Sustainable Agriculture Research Paper

Since these changes began to be introduced in the 1950s and 1960s, innumerable studies documented the serious disruptive effects that the new cropping systems have had on traditional rural societies and ecosystems around the world. As evidence accumulated about the problems of declining water tables, soil contamination, salinization, social disruption, and growing spatial, economic, and social disparities, serious questions were raised about the environmental sustainability of these new systems. Even more, a series of allied disciplines attempting to integrate indigenous knowledge with scientific advances in our understanding of the ability of local communities to implement effective programs of ecosystem management have demonstrated the potential for increasing output without occasioning the environmental and social devastation observed in commercial monocropping systems.

At the end of the twentieth century, the paradigm conflicts between these knowledge systems grew even stronger as the revolution in biotechnology promised yet another wave of innovations that are being challenged even more vigorously than in the past. Indeed, the risks of mistakes and tragic accidents are greater as the new modifications involve the introduction of genes from one species into another in order to confer a degree of protection against plagues, to develop resistance to natural phenomena, or to increase productivity. The critics argue that these trans-genetic products open the world to an unknown series of challenges that may threaten the very stability of existing biological or social systems; the damage wreaked by bovine spongiform encelopathy (BSE or mad-cow disease) in Europe is cited as palpable evidence of such potential.

In view of a broadening commitment to the principles of sustainability agreed upon at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, attention is turning to the importance of introducing appropriate production models for agriculture. New approaches call for agriculture to be less disruptive of ecosystems and less dependent on nonrenewable sources of energy to maintain soil fertility, control plagues, and power machinery. The changes in agriculture are proceeding on a number of different fronts simultaneously. In the fields, greater attention is turning to techniques that require less disruption of the land itself, by introducing new soil and water management techniques that take advantage of ‘zero tillage’ so that fertility and moisture are more jealously guarded. Crop rotations and diversified planting programs are reducing the vulnerability of farming regions to massive infestations that are still a serious concern to commercial farmers. On the market side, a more sensitive consumers’ movement has dramatically changed the prospects for organic products, which can be certified as being free of inputs in the production process that might pose a threat to either the purchaser or the environment in which they are cultivated. As this movement has grown, people have also become aware of the importance of insuring that peasant producers and field workers are also correctly paid so that their own poverty does not become a source of degradation.

Sustainable agriculture, however, will not be achieved simply by developing new cultivation techniques or introducing more benign inputs to use in highly specialized production systems. From decades of failure of modernization programs that did not deliver their promised welfare packages, we discovered that many of the uprooted rural peoples are capable of providing for their own needs and those of their regional environments, while making valuable contributions to the needs of the larger society of which they are a part. The invaluable research of innumerable ethnobotanists and agroecologists around the world has demonstrated the productive potential that could be unleashed if these communities were allowed to function freely.

Sustainable agriculture cannot succeed if a broader development framework that encourages the initiatives of rural peoples does not accompany it. At present, peasants and indigenous groups are forced into marginality. They lack the resources to function well in the marketplace and the support to realize how important their communal knowledge and experience is for producing crops and managing their environments and their societies. The complex relations between earthly resources, the changing seasons, and cyclical changes such as El Nino are not new problems, but they were generally integrated into a social and political framework that facilitated their management. Today these traditional productive systems and the people are frequently subjected to institutional controls and bureaucratic supervision that impede their implementation. Instead, small-scale specialized production processes force them to produce singlemindedly for the marketplace rather than take advantage of the varieties of processes and products that the natural world has provided.

If development is to proceed, rural communities must be allowed to overcome their marginality and their poverty. This does not require their full integration into a globalized society. Rather it means that they must be freed from the fetters that restrict them from realizing the full potential that their own sociopolitical systems and ecosystems allow. The drive for sustainability involves a three-pronged program for local advance: the development of autonomy and greater self-governance, the pursuit of self-sufficiency in food production as well as in other areas of life, and the development of new productive activities and products that will contribute to their material wellbeing, incorporating new community members into activities that will generate new sources of income.

Sustainability is not possible as long as the profound inequalities that characterize most societies in developing countries persist. Social and economic polarization are features of societies in decomposition. Institutions that perpetuate inequality contribute the kind of environmental destruction stimulated by unfettered consumption. These same institutions also perpetuate and rationalize the existence of poverty, and force the poor to contribute to environmental degradation. The growing gap also incubates violence while limiting the possibility of conflict resolution.

Only by encouraging the peasants and indigenous groups to create their own mechanisms to overcome poverty will it be possible to move in the direction of sustainability. They must be allowed to assume responsibility for their own social organization and their local institutions must be legitimized. In the current world order, federal governments cannot continue to try to impose centralized forms of administration and governance on all segments of society. In agriculture, the essence of sustainability is the implementation of a wide variety of production systems, carefully adapted to the demands of the environments, the needs of the communities, and the possibilities of the marketplace. National agricultural policies have generally proved too cumbersome to handle the diversity of situations in which rural producers find themselves.

Self-governance, however, is not a sufficient condition for sustainability. Communities also require some minimum guarantee of well-being, of products and services that will offer them some security. This is part of the reason why peoples have so steadfastly adhered to the principles of self-sufficiency throughout history; so powerful is this argument that John Maynard Keynes saw fit to argue in 1933 that ‘national self-sufficiency’ must be an overarching facet of economic policy, if a country is to be able to have a modicum of control over its fate. Certainly the same principle applies even more so at the community level, where the vulnerability is even greater and ‘natural’ disasters often affect the poorest groups most harshly. But providing for one’s basic needs through mechanisms of local autonomy and traditional social institutions cannot offer a means to improve material welfare and confront the challenges of the market economy. Productive diversification is a policy thrust that is fundamental for generating the additional resources required for a community to pull itself from marginality. The guidelines for this process must be solidly grounded in a respect for the ecosystems and the primacy of local provision of basic needs. Many a community has faltered or even been dismembered by well-meaning programs of export-promotion that have destroyed local buffers, be they social, political, or productive. In the world of the twenty-first century, where there is a growing concern for the quality of life, many new products can be derived from conservation and ecosystem enhancement activities, such as the sequestration of greenhouse gases or increasing the rate of recharge of important aquifers. Some suggest that ecotourism offers an ideal match between the consumption drives of the urban population and the needs of rural communities. Certainly the move to expand fair trade channels and organic production is ideally suited to the conditions of rural communities seeking to promote development by implement pro-grams of sustainability.

Sustainable agriculture is now recognized as an important underpinning for any development pro- gram. It is clear that poverty and environmental destruction rather than the Malthusian specter threat- en humanity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Implementing a program of locally managed rural production that responds to the dual challenges of self-sufficiency and diversification will contribute in important ways to reducing poverty and improving the distribution of income. A key feature of the three principles enumerated here is that they also remove the onus from rural people of depending exclusively on agriculture for their livelihoods. Although it is crucial that cropping patterns and cultivation techniques become as attuned as possible to the demands of local ecosystems, it is also important to realize the importance of actively encouraging rural communities to initiate a broad range of complementary activities that will spread the burden of supporting the community over a broader base of resources and skills, thereby reducing the pressures on the land and on traditional crops that are no longer able to support the nutritional and income needs of the population.

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