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| Miguel Altieri |
By Miguel Altieri, Monthly Review, July-August 2009
Global
forces are challenging the ability of developing countries to feed themselves.
A number of countries have organized their economies around a competitive
export-oriented agricultural sector, based mainly on monocultures. It may be
argued that agricultural exports of crops such as soybeans from Brazil make
significant contributions to the national economies by bringing in hard
currency that can be used to purchase other goods from abroad. However, this
type of industrial agriculture also brings a variety of economic,
environmental, and social problems, including negative impacts on public
health, ecosystem integrity, food quality, and in many cases disruption of
traditional rural livelihoods, while accelerating indebtedness among thousands
of farmers.
The
growing push toward industrial agriculture and globalization—with an emphasis
on export crops, lately transgenic crops, and with the rapid expansion of
biofuel crops (sugar cane, maize, soybean, oil palm, eucalyptus, etc.)—is
increasingly reshaping the world’s agriculture and food supply, with
potentially severe economic, social, and ecological impacts and risks. Such
reshaping is occurring in the midst of a changing climate expected to have
large and far-reaching effects on crop productivity predominantly in tropical
zones of the developing world. Hazards include increased flooding in low-lying
areas, greater frequency and severity of droughts in semiarid areas, and
excessive heat conditions, all of which can limit agricultural productivity.
Globally,
the Green Revolution, while enhancing crop production, proved to be
unsustainable as it damaged the environment, caused dramatic loss of
biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge, favored wealthier farmers,
and left many poor farmers deeper in debt.1 The new Green Revolution proposed for Africa via the
multi-institutional Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) appears
destined to repeat the tragic record left by the fertilizer dependent miracle
seeds, in Latin America and Asia by increasing dependency on foreign inputs
and patent-protected plant varieties which poor farmers cannot afford (for
example, fertilizer costs went up approximately 270 percent last year) and on
foreign aid.2
In
the face of such global trends, the concepts of food sovereignty and
ecologically based production systems have gained much attention in the last
two decades. New approaches and technologies involving application of blended
modern agroecological science and indigenous knowledge systems spearheaded by
thousands of farmers, NGOs, and some government and academic institutions have
been shown to enhance food security while conserving natural resources,
biodiversity, and soil and water throughout hundreds of rural communities in
several regions.3 The science of agroecology—the application of ecological
concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable
agricultural ecosystems—provides a framework to assess the complexity of
agroecosystems. This approach is based on enhancing the habitat both aboveground
and in the soil to produce strong and healthy plants by promoting beneficial
organisms while adversely affecting crop pests (weeds, insects, diseases, and
nematodes).4
For
centuries the agricultures of developing countries were built upon the local
resources of land, water, and other resources, as well as local varieties and
indigenous knowledge. This has nurtured biologically and genetically diverse
smallholder farms with a robustness and a built-in resilience that has helped
them to adjust to rapidly changing climates, pests, and diseases.5 The persistence of millions of agricultural hectares under
ancient, traditional management in the form of raised fields, terraces,
polycultures (with a number of crops growing in the same field), agroforestry
systems, etc., document a successful indigenous agricultural strategy and
constitutes a tribute to the “creativity” of traditional farmers. These
microcosms of traditional agriculture offer promising models for other areas
because they promote biodiversity, thrive without agrochemicals, and sustain
year-round yields. The new models of agriculture that humanity will need to
include forms of farming that are more ecological, biodiverse, local,
sustainable, and socially just. They will be rooted in the ecological rationale
of traditional small-scale agriculture, representing long established examples
of successful community-based local agriculture. Such systems have fed much of
the world for centuries and continue to feed people in many parts of the
planet.6
Fortunately,
thousands of small traditional farms still exist in most rural landscapes of
the third world. The productivity and sustainability of such agroecosystems can
be optimized with agroecological approaches and thus they can form the basis of
food sovereignty, defined as the right of each nation or region to maintain and
develop their capacity to produce basic food crops with the corresponding
productive and cultural diversity. The emerging concept of food sovereignty
emphasizes farmers’ access to land, seeds, and water while focusing on local
autonomy, local markets, local production-consumption cycles, energy and
technological sovereignty, and farmer-to-farmer networks.
Small Farmers as
Key Actors for Regional Food Security
In Latin America, there were about 16 million
peasant production units in the late 1980s, occupying close to 60.5 million
hectares—34.5 percent of the total cultivated land. The peasant population
includes 75 million people representing almost two-thirds of Latin America’s
total rural population. The average farm size of these units is about 1.8
hectares, although the contribution of peasant agriculture to the general food
supply in the region is significant. These small units of production were
responsible for 41 percent of the agricultural output for domestic consumption
and for producing at the regional level 51 percent of the maize, 77 percent of
the beans, and 61 percent of the potatoes.7 The contribution to food security of this
small-farm sector is today as crucial as twenty-five years ago.
Africa has approximately 33 million small farms,
representing 80 percent of all farms in the region. The majority of African
farmers (many of them are women) are smallholders, with two-thirds of all farms
below 2 hectares and 90 percent of farms below 10 hectares. Most small farmers
practice “low-resource” agriculture which is based primarily on the use of
local resources, but which may make modest use of external inputs. Low-resource
agriculture produces the majority of grains, almost all root, tuber, and
plantain crops, and the majority of legumes. Most basic food crops are grown by
small farmers with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed.8 This situation, however, has changed in
the last two decades as food production per capita has declined in Africa. Once
self-sufficient in cereals, Africa now has to import millions of tons to fill
the gap. Despite this increase in imports, smallholders still produce most of
Africa’s food.
In Asia, China alone accounts for almost half the world’s
small farms (on 193 million hectares), followed by India with 23 percent, and
Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. Of the majority of more than 200 million
rice farmers who live in Asia, few cultivate more than 2 hectares of rice.
China has probably 75 million rice farmers who still practice methods similar to
those used more than 1,000 years ago. Local cultivars, grown mostly on upland
ecosystems and/or under rain-fed conditions, make up the bulk of the rice
produced by Asian small farmers.9
Small Farms Are
More Productive and Resource Conserving
Although the conventional wisdom is that small family
farms are backward and unproductive, research shows that small farms are much
more productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than
yield from a single crop. Maize yields in traditional Mexican and Guatemalan
cropping systems are about 2 tons per hectare or about 4,320,692 calories,
sufficient to cover the annual food needs of a typical family of 5-7 people. In
the 1950s the chinampas of Mexico (raised growing beds in shallow lakes or
swamps) had maize yields of 3.5-6.3 tons per hectare. At that time, these were
the highest long-term yields achieved anywhere in Mexico. In comparison,
average maize yields in the United States in 1955 were 2.6 tons per hectare,
and did not pass the 4 tons per hectare mark until 1965.10 Each hectare of remaining chinampa can
still produce enough food for 15-20 persons per year at a modern subsistence
level.
Traditional multiple cropping systems provide as much as
20 percent of the world food supply. Polycultures constitute at least 80
percent of the cultivated area of West Africa, while much of the production of
staple crops in the Latin American tropics also occurs in polycultures. These
diversified farming systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains,
fruits, vegetables, fodder, and animal products in the same field or garden
out-produce the yield per unit of single crops such as corn grown alone on
large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small
farm in which the corn is grown as part of a polyculture that also includes
beans, squash, potatoes, and fodder. But, productivity in terms of harvestable
products per unit area of polycultures developed by smallholders is higher than
under a single crop with the same level of management. Yield advantages can
range from 20 percent to 60 percent, because polycultures reduce losses due to
weeds (by occupying space that weeds might otherwise occupy), insects, and
diseases (because of the presence of multiple species), and make more efficient
use of the available resources of water, light, and nutrients.11
By managing fewer resources more intensively, small
farmers are able to make more profit per unit of output, and thus, make more
total profits—even if production of each commodity is less.12 In overall output, the diversified farm
produces much more food. In the United States the smallest two-hectare farms
produced $15,104 per hectare and netted about $2,902 per hectare. The largest
farms, averaging 15,581 hectares, yielded $249 per hectare and netted about $52
per hectare. Not only do small- to medium-sized farms exhibit higher yields
than conventional larger-scale farms, but they do this with much lower negative
impacts on the environment, as research shows that small farmers take better
care of natural resources, including reducing soil erosion and conserving
biodiversity. However, an important part of the higher per hectare income of
small farms in the United States is that they tend to by-pass middlemen and
sell directly to the public, restaurants, or markets. They also tend to receive
a premium for their local, and frequently organic, products.
The inverse relationship between farm size and output
can be attributed to the more efficient use of land, water, biodiversity, and
other agricultural resources by small farmers. So in terms of converting inputs
into outputs, society would be better off with small-scale farmers. Building
strong rural economies in the Global South based on productive small-scale
farming will allow the people of the South to remain with their families in the
countryside. This will help to stem the tide of out-migration into the slums of
cities that do not have sufficient employment opportunities. As the world’s
population continues to grow, redistributing farmland may become central to
feeding the planet, especially when large-scale agriculture devotes itself to
feeding cars through growing agrofuel feedstocks.
Small Farms
Represent a Sanctuary of Agrobiodiversity Free of GMOs
Traditional small-scale farmers tend to grow a wide
variety of cultivars. Many of these plants are landraces, more genetically
heterogeneous than formal modern varieties, and grown from seed passed down
from generation to generation. These landraces offer greater defenses against
vulnerability and enhance harvest security in the midst of diseases, pests,
droughts, and other stresses.13 In a worldwide survey of crop varietal
diversity on farms involving twenty-seven crops, scientists found that
considerable crop genetic diversity continues to be maintained on farms in the
from of traditional crop varieties, especially of major staple crops. In most
cases, farmers maintain diversity as insurance to meet future environmental
change or social and economic needs. Many researchers have concluded that
variety richness enhances productivity and reduces yield variability. Given the
penetration of transgenic crops into centers of diversity, at issue is the
possibility that traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought,
competitive ability, performance in polycrop systems, storage quality, etc.)
could be traded for transgenic qualities (e.g., herbicide resistance) which are
of no importance to farmers that do not use agrochemicals.14 Under this scenario, risk will increase
and farmers will lose their ability to produce relatively stable yields with a
minimum of external inputs under changing environments. The social impacts of
local crop shortfalls, resulting from changes in the genetic integrity of local
varieties due to genetic pollution, can be considerable in the margins of the
developing world.
It is crucial to protect areas of peasant agriculture
free of contamination from GMO crops. Maintaining pools of genetic diversity,
geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilization or genetic
pollution from uniform transgenic crops, will create “islands” of intact
genetic resources to act as safeguards against the potential ecological failure
derived from the Second Green Revolution increasingly being imposed with
programs such as the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary
islands will also serve as the only source of GMO-free seeds that will be
needed to repopulate the organic farms in the North that will inevitably be
contaminated by the advance of transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and
indigenous communities of the Global South, with the help of scientists and
NGOs, can continue being the creators and guardians of a biological and genetic
diversity that has enriched the food culture of the whole planet.
Small Farms Are
More Resilient to Climate Change
Most climate change models predict that damages will
disproportionally affect the regions populated by small farmers, particularly
rainfed agriculturalists in the third world. However, existing models at best
provide a broad-brush approximation of expected effects and hide the enormous
variability in internal adaptation strategies. Many rural communities and
traditional farming households, despite weather fluctuations, seem able to cope
with climatic extremes.15 In fact many farmers cope and even
prepare for climate change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of
drought tolerant local varieties, water harvesting, extensive planting, mixed
cropping, agroforestry, opportunistic weeding, wild plant gathering, and a
series of other traditional farming system techniques.16
In traditional agroecosystems the prevalence of complex
and diversified cropping systems is of key importance to the stability of
peasant farming systems, allowing crops to reach acceptable productivity levels
in the midst of environmentally stressful conditions. In general, traditional
agroecosystems are less vulnerable to catastrophic loss because they grow a
wide variety of crops and varieties in various spatial and temporal
arrangements. Researchers have found that polycultures of sorghum/peanut and
millet/peanut exhibited greater yield stability and less productivity declines
during a drought than in the case of monocultures.
One way of expressing such experimental results is in
terms of “over-yielding”—occurring when two or more crops grown together yield
more than when grown alone (for example, when one hectare of a mixture of
sorghum and peanuts yields more than a half hectare of only sorghum plus a half
hectare of only peanuts). All the intercrops over-yielded consistently at five
levels of moisture availability, ranging from 297 to 584 mm of water applied
over the cropping season. Quite interestingly, the rate of over-yielding
actually increased with water stress, such that the relative differences in
productivity between monocultures and polycultures became more accentuated as
stress increased.17 Many farmers grow crops in agroforestry
designs and shade tree cover protects crop plants against extremes in
microclimate and soil moisture fluctuation. Farmers influence microclimate by
retaining and planting trees, which reduce temperature, wind velocity, evaporation,
and direct exposure to sunlight and intercept hail and rain. In coffee
agroecosystems in Chiapas, Mexico temperature, humidity, and solar radiation
fluctuations were found to increase significantly as shade cover decreased,
indicating that shade cover was directly related to the mitigation of
variability in microclimate and soil moisture for the coffee crop.18
Surveys conducted in hillsides after Hurricane Mitch hit
Central America in 1998 showed that farmers using sustainable practices such as
the legume “mucuna” cover crop, intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less “damage”
than their conventional neighbors. The study spanning 360 communities and 24
departments in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala showed that diversified plots
had 20 to 40 percent more topsoil, greater soil moisture, less erosion, and
experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbors.19 This points to the fact that a
re-evaluation of indigenous technology can serve as a key source of information
on adaptive capacity and resilient capabilities exhibited by small farms—features
of strategic importance for world farmers to cope with climatic change. In
addition, indigenous technologies often reflect a worldview and an
understanding of our relationship to the natural world that is more realistic
and more sustainable than those of our Western European heritage.
Enhancing the
Productivity of Small Farming Systems Through Agroecology
Despite the evidence of the resiliency and productivity
advantages of small-scale and traditional farming systems, many scientists and
development specialists and organizations argue that the performance of
subsistence agriculture is unsatisfactory, and that agrochemical and transgenic
intensification of production is essential for the transition from subsistence
to commercial production. Although such intensification approaches have met
with much failure, research indicates that traditional crop and animal
combinations can often be adapted to increase productivity. This is the case
when ecological principles are used in the redesign of small farms, enhancing
the habitat so that it promotes healthy plant growth, stresses pests, and
encourages beneficial organisms while using labor and local resources more
efficiently.
Several reviews have amply documented that small farmers
can produce much of the needed food for rural and neighboring urban communities
in the midst of climate change and burgeoning energy costs.20 The evidence is conclusive: new agroecological
approaches and technologies spearheaded by farmers, NGOs, and some local
governments around the world are already making a sufficient contribution to
food security at the household, national, and regional levels. A variety of
agroecological and participatory approaches in many countries show very
positive outcomes even under adverse environmental conditions. Potentials
include: raising cereal yields from 50 to 200 percent, increasing stability of
production through diversification, improving diets and income, and
contributing to national food security (and even to exports) and conservation
of the natural resource base and biodiversity. This evidence has been
reinforced by a recent report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development stating that organic agriculture could boost African food security.
Based on an analysis of 114 cases in Africa, the report revealed that a
conversion of farms to organic or near-organic production methods increased
agricultural productivity by 116 percent.
Moreover, a shift towards organic production systems has
enduring impact, as it builds up levels of natural, human, social, financial,
and physical capital in farming communities. The International Assessment of
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology (AKST) commissioned by World
Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations
recommended that an increase and strengthening of AKST towards agroecological
sciences will contribute to addressing environmental issues while maintaining
and increasing productivity. The assessment also stresses that traditional and
local knowledge systems enhance agricultural soil quality and biodiversity as
well as nutrient, pest, and water management, and the capacity to respond to
environmental stresses such as climate.
Whether the potential and spread of agroecological
innovations is realized depends on several factors and major changes in
policies, institutions, and research and development approaches. Proposed
agroecological strategies need to target the poor deliberately, and not only
aim at increasing production and conserving natural resources. But they must
also create employment and provide access to local inputs and local markets.
Any serious attempt at developing sustainable agricultural technologies must
bring to bear local knowledge and skills on the research process.21 Particular emphasis must be given to
involving farmers directly in the formulation of the research agenda and on
their active participation in the process of technological innovation and
dissemination through Campesino a Campesino models that focus on sharing
experiences, strengthening local research, and problem-solving capacities. The
agroecological process requires participation and enhancement of the farmer’s
ecological literacy about their farms and resources, laying the foundation for
empowerment and continuous innovation by rural communities.22
Equitable market opportunities must also be
developed, emphasizing local commercialization and distribution schemes, fair
prices, and other mechanisms that link farmers more directly and with greater
solidarity to the rest of the population. The ultimate challenge is to increase
investment and research in agroecology and scale up projects that have already
proven successful to thousands farmers. This will generate a meaningful impact
on the income, food security, and environmental well-being of all the
population, especially small farmers who have been adversely impacted by
conventional modern agricultural policy, technology, and the penetration of
multinational agribusiness deep into the third world.23
Rural Social
Movements, Agroecology, and Food Sovereignty
The development of sustainable agriculture will require
significant structural changes, in addition to technological innovation,
farmer-to-farmer networks, and farmer-to-consumer solidarity. The required
change is impossible without social movements that create political will among
decision-makers to dismantle and transform the institutions and regulations
that presently hold back sustainable agricultural development. A more radical
transformation of agriculture is needed, one guided by the notion that ecological
change in agriculture cannot be promoted without comparable changes in the
social, political, cultural, and economic arenas that help determine
agriculture.
The organized peasant and indigenous-based agrarian
movements—such as the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina and
Brazil’s Landless Peasant Movement (MST)—have long argued that farmers need
land to produce food for their own communities and for their country. For this
reason they have advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control
land, water, and biodiversity that are of central importance for communities in
order to meet growing food demands.
Vía Campesina believes that in order to protect
livelihoods, jobs, people’s food security, and health as well as the
environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small-scale
sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness
companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing the export-led, free-trade
based, industrial agriculture model of large farms can the downward spiral of
poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger, and environmental
degradation be halted. Social rural movements embrace the concept of food
sovereignty as an alternative to the neoliberal approach that puts its faith in
an inequitable international trade to solve the world’s food problem. Instead,
it focuses on local autonomy, local markets, local production-consumption
cycles, energy and technological sovereignty, and farmer-to-farmer networks.
“Greening” the Green Revolution will not be sufficient
to reduce hunger and poverty and conserve biodiversity. If the root causes of
hunger, poverty, and inequity are not confronted head-on, tensions between
socially equitable development and ecologically sound conservation are bound to
accentuate. Organic farming systems that do not challenge the monoculture
nature of plantations and rely on external inputs as well as foreign and
expensive certification seals, or fair-trade systems destined only for
agro-export, offer very little to small farmers that become dependent on
external inputs and foreign and volatile markets. By keeping farmers dependent
on an input substitution approach to organic agriculture, fine-tuning of input
use does little to move farmers toward the productive redesign of agricultural
ecosystems that would move them away from dependence on external inputs. Niche
markets for the rich in the North exhibit the same problems of any agro-export
scheme that does not prioritize food sovereignty, perpetuating dependence and
hunger.
Notes
1.
↩ P. M. Rosset, Food
Is Different (New York: Zed Books, 2006).
2.
↩ C. Rosenzweig and D.
Hillel, Climate Change and the Global Harvest (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2008).
3.
↩ J. Pretty, J. I. L.
Morrison, and R. E. Hine, “Reducing Food Poverty by Increasing Agricultural Sustainability
in Developing Countries,” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 95 (2003):
217-34.
4.
↩ S. R. Gliessman, Agroecology
(Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Press, 1998); M. A. Altieri, Agroecology: The Science of
Sustainable Agriculture (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); M. A. Altieri and C.
I. Nicholls, Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems (New York:
Haworth Press, 2005).
5.
↩ W. M. Denevan,
“Prehistoric Agricultural Methods as Models for Sustainability,” Advanced Plant
Pathology 11 (1995): 21-43.
6.
↩ M. A. Altieri,
“Linking Ecologists and Traditional Farmers in the Search for Sustainable
Agriculture,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2 (2004): 35-42.
7.
↩ E. Ortega, Peasant
Agriculture in Latin America (Joint ECLAC/FAO Agriculture Division, Santiago,
1986).
8.
↩ W. K. Asenso-Okyere
and G.Benneh, Sustainable Food Security in West Africa (Dordrecht, Netherlands:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997).
9.
↩ L. Hanks, Rice and
Man: Agricultural Ecology in Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1992).
10.
↩ W. T. Sanders, Tierra
y Agua (Harvard University PhD dissertation, 1957).
11.
↩ C. A. Francis, Multiple
Cropping Systems (New York: MacMillan, 1986).
12.
↩ P. Rosset, “Small is
Bountiful,” The Ecologist 29 (1999): 207.
13.
↩ D. L. Clawson,
“Harvest Security and Intraspecific Diversity in Traditional Tropical
Agriculture.” Economic Botany 39 (1985): 56-67.
14.
↩ C. F. Jordan, “Genetic
Engineering, the Farm Crisis and World Hunger,” BioScience 52 (2001): 523-29.
15.
↩ M. A. Altieri and P.
Koohafkan, Enduring Farms (Malaysia: Third World Network, 2008).
16.
↩ J. O. Browder, Fragile
Lands in Latin America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989).
17.
↩ M. Natarajan and R.
W. Willey, “The Effects of Water Stress on Yield Advantages of Intercropping
Systems,” Field Crops Research 13 (1996): 117-31.
18.
↩ B. B. Lin,
“Agroforestry Management as an Adaptive Strategy against Potential Microclimate
Extremes in Coffee Agriculture,” Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 144
(2007): 85-94.
19.
↩ E. Holt-Gimenez,
“Measuring Farms Agroecological Resistance to Hurricane Mitch,” LEISA 17
(2001): 18-20.
20.
↩ N. Uphoff and M. A.
Altieri, Alternatives to Conventional Modern Agriculture for Meeting World Food
Needs in the Next Century (Ithaca: Cornell International Institute for Food,
Agriculture and Development, 1999); M. A. Altieri, “Applying Agroecology to
Enhance Productivity of Peasant Farming Systems in Latin America,” Environment,
Development and Sustainability 1 (1999): 197-217.
21.
↩ P. Richards, Indigenous
Agricultural Revolution (Boulder: Westview Press, 1985).
22.
↩ E. Holt-Gimenez, Campesino
a Campesino (Oakland, Food First Books, 2006).
23.
↩ P. M. Rosset, R.
Patel, and M. Courville, Promised Land(Oakland: Food First Books, 2006).
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