Despite a slower global population growth rate, agricultural systems around the world still need to double food production in the next century in order to eliminate hunger. However, hunger will continue to persist if issues related to poverty, access to food and distribution are ignored. While most analysts agree that food production from existing farmland needs to be increased, opinions vary as to the best method for achieving this goal. Conventional wisdom asserts that doubling food supply requires more effort to intensify agriculture through emphasis on mechanization, pesticides, fertilizers and biotechnology. However, other analysts point out that the gap between demand and production is continually growing, and will not be bridged simply by developing new agricultural technologies. Most hungry consumers are too poor to buy the food they need, while poor producers cannot afford expensive capital intensive technologies developed by external organizations seeking financial returns. Moreover, these technologies are often not suited to the conditions and needs of small farmers, traditional farming communities and indigenous peoples who have already been bypassed by agricultural intensification efforts. In addition, the sustainability of these technologies has been questioned.

The greatest challenge for humanity is to protect and sustainably manage the natural resource base, while feeding and housing a population that is still growing, and recognizing the land and resource rights of traditional farmers and indigenous peoples. Today, land degradation and soil loss threaten the livelihood of millions of people and future food security, with implications for water resources, the conservation of biodiversity and the cultural integrity of traditional farmers and indigenous peoples. In addition, the so called "intensive" models of agricultural production are also affecting the rights of women relating to access to, control and management of land.**

It is, however, becoming clear that technologies and processes are available that are able to produce more food for poorer groups without causing damage to the natural environment. Indigenous Peoples, for instance, have developed over many generations a holistic traditional scientific knowledge of their lands, natural resources and environment, which has been explicitly acknowledged in Agenda 21, Chapter 26. Thus, the primary need is for solutions largely based on existing local resources and traditional skills and know-how and/or grassroots initiatives informed by NGOs, farmers' and indigenous peoples' expertise. While a number of ecologically-based practices exist, they are not being promoted actively in most countries.

A fundamental principle of sustainable systems is that they do not deplete capital assets, like unsustainable ones do. Sustainable agriculture not only produces food and other goods for indigenous and farm families and markets, but it also enhances environmental goods, such as clean water, wildlife, carbon sequestration in soils, climate amelioration, flood protection, landscape quality. It delivers many unique non-food functions that cannot be produced by other sectors (e.g. on-farm biodiversity, urban to rural migration, social cohesion). Sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD) incorporates environmental, economic and social elements and provides a design that enhances both private benefits for farmers and public benefits. These increasingly recognized interrelationships between the natural environment and its sustainable development and cultural, social, economic and physical well-being have been established over millennia by indigenous peoples.

A key policy challenge is to find ways to enhance food production, whilst seeking both to improve the positive functions and to eliminate the negative ones. Agroecology/organic agriculture provides the scientific and methodological basis to meet the challenge of formulating a strategy that enhances food security, provides paths out of poverty and conserves the natural resource base of agriculture. In the absence of such a people-centered agricultural research and development model, significant opportunities to raise agricultural productivity in economically viable, environmentally benign, and socially uplifting ways will be irrevocably lost.

Solutions Exist - How Best to Support their Adoption?

How then can we encourage transitions in both traditional and intensive systems towards greater sustainability? Sustainable farming seeks to make the best use of nature's goods and services whilst not damaging the environment (Altieri,1995, 1999; Thrupp, 1996; Pretty, 1995a, 1998). It does this by integrating natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and natural enemies of pests into food production processes. It minimizes the use of non-renewable inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) that damage the environment or harm the health of farmers and consumers. And it makes better use of the knowledge and skills of farmers and indigenous peoples, so improving their self-reliance and capacities through participatory approaches to rural development.

Four Options for Change:

1. Better use of available renewable resources (natural capital)

A wide variety of technologies and practices are available which farmers and communities can use to make better and more productive use of available natural resources - the basic notion being that for a variety of reasons, water, soils and biodiversity have not been used most effectively in the past. The options include water harvesting; soil and water conservation - e.g. contour cropping, terraces, minimum tillage, grass strips; composting, livestock manure; irrigation scheduling and management; restoration of degraded or abandoned land; rotational grazing; habitat management for pest-predators; drainage systems and sub-soiling; raised beds or chinampas; bio-pesticides and bio-fungicides. The ideal is to use technologies that optimize a series of ecological processes (nutrient cycling, natural pest control, etc.) that are key for agricultural productivity and sustainability.

2. Intensification of single sub-component of farm system

A different sort of improvement to farm or livelihood systems involves the intensification of a single sub-component of their farm, while leaving the rest alone, such as through double-dug beds, adding vegetables to rice bunds, or digging a fish pond. These technologies can significantly increase total food production for rural livelihoods, particularly of protein and vegetables. The beneficiaries are often children during "hungry" seasons.

3. Diversify by adding new productive natural capital and regenerative components

The third type of improvement to natural capital involves the diversification of the whole agroecosystem through addition of new regenerative components, such as legumes in cereal rotations, fish in rice, agroforestry and livestock. These technologies lead to a total farm re-design, which can result in synergistic interactions - where one component of the system positively contributes to the success of other components.

4. Better use of non-renewable inputs and technologies

Where external and non-renewable inputs are being used, the system can move towards more sustainable and effective production by ensuring precise applications of inputs with little or no wastage or damage to natural or human capital. With time this approach evolves towards an input substitution phase, where chemical inputs are replaced by organic or biological inputs, a strategy followed by most organic farmers. The ultimate goal however is to move beyond input substitution by breaking the monoculture with biodiversification approaches that allow the farm to sponsor its own nutrient cycling, pest control and productivity.

Agroecological systems are not limited to producing low outputs, as some critics have asserted. Fifty to 100 percent increases in production are rather common with most alternative production methods. In some of these systems, yields for crops that the poor rely on most -- rice, beans, maize, potatoes, barley - are already being increased by 200 percent or more, relying on labor and management more than on expensive purchased inputs, and capitalizing on intensification and synergy. More important than just yields, it is possible to raise total production significantly through diversification of farming systems, such as raising fish in rice paddies or growing crops on the paddy bunds, or adding goats or poultry to household operations in many countries. Agroecological approaches increase the stability of production, lowering coefficients of variance in crop yield with better soil and water management.

Institutional Actions and Stakeholders

1. Integrated Partnerships

It is urgent that governments and international public organizations encourage and support effective partnerships with NGOs, local universities and farmers' and indigenous peoples' organizations in order to assist and empower poor farmers to achieve food security, income generation, and natural resource conservation. A major challenge for the future entails promoting institutional and policy changes to realize the potential of the alternative approaches.
 
Needed changes include:

a. Increasing public investments in agroecological participatory methods. b. Changes in policies to stop subsidies of conventional technologies and to provide support for agroecological approaches; c. Improvement of infrastructure for poor and marginal areas; d. Appropriate equitable market opportunities including market access and information, including fair trade schemes; e. Security of tenure and progressive decentralization processes, which, at the same time, respect indigenous peoples' inherent rights to their ancestral territories; f. Change in attitudes and philosophy among decision-makers, scientists, and others to acknowledge alternatives; g. Strategies of institutions encouraging equitable institutional partnerships with local NGOs and farmers; replace top-down transfer of technology model with participatory technology development and farmer-centered research and extension. In this context, Institutions: public and private, governmental and non-governmental, need to recognize and support the ability of small and marginal farmers to contribute significantly to future world food production if given appropriate cooperation and encouragement in the form of institutional change and investments.

2. Provide Appropriate Policy Support for Scaling Up and Mechanisms for Ongoing Stakeholder Dialogue

Sustainable agriculture can contribute significantly to natural and social capital, as well as make a significant impact on rural people's food security, welfare and livelihoods. But without appropriate policy support at a range of levels, these improvements will remain at best localized in extent or, at worst, wither away.

With some important exceptions, many of the sustainable agriculture improvements seen in the 1990s throughout the world have arisen without significant national and institutional policy reform. To date very few countries have given explicit national support for sustainable agriculture by putting it at the centre of agricultural development policy and integrating policies accordingly. Significant change is required in the case of policies framed to deliver increased food production in order to incorporate environmental and social benefits too. In addition, food policies framed to help deliver cheap and abundant food regardless of quality will have to change, while rural development policies and institutions focusing on `exogenous' solutions to the economic and social problems of rural communities need to be refocused toward community-based and participatory development.

While much can be done with existing resources, the shift towards a more sustainable agriculture will not happen without some external help and money. Significant transaction costs will be incurred, such as the costs of learning new knowledge, the costs of developing new or adapting old technologies, the costs of learning to work together, the costs of institutions having to break free from existing paradigms of thought and practice. It will also cost time and money to rebuild depleted natural and social capital. In addition, vested interests in maintaining the status quo could make such reforms difficult. For example, fertilizer companies do not have any incentive to support a transition to legume-based farming or biofertilizers due to the huge potential revenue loss. An ongoing mechanism for dialogue among stakeholders in sustainable agriculture will thus be essential to solving these problems.

 3. Emphasize Process not Product

There is an emerging methodology for agricultural innovation that is as important as the technologies that result from it. These new approaches have emerged largely from experience and experimentation, much of it by farmers themselves, often stimulated by working with non-governmental organizations, universities or other research institutions. In some cases, governments have begun working in new, less directive and more collaborative relationships with farmers. These new approaches are thus, based on active farmer involvement -- indeed, often farmer leadership -- in a process of identifying problems and needs to start and guide the process; of determining and choosing among possible solutions; of testing, monitoring and evaluating the results of new practices; and of helping to disseminate those results that are considered beneficial. This process can be characterized as participatory technology development, as farmer-centered research and extension, or as farmer-to-farmer agricultural improvement. An enabling environment at local, national and international levels is essential to support existing processes and promote the development of new ones, which adopt this approach.

4. Research

Promising research areas for evaluation and promotion of alternative technologies and policies include: green manure, cover crops, improved fallows, agroforestry, aquaculture, crop-livestock mixed systems, IPM, biological control, organic soil management and nutrient cycling, processes of technology adaptation and adoption, supportive policies, institutional partnerships and market development.

The international community and governments must continue or increase investments in agricultural research because it can take years or decades to develop new lines of research and put research findings into sustainable practice on the land. Developing countries, particularly those with high population densities, will need international cooperation to gain access to the results of such research and to technology aimed at improving agricultural productivity in limited spaces, as well as access to resources that will allow producers to conduct agricultural research that is responsive to their own needs. Ways to ensure that privately funded research is made more accountable to farmers, public concerns and the results made more available is needed.

Specific Action Proposals

Governments:

1. adopt and ratify a legally binding POPS Treaty. 2. implement as noted in Agenda 21, 26.4(a) "ratification and application of existing international conventions relevant to indigenous peoples and their communities (where not yet done) and provide support for the adoption by the General Assembly of (the current) declaration on indigenous rights. 3. recognize as in para 26.5 (ii), the need to protect Indigenous Peoples' traditional knowledge (CBD article 8 (j) and elsewhere), "(increase) the efficiency of indigenous peoples' resource management systems, for example, by promoting the adaptation and dissemination of suitable technological innovations." 4. review initiatives promoting an international "soil convention" and prepare a report for further consideration at CSD in 2002. 5. endorse a participatory approach for farmer research and training as a necessary basis for the desired transition towards sustainability.

All stakeholders:

6. All stakeholders need to join in a strong call for the need of corporate interests to be balanced by governments, development agencies and public investment in supporting "best practice" in chemical use, and in introducing strong regulation and tax regimes which would offset the negative influences of an unregulated market in chemical fertilizers and pesticides. 7. Assess the need and possible mechanism for an International Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (ISAWG) for ongoing systematic dialogue and multistakeholder participation in advancing sustainable agriculture and rural development (SARD).
 

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 ** See CSD NGO background paper on the role of land tenure in sustainable agriculture and food security: "The Sustainable Management of Land Resources -- An Essential Building Block in National Food Security Planning."