Sustainable agriculture, food security and food safety are more urgent goals than ever as we enter the new millenium.

In the developing countries the agricultural sector has multiple roles: to help ensure food security, anchor rural development, provide resources for the livelihood and adequate incomes of a majority of people, and to do this without destroying the ecological base. There are thus two inextricably linked components, social and environmental, to agricultural sustainability.

In the industrialised countries, the structural flaws of the industrial food production system are rapidly emerging. Over the past 2 years alone, the European public has confronted the health and environmental hazards of such a production system, both in crops and animal husbandry. At the same time, increasing evidence of ecological and health dangers from genetic manipulation through modern biotechnologies is galvanising deep public and scientific concern, starting in Europe, and spreading to Africa, Asia, Latin America and in recent months in North America which is the largest producer of genetically modified crops. Governments in a number of countries have taken precautionary steps to halt or curb commercial production and imports, and in some cases, even banning certain types of technologies.

Meanwhile, the ecological, social, health and economic fall-out of chemical-based agriculture continues to unfold despite the acknowledgment in Agenda 21 by the world's political leaders that such production systems were proving to be environmentally unsustainable.

Issues and Concerns

In contrast with holistic farming systems with their close links between agriculture and ecology, modern production systems in the post-World War II period are reductionist in their approach, favouring large farms, specialised production, crop monocultures and mechanisation, and compromising on ecological principles, and human health. While the former produced modest but stable yields, the latter showed initial high yields, followed by decreasing output per unit of energy input.

The measurement of yield per unit of land has also been biased towards industrial agriculture. In India, for example, figures on rice production in pre-Green Revolution farms were unfavourably compared with the yield of monoculture farms without comparing the total yield of the former in terms of the various rotation crops, other crops grown with rice plants (polyculture) and animal husbandry (Shiva, 1991).

A 1999 study released at the Maastricht Conference showed that small farmers worldwide produce from 2 to 10 times more per unit area than do larger, corporate farmers. Small farms are "more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development" with communities surrounded by populous small farms having "healthier economies" than those surrounded by depopulated large, mecahnised farms. Small farmers also take better care of natural resources, including reducing soil erosion and conserving biodiversity, thus safeguarding the future sustainability of agricultural production (Rosset, 1999).

Industrial agriculture also saw the replacement of a diversity of closed farming systems, where the cycles of nutrients, energy, water and wastes emulated a natural ecosystem, with more open systems resulting in wasteful use of natural resources and a major problem of agricultural waste.

Biodiversity of crops, animals, fish and soil ecosystems which are essential for sustainable agriculture continues to be threatened by monocultures or near monocultures and intensive use of chemicals. For instance, the documented impact of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS) in the form of commercial pesticides and dioxin (an industrial pollutant), both of which contaminate not only the natural irrigation sources of farmland and Indigenous territories worldwide, and on which farmers and Indigenous Peoples depend, but also contaminate the traditional fish and game eaten by many as an essential protein base. While no longer used in some countries, they are extensively used in the developing world, where they degrade with difficulty, inflicting long term damage to ecosystems and many agricultural lands and Indigenous territories. This violation of the spiritual, cultural, social and economic basis for Indigenous Peoples' reliance on their traditional fish, game and agricultural products contradicts Agenda 21, para 26.3(I) and their treaty rights to the point that advisories warn against eating the game and fish.

While integrated pest management (IPM) has limited the use of chemicals, it is only an intermediate option, and is not a substitute for chemical-free agriculture. Instead, concrete steps should be taken to accelerate the transition towards that end.

In the meantime, as the use of pesticides increases in agriculture, the health and environmental impacts, particularly in developing countries, will increase proportionately unless significant additional resources are provided to develop the infrastructure, equipment, personal protective equipment, washing facilities, access to medical care, and training which can help offset the adverse effects on agricultural workers and small-scale farming communities.

Meanwhile, it is no longer denied that industrial agriculture continues to face an ecological crisis. There are two categories of "ecological diseases" associated with capital-, energy- and chemical-intensive agriculture (Conway and Pretty, 1991 cited in Altieri, 1999):

a) problems directly associated with the basic resources of soil and water, including soil erosion, loss of inherent soil productivity and depletion of nutrient reserves, salinisation and alkalinisation (especially in arid and semi-arid regions), pollution of surface and groundwater, and loss of croplands to urban development;

b) problems directly related to crops, animals and pests, including loss of crop, wild plant and animal genetic resources, elimination of natural enemies of pests, pest resurgence and genetic resistance to pesticides, chemical contamination, and destruction of natural control mechanisms.

However, each "ecological disease" is usually viewed as an independent problem, rather than a symptom of a poorly designed and poorly functioning system. Under conditions of intensive management, treatment of such "diseases" requires an increase in the external costs to the extent that, in some agricultural systems, the amount of energy invested to produce a desired yield surpasses the energy harvested (Altieri, 1999).

This crisis of industrial agriculture is not accidental. It is the systematic result of more than 40 years of the prevalent socio-economic system that promotes monocultures and the use of high-input technologies and agricultural practices. The underlying cause is the predominance of agricultural policies based on production targets rather than an integrated approach towards sustainable livelihoods, human development and poverty eradication in rural areas. Economic and technological strategies in the agricultureal sector promoted by large donors and implementing agencies tend to be based upon a neo-liberal development model which believes the integration of small farmers into the global agricultural market is the best strategy for their human development. This macro-economic model disregards both the physical and biological boundaries of agro-ecosystems,and the ecological quality of the human environment in general, as well as other aspects of human development such as education and health services in rural areas.

Industrial agriculture, coupled with the impetus of international trade and consumption patterns that strain the planet's natural resources, has also destabilised the social and cultural fabric of farming communities. The impact has been even more dramatic for Southern societies, particularly for indigenous peoples. In many societies, women who had critical roles in farm decision-making and the conservation of seeds, found themselves displaced when commercial monocultures were introduced. Moreover, women and children tend to be the main victims of the malnutrition such monocultures haves failed to solve, and even contributed to.

Thus the problem of agricultural production cannot be regarded only as a technological one; attention to social, cultural, political and economic issues that account for the crisis is crucial. This is particularly true today where the economic and political domination of the rural development agenda in both the global North as well as the South by certain large agribusiness corporations and large donors and implementing agencies has thrived at the expense of the interests of farm workers, small family farms, rural communities, the general public, wildlife and the environment (Altieri, 1999; see also Shiva, 1991.)

Unfortunately, even as one chapter of Agenda 21 acknowledged the unsustainability of chemical agriculture and the limits of the Green Revolution, the same corporate interests that championed and benefited from the first "revolution" aggressively promoted the "Gene Revolution" as the panacea. Hence the fulsome promises of the Biotechnology chapter in Agenda 21. However, the new biotechnologies that involve genetic engineering or modification are among the most serious threats to sustainable agriculture and the future of farming communities, especially traditional farmers and indigenous peoples. The Commission on Sustainable Development in its third session called for a more balanced assessment of the new biotechnologies, in the light of new scientific evidence of hazards. Since then the case against these technologies has strengthened (see Rissler and Mellon, 1996; Krimsky and Wrubel, 1996; Snow and Moran, 1997; Ho, 1998; Ho, Ryan and Cummins, 1999; Ryan and Ho, 1999; Epstein, 2000).

Efforts by the majority of nations to formulate a legally binding international agreement on biosafety, under the Convention on Biological Diversity, have been going on for almost four years. Powerful forces are driving forward the use of these technologies but powerful forces from civil society and governments are increasingly voicing their concerns and even taking concrete actions at the national and regional levels We look to inter-governmental institutions such as the CSD to reflect these views and take actions which represent the public interest. In particular, the vulnerability of farmers and consumers in developing countries to the hazards posed by these technologies and their products needs special attention, given the lack of information and biosafety capacity in those countries.

Fortunately, civil society's increasing access to information and awareness, accompanied by a growing public scientific debate in the past year, provides a valuable opportunity for preventive actions before these technologies are diffused throughout the world. For example, the public condemnation in a number of countries of Monsanto's "Terminator Technology"which was designed to suppress the reproductive ability of seeds, led to bans by some governments and eventually to a withdrawal by Monsanto of commercialisation plans, at least for the time being. The two-year de facto moratorium on commercial planting of transgenic crops in the European Union is also a vital development, and public debates on this option for the future of agriculture is mounting all over the world

The lessons from the chemical era, and especially the Green Revolution, remind us that long term sustainability can only be achieved through a comprehensive ecological, social and economic assessment of sustainable livelihoods, poverty eradication and human development in rural areas, and the production systems which serve these goals. Otherwise, any short-term increase in yields will soon be offset by environmental, health and social costs, which eventually lead to a total net loss. Caution is even more urgent where new technologies can cause irreparable damage to the ecosystem and human health, and the benefits have yet to be fully assessed against the hazards and risks.

The Way Forward

There is already a rich spectrum of technologies and practices, even entire systems of sustainable agriculture, alive and flourishing all over the world. Many are traditional or indigenous systems, especially in the South, that are surviving the onslaught of globalisation of industrial agriculture. There is a significant increase in the North of organic/ecological farming, reaching commercial scales, that build on practices that had been abandoned when monocultures and chemicals took over. As scientific understanding about the holistic imperative of agriculture becomes more interdisciplinary itself, there will be a mainstreaming of sustainable agriculture into national and international policies on agriculture. The issue is not technique or experience, or even economic viability, but rather the vested interests and policy/institutional obstacles set up by current trends of globalisation.

Therefore, the protection of, and in many cases the transition to, sustainable agriculture systems can only take place if the underlying obstacles are overcome, and policies are re-directed to addressing poverty eradication and malnutritution itself. This requires the reshaping of the entire agricultural policy and food system, and a realignment of the power relations which currently favour transnational corporations, supported by a few key governments. Given the extent of globalisation, priority must necessarily be given to international actions so that sustainable alternatives on the ground can be strengthened and spread.

A more radical transformation of agriculture is needed, one guided by the notion that ecological change in agriculture cannot be promoted without changing the strategic goals in agriculture and comparable changes in the social, political, cultural, and economic arenas that also constrain agriculture. Change toward a more socially just, economically viable, and environmentally sound agriculture will be the result of social movements in the rural sector in alliance with urban organizations (Altieri, 1999).

This approach is consistent with the call in Agenda 21 for a comprehensive assessment of national agricultural policies within the context of a supportive international environment.

Call For Action: Institutional Action And Possible Partnerships

Production Systems

1. The CSD should call for various forms and systems of organic/ecological agricultural production currently in use to be supported and further enhanced. These include traditional and indigenous systems, particularly in the South, and techniques and systems developed in the North in recent years.

Governments and multilateral institutions should remove programmes, such as price support, that perpetuate monocultures and instead support, among others, crop rotation and polyculture activities, that form part of ecological approaches with small farmers as a priority target.

The CSD is urged to accelerate the implementation of the Agenda 21 and the Programme of Action adopted at the five-year review of Agenda 21. To facilitate this, there should be a review of a mechanism for an ongoing multi-stakeholder working group on sustainable agriculture and rural development to report back to the CSD on a number of issues, particularly those highlighted in the papers presented at this Dialogue of CSD 8.

2. The biosafety protocol being negotiated under the Convention on Biological Diversity should be completed as soon as possible, covering all genetically modified seeds and agricultural products in its scope. It should also incorporate principles of strict liability and prior informed consent.

Biosafety must be addressed by the United Nations and not the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the CSD is the most appropriate forum for a continuing broad-based review of new technologies, supplementing and complementing the work of the international biosafety protocol being negotiated under the auspices of UNEP.

 Specifically, the CSD should call on Governments to act individually, regionally or in concert in the following areas:

a) A moratorium on commercial production until a comprehensive assessment of the impact on biodiversity, the environment, human and animal health is conducted with full and effective public participation. Socio-economic considerations, including food security and the rights of small, traditional farmers, indigenous peoples and women, and consumers in general, must form part of that assessment;

(NOTE: There are many organisations, including Greenpeace, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements-IFOAM, , the Latin American Network on Transgenics and Third World Network, that are calling for an unconditional ban on GMOs.)

b) An immediate ban on antibiotic resistance marker genes in research and development of GMOs; c) An immediate ban on the commercialisation of transgenic crops and fish; d) Compulsory segregation and the highest standards of labelling of all GMOs and products thereof should be required; e) Withdrawal of food products found to be detrimental to health.

The WTO should be supportive of such biosafety actions, in accordance with the precautionary principle, and not further the trade in hazardous products. Given the growing evidence of actual and potential adverse environmental, human and animal health effects of GMOs, liability should be established under national, regional and international biosafety laws, to be determined by independent institutions identified or established by those laws.

The WTO should respect multilateral biosafety agreements, and in general respect other multilateral agreements, including the decisions of the CSD, which address sustainability.

3. Organic/ecological agriculture is now beyond just vision and potential, and is rapidly and increasingly contributing to sustainable agriculture in real terms. It is therefore timely for the CSD to promote the mainstreaming of organic/ecological agriculture amongst governments, bilateral and multilateral agencies.

4. With regard to the existing and even growing use of chemical pesticides, the CSD should:

a) Call for support for the speedy completion of the process which is amending the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, and support its implementation; b) Indicate that the maximum residue levels of pesticides being established under Codex Alimentarius for agricultural produce in international trade need to be at levels which ensure maximum safety for consumers. National residue levels should aim for consistency to protect domestic consumers; c) Acknowledge that pesticides should not be used in developing countries if they are classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as 'extremely' and 'highly' hazardous, and also preferably not those classified 'moderately' hazardous; d) Call for the removal and safe destruction of the stockpiles of obsolete pesticides in developing countries and countries with economies in transition which are threatening health and the environment, and introduce regulation and training to ensure that stockpiles are not accumulated in future to the detriment of future generations.

 Rights of indigenous peoples, farming communities and consumers

1. It is fundamental to the progress of sustainable agriculture and food security that the rights of indigenous peoples and farming communities to seeds, land, water and other natural resources are guaranteed. To that end the CSD should call for:

a) Financial support for existing organic/ecological agricultural activities and for transitional activities away from chemical and monoculture-based production, including IPM programmes. The target for such support should be family farms and communities, especially those who are impoverished; b) Phasing out of subsidies for unsustainable practices; c) Action by national governments to complete the revision of the FAO International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources to legally protect farmers' rights to own, conserve and use traditional seeds. Strengthening the rights of farmers would empower them to make choices in favour of sustainable production; d) The removal of obstacles to the protection of traditional and indigenous knowledge, including the provisions permitting the patenting of life forms contained in the Agreement on Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights, as part of the ongoing WTO review of those relevant provisions.

International cooperation

1. There is an urgent need to rebuild a commitment to North-South dialogue and cooperation that would eventually result in increased aid volume, better terms of trade for the South and a greater balance in global economic relations and structures that are supportive of organic/ecological agriculture. The CSD can contribute significantly to facilitate this dialogue.

A start can immediately be made to reform the content of aid and improve its quality in agriculture and rural development. A serious review of the past and future of various forms of aid (bilateral, multilateral, research, technical advice and projects) can be made a valuable exercise. It could help correct past mistakes and lead the way to sustainable agriculture and rural development, a goal which the FAO has adopted and which was reaffrimed in Agenda 21.

1. The FAO should complete its work on the evaluation of the potential contribution of organic agriculture to sustainability goals by 2000, and formulate and implement support programmes to that end by 2002 to enable a review at Rio+10.

(see "Evaluating the Potential Contribution of Organic Agriculture to Sustainability Goals", FAO's Technical Contribution to IFOAM's Scientific Conference, Mar del Plata, Argentina, 16-19 November, 1998. Available on the FAO website at HYPERLINK "http://www.fao.org" www.fao.org )

1. NGOs and movements involved in biodiversity conservation, organic/ecological agriculture and consumer rights should increase and deepen their partnerships, linking conservation, organic/ecological agriculture and sustainable consumption in their policies and programmes.

1. Traditions, knowledge and practices, and the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples and other farming communities must be respected in all policies, laws and activities undertaken by governments as well as partnerships with NGOs.

1. Further, governments, social movements and NGOs in developing countries should unite more effectively to defend their interests in negotiations and institutions such as the Bretton Woods agencies, the WTO and the United Nations, working in collaboration with other concerned countries.

Consumption patterns and consumer rights

1. Effective policies and measures should be put in place to change unsustainable consumption of agricultural products. Such unsustainable consumption patterns include excessive consumption in rich countries, which cause unacceptable pressure upon the environmental space and agricultural lands in developing countries.

1. Local consumption of the produce of sustainable agriculture should be encouraged, as this will reduce transport costs and energy waste, as well as increase the commitment of consumers to the farmers who produce their food as well as their local environment. In this regard, the CSD should call for support for urban organic/ecological agriculture so that increasing urban populations do not put more pressure on rural communities and land for the supply of food.

1. The CSD and individual governments should reaffirm and implement the right of consumers, individually and through various associations, to full information and informed choice in the market place. The Consumer Protection Guidelines adopted in 1999 should be fully and urgently implemented.

Research and policy

1. The CSD has a vital role to play in supporting and recognising ongoing research on the real contributions of organic/ecological agriculture to, among others, food security, biodiversity conservation, soil protection/enhancement, water conservation and the socio-economic well-being of farming communities and consumers1 interests, and to galvanise the research findings into policies and implementing programmes at all levels.

1. Accordingly, mainstream research priorities should be reversed from their emphasis on industrial agriculture and genetic engineering and be directed to the diversity of organic/ecological options that already exist, and to enrich knowledge and understanding of more alternatives. Public support for research, at national, bilateral, regional and multilateral levels is crucial for this purpose.

1. The true multiple values of small farms should be recognised and reinforced, and form the basis for policies on sustainable agriculture, food security and rural development.

 REFERENCES

Miguel Altieri, "Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming", Hungry for Profit, Monthly Review Press, 1999

Mae-wan Ho, Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare, 2nd ed., Gateway, Gill & Macmillan, Dublin, 1999

Mae-wan Ho, Angela Ryan and Joe Cummins, "Cauliflower Mosaic Viral Promoter - A Recipe for Disaster?", Microbial Ecology in Health and and Disease, Vol.11(4), 1999

Martin Khor, "Economic Globalisation and Eroding International Cooperation: Implications for Agriculture and Rural Sustainability", Third World Network, 1997

S. Krimsky and R.P. Wrubel, Agricultural biotechnology and and the environment: science, policy and social issues, University of Illinois Press, 1996

Jane Rissler and Margaret Mellon, The ecological risks of engineered crops, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996

Peter Rosset, The Multiple Functions and Benefits of Small farm Agriculture in the Context of Global Trade Negotiations, Institute for Food and Development Policy, USA and the Transnational Institute, the Netherlands, 1999

Angela Ryan and Mae-wan Ho, "Transgenic DNA in Animal Feed", Institute of Science in Society, 1999

Vandana Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution, Third World Network, 1991

Vignola Declaration and Action Plan, IUCN-IFOAM-AIAB, 23 May 1999