Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Executive summary
Agriculture remains a major focus of development efforts. With the global population expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, coupled with the negative impacts of climate change on agricultural production, a serious strain is being placed on the sector. This is exacerbated by the concentration of extreme poverty among smallholder farmers in the least developed countries.
Meeting this triple challenge is at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals, which call for 'leaving no one behind'. Yet, intensification-centred approaches to agricultural development have fundamentally failed to be inclusive; they do not address the needs or tap the productive potential of smallholder farmers.
This paper assesses the range of agricultural development pathways using the Technology Justice framework, looking at the significant issue of access for smallholder farmers, the sustainability of the pathways, and the opportunities for supporting local innovation. Agroecology emerges as the strongest pathway for leaving no one behind and meeting the triple challenge of productivity, sustainability and poverty eradication.
This policy briefing presents existing evidence and research in agroecology alongside case studies of successful initiatives with scalable potential, particularly those where market systems are at the core of development practices.
Agroecology emerges as the strongest pathway for leaving no one behind
Several barriers to scaling up agroecology exist, posing a challenge to its use in development programming. To address these barriers, we recommend governments, donors, researchers, and civil society work together to use the existing evidence to promote agroecological research, practice, and incentives to facilitate systemic change.
This paper presents a variety of potential opportunities to adapt market systems and entry points for private-sector investment and engagement in agroecological systems. These can stimulate scalable, profitable and sustainable business models to help reach many millions more smallholder farmers, enabling them to 'step up' within agriculture rather than remain 'hanging in'.
Introduction
Current approaches to agricultural development have boosted productivity through the application of modern technologies, synthetic inputs, and economies of scale across large farms. But such approaches have fundamentally failed to address the needs and tap the productive potential of smallholder farmers. Moreover, they have created production systems that are environmentally unsustainable and which can trap poor farmers in cycles of debt and poverty. This has led to a serious technology injustice, one that will undermine the very essence of the newly agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which call for 'leaving no one behind'.
This paper calls for governments and donors to build on existing experience to promote agroecological research and provide incentives for agroecological practice in order to facilitate greater private-sector investment and system change.
The challenge is to address the existing 'catch-22' situation, whereby there are few existing commercial incentives for investment in agroecological farming, resulting in a lack of experience, learning, and innovation in such farming which, in turn, leads to a paucity of evidence and incentive for further investment (see also Gómez et al., 2012).
Existing applications of agroecological practices show that they can increase productivity (especially in marginal environments), are more resilient to climate shocks, achieve long-term sustainability, and can be readily adopted and adapted by risk-averse and poor smallholder farmers, but are often classified as anecdotal or small scale.
The need for a practical use of agroecology
A widely used definition of agroecology was developed by Altieri (1995): 'the application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agro-ecosystems'. It is recognized as having three facets:
• a scientific discipline involving the holistic study of agro-ecosystems, including human and environmental elements;
• a set of principles and practices to enhance the resilience and ecological, socio-economic, and cultural sustainability of farming systems;
• a movement seeking a new way of considering agriculture and its relationships with society for the environment and future generations (Silici, 2014).
That 'agroecology' has therefore been used to describe a science, a practice, and a social movement for reform of the global food system has created much debate, indecision, and controversy.
Agroecology is a scientific discipline enabling an understanding of agriculture within its physical context (see Box 1). Its practice is necessary for sustainable and resilient agriculture – whether for smallholders, emerging commercial farmers, or large-scale production systems (Wezel et al., 2009).
Why agroecology is relevant and needed
The needs and contributions of many smallholder farmers are not being addressed, as evidenced by stagnating yields, incomes and livelihoods. This group is often referred to as the 'hanging in': they usually practise subsistence farming and are often food insecure (Dorward et al., 2009). The reason they are hanging in – unable to 'step up' – is because conventional agricultural development and growth strategies do not work for them. There are some 500 million smallholder farms worldwide; more than 2 billion people depend on them for their livelihoods (Nwanze, 2011). Improving the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers is crucial to achieving the poverty and food security goals of the SDGs.
Policies need to meet the triple challenge of production, sustainability and poverty eradication
The challenge is to generate incentives for innovative investment by farmers and businesses, large and small, in agroecological markets and production systems. This policy brief looks at the choices – innovative pathways for policy and investment – and the barriers to these pathways. We examine learning from existing market-based practice, consider the private-sector opportunities, and propose new research, innovation, and investment by development actors and others.
Agricultural development pathways
In many parts of the world, particularly in Africa, the production practices of the majority of smallholder farmers are neither sustainable nor productive. Population growth has fragmented landholdings and increased the pressure on land (IFAD and UNEP, 2013). The task recognized by the recently agreed SDGs (goals 1, 2, 8, 12, 13 and 15 in particular – see UN, 2014) is to address the triple challenge of:
• boosting food production to meet growing demands;
• improving the incomes and well-being of smallholder farmers to move them out of extreme poverty;
• working within the boundaries of sustainability to ensure that future generations can continue to provide food for the world, and that the first two aspects are not undermined by climate impacts and shocks.
There are different schools of thought about how to address these challenges, as reflected in the three dominant agricultural development pathways promoted by a range of organizations and institutions. These can be broadly categorized as:
1. 'green revolution' style conventional agriculture, which promotes monocropping and extensive synthetic input use to maximize yields of a single crop;
2. sustainable intensification, which blends aspects of agroecology with modern technological agricultural practices, such as targeted use of synthetic inputs and improved seeds;
3. low external-input systems that use agroecological principles to enhance production and resilience to changing climatic conditions. These systems can require high internal inputs of labour, knowledge and social capital.
The main characteristics of these three approaches are outlined in Table 1. The distinction between the three approaches is not clear-cut and is made here for illustrative purposes only. The scale with which these different pathways are able to meet the triple challenge is illustrated in Figure 1.
The Technology Justice framework (Meikle and Sugden, 2015), set out in the first paper of this policy briefing series, provides a lens for assessing whether agricultural practices and technologies actually benefit smallholder farmers. It looks at access, local innovation, and sustainable use of technologies.
Technology Justice: where people have the ability to choose and use technologies that assist them in leading the kind of life they value, without compromising the ability of others and future generations to do the same (Sugden, 2015: 5).
In agriculture, this means that interventions or practices must, at a minimum:
• improve and support access to productive agricultural practices and technologies for marginalized smallholder farmers in a way that minimizes risk;
• promote local innovation that improves the adaptive capacity of smallholder farming systems;
• facilitate sustainable use of natural resources to ensure the viability of continued production and adaptation.
Agricultural systems that do not meet the three pillars of Technology Justice will ultimately fail to address the triple challenge of productivity, sustainability, and poverty eradication, and will leave smallholders behind, hanging in rather than stepping up.
Meeting the triple challenge and Technology Justice
The distinction between the three pathways is not clear-cut. They span a continuum of different practices. In a given district, circumstances may favour some farmers with good market access and financial capacity allowing them to follow Pathway 2, while others, with poor access to markets or few resources, may follow Pathway 3.
Pathway 1 can appear attractive as it provides the highest production output, market opportunities for input and output agribusinesses, and efficiencies associated with concentrated production and marketing systems. But the cost of inputs, along with the technologies and technical capacities needed to achieve high outputs, make it prohibitive for the vast majority of low-income smallholder farmers.
Single-crop systems have routinely been shown to be less resilient to natural disasters and shocks (Altieri et al., 2015; De Schutter and Vanloqueren, 2011), and so present an inappropriate development pathway for resource-poor smallholder farmers. Furthermore, the application of synthetic chemical inputs to manage such production systems damages and degrades soils, undermining the natural resource base of smallholder farmers. This system not only contributes to greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, but promotes a short-term vision of agriculture, shifting the impending food crisis from this generation to the next, and leaving it unable to provide for a global population which it is estimated will be 9.7 billion by 2050 (UN-DESA, 2015: 1). A dependency on technology transfer and external inputs exacerbates risk and limits access, meaning Pathway 1 fails to meet the access, innovation and sustainability criteria of Technology Justice.
Pathway 2, sustainable intensification, provides a more nuanced approach to agricultural production, and better meets the challenge of sustainability, through precision application of inputs, minimal tillage, and some diversification (Godfray and Garnett, 2013). Its proponents stress the need to keep all technological options on the table, combining agroecological practices with modern technological solutions which are also effective at improving yields.
As with Pathway 1, sustainable intensification will typically promote contract farming to achieve economies of scale and may focus on the production of particular crops with some chemical inputs and improved seeds. The danger with this pathway is that productivity will be prioritized over access for smallholders. Many smallholders are in locations too remote or inaccessible for this approach to be financially viable for them: limited market linkages, and the credit needed for inputs, seeds, and technology erodes the income they can generate. The investment and focus on specific crops increases financial, environmental, and food security risks, in particular by limiting adaptation choices in future years, and does not foster local innovation efforts.
Pathway 3 is closely associated with agroecology and most effectively meets the triple challenge of increased food production, higher incomes, and sustainability. Working within the natural ecological systems of the locality, Pathway 3 places sustainability and land management at the heart of the approach and has a clear focus on resilience to climate changes and shocks. Diversified growing practices result in crops being available for a greater part of the year, providing more stable income-earning opportunities and food availability across growing seasons. The diversity of produce also encourages a more varied diet, helping to address nutritional issues (Alloway, 2008; DeClerck et al., 2011).
Pathway 3 is likely to be more appropriate for the majority of marginalized smallholder farmers who could develop commercial viable enterprises by reducing costs, managing risks, and achieving a greater return on investment. Agroecology fits the key criteria of Technology Justice and presents an opportunity to support the majority of poor smallholder farmers in low-income countries, a group that is currently excluded from opportunities presented by other agricultural pathways and faces insurmountable constraints in 'stepping out' of agriculture into alternative rural or urban livelihoods. One of the major challenges facing smallholders, however, is how to meet the higher labour requirements of agroecological farming.
It is vitally important to find common ground between private-sector interests and development objectives
While innovation and investments in agriculture are dominated by commercial interests, it is possible and vitally important to find common ground between private interests and development objectives so that innovation and investment deliver improved agricultural practices that are inclusive and benefit the poor (Sugden, 2015).
To ensure the access element of Technology Justice is met, a paradigm change is required in the policies, investments, and structure of agriculture. That change needs to create incentives and an enabling environment for the private sector to invest in, engage in, and deliver technologies, services, and knowledge that enable agroecological farming by remote smallholder farmers.
Although the productivity potential of agroecology is often challenged by proponents of other agricultural development pathways, there is a growing body of evidence which demonstrates the capacity of such systems to significantly and sufficiently increase yields (see Box 2). Table 2 summarizes the major research findings on the productivity of agroecology.
What is often not systematically captured in studies of the three pathways is evidence of the benefits beyond yields and income – resilience, sustainability, nutrition, livelihood security, land and soil quality, and water-use efficiency. Without such comparable evidence of these equally important factors, yield and income comparisons are a shallow and misleading representation of the benefits, qualities, and appropriateness of different systems.
Governments, donors, NGOs, and researchers need to ensure that measures of well-being, income, sustainability, resilience, and nutrition are included in the planning and evaluation of development programmes. In this way a true comparison can be made to measure the multifunctional benefits of agriculture that are vital to achieving multiple SDGs.
Constraints and opportunities in scaling up agroecology
Challenges
Barriers to the supply of agroecological technologies and approaches when developing successful agricultural market systems are many and varied (HLPE, 2013). Many NGO-and farmer-led initiatives have not continued once the project funding that supported them ended (Altieri et al., 2011).
Table 3 outlines some of the key challenges for policy makers creating enabling environments for the widespread promotion of agroecological production systems, particularly among smallholder farmers.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Scaling up Agroecology through Market Systems"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Practical Action.
Excerpted by permission of Practical Action Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
