AGRICULTURE

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• AGRICULTURE

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Outline

• Preliminaries
• Landmarks in development of agriculture
• 3. Forms of agriculture.
• 4. State of global food prospect
• 5. Context of current state of agriculture
  Trapped in non-improvement mode?
• 6. Environmental sources of agricultural stress?
• 7. Agricultural sources of environmental
  degradation
• 8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
  Realignment
• 9. Conclusion.

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1. preliminaries

• Issues in agriculture -food security scarcity
  and shortage deprivation and famine-Agricultu
  re-environment interface. - Puzzle
• - Challenge
• - Way out?- Is the Green/biotech Revolution
  good for the Environment?

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• 2. Landmarks in development of agriculture
• a) Domestication of seeds
• - Soyabean domesticated in China about 5,000
  years ago
• introduced to U.S. 1804.
• b) Irrigated agric.
• - Euphrates and Tigris, over 6000 years ago.
• - Other variants known all over the world.
• c) Genetic manipulation
• 1847 Chemical fertilizer, discovered Germany
  that
• nutrients removed from soil by plants could be
  replaced in
• chemical form.
• - 1935 Japanese Norin wheat released in Japan,
  and brought to the
• US in 1946 and cross bred with American seeds.
• - 1940s US govt, Foundations set up a plant
• breeding program in Mexico.

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Landmarks cont.

• - 1944 the program thro Norman Borlaugh bred
  dwarf varieties of wheat (1954). 1970, Borlaugh
  awared Nobel Peace Prize for developing Miracle
  Seeds
• - 1956 International Maize and Wheat Improvement
  Center, set up by Rockefeller and Mexican Govt
  was diffusing seeds to developing countries
• - 1960 Impact of Mexico Rockefeller and Ford
  Foundations set up in Philippines International
  Rice Research Institute IRRI.
• -1966 IRRI was producing dwarf rice.
• Era of Green Revolution in some developing
  countries

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3. Forms of agriculture

• 1) Traditional
• -Shifting cultivation
• - Labor-intensive agric.
• 2) Modern
• - Mechanized agriculture
• Characteristics of modern agriculture cf. to
  traditional agriculture
• - intensive use of artificial fertilizers
• - extensive practice of monocultures
• - intensive and extensive mechanization
• Biotechnology
• - Focus develop seeds tolerant to herbicide
  resistance to
• insect and disease.
• - dogged by controversy

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4. State of global food prospect

• Grain harvesting previously rising, now falling
• - World production nearly tripled from 1950 to
  mid 1990s.
• By 2003, world grain stocks dropped to lowest
  level in 30 yrs.downtrend be norm?
• E.gs.
• - Chinas massive decline in grain production
  between 1998 and 2004, leading to import of 8
  million tons.
• - 1960s, African, unlike India, had no food
  deficit today,
• food scarcity reins cf. Zimbabwe

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5. Context of current state of agriculture
Trapped in non-improvement mode?.

• Where are we? Shrinking opportunities assuming
  this is a fair interpretation of grain
  production decline
• a) Land Quality and acreage under crop
• i) quality
• Past solved through opening new frontiers
• Today This option is limited Brazil?
• - but environmental concerns loom large.
• ii) acreage under crop
• Past increased through irrigation
• Today, aquifers used up, and any further demand
  will only
• deplete, meaning more drop in food production.

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5. Context of current state of agriculture cont.

• b) Crop yields
• Past mitigated through increased use of
  fertilizer.
• 1950-1989 14m tons -146m.
• Today use of more fertilizer has little effect.
• - Also fertilizer use declining.
• c) Science and Technology
• Past spurred grain production, both acreage and
  yields/acre.
• Today biotech may do it, but it is under attack
• Convergence of dual attacks
• i) Environmental and Ideological.
• - Environmentally counter-productive human
  health and biodiversity
• - Ideologically - political-economy questions
  future of
• seeds monopolized by a few corporations.
• ii) Combined forces in developed and developing
  countries
• Before, it was developed vs. developing

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6. Environmental sources of agricultural stress?

• 1) Temp. rises undermining food productivity
• -1 degree Celsius rise in temp. leads to 10
  decline in wheat, rice, and corn yields.
• e.g.- 2003 European heat Eastern Europe
  harvested smallest wheat crop in 30 yrs.
  Imports.
• - Sahel is an over-told story
• - But, new frontiers? Russia Canada.
• - How do temp. affect food production?
• i) Worlds fresh water stored in ice and snow in
  mountainous regions.
• E.g. smelting snowfields reported in Himalayas,
  Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya
• ii) worsen or create new crop disease and insect
  problems.

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6. Environmental sources of agricultural stress?
Cont.

• 2) Falling water tables
• - Impact of irrigation
• -many countries affected, including a
  combination of those accounting for about half of
  global grain harvest China, India, US.
• Eg.
• Saudi Arabia used aquifer for irrigation and
  wheat production rose from 140,000 tons (1980) to
  4.1 million tons (1992).
• - By 2004, aquifer had depleted and production
  dropped to 1.6 million tons.
• - Irrigated wheat production threatened.

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6. Environmental sources of agricultural stress?
Cont.

• 3) Soil erosion and desertification effect on
  land productivity over time
• - Wind and water erosion mismanaged
  agricultural activities? reduces fertility of
  cropland, hence less yields.
• - Desertification in Africa and Asia.
• Eg.
• In China, some deserts about to merge
• - parts of northern and western regions.
• 4) Second order Impacts of Environmental
  degradation
• i) Collapsing fisheries vs. implication on
  livestock production.
• ii) Shrinking forests implications for both
  wind and water erosion, hence unsustainable
  agricultural and grazing opportunities, leading
  to more erosion global warming.
• iii) Disappearing species biodiversity

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation

• 1) Loss of vegetation cover - Soil erosion
• -overgrazing or cultivation in marginal lands.
  Plowing steep sloping land if not protected
  by terraces, or perennial crops, etc.
• - Heavy rains or too dry conditions .
• - vulnerability to both water and wind erosion.
• Egs
• - Problem of Africas rangelands ASALS
• - 1930s Dust Bowl in U.S.
• Russias Virgin Lands Project, 1954 and 1960.
• - a short success, then dust bowl.

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation

• 2) collapse and even commercialization? of
  agric.
• - trigger pressures on forests, wetlands.
• - Eg. of Brazil?
• Fears of soil erosion in areas where large scale
  vegetation clearing is taking place cerrado-
  Soyabean cultivation.
• -Forest clearing could jeopardize rainfall
  patterns
• - plus carbon sequestration impaired.
• - Loss of species global centre of
  biodiversity, some endemic esp. in cerrado

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation cont.

• 3) Modernization of Agriculture Genetic
  engineering and environment-- bane or boon?
• - combine both Green Revolution GR and
  GMOs.
• - Question of success of Green Revolution can be
  conceptualized at two levels
• a) Was meant to create abundance, did it?
• b) Unintended consequences disastrous
  environmental impacts?
• Conceptualized contentious claims
• - competing epistemologies
• could the effects i.e. b occur under
  circumstances absent of modernization of
  agriculture, and two, what is the trade-off?

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation cont.

• 3 i) Critics
• Contribution to pest vulnerability
• pesticides enhance evolution
• of resistant pest strains
• b) Destruction of diversity
• Homogenization of marginal lands and croplands
  destroys genetic diversity.
• Potential effects on nontarget organisms
• Direct effects adverse effects on nontarget
  organisms
• Indirect effects biomagnifications
• - in theory, can mean local extinction of some
  animals.

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation cont.

• c) Destruction of soil fertility
• -Soil toxicity thro GR by introducing excess
  quantities of trace elements in the ecosystems.
• Have to always use fertilizers
• d) Greenhouse effect
• - Nitrogen-based fertilizers release nitrous
  oxide to the atmosphere, causing global warming.
• cropping patterns lead to erosion and degradation
  of land.
• - Croplands are kept under constantly soil
  depleting crops like wheat and rice no rotation
  with soil building crops --legumes.

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7. Agricultural sources of environmental
degradation cont.

• 3 ii) Alternative/Competing explanations
• a) In 2000, for example, the U.S. National
  Academy of Sciences committee on Genetically
  Modified Pest-Protected Plants submitted that
• Health and ecological risk assessments of
  transgenic pest
• protected plants do not differ in principle from
  the
• assessment of other health and ecological risks.
  
• b) On loss of biodiversity, the NAS committee
  (2000) found that
• these potential impacts on nontarget organisms
  are generally expected to be smaller than the
  impacts of broad-spectrum synthetic insecticides,
  and therefore, the use of pest-protected plants
  could lead to greater biodiversity in
  agroecosystems where they replace the use of
  those insecticides.

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8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
RealignmentMitigation

• Two considerations
• Question is how do we minimize additional
  demands on land and water resources and avoid
  damage to natural systems in responding to the
  imperatives of agric. production?
• ii) What/where is the problem?
• - Given that land is a private asset, why should
  farmers then fail to control degradation of soil?
  Is it that they dont know information or they
  dont care/mind incentives?

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8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
RealignmentMitigation

• Activities that constrain adverse effects of
  agriculture.
• Conversion of ruminants into animal protein
  second harvest effects milk, fish and beef
• -industries built on roughage --- wheat and rice
  straw, corn stalks, and grass from roadside.
• Egs.
• - Indias milk industry
• - Chinas Beef Belt and aquacultural sector

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8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
RealignmentMitigation

• 1. Activities that constrain adverse effects of
  agriculture cont.
• b) Multiple croppingmore than one crop on a
  field per year.
• - already declining Japan, South Korea, Taiwan,
  and China
• c) Raise water productivity
• -build small water-harvesting ponds to capture
  rainfall runoff and help recharge underground
  aquifers Africa.
• d) Sustainable agriculture and contain
  post-harvest loss contrast Brazil and Machakos
• - Africa due to storage infrastructure.
• -On new frontiers?
• Crisis posed by Brazil Amazon and cerrado
• - Organic farming?

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8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
RealignmentMitigation

• 2) Active use of agriculture to improve the
  environment
• market incentives
• Egs.
• Starbucks, Conservation International and coffee
  farmers.
• b) State policies on both agriculture and
  environment
• i) Intervention in market question is how to
  interveneStarbuck and CI model, or ?
• 1) remove subsidies on inputs, while taxing
  those injuring environment for Green tax?
• If policies subsidize farm inputs equipment,
  fertilizers, or pesticides
• - leads to inefficient and unsustainable use of
  fertilizers.

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8. Towards an Agricultural-Environmental
RealignmentMitigation

• i) Intervention in market cont.
• Egs.
• - Europe Denmark and Sweden on chemical
  reduction targets input taxes to provide
  incentives to use fewer agricultural chemicals
• Developing countries tricky
• - To farmers subsidies necessities.
• Maize farmer Francis Kimosop Kimetto complains
  about the costs of inputs
• If fertiliser remains this expensive, farmers
  will
• revert to the traditional cow dung, which will
  reduce the
• yield, (and) We want a minister who will solve
  our
• problems, says Francis Rono, a wheat farmer in
  Kitale in
• the North Rift Valley.

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Intervention in market cont.

• 2) On guaranteed prices for outputs
• - combined with 1 above, increase profitability
  of agriculture, thus motivating inefficient
  practices like opening up inappropriate land for
  cultivation.
• - liberalize market?
• c) Make conservation a paying venture? pay
  farmers for producing public goods
• - subsidize soil erosion control measures
  incentives.
• Egs.
• -1985 U.S. Conservation Reserve Program
• - Agroforestry in Africa?
• - With respect to conversion of forests and
  grasslands into farming -erosion
• - Forest farms as CPR - management

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Conclusion.

• Food production imperatives can impact on
  environment.
• Hence, failure to have agricultural regime that
  guarantees affordable food will imply a
  declaration of war on the earths ecosystem
  people eking for a living speculators.
• However, answer to the agricultural-environmental
  conundrum lay outside the two sectors.
• - largely a question of how information
  interacts with incentives.