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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.


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