With adequate extension support, women farmers can increase productivity and food security in Africa. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, May 8 2014 (IPS)

An estimated one billion small farmers scratching out a living growing diverse crops and raising animals in developing countries represent the key to maintaining food production in the face of hotter temperatures and drought, especially in the tropical regions, says Sarah Elton, author of the book, “Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet.”

The Canadian journalist travelled to southern France, China, India and the province of Quebec in her own country to observe how small farmers apply their practical knowledge of agriculture – defined as either organic, agroecological or sustainable.“We are now aware that the unthinking application of yield-boosting technologies around the world has brought both many good things as well as many bad things." -- Evan Fraser

“What I found most surprising as a journalist was to see how pervasive the social movement was at the grassroots. So, rather than it being a policy perceived by government, people [in the rural areas] are not waiting for government. Government is not there to solve their problems. [Small farmers] are figuring out better ways themselves.”

At the moment a “very big but brittle” global industrial food system is supplying the world’s supply of food, she explains. Typically, it is reliant on the massive growing of single crops like wheat, corn or rice, which in turn are assisted by commercial agriculture inputs such as hybrid seeds, chemical based pesticides and fossil fuel-based fertilisers, as well as an overuse of water.

Global industrial food is praised for its efficiency and high yields and so small farmers get aboard. But in the process some become too dependent on these expensive commercial agricultural inputs by borrowing money to pay for them and thereby incurring large debts.

The journalist relates in her book how Chandrakalabai, today a resourceful and thriving farmer in the agricultural state of Maharashtra in the western part of India, managed to avoid that economic fate.

Originally, she struggled in terms of growing a range of items – millet, sorghum, vegetables and cotton – while simultaneously investing into the commercial agricultural inputs when she could afford them.

By the early 1990s, she made the switch to organic farming, minus these inputs and with the assistance of an NGO, the Institute for Integrated Rural Development.

“Chandrakalabai’s story shows us that smaller farmers in the developing world can lessen their input costs and grow organically. If they can then embed themselves in a local food system with a minimum of intermediaries between them and the consumer, they can earn more money and secure a better future,” Elton writes in her book.

The other problem with global industrial food is that single crop farming undermines the soil’s fertility and makes these kinds of operations especially vulnerable to storms, floods and drought, associated with climate change, adds Elton.

She cites how 880 small holders based farming plots in Nicaragua with diverse crops and minus the commercial agricultural inputs managed to survive the catastrophic battering of Hurricane Mitch in 1998. On average these agro-ecological operations retained 40 percent more topsoil after the storm and lost 18 percent less arable land in landslides.

Isabel Michi carefully tends seedlings in the greenhouse on her small organic farm in the settlement of Mutirão Eldorado in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

The latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a stark picture of a hotter future where crop yields decline, demand for food increases and food prices rise.

Farming operations are being urged by scientists to alter their growing practices as a part of a general mitigation strategy for a range of human activity (which also includes reducing the amount of fossil fuels burned for energy) in order to avoid the worst case scenario of world temperatures rising way past two degrees Centigrade.

“One of the things that the report makes very clear is how farmers respond and how farmers behave will have a huge impact on the effect of climate change,” says Evan Fraser, a University of Guelph geography professor, food security specialist and Canada Research Chair in Global Human Security. He worked on an earlier draft on the food section of the IPCC report.

Fraser says that sophisticated weather forecasting tools are being developed to make it possible for government authorities to react before a catastrophic storm arrives to cause devastation to crops, infrastructure, homes and people. And he also maintains that drought conditions represent a far more serious threat to agriculture single episodic events like storms and floods.

“I think that drought is going to be the bigger problem over the long term, in the 21 century. Certainly drier conditions in the tropics are going to lead to significant challenges for farmers,” he says.

With that in mind, Fraser calls for going in the direction of traditional small farmers by planting diverse crops. Furthermore, he say, one should include drought tolerant crops with a deeper root structures to access water. Furthermore, the food security specialist suggests a ramp up of organic matter, be it recycled manure or what is left of last year’s crop, to serve as a sponge in the soil to trap or restore water.

“We are now aware that the unthinking application of yield-boosting technologies around the world has brought both many good things as well as many bad things. Developing and applying new technologies to boost yields into the future will require a deft handling of both science, agricultural extension, social policy, and a very context-specific understanding of the needs local farmers face,” Fraser told IPS.

But experimentation in agricultural practices is less likely to happen in North America where farming operations, because of their size, are tied up in loans and big contracts to corporations in agribusiness and their unsustainable practices, says food security specialist Danielle Nierenberg, president of the Chicago based Food Tank, a food security think tank.

But small farmers, especially in developing countries, are better able through necessity to innovate and so, “we have a lot to learn from them,” she told IPS.

Many farmers have been encouraged to practice more industrial methods and they are finding in the face of drought and extreme flooding that going back to more traditional and indigenous practices they are able to better combat climate change,” says Nierenberg.

But the president of Food Tank warns against a rigid definition of what constitutes sustainable agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, where are the soils can be deficient, “an extra boost” of artificial fertiliser may be needed to make the land more productive, she explains.

Meanwhile, some government and international development agencies including the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation are jumping on the “sustainable” bandwagon without completely breaking away from chemical inputs, says Julia Wright, deputy director at the UK-based Centre for Agroecology and Food Security at Coventry.

“Sustainable intensification, for example, can mean a concentrated form of industrial agriculture, and conservation agriculture – one form that the FAO likes to promote,” she told IPS.

One piece of good news, Wright adds, is that there are a number of national governments which have genuine programmes for agroecological or organic smallholder farmers.

“Bhutan is planning to become the world’s first organic country. Bolivia has some supportive policies. Parts of Germany are quite forward thinking in this respect, and of course the Cuban government supports smallholder organic urban agriculture,” Wright said.

Organic tomatoes thrive in a greenhouse at a farm in southern Poland. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
WARSAW, Aug 19 2012 (IPS)

Present day European farming is based on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which was created over six decades ago by countries emerging from severe food shortages that swept the continent during and after the Second World War.

But at a time of widespread famine, lingering droughts, and looming resource wars, experts warn that the logic behind the CAP’s theory of producing huge quantities of food, using largely industrial farming methods, needs reassessment.

For one thing, Europeans are no longer hungry. In fact, they eat twice as much meat as the world average. Over 170 kilogrammes of food per capita are wasted yearly in the European Union, according to the European Environmental Bureau.

Secondly, the kind of industrial farming promoted for decades in the Union comes at a huge cost to the environment: agriculture accounts for one quarter of total water use in Europe; yearly, 100,000 hectares of land are lost to farming because of deterioration; and biodiversity is shrinking at an unprecedented pace.

Finally, support offered by the Union to its farmers to export products at prices well below production costs has played a role in the destruction of livelihoods of small farmers in developing countries.

While such subsidies have been significantly reduced over the years, Europe finds itself today the world’s leading importer and exporter of agri-products. Its imports of animal foodstuff are linked to the promotion of monocultures, deforestation and even land grabbing in developing countries.

Clearly, the model needs to change: for the sake of developing countries, the global climate crisis, and the health and wellbeing of Europeans themselves.

Proposal for reform

Many Europeans are already aware of the need for such a change. The CAP is currently undergoing structural reforms, that will likely result in a revamped policy after 2014.

Last year the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, put forward a proposal of reform that, while not necessarily addressing all the ills of the CAP – such as its broad focus on increased productivity based on industrial farming or its impact on food sovereignty around the world – nevertheless made determined steps to green farming methods throughout the block.

Over 350 billion euros worth of public money go towards financing EU farms over each seven-year cycle. The Commission proposed that, starting from 2014, 30 percent of direct payments typically made to farmers be conditioned upon the adoption of environmental standards.

It also said that a ceiling of 300,000 euros should be placed on the amount of subsidies each farm can receive.

The Commission further called for crop diversification, asking that farmers plant at least three types of crops on their lands, in an effort to move away from destructive monocultures.

It asked that farmers maintain pastureland permanently, rather than plough it up, which will enable carbon sequestration, biodiversity and water management. And it demanded that seven percent of the land on each farm be kept uncultivated, to allow wildlife to develop freely.

The proposal represents an attempt to restore European farming to more natural practices. For many of the region’s 15 million farmers, the recommendations are not difficult to implement, and numerous small farms thriving across the continent are evidence that such measures are not only practical but also hugely beneficial.

But industrial farmers, interested in using every bit of land for profit-making production, will not let the old farming regime go down without a fight.

The Commission’s proposal came under fire both from industrial farmers’ groups and national governments. A UK parliamentary report argued that it would add huge new bureaucratic burdens on farmers and possibly stifle already existing green farming practices implemented in member states.

The Commission is for the moment trying to hold its ground.

“I know that some farmers are already doing more; we definitely do not want to penalise the champions,” EU Commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, told IPS. “That’s why the Commission is ready to consider a system of equivalency in those member states or regions that have already done a lot in this direction. We are providing this flexibility because it is important we take into account the progress made so far.

“But, beyond this flexibility, the principle stays the same,” added the Commissioner. “The key point with these (green) agricultural practices linked to direct payments is to have a real impact at the European level. And we can only have it if we ask every single farmer in the EU to employ these practices.

“Therefore, these measures cannot be voluntary. We cannot talk about sustainability of agriculture without assuming responsibility for the protection of environment and the management of natural resources,” he stressed.

With roughly one more year to go on CAP negotiations, the Commission is now struggling to ensure that its initial proposals are not weakened too much, while simultaneously gaining the approval of reluctant member states.

At this point, green NGOs that initially gave a tepid welcome to the Commission’s proposal – arguing that it could have gone much further – are now advocates of the reforms, using their grassroots base to push member states to implement the recommendations.

“The Commission’s proposal is an attempt to shift thinking about CAP, to orient it towards the safeguarding of public goods,” Trees Robijns, EU agriculture policy officer at BirdLife, one of the NGOs working on CAP in Brussels, told IPS. “But we will see whether it turns out to be a greening of CAP or rather greenwashing.”

“Beneficiaries of CAP have to understand that this public money is not their god given right, but rather a privilege, which they have to defend and justify,” added Robijns.

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