The Horrors:
Many of the problems emerging in global agriculture can be traced to the increasing trend away from traditional diversified mixed farming techniques towards intensive chemically dependent mono-cultures.
By replacing traditional crops suited to local conditions with those grown for commercial and economic reasons dictated by the global market, people around the world are not only denied their subsistence crops, but are forced to replace sustainable and complex ecosystems, which have evolved over thousands of years, with energy intensive techniques which are dependent on external markets and inputs.
Numerous studies have shown that the long-term sustainability of the global 'agri-business' can never be achieved: 6 billion hectares of productive land are being lost to desertification every year and 26 billion tons of topsoil are literally washed out to sea.
A quarter of the world's topsoil has been lost in the last twenty five years and in many areas is disappearing seventeen times faster than it is being replaced.
Intensive farming monocultures are not only energy intensive but immensely inefficient, yielding only 6 units of energy in food for every 15 expended in its production. Some 96% of the cultivated land in the state farms of the former Soviet Union produced less than 16% of the food while the 4% taken by individual allotments yielded the remaining 84%.
20,000 tons of chemicals are applied to UK farming land every year, during which time the average British adult eats his way three pounds of chemical additives.
The world is using over 150 million tons of fertilizers every year and it is now estimated that pests have destroyed three times as many crops since chemicals were first introduced.
Prior to the advent of the agri-business, set in motion by the Agriculture Act of 1947, there were half a million farms in Britain, the majority of which were small mixed farms of less than fifty acres. Almost 1.5 million families made part or all of their income from the land, maintaining a rich bio-diversity and preserving the environment at no extra cost to the taxpayer.
Annual production of synthetic chemicals increased from 1 billion pounds after the War to 500 billion pounds during the 1980s. Farmers currently use over 600 million pounds of insecticides alone.
Despite being more active, smoking less and having a lower incidence of heart disease than the average American, farmers now experience rates of leukaemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, brain and prostate cancers which are much higher than the national average.
By the time you have read this page, nearly one hundred people around the world will have succumbed to pesticide poisoning - 48 every minute, 25 million every year. In some Third World countries, pesticides kill more people than major diseases.
UN figures show that global food supplies are more than adequate without the need for GM, producing one and a half times the amount required to feed the expanding population.
Pesticide residues in vegetables sometimes exceed the Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) by as much as 45 times. Fungicides, like the highly toxic methyl bromide, are sprayed all over fruits. Consumers are exposed to concentrations of everything from DDT to organophosphates and chlordane in animal fats, along levels of PCB's and dioxins in fish at the top of the food chain, like tuna and shark, which are up to 25 million times greater than when they were first released into the atmosphere.
Twelve of the top 19 seed companies are owned by corporations connected with chemicals, pharmaceuticals or food distribution.
Just four companies - Syngenta (formerly AstraZeneca and Novartis), DuPont, Monsanto and Aventis - account for two-thirds of the global pesticide market, a quarter of the global seed trade and virtually all the transgenic seed in circulation. Monsanto owns all the world's genetically engineered cotton.
The modern agri-business has also reduced the genetic diversity of our staple crops to a fraction of what existed just fifty years ago - the 50,000 varieties of rice that used to be grown in India have been reduced to less than fifteen.
The planet is thought to contain 80,000 edible plants, of which only 150 have been commercially cultivated and less than 20 produce 90% of the world's food.
Two thirds of global agricultural production is now devoted to just three crops - rice, wheat and maize.
The Irish potato famine of the 1840s, and the more recent corn blight in the US in 1970, are reminders of what can happen when genetic diversity of staple crops is reduced to a single monoculture. Phytophthora infestans, an airborne disease which causes potatoes to wither and rot, spread through Europe in 1845 after crossing the Atlantic in a diseased tuber. Since all the potatoes grown in Europe were descended from the few plants which had originally been brought from the New World, no resistant varieties had been developed. Since most of rural Ireland was dependent on the potato crop, hundreds of thousands starved after the entire crop was destroyed in 1847.
The Hopes:
The Fukuoka method, Japan:
In Japan, Manasobu Fukuoka has pioneered perhaps the most energy efficient agriculture in the world, growing a variety of crops together but without ever ploughing the land, thus preserving soil structure and fertility. The usual crop rotation is replaced by a continuous grain or legume. In the autumn, rice, clover and another winter grain like rye, barley, oats or winter wheat are sown into the ripe rice crop before planting. After harvest, the rice straw and husks are returned to the field as mulch, while the clover provides a living mulch which continually fixes nitrogen. Winter grains then grow through the mulch and are harvested in the spring when the rice seedlings are small. The rice is then flooded for a week in the summer, which weaken the weeds but does not kill the clover. Then the cycle starts again. On a quarter of an acre, Fukuoka produces 22 bushels of rice and 22 bushels of winter grains, enough to feed up to ten people and requiring a few days work for one or two people to hand sow and harvest the crop. The Fukuoka system has spread widely though Japan and is now practised on nearly a million acres in China.
Forest gardens:
Traditional agriculture systems controlled pests through diversification, planting a mixture of crops rather than the intensive monocultures of the modern agri-business. Mixing different crop species or varieties can delay the onset of disease, reduce the spread of diseased spores and modify micro-climate conditions like humidity, light, temperature and air movement.
The forest garden concept has been well established in various parts of the globe and there are numerous examples of the high productivity that can be achieved. Rather than felling the existing trees, the Chagga settlers on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro planted bananas, fruit trees and vegetables in their shade. Now the individual plots, which average 0.68 hectares in size and contain some seventeen stories of vegetation, provide the entire subsistence for a family of ten people.
The south Indian state of Kerala, the most densely populated area in the country, contains some 3.5 million forest gardens. One plot of just 0.12 hectares has been known to contain 23 coconut palms, 12 cloves, 56 bananas and 49 pineapples, with 30 pepper vines trained up the trees. Associated industries in the area include the production of rubber, matches, cashews, furniture, pandanus mats, baskets, bullock-carts and catamarans, along with the processing of palm oil, cocoa and coir fibres from coconuts. Many families meet their own energy requirements through biomass systems fed by human, animal and vegetable waste, while the forest gardens provide full-time occupations for families which average seven members.
The multi storied pekarangan gardens of Java are a prime example of the productivity that can be achieved by imitating the diversity of a forest eco-system, providing regular harvests of food, fuel, fodder, fibre and medicinal products for the cash and subsistence needs of rural people. Rice, maize, cassava, peanuts and cumin are grown on the ground, coffee, bananas and papayas above, with cinnamon, jackfruit and other fruit trees forming the canopy with coconut palms and various vines like pepper and vanilla trailing up the trunks and branches.
Organic techniques:
There are numerous examples, from all around the world, that productivity actually increases when chemical dependence is reduced or abandoned altogether. In Indonesia, yields have risen by 15% since pesticide use was cut in half. Hundreds of farmers, from Mexico and Brazil to Kenya and India, have turned to organic methods, reduced their external costs and increased their production. In 1998, research from the University of Wisconsin revealed that seventeen out of twenty one samples of GM soya actually produced lower yields than conventional varieties.
Dependence on chemical fertilisers can also be reduced or replaced by organic methods. For example, some species of blue-green algae, which grow naturally in paddy fields, have been found to fix nitrogen. Azolla is a beautiful tiny fern that floats on stagnant water, growing extremely fast in symbiosis with anabaena, a nitrogen-fixing algae, producing up to one tonne of green biomass per hectare per day, containing up to three kilogrammes of fixed nitrogen.
Nitrogen can also be increased in the soil by incorporating legumes in the crop mixture, and phosphorus assimilation can be enhanced by growing crops with mycorrhizal associations - fungi in symbiotic relationship with plant roots, enabling the latter to absorb nutrient more effectively.
Permaculture:
Permaculture was first developed in Australia in the 1970s, by Bill Mollison, whose aim was to develop a complete agricultural eco-system, an edible landscape which would encourage self-reliance. Permaculture has been extended to incorporate every aspect of human lifestyles, from alternative energy systems to architectural design, and has been introduced to every type of climatic system on a variety of scales, from Nepalese villages high in the Himalayas to suburban back gardens in Europe. Crystal Waters, in Australia's New South Wales, is a complete community modelled on permaculture principles.
Permaculture recognises that a sustainable agriculture must satisfy four basic requirements: 1) produce more energy than it consumes, 2) must not destroy its own base, the soil, local hydrology etc., 3) must meet local needs and 4) must find its own nutrients on site. Various natural ecosystems satisfy these criteria, like forests, lakes, swamps and savannah. Traditional agriculture systems have recognised this and therefore endeavoured to replicate, or work with, the inherent energy of the surrounding landscape. For example, farmers in New Guinea using forests, lakes, pastures and no-tillage techniques use one unit of energy for every 15 that is produced.
Permaculture systems emphasize perennial rather than annual crops, with tree crops replacing annuals for winter animal fodder and some human food. Trees are amazingly efficient as a source of food, an acre of black walnut trees being 400 times more productive than an acre of wheat. Other important aspects of the design include high species diversity, intercropping and companion planting to encourage symbiotic and synergistic functions. Tomatoes are planted with nasturtiums, comfrey with potatoes for potash, gladiolus with onions against onion rot.
The use of small scale machinery and hand tools is encouraged, along with a combination of gardening, commercial farming, grazing, poultry and aquaculture, the recycling of all materials and an overall design which minimises walking and transportation. For example, the zone around the house is used for crops which require the most attention and are used the most, like annual vegetables and culinary herbs. Beds are planted so that crops which are harvested regularly, like lettuce and salad leaves, are placed in front of those which are picked only once, like cabbages and carrots. Similarly, the orchard is placed beyond the immediate garden, the pasture and forest furthest away. Three dimensional space is also exploited, growing plants of different heights and training creepers up the trunks of trees.
References and links:
Sustain Digest,: www.sustainweb.org
Farmers World Network: www.fwn.org.uk
Henry Doubleday Research Association: www.hdra.org.uk
Info on seed industry giants: www.rafi.org
Norfolk Genetic Information Network: www.ngin.org.uk
Permaculture: A Designer's Manual, by Bill Mollison. (Australia: Tagari 1988)
Forest Gardening: Rediscovering Nature and Community in a Post-Industrial Age, by Robert Hart. (Totnes, Devon: Green Earth Books 1996)
Samples from the web of hope www.thewebofhope.com
Rory Spowers 01982 570 369 bodge@easynet.co.uk