Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

"scant attention has been paid to the most cutting-edge ecological farming 
methods—methods that improve food production and farmers’ incomes, while also 
protecting the soil, water, and climate"


Published on Sunday, August 21, 2011 by Solutions
The New Green Revolution: How Twenty-First-Century Science Can Feed the World
Countries can and must reorient their agricultural systems toward modes of 
production that are not only highly productive, but also highly sustainable.
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/971
by Olivier De Schutter and Gaëtan Vanloqueren
Olivier De Schutter is UN special rapporteur on the right to food; professor 
at the University of Louvain in Belgium
Gaëtan Vanloqueren is research associate at the Earth and Life Institute of 
the University of Louvain in Belgium; Adviser to the UN special rapporteur on 
the right to food


Some crises appear and disappear in global media while remaining acute in the 
lives of real people. Global food insecurity is this type of crisis. In 
January 2011 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 
(FAO) warned that global food prices in December 2010 exceeded the 2008 peak 
during the so-called food price crisis that sparked “food riots” across 
Africa, Asia, and Latin America.1 The UN also warned that the price increase 
would not stop overnight and that we were entering “danger territory.”2 
Although prices stabilized in the spring, global food prices in May 2011 
remained higher than they were in June 2008. We will see more price spikes in 
the future, due to a growing discrepancy between supply and demand, the 
impacts of climate disruption on agricultural production, and the merger of 
the energy and food markets. The food crisis is here to stay.

Governments have pledged to reinvest massively in agriculture. After three 
decades of neglect, this is welcome news. However, as countries announce 
impressive figures on the scope of their reinvestment, we tend to forget that 
the most pressing issues today regarding agricultural reinvestment involve 
not only how much, but how.

The choice between agricultural development models has immediate and 
long-term consequences. Since 2008 some major reinvestment efforts have been 
channeled into a slightly modified version of the Green Revolution without 
fully considering our other great contemporary challenge of climate change. 
In contrast, scant attention has been paid to the most cutting-edge 
ecological farming methods—methods that improve food production and farmers’ 
incomes, while also protecting the soil, water, and climate.

Yet, with an estimated 925 million hungry people on the planet,3 we must 
think outside the box. Major shifts in food security policies are being 
discussed in most countries. Yet the best options are simply not being 
promoted sufficiently.

The first Green Revolution—as developed in Mexico and then in South Asia in 
the 1960s—succeeded in improving yields in the breadbasket regions where it 
was implemented.4 But it sometimes came at a high social and environmental 
cost, including the depletion of soils, pollution of groundwater, and 
increased inequalities among farmers.5 And the productivity gains were not 
always sustainable in the long term.

Our strategy today must recognize the connection between climate change and 
food security. It must leverage the potential of the new sustainable 
agriculture paradigm with policies designed to scale up and mainstream the 
systems that have proven records of success. It must not only preserve land 
and other agricultural resources for future generations; it must actively 
restore lands and resources that have been degraded. It must monitor progress 
using multiple indicators, ones that go beyond the amount of money invested 
and the amount of crops harvested. It must also create the enabling 
macroeconomic environment needed to link sustainable agricultural systems to 
markets.

Because hunger can be attributed to a wide range of causes, a comprehensive 
strategy to combat food insecurity would have to address issues such as an 
international trade regime that penalizes developing countries through 
subsidies that stifle local markets, the infliction of an unsustainable 
burden of foreign debt, and the impact of speculation on commodities markets. 
We do not focus on these themes, which are well known. Our interest is in the 
paradigm of agricultural development under which most policymakers work, and 
whether it meets the challenge of today and tomorrow. We believe it does not, 
and we seek to outline an alternative path.
Climate Change and Energy Scarcity: Key Elements of the New Food Security 
Context

Climate change is already having dramatic consequences for agriculture and 
international food security. Rain patterns are shifting, leaving farmers 
unable to harvest mature crops. More prevalent droughts and floods place 
unprecedented stress on agricultural systems. Water sources are more variable 
and are rapidly exhausted. Peasants are already struggling with these 
disruptions in Central America and East Africa. And, by 2080, 600 million 
additional people could be at risk of hunger as a direct result of climate 
change.6 In Sub-Saharan Africa, arid and semiarid areas are projected to 
increase by 60 million to 90 million hectares, while, in Southern Africa, it 
is estimated that yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 
50 percent between 2000 and 2020.7 Losses in agricultural production in a 
number of developing countries could be partially compensated by gains in 
other regions. But the overall result would be a decrease of at least 3 
percent in productive capacity by the 2080s, and up to 16 percent if the 
anticipated carbon fertilization effects (incorporation of carbon dioxide in 
the process of photosynthesis) fail to materialize.8 Without closer 
international cooperation, the FAO and the Organisation for Economic 
Co-operation and Development (OECD) warn that the direct impacts of climate 
disruptions on food production patterns will also lead to more “extreme 
volatility events on international food commodities markets”—the economists’ 
way of describing the 2008 global food price crisis.

Additionally, our current systems of agriculture are utterly dependent on 
fossil fuels. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy 
Agency, warned in August 2009 that oil is running out far more quickly than 
previously predicted, and that global production is likely to peak in about 
ten years. A study of the 800 biggest oil fields reveals that the rate of 
decline in the output of the world’s oil fields is 6.7 percent a year.9 The 
impacts of energy scarcity have been obscured by the economic crisis over the 
past two years. However, the price of the crude oil barrel has constantly 
increased in 2009 and 2010 thanks to economic growth in China and other 
emerging countries. Its level in May 2011 exceeds the level preceding the 
2008 food price crisis.10 Although the geopolitical situation in the Arab 
world and speculations about its consequences are currently driving oil 
prices up, economic recovery in developed nations and growth in the rest of 
the world will keep prices high. [A farmer gathers wheat in Bamiyan, 
Afghanistan. (UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein )] A farmer gathers wheat in Bamiyan, 
Afghanistan. (UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein )

Modern agriculture is highly sensitive to oil prices. Our food relies on oil 
or gas at many stages: nitrogen fertilizers are made of natural gas, 
pesticides are made out of oil, agricultural machinery runs on oil, 
irrigation and modern food processing are highly energy-dependent, and food 
is transported over thousands of miles by road or air. While the exact 
impacts of peak oil on the availability and cost of both oil and natural gas 
are unknown, it will undoubtedly affect food security. Energy scarcity is 
thus a key element of any policy for reinvestment in agriculture. But it is 
one that many current efforts lack.

Our current methods of food production are thus deeply unsustainable. Water 
scarcity and land degradation—two of the anticipated results of climate 
change in many regions—will add to the challenge of feeding the world. 
Already, 37 percent of China’s total territory suffers from land degradation. 
And, while China has 21 percent of the world’s population, it has only 6.5 
percent of the freshwater available globally.11

This can be changed. Some agricultural systems can mitigate greenhouse gas 
emissions and increase resilience to climate extremes. According to a United 
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report, the agricultural sector could be 
largely carbon neutral by 2030 and could produce enough food for a population 
estimated to increase to 9 billion by 2050—if systems proven to reduce 
emissions from agriculture were widely adopted today.
Roots of the Future: The New Agricultural Paradigm

A few decades ago, agronomists were faced with a sharp increase in pest 
outbreaks in modern monocultures, while ecologists were starting to model the 
complex interactions between insects and plants. At the same time, scientists 
were observing the effectiveness of traditional farming systems. The two 
scientific disciplines of agronomy and ecology converged, shaping the field 
of agroecology. Agroecology is the application of ecological science to the 
study, design, and management of sustainable agriculture.12,13 It seeks to 
mimic natural ecological processes, and it emphasizes the importance of 
improving the entire agricultural system, not just the plant.

The pioneers of agroecology proposed that agroecological systems be based on 
five ecological principles: (1) recycling biomass and balancing nutrient flow 
and availability; (2) securing favorable soil conditions for plant growth 
through enhanced organic matter; (3) minimizing losses of solar radiation, 
water, and nutrients by way of microclimate management, water harvesting, and 
soil cover; (4) enhancing biological and genetic diversification on cropland; 
and (5) enhancing beneficial biological interactions and minimizing the use 
of pesticides.14 Now, agroecologists are looking to integrate food systems, 
as well as agricultural systems, into the scope of agroecology.15

A growing number of scientists work and publish on this field,16,17 and, 
recently, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and 
Technology for Development (IAASTD), a four-year study involving 400 experts 
from all regions as well as international organizations such as the World 
Bank, the FAO, and UNEP, called for a fundamental paradigm shift in 
agricultural development and strongly advocated the increase of 
agroecological science and practice.18 Agroecology is also at the core of the 
latest reports published by the FAO and UNEP.19,20 Meanwhile, the farmers 
united through La Via Campesina, the largest transnational peasant movement, 
have rapidly integrated agroecological principles in recent years.21

Today, agroecology has concrete applications on all continents. Its results 
speak for themselves. The widest study ever conducted on these approaches, 
led by Jules Pretty of the University of Essex, identified 286 recent 
interventions of resource-conserving technologies in 57 developing countries 
covering a total area of 37 million hectares in 2006.22 The average crop 
yield increase was 79 percent, and a full quarter of projects reported 
relative yields greater than 2.0 (i.e., 100 percent increase). Malawi, which 
ramped up its fertilizer subsidy program in 2002 following the dramatic 
drought-induced food crisis the year before, is now also implementing 
agroforestry systems using nitrogen-fixing trees.23 (Agroforestry involves 
planting trees with crops to more efficiently use land, nutrients, and 
water.) By mid-2009, over 120,000 Malawian farmers had received training and 
tree materials from the program, and support from Ireland has enabled 
extension of the program to 40 percent of Malawi’s districts, benefiting 1.3 
million of its poorest people. Research shows that the program has increased 
yields from one ton per hectare to two to three tons per hectare, even if 
farmers cannot afford commercial nitrogen fertilizers.23 With an application 
of a quarter-dose of mineral fertilizer, maize yields may surpass four tons 
per hectare. The Malawi example shows that while investment in organic 
fertilizing techniques should be a priority, it should not exclude the use of 
other fertilizers. An optimal solution could be a “subsidy to sustainability” 
approach: an exit strategy from fertilizer subsidy schemes that would link 
fertilizer subsidies directly to agroforestry investments on the farm in 
order to provide for long-term sustainability in nutrient supply, and to 
build soil health for sustained yields and improved efficiency in fertilizer 
use.23 In Tanzania, 350,000 hectares of land have been rehabilitated in the 
Western provinces of Shinyanga and Tabora using agroforestry.24 In Zambia, 
agroforestry practices outperform fertilizers in rural areas where road 
infrastructure is poor and transport costs for fertilizer are high (which is 
the case in much of the African continent). The benefit to cost ratio for 
agroforestry practices ranges between 2.77 to 3.13 in contrast to 2.65 with 
subsidized fertilizer applications, 1.77 in fields with nonsubsidized 
fertilizer, and 2.01 in nonfertilized fields.25 Dennis Garrity, the director 
of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, estimates that a global 
implementation of agroforestry methods could result in 50 billion tons of 
carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere—about a third of the world’s 
total carbon reduction target.26 Such agricultural developments are examples 
of what many experts and scientists are calling the “evergreen revolution.” 
Among them is M.S. Swaminathan, the architect of the first Green Revolution 
in India, who now advocates organic farming.

In West Africa, stone barriers built alongside fields help retain water 
during the rainy season, improving soil moisture, replenishing water tables, 
and reducing soil erosion. Significant gains result: the water retention 
capacity of the soil is increased five- to tenfold, the biomass production 
ten- to twentyfold, and livestock can feed on the grass that grows along the 
stone barriers after the rains. Such “water harvesting” techniques are highly 
efficient in fighting desertification. They match the efficiency of 
mechanized irrigation, and are vital for food-insecure communities who live 
in dry environments. Indeed, it is impossible to build a truly Green 
Revolution without what Alan Savory calls a Brown Revolution: one that 
enhances soil organic matter, leading to sustainable productivity gains.27

In Kenya, researchers and farmers developed the “push-pull” strategy to 
control parasitic weeds and insects that damage crops. The strategy consists 
of “pushing” away pests from corn by interplanting corn crops with 
insect-repellent crops like Desmodium, while “pulling” them toward small 
plots of Napier grass, a plant that excretes a sticky gum that attracts the 
pest and traps it. The system controls pests without using costly and harmful 
insecticides. It also has other benefits, as Desmodium can be used as fodder 
for livestock. The push-pull strategy doubles maize yields and milk 
production while improving soils. The system has already spread to more than 
10,000 households in East Africa through town meetings, national radio 
broadcasts, and farmer field schools.

Agroecological practices enhance on-farm fertility production. Malawian 
farmers call it a “fertilizer factory in the fields.” These practices reduce 
farmers’ reliance on external inputs and state subsidies. This, in turn, 
makes vulnerable smallholders less dependent on local retailers and 
moneylenders.

Similar examples exist around the world. In Japan, farmers found that ducks 
and fish were as effective as pesticide for controlling insects in rice 
paddies, while providing additional protein for their families. The ducks eat 
weeds and insects, thus reducing the need for labor-intensive weeding, 
otherwise done by hand by women, and duck droppings provide plant nutrients. 
The system has been adopted in China, India, and the Philippines. In 
Bangladesh, the International Rice Research Institute reports 20 percent 
higher crop yields, with net incomes increasing by 80 percent.28 In 1998, 
after Hurricane Mitch, agroecological plots on sustainable farms from 
southern Nicaragua to eastern Guatemala had on average 40 percent more 
topsoil, 69 percent less gully erosion, higher field moisture, and fewer 
economic losses than control plots on conventional farms.29 This greater 
resistance to climatic disruptions will be vital in the coming decades.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Cutting edge innovation in agroecology 
is taking place in research centers in Santa Cruz, Nairobi, and Beijing. 
Scientists are discovering Iroko trees that build a carbonate-layer in the 
soil from CO2 captured in the atmosphere, offering new opportunities for 
long-term carbon sinks.30 They are designing future perennial cereal systems 
for sustainable grain production.31 And they are developing mycorrhizal 
products that could be applied in small doses to mimic in modern farming the 
mycorrhizal systems that exist between fungus and trees, a source of 
extraordinary productivity.32

It would be unwise, however, to wait for a silver-bullet solution to emerge 
from years of research and development. The most urgently needed effort for 
increasing food security is the scaling up of existing systems. Understanding 
what keeps agroecology underdeveloped is a necessary first step.
The Obstacles to the Necessary Change

We identify at least seven, largely self-reinforcing obstacles to the 
expansion of agroecological practices.

First, small-scale farmers, the primary practitioners of agroecology and the 
main beneficiaries of its expanded use, are marginalized in policy decisions. 
Small-scale farms use land and water more efficiently, and economists have 
long demonstrated the inverse relation between farm size and land 
productivity.33-40 However, a number of factors in the real world favor large 
farms: Large-scale operations are more competitive in the agribusiness sector 
because of facilitated access to credit (including from state-owned 
development banks). Large farms have a greater ability to integrate 
globalized food chains and to comply with the standards of the retail 
industry, including quality and sanitary standards but also social and 
environmental certification schemes. They also benefit from recent 
technological innovations that are designed to meet their needs, such as 
genetically modified crops, information technology, and zero-tillage 
machinery.40,41 In addition, decentralized small farmers experience agency 
problems and transaction costs that cannot be underestimated.35

At the same time, the belief that larger farms are more productive continues 
to be disseminated by influential authors.42 This is a mistake. Large, 
mechanized, monocropping operations are more competitive than small farms for 
the reasons explained above, but competitiveness and productivity are 
different things. Big farms outperform small farms according to only one 
measure of economic efficiency: productivity per unit of labor. Indeed, one 
agricultural worker on a modern, mechanized farm in the most fertile regions 
of the world can manage as much as 100 hectares of land, with a total output 
of 1,000 tons of cereal a year. A small-scale farmer with only a hoe can 
manage just one hectare, with a productivity per hectare as low as one ton a 
year in many African regions.43,44 But the global expansion of highly 
mechanized farming is something the planet simply cannot afford. The 
agroecological approaches highlighted above not only are more resource 
efficient—that is, they produce more from less—they also, with appropriate 
kinds of support, have a higher productivity per hectare, a different measure 
of productivity. The fact that some agroecological approaches require more 
labor can actually be positive, if the harvest provides sufficient incomes, 
since it can slow rural flight to cities and encourage rural development by 
attracting off-farm labor in rural areas. This is not a minor advantage as 
many countries face double-digit rates in urban unemployment.

Second, agroecology has rarely been supported by mainstream trade and 
agricultural policies. While agroecology supports diversified production 
systems, short food chains, and a balance of power among all actors, the 
structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s and the schedules of 
commitments under the Agreement on Agriculture of the World Trade 
Organization (WTO) led to a rapid (albeit still partial) liberalization of 
agricultural trade. This liberalization, in turn, encouraged the building of 
an export-led sector based on monocultures and the globalization of food 
chains, making transnational agribusiness companies increasingly 
influential.45 Similarly, while the development of agroecology would have 
required a strong state to empower small-scale farmers, disseminate best 
practices, and invest in agriculture, the “Washington consensus” was imposed 
on most developing countries through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 
and the World Bank. This orientation toward economic deregulation and 
privatization resulted in a 25-year downsizing of public services and 
disinvestment in agricultural systems.46-50 The dominance of neoliberal 
thinking during the last three decades has had lasting impacts on 
agricultural policies. Although some questioned this dominant model after the 
2007–2008 food price crisis, it continues to influence current debates and 
many elites in developing countries continue to believe that they must mimic 
the modernization-liberalization path pursued by developed countries.

The combination of the first two obstacles explains why small farmers are 
unable to compete with large-scale enterprises. Although the World Bank has 
put more emphasis on their importance in its 2008 World Development Report,51 
small-scale agriculture is still seen as nonviable in many mainstream policy 
discourses.

Third, the development of agroecology is impeded by the absence of security 
of land tenure for a large fraction of small-scale farmers. Improved security 
of tenure plays a vital role in agroecology: it encourages the planting of 
trees, the more responsible use of soils, and other practices with long-term 
payoffs (planting fruit trees, for example, also contributes to improved 
nutrition and health). However, some recent developments are increasing the 
threats to security of tenure: large-scale land acquisitions and leases 
(widely known as land grabs) are putting an enormous pressure on land access 
for vulnerable land users. Yet the policy debate on their regulation 
continues to be largely influenced by the belief that any private investment, 
whatever form it takes, will contribute to food security.52

Fourth, the common belief that a Green Revolution complemented by a “gene 
revolution” could solve global hunger puts scientific and technological 
progress at the core of efforts to alleviate hunger, diverting attention from 
a broader exploration of agricultural development. Agroecological research 
struggles with inconsistent research investments as well as a “lock-in” 
situation (an accumulation of obstacles) in agricultural research systems, 
which both hinder its development.53

Fifth, agroecology has been mischaracterized as a return to the past and as 
incompatible with the mechanization of agriculture. Agroecology is not about 
a return to a model of agriculture that relies solely on human power for 
tilling and harvesting. Agroecological approaches are perfectly compatible 
with a gradual and adequate mechanization of farming. However, for the 
farmers who have only hoes for tools and who live in areas where oil is 
scarce, the first step toward development may well be use of animal traction 
rather than tractors. A forced path toward mechanization—one that focuses on 
rapid mechanization of farming or use of technology that is not affordable 
for small-scale farmers—could aggravate rural depopulation. One tractor 
replacing the daily work of twenty landless laborers is only progress if 
nineteen jobs are created in the secondary and tertiary sectors.43 Yet most 
developing countries currently cannot offer urban job opportunities to those 
who leave the farming sector. Instead, the production of simple mechanical 
equipment adapted to smallholders and fit for agricultural techniques that 
conserve soil and water will actually result in more jobs in the 
manufacturing sector in developing countries.54

Sixth, the absence of full inclusion of externalities in agrifood price 
systems has enabled the development of industrial farming despite important 
social and environmental costs, and has hindered a comprehensive valuation of 
the benefits of agroecology.55 The success of large plantations is, in part, 
attributable to the fact that the price of food does not reflect the real 
costs to society resulting from their operations, particularly from the 
impacts of their modes of production on the soil and climate56 and on public 
health.

And, finally, organizations with vested interests in the status quo have 
ignored or resisted the benefits of agroecology.
Scaling Up Sustainable Agriculture: Policies for Change

Despite these obstacles, the scaling up of existing agroecological practices 
is achievable if we can develop a policy framework to move from successful 
pilot projects to nationwide policies.57 Six key principles could help us do 
this.

First, we need better targeting. Focusing our efforts on the needs of 
smallholders may seem obvious, yet only a few existing programs effectively 
target this group. Today, 50 percent of the hungry live in small-scale 
farming households, living off less than two hectares of land, and 20 percent 
are landless.58 This is unacceptable. Nor is it adequate to fixate on 
productivity improvements in breadbasket regions while ignoring the people 
who live in more inhospitable environments such as semiarid lands or hills. 
Trickle-down economics failed the test in Africa and South Asia—the two 
regions with the highest incidence of hunger. In the 1960s, investing in the 
Punjab (as the Green Revolution did) did little to improve the situation of 
farmers in the eroded hills of Karnataka.

Second, the redistribution of public goods must be prioritized in food 
security policies. Agroecological practices require public goods such as 
extension services; storage facilities; rural infrastructure (roads, 
electricity, and information and communication technologies) for access to 
regional and local markets; credit and insurance against weather-related 
risks; agricultural research and development; education; and support to 
farmers’ organizations and cooperatives. The investment can be significantly 
more sustainable than the provision of private goods, such as fertilizers or 
pesticides that farmers can only afford so long as they are subsidized. World 
Bank economists have rightly noted that “underinvestment in agriculture is […
] compounded by extensive misinvestment”59 with a bias toward the provision 
of private goods, sometimes motivated by political considerations.60 A 
1985–2001 study of 15 Latin American countries in which government subsidies 
for private goods were distinguished from expenditures on public goods 
indicated that, within a fixed national agriculture budget, a reallocation of 
10 percent of spending to supplying public goods increases agricultural per 
capita income by 5 percent, while a 10 percent increase in public spending on 
agriculture, keeping the spending composition constant, increases per capita 
agricultural income by only 2 percent.61 In other words, “even without 
changing overall expenditures, governments can improve the economic 
performance of their agricultural sectors by devoting a greater share of 
those expenditures to social services and public goods instead of non-social 
subsidies.”62 Thus, while the provision or subsidization of private goods may 
be necessary to a point, the opportunity costs should be carefully 
considered. Extension services that can teach farmers—often women—about 
agroecological practices are particularly vital. In today’s knowledge-based 
economies, increasing skills and disseminating information are as important 
as building roads or distributing improved seeds. Agroecological practices 
are knowledge-intensive and require the development of both ecological 
literacy and decision-making skills in farm communities.

Market failures affect the provision of these services. There is just too 
little incentive for the private sector to invest in these domains, and 
transaction costs are too high for local communities to create these goods 
themselves. States must step in. Seeds and fertilizers at subsidized prices 
are not a substitute for these public goods, although they may be competing 
for the provision of private assets in public budgets. Increasing the share 
of public goods in the government’s budget would have a significant positive 
impact on rural per capita income.

Third, if we want the best food security policies, we need a richer 
understanding of innovation that includes indigenous, local, and traditional 
knowledge. Simply put, not all innovations come from experts in white coats 
in laboratories. In large areas of Asia, farmers now join farmer field 
schools, a group-based learning process that enables farmer-to-farmer 
instruction. In India, farmers pool their seeds in community seed banks, 
which are administered through institutional arrangements to ensure the 
availability of planting material and the preservation and improvement of 
agrobiodiversity. And in Ghana, scientists launched radio broadcasts in local 
languages to popularize the best techniques to grow rice without additional 
inputs, rather than breeding new rice varieties. These techniques were 
identified through consultations with peasant groups, and they resulted in an 
average yield increase of 56 percent.63 Farmer field schools and community 
seed banks are not new technologies: they are social or institutional 
innovations. Such innovations are important to future food security because 
they can channel farmers’ experiences into knowledge-sharing processes with a 
considerable multiplier effect and at minimal cost.

Fourth, programs and policies must involve meaningful participation of 
smallholders. While some of the largest efforts to reinvest in agriculture 
shy away from a genuine engagement with representative farmer organizations, 
participation, if done properly, has several advantages for food security. 
First, it enables us to benefit from the experience and insights of the 
farmers. Second, participation can ensure that policies and programs are 
truly responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups. Third, participation 
empowers the poor, a vital step toward poverty alleviation because the lack 
of power exacerbates poverty: marginal communities often receive less support 
and are less able to advocate for their rights than the groups that are 
better connected to government. And finally, collaborations between farmers, 
scientists, and other stakeholders will facilitate innovation and create new 
knowledge.64

Existing projects demonstrate that participation works. Farmer field schools 
have been shown to significantly reduce pesticide use: large-scale studies 
from Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh recorded 35 to 92 percent reduction 
in insecticide use for rice.65 At the same time, the schools have contributed 
to a 4 to 14 percent improvement in cotton yields in China, India, and 
Pakistan.65 In Syria, Nepal, Nicaragua, and many other countries, 
participatory plant breeding schemes have been introduced in which 
researchers work directly with farmers, often combining traditional seeds 
with modern varieties.66 This practice empowers poor rural women who are key 
actors in seed management.67 In Latin America, the Campesino a Campesino 
movement has demonstrated that, when given the chance to generate and share 
agroecological knowledge among themselves, smallholders are very capable of 
improving their methods.68 In Cuba, a country that met its own peak oil when 
cheap oil imports from the USSR stopped, the adoption of agroecological 
practices was supported by the National Association of Small Farmers: between 
2001 and 2009, the number of promotores (technical advisers and coordinators) 
increased from 114 to 11,935 and a total of 121,000 workshops on 
agroecological practices were organized.69 Participation, a key principle in 
the activities of the grassroots organizations and NGOs that currently 
promote agroecology,68,70 should be an element in all food security policies, 
from policy design to management of extension services. Experts, technical 
advisers, and farmers should be encouraged to collaborate in identifying 
innovative solutions.71

Fifth, states could use public procurement to speed a transition toward 
sustainable agriculture. In several European countries, schools have already 
started sourcing food from local producers with sustainability criteria. In 
June 2009 Brazil decided that 30 percent of the food served in its national 
school-feeding program should come from family farms.72

[ Christian Dupraz)] An agroforestry system (interplanting poplar trees and 
wheat) in southern France. The system produces more grain and wood by hectare 
than if the two crops were cultivated separately. (photo: Christian 
Dupraz)Sixth, performance criteria used to monitor agricultural projects must 
go beyond classical agronomical measures, such as yield, and economic 
measures, such as productivity per unit of labor. In a world of finite 
resources and in a time of widespread rural unemployment, productivity per 
unit of land or water is a vital indicator of success. Overall, measuring 
efficiency in the new agricultural paradigm of agroecology requires a 
comprehensive set of indicators that assesses the impacts of agricultural 
projects or new technologies on incomes, resource efficiency, hunger and 
malnutrition, empowerment of beneficiaries, ecosystem health, public health, 
and nutritional adequacy. The assessment of progress should be appropriately 
disaggregated by population, so that improvements in the status of vulnerable 
populations can be monitored.

Promoting agroecological approaches does not mean that breeding new plant 
varieties is unimportant. Indeed, it is vital. Already, new varieties with 
shorter growing cycles enable farmers to continue farming in regions where 
the crop season has already shrunk and where classical varieties did not have 
time to mature before the arrival of the dry season. Breeding can also 
improve the level of drought resistance in plant varieties, an asset for 
countries where lack of water is a limiting factor. Reinvesting in 
agricultural research must involve continued efforts in breeding, though 
caution is needed due to the drawbacks of current seed policies and of 
intellectual property regimes on seeds.73 Just as breeding should not be 
discontinued, but rather done with the participation of the farmers most in 
need, fertilizers should not be forbidden. Agroecology provides the larger 
framework for their use, and it emphasizes that fertilization can be pursued 
through natural means, such as nitrogen-fixing trees.
Linking Sustainable Farming to Markets: The Political Economy of Food Chains

The above principles are not sufficient in themselves. Efforts by agronomists 
will be pointless if the right institutions, macroeconomic regulations, and 
accountability mechanisms are not established and implemented. In other 
words, farmers need enabling economic and institutional environments, 
allowing the 500 million households that depend on small-scale farming today 
not only to put food on the table, but also to market their surpluses. Public 
action is needed, not in order to “feed the world,” as stated in the food 
security policies of the past century, but rather in order to “help the world 
feed itself.”

Many, including respected food security pundits, think smallholder farmers 
are incapable of producing sufficient food for rapidly growing urban markets. 
This is simply false. The reality is that small food producers face a number 
of obstacles when trying to market their surpluses. We met with smallholders 
in Benin who insisted that improving market conditions is a greater priority 
than—and a condition for—improving crop productivity.74 An enabling market 
environment does not mean greater trade liberalization and a favorable 
environment for investment, as proponents of the “new conventional wisdom,” a 
slightly adapted version of the Washington consensus, contend.75 Rather, it 
means supporting the diversification of trade and distribution channels in 
order to create the conditions for genuine choice by small farmers between 
rural and urban markets and, in some cases, the high-value markets of 
industrialized countries.76 It also means preventing gains from being wrested 
from smallholders by better-resourced farmers.

Today, the limited number of buyers, the paucity of information on prices, 
and the absence of storage facilities all contrive to deprive farmers of any 
choice but to sell during the harvest period, when prices are at their 
lowest. A rapid and significant expansion of storage facilities capable of 
preventing postharvest losses in rural areas is needed. Mechanisms such as 
warehouse receipt systems are spreading across Asia and Africa. Such systems 
enable farmers to sell crops to warehouses at harvest time, but obtain the 
additional revenue generated when the food is sold at higher prices during 
the dry season.77

States should also aim to improve equity in the food system, especially in 
global supply chains where inequity is most pronounced. In too many cases, 
global food chains primarily reward large producers who have access to inputs 
(land, water, and credit), technologies, and political influence, and who can 
meet the volume and standards required by global buyers and retailers. Where 
small food producers are willing to be integrated into global food chains, 
states should actively support them through technical assistance and cheap 
credit, if needed. The promotion of modern farmer cooperatives is one way to 
improve the market position of producers, especially women. Ultimately, what 
matters, from a social point of view, is that the incomes of the poorest 
increase, whether they choose to serve local, regional, or global markets. As 
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has remarked, hunger is not necessarily a problem 
of food availability; it is primarily a problem of people lacking the 
purchasing power to procure the food they need.78

Because the power relationships that exist in food chains are so central to 
global hunger—over two-thirds of those who are hungry today produce 
food—centralized control over key agricultural functions must be 
dismantled.79 In the Brazilian soybean market, 200,000 farmers attempt to 
sell to five main commodity traders. Three large transnational commodity 
buyers—ADM, Cargill, and Barry Callebaut—dominate the Ivorian cocoa industry. 
Four firms carry out 45 percent of all coffee roasting, and four 
international coffee traders control 40 percent of an industry on which 25 
million producers depend. The result of this power distribution is that a 
significant portion of the reinvestment in agriculture will be captured by 
global players, instead of vulnerable food producers.
Stopping the Damage: The Role of Land

Farmers around the world face increasing pressures from large-scale 
development projects (including dams), extractive industries, logging, land 
conversion to agrofuels, and the creation of special economic zones. The 
result is that the poorest farmers are priced out of land markets and that 
evictions are rising everywhere, cutting farmers off from their 
livelihoods.80-82

States should strengthen customary land tenure systems, while at the same 
time weeding out their discriminatory components against women, and should 
reinforce tenancy laws in order to significantly improve the protection of 
land users. There is also ample empirical evidence of the positive impacts of 
land redistribution on the livelihoods of smallholders as well as on broader 
rural development.37 Agrarian reform with a strong redistributive component 
has been an important element in economic growth in South Korea and China. 
The belief that land redistribution is communism has led many to reject it 
out of hand. But, if it is part of comprehensive rural development policies 
that support the beneficiaries of land redistribution, complemented by an 
implementation of the six principles we put forward in this paper, it can 
contribute to increased food security and nutrition, prevent environmental 
losses, and put people to work in rural areas, thus reducing the effects of 
ecological, financial, and economic crises. The current wave of large-scale 
land acquisitions and leases unfortunately moves us in the opposite 
direction: in many cases it amounts to nothing less than a counter-agrarian 
reform that poses threats to food security.52
Farmers-in-Chief

Our “farmers-in-chief”—heads of states—can make the new paradigm on 
agriculture, food, and hunger a reality.83 The strategies highlighted in this 
essay can shape productive, sustainable, healthy food systems for the 
twenty-first century. Concrete recommendations to states and donors have been 
identified to scale up these promising agroecological farming systems and to 
shape an economic and institutional environment that will allow them to 
thrive. If significant progress is not achieved in the next three years, huge 
opportunities will be missed for feeding the world’s poorest people, 
mitigating climate change, and avoiding worsening water scarcity. In that 
case, coming generations will judge us harshly.
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Olivier De Schutter is UN special rapporteur on the right to food; professor 
at the University of Louvain in Belgium

Gaëtan Vanloqueren is research associate at the Earth and Life Institute of 
the University of Louvain in Belgium; Adviser to the UN special rapporteur on 
the right to food