculture have been clamoring for authority on the matter, framing up
widely varying definitions and criteria to steer the national dialogue.

Last week, the National Research Council (NRC) upped the ante with the
publication of Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems for the 21st Century.
The report will surely be an important milestone on the path toward
agricultural sustainability. This 570-page tome, an update of the 1989 NRC
report Alternative Agriculture, set out to investigate the sustainability of
various agricultural production systems. It aims to distill principles of
practice that can underlie agricultural production across geographies and
scales, with a particular focus on applying practices-drawn from the U.S.
experience-in less developed countries, specifically sub-Saharan Africa. The
report also illustrates sustainable practices by showcasing a range of case
study farms, many of them a review of studies conducted for the 1989 report.

The NRC report sidesteps the debate about what sustainable agriculture is by
arguing that the "pursuit of sustainability is not a matter of defining
sustainable or unsustainable agriculture, but rather is about assessing
whether choices of farming practices and systems would lead to a more or less
sustainable system as measured by the four goals." It argues the "inherently
subjective" nature of characterizing sustainable agriculture and underscores
the degree to which different groups emphasize different goals of sustainable
agricultural systems, which the NRC frames as:

* Satisfying human food, fiber, and feed requirements, and contributing
to biofuels needs;
* Enhancing environmental quality and the resource base;
* Maintaining the economic viability of agriculture; and
* Improving the quality of life for farmers, farm workers, and society as
a whole.

The bottom line conclusion of the study? In order to meet society's long-term
needs for food, fiber, and fuel, and minimize externalities, "agricultural
production will have to substantially accelerate progress towards the four
sustainability goals" outlined above.

The authors stress the need to pursue two approaches simultaneously:
incremental and transformative change. In other words, we should support
positive baby steps toward one or more of the goals across all farming types
and scales, while at the same time striving to re-envision a model farm
landscape, as well as a policy framework that will facilitate its realization.

Where do farmers fit?

So just what will it take for our production systems to make this shift? The
NRC strongly emphasizes that scientific knowledge is the necessary foundation
to progress toward sustainability, stating that "[s]cience generates the
knowledge needed to predict the likely outcomes of different management
systems and expands the range of alternatives that can be considered by
farmers, policy makers, and consumers." Science is undeniably important to
the development and refinement of sustainability practices and policies. But
where do farmers fit?

The NRC report makes surprisingly little reference to farmers' knowledge in
the American context, but it does recommend that the USDA and other research
support agencies "encourage researchers to include farmer-participatory
research or farmer-managed trials as a component of their research." But is
this kind of partnership really about placing farmers' knowledge on a level
playing field with that of scientists? The stated objective of this farmer
involvement is to "enhance information exchange and enhance farmers' adoption
of new practices and approaches," a formulation that emphasizes a flow of
information from scientists to farmers, not the other way around.

Farmers can not only offer new innovations and advances in farming practices,
but importantly, an understanding of what approaches have worked and not
worked over decades and even generations of diligent trial-and-error on a
given piece of land. Yet many farmers are not inclined or encouraged to
document their experience in formal academic format that has come to be the
respected standard for knowledge among decision-makers.

Many analyses, including the bulk of the NRC report, take a literature-based
approach, which typically (and often inadvertently) ignore or downplay
farmers' experience and knowledge. One byproduct is that decision-makers in
our society tend to overlook farmers as experts, and they get subjugated in
broader decision-making processes. It may be that sustainability cannot be
achieved until farmers are understood as agricultural experts in their own
right and broader solutions truly integrate practitioners and their knowledge
systems.

The NRC report correctly acknowledges that the loss of local agricultural
knowledge is a key barrier to sustainability in farming systems. True
sustainability will require a recognition and acceptance of a diversity of
agricultural knowledge systems. As core actors in any kind of agriculture,
farmers must be placed at the center of proposed change models, in coalition
with representatives from throughout the model supply chains and food systems
that foster healthy food systems more broadly.

As Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems for the 21st Century indicates,
different people-agricultural producers included-emphasize different aspects
of sustainability. True sustainability requires all four goals to be met. It
is to farmers like the ones profiled in the report, especially those who have
scored high on all four sustainability goals, that we should look to in order
to move U.S. farming to greater sustainability. Not only do farmers like
these offer up valuable practices, but they hold important value systems and
worldviews that are essential underpinnings for agricultural policy, as well
as society as a whole.

What would it look like to truly place farmers like these at the center of
agricultural policy and production systems for the 21st Century? How can we
build collaborative decision-making models that better integrate farmers and
communities into policy decision-making?





  • [Livingontheland] Farmers in the Future of Sustainable Agriculture, Tradingpost, 07/10/2010

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