The new hype

A new phase of agriculture is promoted by the industry and innovation policies in Europe and worldwide, promoting the development and integration of Information and Communication (ICT), sensor-based and data technologies. Many stakeholders refer to this integration of hi-tech solutions in farming as “Agriculture 3.0”, leaving behind Agriculture 1.0, the main form up to 1920 with manual labour, and Agriculture 2.0 following, also known as Green Revolution. Indeed, this new trend has become currently a mainstream narrative of innovation in agriculture, including all sorts of novel high-tech approaches; cloud computing, specialized software, drones and Internet of Things, all presented as promising tools to increase yields, reduce costs and, notably, promote agricultural sustainability. The EU also appears willing to provide a suitable environment through policies which strongly facilitate the development of “smart farming” and data-driven business models in agriculture.

Consequently, this has created an ambitious, and often opportunistic, business “ecosystem”, consisting of a diverse mix of specialised larger or small companies, entering the agricultural sector with a variety of promises for solutions to important agricultural and environmental issues, aiming at a share of the new market, created by the neoliberal approach of delivering profit and entrepreneurship opportunities out of new topics. That includes also a “share data” and “open source” approach, not with the intention of sharing, but for ensuring the possibility these new stakeholders will be able to “extract value” from this raising market.

On the other hand, agroecology as an emerging concept providing a holistic approach for the design of genuinely sustainable food systems not simply seeking temporary solutions that unambiguously will increase environmental performance and productivity. It stands mostly as a systemic paradigm of perception change, towards full harmonization with ecological processes, low external inputs, and use of biodiversity and cultivation of agricultural knowledge. Additionally, agroecology emphasizes independent and grassroots experimentation, and not the reliance on high tech and external suppliers, with a high degree of dependency on additional support services. Obviously, the new “sustainable” approaches and promises of digital technology and big data could be considered as focusing mainly on conventional, industrial-scale agriculture, allowing only large-scale farmers to thrive at the expense of smaller ones, while not having much to do with the transition towards truly sustainable and resilient food systems. However some alternative examples of digital innovation in agriculture focusing on agroecology-based approaches also exist, including open source agricultural technology initiatives (farmhack.net), collaborative projects for the creation of technology solutions and innovation by farmers (l’Atelier paysan) or research projects using data technologies to promote biodiversity and sustainable land management.

Farm Hack from farmrun on Vimeo.

Considering the above, important question marks are raised whether digital solutions fit within the agroecological concept, or they are inherently non-compatible with a strong sustainability approach in agriculture, and to what extent and under which framework such digital innovations may play a role in the transition towards truly sustainable food systems.

Consultation on the topic* recognized that the main barrier to consider to the use of digital innovations in agroecology is related to the lack of autonomy. Farmers may lose control of data provided by vertically developed and hierarchically-based decision support tools that often largely ignore ecological processes and are mostly based on optimization of production models. In addition, the cost of technologies is often not economically viable for individual farmers, especially for the small ones. However, automation of specific production processes and the use of high-tech equipment had and may still have some positive impact on the quality of farmers’ life.

Commonly peer

The main issue is related to how the innovation process to develop a specific technological tool is evolved. The attribution of power relationships in the development of innovative tools, a peer-to-peer approach and the user’s engagement to technology development, often called user innovation, can definitely be used to give power to all actors collectively involved in developing an innovation. We also keep in mind that digitization is no miracle, no more than classic tools are; innovation lies in the creative process, not only in the tool itself. There is a need to work on methodologies to develop a responsible innovation system that allow the technologies to respond to real users needs and not to create needs induced by the technology developers. The main issue is who takes the lead in the innovation system that develops the new digital solutions.

Digitization may also be an opportunity for democratization of knowledge, and agroecology is a knowledge intensive system in which information and data should be specific to the local context. As an example, climate change is an issue that requires a global perspective to solve local problems, but many other natural and ecological processes ask for this approach. Hence, the main issue raised is how to decentralize digital innovation and transform it to a public tool of knowledge exchange, complementary to personal and individual-to-individual processes rather than a substitute to them? An opportunity is offered by the Economy of Commons approach (see here also) – when actors can give and receive back data related to the combination of data collected from different stakeholders. The capacity to combine open data in a way that is useful for farmers at local level can be of interest for agroecology if the technology will work for and from the communities.

The point that makes a difference is the role of rural communities in the innovation process; are they just clients and potential users or main co-innovators?

Notes

* Discussion and consultation on the issue in the relevant workshop, held at the 1st European Forum on Agroecology, Lyon, France, October 26, 2017, with the participation of various academic organizations, organizations and producers, and with presentations by Vassilis Gkisakis (Dr. agronomist, Agroecological Network of Greece, organizer of the workshop), Nicolas Sinoir (L’atelier Paysan), Mariateresa Lazzaro (Dr. agronomist, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy) Livia Ortolani (Rete Semi Rurali, Italian Seed Network).

This article originally appeared on the website of the Agroecological Network of Greece (Agroecology Greece) consists a network and a platform aiming to promote Agroecology as a science, practice and movement, in Greek. Its purpose is to network agricultural scientists/trainers, in order to exchange information, knowledge & research that will familiarize the principles and framework of agroecology in Greece and promote the transition of food production systems towards a truly sustainable form, integrating food sovereignty and security principles.

Vasileios Gkisakis, Agronomist (MSc, PhD): Vassilis specialises in Sustainable Agriculture and Agrobiodiversity, with a background in Food Science. He worked previously in the organic farming sector, while he has collaborated with several research groups across Europe on organic farming/agroecology, olive production, biodiversity management strategies and food quality. He is a contracted lecturer of i) Organic Farming and ii) Food Production Systems in the TEI of Crete and visiting lecturer of Agroecology & Sustainable Food Production Systems in the Agricultural University of Plovdiv. He is official reviewer in one scientific journal, Board member of the European Association for Agroecology and moderator of the Agroecological Network of Greece and also the owner of a 20 ha organic olive and grain farm.

Lead image of an Open Source Compost Sensor – an agroecologically acceptable new technology? Developed by KindaSmith (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5)

Originally published on arc2020.eu

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Because they are often developed and shared through extensive Campesino a Campesino (farmer-to-farmer) social networks, peasant-based agroecological approaches are an integral part of many agrarian struggles for land and market reforms… For them, agroecology is… a science, a practice and a movement.

The following article presents the Latin American and other Global South farmer’s movement as peer to peer movements that have an integrative approach to self-organisation, land ownership, and technology, and is critical of approaches that ignore the land and organizational questions. It was co-authored by Eric Holt-Giménez and Miguel Altieri and originally published in Food First:

The Green Revolution is a one-size-fits-all technological model for global agricultural development that originated in the breadbasket of the United States. Following World War II, the US turned “swords into plowshares” by transforming the vast stocks of wartime nitrate and poisons into fertilizer and pesticides, and by refitting arms factories to make newer, bigger farm machinery. Hybrid seeds were bred to respond to irrigation and chemical inputs. Industrial agriculture boomed.

However, US farmers soon bought all of the new technology they needed. Seeds, agrochemicals and machinery began to pile up in warehouses. The solution to the problem of industrial surplus was to export the uniform model of production to very different and diverse geographical, cultural and social environments in the Global South.

Carl Sauer, a highly respected Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley with vast experience in Latin American agriculture, was originally contracted by the Rockefeller Foundation as a consultant to the US Mexican Agricultural Program regarding the possibility of exporting US agricultural technology to Mexico—ostensibly to help Mexico increase their food security. But Sauer strongly advised Rockefeller against the approach:

“A good aggressive bunch of American agronomists and plant breeders could ruin native resources for good and all by pushing their American stocks…and Mexico cannot be pointed toward standardization on a few commercial types without upsetting native economy and culture hopelessly. Unless the Americans understand that, they better keep out of this country entirely. This must be approached from an appreciation of native economies as basically sound.” [i]

The Rockefeller Foundation dismissed Sauer’s concerns and, despite internal opposition, went forward with the project—which became a 50-year global campaign—later known as the Green Revolution.

The Green Revolution was spread with subsidized credit, international institutions and government programs, to millions of farmers in the Global South. With massive investment, global food production increased dramatically. But, Carl Sauer’s predictions came true: because the technology required capital, it concentrated production on large farms and in fewer and fewer hands—the best agricultural land. Smallholders were driven to the fragile hillsides and into the rain forests. When they were offered cheap credit to buy Green Revolution seeds and chemicals, these inputs quickly destroyed the fertility of their soils and eroded their local genetic diversity. Yields fell, millions of small farmers were economically ruined, and millions of acres of forests and topsoil were lost.

The Green Revolution proved to be a disastrous mismatch for the Global South. In its aftermath, peasant farmers struggled to stay on the land and restore the ecological integrity of their farming systems. They found a way with Agroecology.

Although many northern academics claim that the term Agroecology was first coined by European scientists at the beginning of the 20^th century,[ii] the roots of agroecology lie in the ecological rationale of indigenous and peasant agriculture still prevalent in many parts of the developing world today.[iii]

Thirty years ago, Latin American agroecologists argued that a starting point for a better, pro-poor agricultural development strategies were the systems that traditional farmers had developed over centuries. From the early1980s on, hundreds of agroecologically-based projects incorporating elements of both traditional knowledge and modern agricultural science have been promoted throughout Latin America and other parts of the developing world. A variety of projects emerged showing that over time these agroecologically-managed systems bring benefits to rural communities by enhancing food security with healthy local food, strengthening their resource base (soils, biodiversity, etc.), preserving cultural heritage and the peasant or family farm way of life, and promoting resilience to climate change.[iv]

Agroecology also contributes towards the process of “re-peasantization” in which, contrary to the general tendency of migration from the countryside to the city, smallholders are returning to the land. For peasant organizations, agroecology has proven vital in their struggle for autonomy by reducing their dependence on external inputs, credit and indebtedness and also by recovering their territories.[v] Because they are often developed and shared through extensive Campesino a Campesino (farmer-to-farmer) social networks, peasant-based agroecological approaches are an integral part of many agrarian struggles for land and market reforms as well as peasant movements against land grabs and extractive industries. For them, agroecology is not just a scientific or technological project, but a political project of resistance and survival. It is a science, a practice and a movement.

In Latin America, agroecology is often viewed as an applied science embedded within a social context that challenges capitalist agriculture and is allied with agrarian movements. Deeply engaged with ongoing agrarian debates, Latin American agroecologists typically support both bottom-up agricultural development and peasant resistance against the corporate, industrial agriculture and neoliberal trade policies.

Agroecology is spreading in the US and Europe. This is good news. But similar to the southward spread of the Green Revolution, the northward spread of agroecology has encountered a mismatch, and it is political.

The political dimension of agroecology is problematic in the Global North—particularly in the United States—because challenging the root causes of industrial agriculture’s socio-environmental destruction implies challenging capitalism itself. It requires a radical (i.e. going to the root) critique that transcends the notion that minor adjustments or ‘greening’ the neoliberal economic model will bring about substantive change. It situates agroecology outside mainstream academic, government and non-governmental programs and within the resistance struggles of the social movements fighting for food sovereignty, local autonomy, and community control of land, water and agrobiodiversity.[vi]

But, agroecology in the US and Europe is not anchored in strong agrarian movements. The northern arena of agroecological debate is dominated by an eclectic soup of apolitical narratives (read: avoiding the subject of capitalism), largely promoted by consumers and academics, global institutions, big NGOs and big philanthropy. This institutional camp uses a variety of terms (sustainable intensification, climate-smart agriculture, diversified farming systems, etc.) to promote a reformist definition of agroecology as a set of additional tools to improve everyone’s toolbox. Big, small, organic, conventional… will all get along better with a little more agroecology.

The cooptation of agroecological practices will make industrial agriculture a bit more sustainable and a little less exploitative, but will not challenge underlying relations of power in our food system. Further, agroecology “lite” ignores the ways in which large-scale, industrial monocultures undermine the existence of the smallholder farmers who farm agroecologically. The voices of agroecological practitioners —Afro-American, Latino, Indigenous and Asian communities, smallholders and urban farmers—and of low income consumers, progressive academics and NGOs critical of conventional agriculture, are marginal or muted in this discourse.

Agroecology—as a countermovement to the Green Revolution—is at a crossroads, struggling against cooptation, subordination, and revisionist projects that erase its history and strip it of its political meaning.[vii] De-politicized agroecology is socially meaningless, divorced from agrarian realities, vulnerable to the corporate food regime and isolated from the growing power of global food sovereignty movements.

Agroecology has a pivotal role to play in the future of our food systems. If it is co-opted by reformist trends in the Green Revolution, the agroecological countermovement will be weakened, the corporate food regime will likely be strengthened, and substantive reforms to our food systems will be highly unlikely. However, if agroecologists build strategic alliances with food sovereignty and agrarian movements—at home and abroad—the countermovement will be strengthened. A strong countermovement could generate considerable political will for the transformation of our food systems.[viii]

Whether one recognizes the politics of agroecology—or tries to hide them—it is precisely these agrarian politics that will determine our agricultural future.

Miguel A. Altieri, University of California, Berkeley

Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First

[i] Jennings, B. (1988) Foundations of International Agricultural Research: Science and Politics in Mexican Agriculture. Boulder CO: Westview Press.

[ii] Wezel, A., S. Bellon, T. Doré, C. Francis, D. Vallod and C. David. (2009) Agroecology as a science, a movement, and a practice. A Review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 29(4): 503–515.

[iii] Altieri, M.A. (2002) Agroecology: the science of natural resource management for poor farmers in marginal environments. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 93: 1–24.

[iv] Altieri, M.A. and C.I. Nicholls. (2008) Scaling up Agroecological Approaches for Food Sovereignty in Latin America. Development, 51(4): 472–80. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/dev.2008.68

[v] Van der Ploeg, J.D. (2009) The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization. Earthscan, London, 356 p.

[vi] Rosset, P.M. & Martinez-Torres, M.E. (2012) Rural Social Movements and Agroecology: Context, Theory and Process. Ecology and Society, 17: 17-26

[vii] Roland, P. C, and R. W. Adamchak. (2009) Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Tomich, T., S. Brodt, F. Ferris, R. Galt, W. Horwath, E. Kebreab, J. Leveau, et al. (2011) Agroecology: A Review from a Global-Change Perspective. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 36(15): 1–30.

[viii] Holt-Gimenez, E and M.A. Altieri 2013 Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and the New Green Revolution. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 37: 90-102

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The promise of the Green Revolution was that it would end hunger through the magic of chemicals and genetic engineering.   The reasoning goes like this:  the miracle seeds of the Green Revolution increase grain yields; higher yields mean more income for poor farmers, helping them to climb out of poverty, and more food means less hunger.  Dealing with the  root causes of poverty that contribute to hunger takes a very long time – but people are starving now.  So we must do what we can now  –  and that’s usually to increase production. The Green Revolution buys the time Third World countries desperately need to deal with the underlying social causes of poverty and to cut birth rates.

Today, though, growth in food production is flattening, human population continues to increase, demand outstrips production; food prices soar. As Dale Allen Pfeiffer maintains in Eating Fossil Fuels, modern intensive agriculture – as developed through the Green Revolution –  is unsustainable and has not been the panacea some hoped it would be. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.  And the data on yields, and fertilizer and pesticide use (not to mention human health problems)  supports these allegations.  A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists called “Failure to Yield” sums it up nicely (click here).

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma,  says the Achilles heel of current green revolution methods is a dependence on fossil fuels.  “The only way you can have one farmer feed 140 Americans is with monocultures. And monocultures need lots of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and lots of fossil-fuel-based pesticides,” Pollan says. “That only works in an era of cheap fossil fuels, and that era is coming to an end. Moving anyone to a dependence on fossil fuels seems the height of irresponsibility.”

So is a reprise of the green revolution—with the traditional package of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation, supercharged by genetically engineered seeds—really the answer to the world’s food crisis?  As Josh Viertel, president of Slow Food USA, describes it:  the good news is that feeding the world in 2050 is completely possible; the bad news is that there isn’t a lot of money to be made by doing so.[1]

It has become clear that agriculture has to shrink its environmental footprint – to do more with less.  The world’s growing demand for agricultural production must be met not by bringing more land into production, with more gallons of water, or with more intensive use of inputs that impact the environment, but by being better stewards of existing resources through the use of technological innovation combined with policy reforms to ensure proper incentives are in place.[2]

A massive study (published in 2009)  called the “International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development”  concluded that the immense production increases brought about by science and technology in the past 30 years have failed to improve food access for many of the world’s poor. The six-year study, initiated by the World Bank and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and involving some 400 agricultural experts from around the globe, called for a paradigm shift in agriculture toward more sustainable and ecologically friendly practices that would benefit the world’s 900 million small farmers, not just agribusiness.  As the report states:  “business as usual is no longer an option”.[3]

Dr. Peter Rosset, former Director of Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy and an internationally renowned expert on food security, has this to say about the Green Revolution:

      In the final analysis, if the history of the Green Revolution has taught
      us one thing, it is that increased food production can-and often does-go
     hand in hand with greater hunger. If the very basis of staying
     competitive in farming is buying expensive inputs, then wealthier farmers
     will inexorably win out over the poor, who are unlikely to find adequate
     employment to compensate for the loss of farming livelihoods. Hunger is
     not caused by a shortage of food, and cannot be eliminated by producing
     more.

    This is why we must be skeptical when Monsanto, DuPont, Novartis, and
     other chemical-cum-biotechnology companies tell us that genetic
     engineering will boost crop yields and feed the hungry. The technologies
     they push have dubious benefits and well-documented risks, and the second
     Green Revolution they promise is no more likely to end hunger than the
     first.

    Far too many people do not have access to the food that is already
     available because of deep and growing inequality. If agriculture can play
     any role in alleviating hunger, it will only be to the extent that the
     bias toward wealthier and larger farmers is reversed through pro-poor
     alternatives like land reform and sustainable agriculture, which reduce
     inequality and make small farmers the center of an economically vibrant
     rural economy.

We began this series a few weeks ago with statements from several people who said that organic agriculture cannot feed the world.  Yet increasing numbers of scientists, policy panels and experts  are suggesting that agricultural practices pretty close to organic — perhaps best called “sustainable” — can feed more poor people sooner, begin to repair the damage caused by industrial production and, in the long term, become the norm.  This new way of looking at agriculture is called agroecology, which is simply the application of ecological principles to the production of food, fuel and pharmaceuticals.   The term is not associated with any one type of farming (i.e., organic, conventional or intensive) or management practices, but rather recognizes that there is no one formula for success.  Agroecology is concerned with optimizing yields while minimizing negative environmental and socio-economic impacts of modern technologies.

In March, 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food , Olivier de Schutter, presented a new report, “Agro-ecology and the right to food”,  which was based on an extensive review of recent scientific literature.  The report demonstrates that agroecology,  if sufficiently supported, can double food production in entire regions within 10 years while mitigating climate change and alleviating rural poverty.  “To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available,” says De Schutter.  “Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live — especially in unfavorable environments. …To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects,” De Schutter says. “Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years.”

The report calls for investment in extension services, storage facilities, and rural infrastructure like roads, electricity, and communication technologies, to help provide smallholders with access to markets, agricultural research and development, and education. Additionally, it notes the importance of providing farmers with credit and insurance against weather-related risks.

De Sheutter goes on to say: “We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations.” Instead, the report says the solution lies with smallholder farmers. Agro-ecology, according to De Sheutter, immediately helps “small farmers who must be able to farm in ways that are less expensive and more productive. But it benefits all of us, because it decelerates global warming and ecological destruction.”

The majority of the world’s hungry are smallholder farmers, capable of growing food but currently not growing enough food to feed their families each year. A net global increase in food production alone will not guarantee the end of hunger (as the poor cannot access food even when it is available), but an increase in productivity for poor farmers will make a dent in global hunger. Potentially, gains in productivity by smallholder farmers will provide an income to farmers as well, if they grow a surplus of food that they can sell.

As an example of how this process works, the UN report suggests that “rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise”. For example, in Kenya, researchers and farmers developed a successful “push-pull” strategy to control pests in corn, and using town meetings, national radio broadcasts, and farmer field schools, spread the system to over 10,000 households.

The push-pull method involves pushing pests away from corn by interplanting corn with an insect repelling crop called Desmodium (which can be fed to livestock), while pulling the pests toward small nearby plots of Napier grass, “a plant that excretes a sticky gum which both attracts and traps pests.” In addition to controlling pests, this system produces livestock fodder, thus doubling corn yields and milk production at the same time. And it improves the soil to boot![4]

Further, by decentralizing production, floods in Southeast Asia, for example, might not mean huge shortfalls in the world’s rice crop; smaller scale farming makes the system less susceptible to climate shocks.  If you read the  story by Justin Gillis in the New York Times on May 5, which discusses the effects climate change is having on crop yields, this can only be a good thing.

Significantly, the UN report mentions that past efforts to combat hunger focused mostly on cereals such as wheat and rice which, while important, do not provide a wide enough range of nutrients to prevent malnutrition. Thus, the biodiversity in agroecological farming systems provide much needed nutrients. “For example,” the report says, “it has been estimated that indigenous fruits contribute on average about 42 percent of the natural food-basket that rural households rely on in southern Africa. This is not only an important source of vitamins and other micronutrients, but it also may be critical for sustenance during lean seasons.” Indeed, in agroecological farming systems around the world, plants a conventional American farm might consider weeds are eaten as food or used in traditional herbal medicine.

States and donors have a key role to play here. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.  The flood-tolerant rice mentioned above was created from an old strain grown in a small area of India, but decades of work were required to improve it.  But even after it was shown that this new variety was able to survive floods for twice as long as older varieties, there was no money for distribution of the seeds to the farmers.    Indeed, the distribution was made possible only through a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

American efforts to fight global hunger, to date, have focused more on crop breeding, particularly genetic engineering, and nitrogen fertilizer than agroecology. Whereas the new UN report notes that, “perhaps because [agroecological] practices cannot be rewarded by patents, the private sector has been largely absent from this line of research.”   The U.S. aggressively promotes public-private partnerships with corporations[5]  such as seed and chemical companies Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, and BASF; agribusiness companies Cargill, Bunge; and Archer Daniels Midland; processed food companies PepsiCo, Nestle, General Mills, Coca Cola, Unilever, and Kraft Foods; and the retail giant Wal-Mart.[6]

We need to look closely at all options since there is so much at stake.  To meet the challenges listed above, perhaps we need what Jon Foley calls a “resilient hybrid strategy”.   Foley, director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Minnesota, puts it this way:

I think we need a new kind of agriculture – kind of a third agriculture, between the big agribusiness, commercial approach to agriculture, and the lessons from organic and local systems…. Can we take the best of both of these and invent a more sustainable, and scalable agriculture?[7]

The New York Times article pointed out the success of a new variety of rice seeds that survived recent floods in India  after being submerged for 10 days.  “It’s the best example in agriculture,” said Julia Bailey-Serres, a researcher at the University of California, Riverside. “The submergence-tolerant rice essentially sits and waits out the flood.” (8)

But this path raises many concerns – for example, genetically modified seeds are anathema to much of Europe and many environmentalists.   And so far, genetic breakthroughs such as engineering plants that can fix their own nitrogen or are resistant to drought “has proven a lot harder than they thought,” says Michael Pollan, who says the  major problem with GMO seeds is that they’re intellectual property.   He is calling for an open source code  (i.e., divorcing genetic modifications from intellectual property). De Sheutter sees promise in marker-assisted selection and participatory plant breeding, which “uses the strength of modern science, while at the same time putting farmers in the driver’s seat.”

So what can be done?

[1] http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/why_big_ag_wont_feed_the_world/

[2] 2010 GAP Report, Global Harvest Initiative, http://www.globalharvestinitiative.org

[3] Synthesis Report: International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development”, 2009

[4] http://www.worldchangecafe.com/2011/03/13/groundbreaking-new-un-report-on-how-to-feed-the-worlds-hungry-ditch-corporate-controlled-agriculture/

[5] http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/pr110128.html

[6] Richardson, Jill, “Groundbreaking New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry:  Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture”, March 13, 2011

[7] Revkin, Andrew, “A Hybrid Path to Feeding 9 Billion on a Still-Green Planet”, New York Times, March 3, 2011,

(8)  Gillis, Justin, “A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself”, New York Times, May 5, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/science/earth/05harvest.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

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