November
7, 2003: A British ecologist who has studied hundreds
of sustainable farming systems worldwide is challenging Americans
to judge agricultural success by more than just productivity
and cheap commodities.
“Modern farming looks good because it measures its
own success narrowly, but it ignores costly side effects,”
said Jules Pretty, director of the Centre for the Environment
and Society at the University of Essex (www2.essex.ac.uk/ces).
“We should be asking the fundamental question, ‘What
is farming for?’ Of course it’s to produce food,
but it’s more than that.”
Pretty visited Iowa recently as a guest of the Ecology Initiative
of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (www.leopold.iastate.edu).
He noted that only three countries-- Switzerland, Cuba and
Bhutan--have developed explicit national policies for sustainable
agriculture. “I’ve never met anyone who says they
don’t support sustainable agriculture, but this is lamentable
that only three nations have made these fundamental changes.”
A big part of the problem is the prevailing myth, Pretty
said. “Too many people say that being nice to the environment
is nice in theory, but you can’t do that and increase
productivity in agriculture.”
Finding answers around the globe
To investigate this myth, University of Essex researchers
studied 208 sustainable agriculture projects and initiatives
in Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions involving
nearly nine million farmers.
“We’ve seen promising signs of progress, and
we’ve seen innovations in sustainability coming from
all over the world,” Pretty said.
Here are some examples:
- In Indonesia
and other parts of Asia, “farmer field schools”
are turning fields into outdoor classrooms. Farmers are
learning new ways to identify and control insect pests.
In Vietnam, many farmers have stopped farming without pesticides,
Pretty said.
- In India,
groups of women have worked together to turn eroded, barren
land into productive fields once again.
- In Kenya,
farmers have organized in groups to manage soil and water
conservation more effectively. “This has been a very
successful program,” Pretty added.
- In the United States,
programs like USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research
and Education (SARE) offer a tremendous number of success
stories, Pretty said.
So how do you make even more progress towards sustainability?
By making connections, Pretty said. These include:
- Substituting management
skills and knowledge for costly inputs
- Building on-farm
biodiversity and soil health
- Organizing in
groups
- Adding value
to commodities
- Selling direct
to consumers
“We need to reestablish the connections to the land,
to food and systems of production, and between producers and
consumers,” Pretty said. “These are pretty mundane
ideas, but we need to remember that they work.”
Francis Thicke, an organic, grass-based dairy producer from
Fairfield, Iowa, who attended the event at the Leopold Center,
said he agrees with Pretty.
“Jules’ message about the interconnectedness
of ecology and farming really hit home with me. I try to model
my farm after the ecology of nature, because I believe you
can’t be sustainable if you can’t connect the
whole system together.”
Changing public policy
Most of the sustainability success stories around the world
have developed in spite of public policy, rather than because
of it.
Still, Pretty says he’s encouraged that public policy
is starting to shift in new directions. “The concept
is taking hold that spending public money should do the most
public good. It’s not just to give subsidies.”
To make this shift, policy makers and the public need to
start thinking more about the positive and negative side effects
that agriculture produces.
“We need a full-cost accounting of our agricultural
systems. Farming can offer biodiversity, landscape aesthetics,
clean water, flood protection, carbon sequestration, a rural
economy and community cohesion. But it can also contribute
to water pollution, a loss of biodiversity, foodborne illnesses,
and gaseous emissions.”
Pretty said this raises two important questions:
- how much are the
positive side effects worth to farmers and rural communities,
and
- how much do the
negative ones cost the rest of society?
“In the UK, it has been estimated that the negative
externalities associated with agriculture cost consumers the
equivalent of nearly $2.6 billion per year. These costs come
in the form of pesticide removal from water, the loss of biodiversity,
bacterial outbreaks in food, antibiotic resistance, the effects
of greenhouse gasses on climate, and more. In effect, this
is a hidden subsidy from the public to polluters.”
So what does this mean for farmers in other countries? When
dealing with policymakers, there are two keys, Pretty says:
- Provide clear evidence that
there’s a problem. “Think of
the externalities numbers we used in the UK. They were controversial
numbers, but they’ve opened a lot of eyes,”
Pretty said.
- Share the success stories
of sustainable agriculture. “We need
to compile a strong evidence base that this system works,”
Pretty said.
Understanding the food ethic
Farmers also need to build constructive relationships with
policy makers, consumers, and others.
“We need to try to find ‘both/and’ solutions,
not ‘either/or’ solutions,” Pretty said.
“We need to create more spaces in agriculture where
alternative, sustainable systems can crop up. But if you think
we need a complete revolution in agriculture, you won’t
get far.”
Part of making this transition involves a land and food ethic.
“The food we eat is the most political decision we make
every day,” Pretty said. “Each time we buy food,
you buy the agricultural production system at the other end.
These choices make a difference to nature and to communities.”
In the next decade, Pretty hopes that perhaps 30 to 40 countries
might start working toward sustainability and “at least
try to do the right things.” In closing, he quoted Peter
Senge, author of the book “The Fifth Discipline.”
“When things are going poorly, we blame the situation
on incompetent leaders, thereby avoiding any personal responsibility.
Through all of this, we totally miss the bigger question,
‘what are we, collectively, able to create?’”
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