THE EARTHSCAN READER IN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

EDITED BY JULES PRETTY

EARTHSCAN          2005

PART XV

 

PART V: PERSPECTIVES FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Perspective 27: Reducing Food Poverty by Increasing Agricultural Sustainability in Developing Countries by Jules Pretty, James Morison and Rachel Hine

Introduction

Over the past 40 years, per capita world food production has grown by 25%, with average cereal yields rising from 1.2 tonnes per hectare to 2.52 tonnes per hectare in developing countries (1.71 on rainfed lands and 3.82 on irrigated lands), and annual cereal production up from 420 to 1176 million tonnes. These global increase have helped to raise average per capita consumption of food by 17% over 30 years to 2760 kilocalories  per day, a period during which world population grew 3.69 billion to 6.0 billion. Despite such advances in productivity, the world still faces a persistent food security challenge. There are an estimated 790 million people lacking adequate access to food, of whom 31% are in east and southeast Asia, 31% in south Asia, 25% in sub-Saharan Africa, 8% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 5% in North Africa and Near East. A total of 33 countries still have an average per capita food consumption of less than 2200 kcal per day.

An adequate and appropriate food supply is a necessary condition for eliminating hunger. But increased food supply does not automatically mean increased food security for all. A growing world population for at least another half century, combined with changing diets arising from increasing urbanization and consumption of meat products, will bring greater pressures on the existing food system. If food poverty is to be reduced, then it is important to ask who produces the food, who has access to the technology and knowledge to produce it, and who has the purchasing power to acquire it? Modern agricultural methods have been shown to be able to increase food production, yet food poverty persists. Poor and hungry people need low-cost and readily-available technologies and practices to increase food production. A further challenge is that this needs to happen without further damage to an environment increasingly harmed by existing agricultural practices.

Key questions for research on agricultural sustainability

There are three strategic options for agricultural development if food supply is to be increased:

1. expand the area of agriculture, by converting new lands to agriculture, but resulting in losses of ecosystem services from forests, grasslands and other areas of important biodiversity;
2. increase per hectare in agricultural exporting countries (mostly industrialized), but meaning that food still has to be transferred or sold to those who need it, whose very poverty excludes these possibilities;
3. increase total farm productivity in developing countries which most need the food, but which have not seen substantial increases in agricultural productivity in the past.

 

In this research, we explore the capacity to which more sustainable technologies and practices can address the third option. We draw tentative conclusions about the value of such an approaches to agricultural development. This is not to say that industrialized agriculture cannot successfully increase food production. Manifestly, any farmer or agricultural system with unlimited access to sufficient inputs, knowledge and skills can produce large amounts of food. But most farmers in developing counties are not in such a position, and the poorest generally lack the financial assets to purchase costly inputs and technologies. The central questions, therefore, focus on:

v  to what extent can farmers increase food production by using low-cost and locally available technologies and inputs?

v  what impacts do such methods have on environmental goods and services and the livelihoods of people who rely on them?

The success of industrialized agriculture in recent decades has often masked significant environmental and health externalities (actions that affect the welfare of or opportunities available to an individual or group without direct payment or compensation). Environmental and health problems associated with industrialized agriculture have been well documented.

What do we understand by agricultural sustainability? Systems high in sustainability are making the best use of nature’s goods and services whilst not damaging these assets. The aims are to:

1. integrate natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and natural enemies of pests into food production processes;
2. minimize the use of non-renewable inputs that damage the environment or harm the health of farmers and consumers;
3. make productive use of the knowledge and skills of farmers, so improving their self-reliance and substituting human capital for costly inputs; and
4. make productive use of people’s capacities to work together to solve common agricultural and natural resource problems, such as pest, watershed, irrigation, forest and credit management.

 

Agricultural systems emphasizing these principles are also multifunctional within landscapes and economies. They jointly produce food and other goods for farm families and markets, but also contribute to a range of valued public goods, such as clean water, wildlife, carbon sequestration in soils, flood protection, ground water recharge, and landscape amenity value. As a more sustainable agriculture seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services, so technologies and practices must be locally adapted. They are most likely to emerge from new configurations of social capital, comprising relations of trust embodied in new social organizations, and new horizontal and vertical partnerships between institutions, and human capital comprising leadership, ingenuity, management skills and capacity to innovate. Agricultural systems with high levels of social and human assets are more able to innovate in the face of uncertainty.

Research methods

Survey results

Changes in farm and household food productivity

Technical options for improving food production and agricultural sustainability

We discern in the dataset three types of technical improvements that have played substantial roles in these food production increases:

1. more efficient water use in both dryland and irrigated farming;
2. improvements to soil health and fertility;
3. pest and weed control with minimum or zero-pesticide use.

 

More efficient use of water

• In the projects analysed, water harvesting has been widely applied in dryland areas.
• In the Indo-British Rainfed Farming project basic grain yields of rice, wheat, pigeon-peas and sorghum have increased from 400 to 800-1000 kg per hectare, and the increased grass production from the terrace bunds is valued highly for the livestock.
• Improved water retention has resulted in water tables rising by one metre over 3-4 years, meaning that an extra crop is now possible for many farmers, thus turning an unproductive season into a productive one.
• Women are major beneficiaries. Sodhi puts it this way: ‘In these regions, women never had seen themselves at the front edge of doing things, taking decisions, and dealing with financial transactions. The learning by doing approach of the project has given them much needed confidence, skills, importance and awareness.’
• In sub-Saharan Africa, water harvesting is also transforming barren lands. Again, the technologies are not complex and costly. In central Burkina Faso, 130,000 ha of abandoned and degraded lands have been restored with the adoption of tassas  and zaï. 
• These are 20-30cm holes dug in soils that have been sealed by a surface layer hardened by wind and water erosion. The holes are filled with manure to promote termite activity and enhance infiltration. When it rains, water is channelled by simple stone bunds to the holes, which fill with water, and into which are planted seeds of millet or sorghum.
• Cereal yields in these regions rarely exceed 300kg per hectare, yet these improved lands  now produce 700-1000 kg per hectare.
• Good organization also helps to improve irrigated agriculture.

 

Improvements in soil health and fertility