Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture

Greening the World's Food Economy

Jules Pretty, Zareen Pervez Bharucha

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317269847
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Sustainable Agriculture
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Sustainable intensification (SI) has emerged in recent years as a powerful new conceptualisation of agricultural sustainability and has been widely adopted in policy circles and debates. It is defined as a process or system where yields are increased without adverse environmental impact and without the cultivation of more land.

Co-written by Jules Pretty, one of the pioneers of the concept and internationally known and respected authority on sustainable agriculture, this book sets out current thinking and debates around sustainable agriculture and intensification. It recognises that world population is increasing rapidly, so that yields must increase on finite land and other resources to maintain food security. It provides the first widely accessible overview of the concept of SI as an innovative approach to agriculture and as a key element in the transition to a green economy. It presents evidence from around the world to show how various innovations are improving yields, resilience and farm incomes, particularly for 'resource constrained' smallholders in developing countries, but also in the developed world. It shows how SI is a fundamental departure from previous models of agricultural intensification. It also highlights the particular role and potential of small-scale farmers and the fundamental importance of social and human capital in designing and spreading effective innovations.

1
It Could Be a Wonderful World

Progress towards sustainable intensification

Think of this. Half of all children you know now, just saw walking to the local school, watched playing in a park, will live into the 22nd century. They will have adopted sufficient components of healthy living to see them live a hundred years. Their life journeys will take them past the point where world population will stabilise, then start to fall in some places, for the first time in human history. They will know a world where agriculture, the work of producing food, improves the natural capital of the planet rather than depleting it. This will happen in the temperate regions and tropics, across all continents, up hill and down dale.

Not possible? Perhaps utopian? Surely other pressing problems will intervene: political disturbance, climate change, pest and disease, drought or flood. Some of these may represent possible existential threats, many will result in greater temporary hunger and ill-health. But inexorably, year on year, the world’s farmers will produce the food, fuel and fibre we need, from no more agricultural land. They will do it with responsibility and care for our environments and people. They will be part of redesigned food systems in which healthy food is grown with respect for nature, and distributed more evenly. There have been many agricultural revolutions across the last ten thousand years of human history. We are now amidst another – and it could be the most important.

In this book, we marshal the evidence. We look back to mid-last century when world population was four-tenths of that today, yet there were more people hungry and in poverty. We will show changes in productivity of land and other factors of production. We will note how the previous agricultural revolution also brought considerable harm to environments, and often to people’s health. It did not seem possible, at the time, to conceive of a productive agriculture that did not trade off valuable services from the environment. You want food? Well, stop worrying about the birds and bees, the clean atmosphere and pristine waters, the diverse forests and boggy swamps. Losses are simply the price you must pay to eat. This was the narrative.

In the final couple of decades of the 20th century, evidence began to emerge that alternative approaches might work at scale. An innovation frontier was conceived and crossed. The word sustainable came into common use, though still seemed to many to be hopelessly optimistic. But farmers small and large, supported by researchers and extensionists, businesses, government and non-government agencies, experimented, organised, shared and learned. Agriculture became part of the knowledge economy. It was not a factory of grinding instruments, with predictable outcomes. It became performance.

When Thomas Kuhn (1962) wrote first of paradigms in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he showed how most science and practice fills in the spaces of an existing and well-defined pattern of ideas and theories. He called this normal science, firmly based on one or more past achievements. It is hard to change habituated practices; they seem from our personal experiences to be correct. Transitions are hard, often threatening. Physicist Max Planck wistfully observed that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die”. It is not for us to say whether sustainability represents a new paradigm for agriculture, but it certainly means farmers doing new things, and scientists of all disciplines working on new technologies and practices to support them. New is risky, new is disruptive. New could also mean a better future for people and the planet.

But it will not be easy. In this book, we focus on the sustainable production of chiefly food crops. This is one part of the puzzle. There are many deep challenges associated with food production and consumption. Much today is wasted, lost to pests post-harvest, through cosmetic choices by retailers, left on plates or too long in a fridge. In the past generation or so, about 30 years, the proportion of people in affluent parts of the world who are overweight or obese has dramatically increased. In some industrialised countries and communities, more than a third of adults and a fifth of children are defined as clinically obese. Their futures do not look benign.

We do not fully address here the pull of consumption choices, though we do wrap up with observations on how redesigned agriculture can contribute to greener economies where all consumption patterns are very different to those of today. Our focus here is on the redesign of farming systems that can help shape those individual choices and behaviours. We feed more than 6 billion people well, yet the system is broken (Rockström et al., 2009; Roisin et al., 2012; Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 2013; IFPRI, 2016; IPES-Food, 2017). Our hope is that new world-building can begin.

Calls for a new type of farming are not recent. The desire for agriculture to produce more food without environmental harm, even make positive contributions to natural and social capital, has been reflected in calls for a wide range of different types of more sustainable agriculture: for a doubly green revolution, alternative agriculture, agroecological intensification, green food systems, greener revolutions, agriculture durable and evergreen agriculture. All centre on the proposition that agricultural and wild systems should no longer be conceived of as separate entities. All see positive synergies between planetary health and society, rather than zero-sum trade-offs. In light of the need for agriculture to contribute directly to the resolution of other global challenges, there have also been calls for nutrition-sensitive, climate-smart and low carbon agriculture. This is a great deal to ask of a single economic sector.

But agriculture is also unlike any other sector. Earlier models of intensification drew sharper distinctions between wild and farmed lands, between technology and nature, between intensive and extensive. This intensification was premised on the view that agriculture was an economic sector separated from the environment, emerging from the philosophical dominance of a Cartesian view of nature as machine. This led to an assumption of two opposed entities: people with constructed systems of food production, and the wild or even brutal nature out in the wider environment.

Compatibility of the terms sustainable and intensification was hinted at in the 1980s, and then first used together in an examination of the status and potential of African agriculture (Pretty, 1997). Until this point, intensification had become synonymous with types of high throughput agriculture characterised as causing harm whilst producing food. At the same time, sustainable was often seen as a term to be applied to all that could be good about agriculture. The combination of the terms was an attempt to indicate that desirable ends (more food, better environment) could be achieved by a variety of means. The term was further popularised by a number of key reports from learned societies, governments and multilateral bodies, including the United Nations.

We define Sustainable intensification (SI) as a process or system where yields are maintained or increased without adverse environmental impact and without the conversion of more land (Pretty, 2008; Pretty and Bharucha, 2014, 2015). The concept is thus relatively open, in that it does not articulate or privilege any particular vision of agricultural production. Though certain agronomic practices or packages have come to be frequently discussed, these are an indicative rather than a closed list of what constitutes sustainable intensification. Rather than being composed of a particular set of practices or technologies, sustainable intensification emphasises ends rather than means, and does not predetermine technologies, species mix or particular design components. Sustainable intensification can be distinguished from earlier conceptions of intensification because of an explicit emphasis on a wider set of environmental and health outcomes compared with just productivity enhancement.

Efficiency, substitution and redesign

In 1980s, Stuart Hill of the radical Hawkesbury College in Sydney, then of McGill University, developed a new concept of change in agricultural systems. This helps plot both steps towards new and more effective systems, and sets a scale for ambition. Hill observed “there is something seriously wrong with a society that requires one to argue for sustainability”, and suggested there were three critical phases and options in a transition to sustainable agricultural systems:

1. Efficiency
2. Substitution
3. Redesign.

We find this ESR progression framework helpful in understanding what we have achieved on a path towards sustainability in agricultural and food systems, and how the focus should now be on systemic redesign (Hill, 1985, 2014; MacRae et al., 1993; Lamine, 2011; Wright et al., 2011). Hill also distinguishes between deep (eco-design and redesign-based) and shallow (substitution-based systems). At the end of this book, we will conclude with observations about a new knowledge economy for agriculture, and the potential for world-building.

Step 1: Efficiency

The first step focuses on making best use of resources within existing system configurations. Why waste costly inputs or resources? Efficiency gains include targeting inputs of fertiliser and pesticide to focus impact, reduce use and cause less pollution and damage to natural capital and human health. The first progression thus draws from prophylactic, calendar-based and reactive approaches towards problem cure and, then, prevention. Precision agriculture is a further example, using global positioning system (GPS), robotics and drones to reduce both financial costs and environmental externalities. Better machine design can reduce the use of fossil fuels. In these ways, the unnecessary use of external inputs is avoided, saving on resources and farmers money.

These can be argued to be brilliant basics (Morgan, 1999): they should be done by all diligent farmers, but will probably not be much noticed when undertaken. They also do not result in system change.

Step 2: Substitution

This step focuses on the use of new technologies and practices to replace existing ones that may be less effective on both productivity and sustainability grounds. In sustainable intensification, inorganic inputs are often substituted by existing or revitalised ecosystem services. The development of new crop varieties and livestock breeds is an example of substitution replacing less efficient system components with new ones. Beetle banks substitute for insecticides; releases of biological control agents can also substitute for inputs. Hydroponics is an extreme example of substitution, where water-based architectural systems replace the use of soils. No- and zero-tillage systems substitute new forms of direct seeding and weed management for inversion tillage. Substitution implies an increasing intensification of resources, making better use of existing land, water and biodiversity, as well as technologies.

Substitution approaches can result in compellingly different systems on a considerable path towards sustainability arising out of systemic change.

Step 3: Redesign

This third step centres on the design of agroecosystems to deliver the optimum amount of ecosystem services to aid production whilst ensuring that agricultural production processes improve the ecosystems on which they depend. Redesign harnesses agroecological processes such as nutrient cycling, biological nitrogen fixation, allelopathy, predation and parasitism. The aim is to minimise the impacts of agroecosystem management on externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions, clean water, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and dispersal of pests, pathogens and weeds. Redesign is a fundamentally social challenge, as there is a need to make productive use of human capital in the form of knowledge and capacity to adapt and innovate, and social capital to resolve common landscape-scale or system-wide problems (such as water, pest or soil management).

Redesign could be the game changer, setting agriculture on a journey that never ends, but with a clear sense of multiple targets and potentially wide social benefits. Hill (2014) does note a paradox, indicating why it has been so hard to achieve deep redesign: the more effective any efficiency and substitution initiatives are, the more likely they are to protect and perpetuate the design characteristics of the system that is the root cause of many problems.

The game changer

The notion of redesign as potential game changer is nonetheless important: it suggests there is no single solution to the productivity and sustainability challenges in agriculture. Systems will need to learn and develop, addressing new opportunities and challenges as they emerge. Thus sustainable intensification will become a paradigm for continuous learning, where means will differ temporally and spatially to achieve desired ends. Systems will emerge from localised social and ecological contexts, and possibly diverge.

This suggests the job is never done. Ecological and economic conditions change. This is particularly well illustrated by the challenges for integrated pest management. Pests, diseases and weeds evolve, new pests and diseases emerge (often because of pesticide overuse, sometimes from material transfers along trade routes), and pests and diseases are easily transported or are carried to new locations (often where natural enemies do not exist). New pests that have emerged in recent years include banana leaf roller (Nepal), invasive cassava mealybug (South East Asia), cucumber mosaic virus (Bangladesh), tomato yellow leaf curl virus (West Africa) and cassava mosaic virus and brown streak virus (Uganda).

The papaya mealybug is a native of Mexico, and is worryingly intrusive. It spread to the Caribbean in 1994, jumped to Pacific islands by 2002, and was reported in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka by 2008 (Myrick et al., 2014). In each new location, there was an absence of natural enemies. Parasitoids were collected in Puerto Rico and released in India and Sri Lanka in 2009–10, producing first year benefits to farmers of the order of US$300 million. The releases also prevented spread of the pest to northern India. But, papaya mealybug had by then spread to Thailand and the Philippines, and soon was discovered in Ghana. It then rushed 4,000 km along the coasts of West and Central Africa. The pest’s preferred host is papaya, but it is highly polyphagous, feeding on 80 other species. Parasitoids were released in West Africa in 2013. In South East Asia, it has now jumped to mulberry, cassava, tomato and eggplant. Each geographic spread, each shift of host, requires new redesigns of agricultural systems.

We suggest redesigned and sustainable agroecosystems will have four features:

1. they will be multifunctional within landscapes and economies;
2. they will jointly produce food and other goods for farmers and markets, while contributing to a range of valued public goods;
3. they will be diverse, synergistic and tailored to social–ecological contexts;
4. they will have new configurations of social capital, comprising relations of trust embodied in social organisations, horizontal and vertical partnerships between institutions; and of human capital, comprising leadership, ingenuity, management skills and capacity to innovate.

There are many pathways towards agricultural sustainability, and no single configuration of technologies, inputs and ecological management is more likely to be widely applicable than another. For the past 15 years, we have been editors of the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, a leading peer-reviewed journal on the sustainability of agricultural systems worldwide. We have seen to publication some 350 novel scientific papers by the end of 2017. More is happening on the ground. There are 570 million farms worldwide, 90 per cent of which are run by individuals and families. Small farms occupy 12 per cent of world agricultural land, yet produce 70 per cent of the world’s food (Lowder et al., 2016). There is much evidence of transformations on these farms, as well as on the larger farms of industrialised countries.

Agricultural systems with high levels of social and human assets are able to innovate in the face of uncertainty and farmer-to-farmer learning has been shown to be particularly important in implementing the context-specific, knowledge-intensive and regenerative practices of sustainable intensification. We will need learning systems that include experimenting, designing and planning, and taking action (Bawden, 1998). This is an open or soft systems approach, where the system is the platform of learning. This can cause fundamental changes in worldviews, precisely what may now be required to ensure successful transitions...