My first encounter with the rather mind-blowing extent to which agriculture accounts for landuse change was when I watched this TED talk by Jonathan Foley  some time last year.

In the video, he shows through satellite & ground-base data the presence of agriculture (- agriculture uses 40% of terrestrial land. However if we include neighbouring, "partially-used" land affected by agriculture, the number rises to a whopping 75%. Hence, agriculture has a huge influence on habitat structure,biodiversity and the water cycle.

The root cause of that was in effect was sparked by the Green Revolution, a revolution driven with the aim of producing food for an ever-growing population. It was probably the most major change the sector has seen. However, some like Bayliss-Smith say that the paradigms like this we have seen thus far are in fact not revolutionary enough to tackle the problems of today. 

In this post I will attempt to incorporate lessons learnt from the Green Revolution while merging together recommendations laid out by Foley et al (2011)  in a very succinct and comprehensive reviewespousing the aims of  the agriculture ofthe future. 

Problem #1: Wholesale adoption of technology without adaptation to localized environments

An analysis by Griffin 1974 compared pre (1955-65)- and post (1965-75)- green revolution production levels and found that in fact, when averaged, there was no overall acceleration in production. Instead, it saw large increases in small areas (E.g. rice in Africa and wheat in the Far East) while others benefit less (E.g. Latin America). Why didn't the green revolution give the worldwide-good it promised? It was partly because the only way 1st world-originating High-Yielding Varieties could yield high yields was with the prerequisite of 1st world mechanics and technologies of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation (Paarlberg, 2010).

Principle #1: Much care has to be taken when touting a "global or cure-all" solution, and many good solutions still have to be tailored to local conditions.

Problem #2: A Technocractic Approach

Perhaps then, learning from the sentiments of the past, accruing the technology isn't the whole picture.  Indeed, the Green Revolution with its bias toward big farms had caused many social problems and did not provide all farmers with the benefits it touted. Benefits were indeed seen for farmers in Asia where local conditions required less mechanical input (hence capital), but inequality was worsened in Latin America where expensive machinery etc. was required. (Paarlberg, 2010).

Principle #2: Socially-sensitive Change is required

This change is to be shaped in context of the social/political & economic fabric. The nature of how many of these agricultural societies function has been through small farms on which they depend on for subsistence. Implementing these large-scale solutions so quickly were not suitable for the social context (at least then). A solution needs to be one that can be adopted well by the citizens of  that country and where they would really benefit (not just corporations across the globe). This is necessary for a sustainable solution.

Problem #3: Perspectives have been to narrow- EITHER Ignoring the Environment OR  Dismissing Productivity

Stephen Stanford (Arenown specialist in African agriculture) said in the New Scientist on thegreen revolution in Africa: "Twenty years ago there was a very strong belief that many technical solutions were already known and that the real difficulty was getting them adopted. We thought that solutions were all in bottles in the shelf. Now we've come more and more to the feeling that we don't have that shelf-load of technology"

Foley et al. argue that most paradigms have either focused on

1. an increase in production that is detrimental to the environment

Even if technology could be adopted, the problem in fact lies with that technology. The idea of the green revolution did not take into account environmental costs related to fertilizer-over use, excessive freshwater extraction (irrigation is the largest use of freshwater, responsible for 70% global freshwater withdrawals), high energy consumption, risks associated with monocropping (lack of biodiversity and resilience through over-favoring of certain traits through GMO as HYVs were less resistant to floods) and transport emissions. (I just realised… all these aspects straddle many of the global environmental issues we see today!) In essence, what the green revolution did was shift the economic costs of production to environmental costs without minimizing costs i.e. it wasn't really that efficient. Higher production came at a cost that would eventually hurt ecosystems- for example, on farm degradation (depletion of nutrients without fertilizers) was turned into off-farm pollution (excessive nutrient runoff).

OR

2. conservation strategies that do not have production as a goal
• It is known that low-yielding traditional methods could lead to soil erosion and nutrient depletion resulting in potentially arable land lost. Unsustainable low-yield farming had led to ~70% deforestation. For example, the Dustbowl of the 1920s- America's most serious disaster then- included the destruction of arable land as big as Pennsylvania state resulting in the migration of 400,000 farmers. (Abraham, 1991). Conservation strategies like  organic farming have shown to have lower yields overall than conventional high-input systems (Seufert et al., 2012). Hence these back-to-basics models are also lacking...

Principle #3: An Ecologically sound approach taking into account the myriad of Environmental Goals in addition to Food Security

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/images/nature10452-f2.2.jpg

This figure (Foley et al., 2011) shows the need for a future solution to meet both goals of food security(with yields rising between 1985-2005 slower than before, the status quo seems to be unsatisfactory) and environmental goals. With regard to the latter, what is of bigger concern today is that agricultural land is still expanding despite its already large landuse, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction. Expansion takes place mainly in the tropics today with 80% of new croplands occupying land which was once forests. Not only does this have a massive impact on biodiversity & ecosystem services (which are so rich in that area), clearance also accounts for 12% of CO2 emissions i.e. main energy use within agriculture (30-35% of agricultural GHG). Also, another reason why it makes much sense to stop this expansion is because gains made through agriculture are mainly through intensification! Hence, the costs of expansion definitely outweigh the benefits today.

According to Foley et al., (2011) , such a solution of stopping land expansion and meeting water needs while ensuring food security would require "closing yield gaps" through "increasing agricultural resource efficiency". This would be done through:

• Better use of Genetic technology
• Taking advantage of past experiences through "reforming conventional agriculture and adopting lessons from organic systems and precision agriculture" .
• Organic practices have their performance benefits such as being shown to grow beter under drought conditions (i.e. higher resilience). Still, in developing countries, organic agriculture has significantly lesser yields (-40%). However, the disparity is less great in the developed nations and certain crop types especially with the implementation of better management  practices (-15%). For example, "organic yields are low in the first years after conversion and gradually increase over time owing to improvements in soil fertility and management skills" (Seufert et al., 2012). Hence there is a need to find out what these 'best management practices' are for various crops and conditions and implement them quickly.
• We could also maximize efficiency through tackling the high excesses of nutrients in small areas (E.g. China, USA, Western Europe) such as through proper management that prevents disproportionate fertilization to output, allowing us to increase nutrient efficiency without compromising on food yields. Organic systems are also known to be N-limited and do not perform as well under irrigated conditions(Seufert et al., 2012). Hence it would make sense for the issue of N-limitation to be addressed while reducing irrigation (reducing water needs). "Precision Agriculture" an evolution of conventional systems whereby GIS,  GPS and infrared technologies farmers enable them to understand the conditions of their environment and requirements of their crops better (e.g. measuring the depth of the soil etc.), allowing them to give fertilizer inputs only to the extent that they are being utilized. Positive results have come about with this method with this form of conventional agriculture now increasing yields by 5% while at minimizing impacts at the same time (Paalberg, 2010).

Principle #4: Remember, yields ¹ food!

Food accessibility is once again another way of ensuring better allocation of  limited resources. It could be achieved via 2 ways:

• Shift in dietary preferences
• Today, only 62% of crops is allocated to  human food  while 35% to livestock in the form of feed. Foley et al. put forth that there is a need to re-evaluate devoting such large amounts of crops to animal feed. While great reductions in meat consumption are likely to be difficult,  comparing "intrinsic food production" to "delivered food production" there is potential for a 49% increase (this is known as the "diet gap").

• Reduce Waste
• According to FAO, 1/3 to 1/2 of food is not consumed due to post-harvest losses great (40%). This takes the form of poor conditions of storage/ transport for developing countries and consumer waste in developed countries. It would be of special interest to reduce waste from high intensity produce e.g. dairy (Foley et al 2011).

In Conclusion...

Abraham (1991) argues that the Green Revolution, it has generally be driven by undemocratic financial motivations which have not solved world hunger and inequalities. There have been gains throughout but at environmental cost. However, this is not to say that 'conventional systems' are all bad as we have seen from the higher yields in some areas and has been the precursor to its more efficient birth-child of  'precision agriculture'. In the end, as Seufert et al. (2012) suggest, "there are many factors to consider in balancing the benefits of organic and conventional agriculture and there is no simple way to determine a clear 'winner' for all possible farming situations" instead, "we should evaluate the costs and benefits of different management options…. We will probably need many different techniques, including ..possible hybrid systems. "

Strictly speaking, all landuse change of natural environments by humans due to agriculture could be seen as 'damaging the natural environment'. The question to ask is perhaps to what extent has agriculture been or is going to be harmful or beneficial? Perhaps a helpful plumbline to guide us would be considering harm if the long-term costs to humans exceed the short-term food production gain and whether or not these agricultural methods can be part of the solution (instead of the problem) of various environmental issues.

Non-linked References:

Robert Paarlberg. Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know.  2010. Oxford University Press.

John Abraham. 1991.Food and Development: The political economy of hunger and the modern diet. WWF & Kogan Page Ltd.