Rational Agriculture

So reads the headline for a recent piece on the SciDev website. This covers the publication on 19th May by the biodiversity working group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment of a new report: Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: A biodiversity synthesis.

This report commits the sin (for environmentalists) of suggesting that there may be trade-offs to be made between the needs of poor people and conservation targets. It then compounds this by suggesting that the various targets will not be fully met. Heresy indeed.

But, if we try to look at the situation objectively, it seems to be pretty generally accepted that the initial goal of any concerted effort to lift people out of absolute poverty is to enable them to grow or buy sufficient food. It is also clear that agriculture has a major impact on the environment, eliminating some ecological niches and creating others. So, it's not entirely surprising that there may be some conflicts between the Millennium Development goals and some conservation targets. Not only that, but the evidence of our own eyes is that richer societies provide higher quality, less polluted environments for their citizens. It also seems self-evident that more productive, more intensive agriculture actually protects biodiversity by reducing the need to encroach on marginal lands to grow food.

This, however, does not please many in the environmentalist movement, who are reluctant to compromise their absolute beliefs and certainties. Hamdallah Zedan, executive director of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, for example, is quoted thus "What they are forgetting is that biological diversity is the source for our current and future food supplies. We will destroy this if we expand our current agricultural system." While there are many who would subscribe to this view, and few who would have no qualms at all about wanton destruction of species, the fact remains that Humankind ultimately depends on the productivity of a handful of domesticated crop species: not much biodiversity there.

My concerns about the absolutist position of some in the Green movement were reinforced when we read later in the article that there is good evidence that the rate of ecosystem degradation is slowing, but that such positive news is not seen as worthy of a high profile in the MEA report.

It looks like the propaganda must continue for the forces of good to triumph (excuse my cynicism)...

Two items have come up in the past few days which merit some attention.

One relates to agriculture here in Europe, where farmers are a small and, in some cases, well-off part of society. The other concerns the developing world, where farmers generally constitute the largest single social group and the vast majority of whom live in real poverty.

First, up for debate by the European Union is the UK's rebate on net contributions. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this (and the UK is the only country willing to defend it) the reason why it was negotiated in the first place is that the UK receives considerably less than the other large European economies in direct payments from the EU. And the reason for this is simply that half the European budget is taken up by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), most of which goes to support inefficient farming in southern Europe (although those of us further north also take our share).

In the past, the subsidies paid resulted in needless over-production and the infamous "milk lake" and "beef mountain". The worst excesses have been organised out of the system, and the move is now towards paying farmers just for owning land rather than for producing anything. Of course, the rewards are higher if the land is managed in ways deemed to be environmentally friendly. But the result is that people will be paid £70 per acre just for owning farmland. To some extent, this is a recognition that the countryside we expect to see in much of Europe has been shaped by agriculture and that we effectively have to subsidise people to keep it this way. And, to some extent, it addresses the greater wrong of subsidised crops destabilising world markets and making it even harder for poor people to earn a living growing cash crops.

And this brings me on to my second point. The Department for International Development has started a consultation process on its new Strategy for Research on Sustainable Agriculture, which will run for ten years from 2006. In many ways, this is eminently sensible, recognising that productive agriculture is the main route to lift people out of absolute poverty but that, as societies become more prosperous, farming becomes a less and less important part of their overall economies. However, there are some omissions. For example, the focus is clearly on developing crop varieties which are resistant to pests, diseases and other stresses, but makes no mention of crop protection. If Third World farmers really are to be helped, we should make available all the tools which can contribute to consistent harvests and, in many cases, that includes conventional crop protection.

For anyone who wants to make their views known, the public consultation runs until 13th June, and the website is SRSA-Consultation@dfid.gov.uk .

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has recently published its first ever Soil Atlas of Europe (see the Press Pack and the BBC online report on this). Perhaps the most important thing is that this focusses on the fact that soil is vital, but often comes in for little consideration. The very pertinent quote from the JRC site sums it up well:

"Man … despite his artistic pretensions and many accomplishments, owes his existence to a thin layer of topsoil … and the fact that it rains".

According to the report, there is cause for concern over degradation of soils. As the BBC puts it:

“The major threats to soil quality identified by the atlas are erosion, the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides, the loss of organic content, pollution from industry, the loss of biodiversity, salinity, the compacting of soil by agricultural vehicles, landslides and flooding."

Clearly, soil is important, and there are many factors which can threaten it. But there is an implication in reports such as this that this is all due to "modern" agriculture. In actual fact, one of the statistics quoted is that 75% of land in Southern Europe has an organic matter content low enough to cause concern. On the other hand, soils with low organic matter content in England and Wales accounted for 42% of land in 1995. It is generally recognised that farming in the UK is amongst the most intensive (and productive) in Europe, so clearly intensive farming is not the primary cause.

Indeed, if we moved towards less extensive, organic agriculture, as some would still have us believe is desirable, we would need to keep considerably greater areas of land in good condition in order to produce as much food. The situation is never quite as simple as it seems.