http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=1636

 

 

The Postmodern Disconnect: Food Fetishism and Agricultural Reality

- Thomas R. DeGregori, Health Facts and Fears, April 8, 2003
http://www.healthfactsandfears.com/high_priorities/safe/2003/disconnect040803.html


There seems to be some disconnect from reality when one hears strident
voices dogmatically proclaiming that our food system has "failed" and must
be entirely transformed, or that the "Green Revolution" (which boosted
crop yields through improved fertilizer use) is a failure. People who say
that must think, as Tertullian (and later St. Augustine) would say, Credo
Quia Absurdum Est ˜ "I believe it because it is absurd."

That it is absurd can quickly be seen if one simply glances at the produce
section of a modern supermarket and thecornucopia it offers to an
increasing number of the world's population. It is absurd because though
world population has doubled in the last forty years the absolute number
of people in poverty and hunger has been falling steadily. Such absurd
statements are made possibly because being absurd is the only way that
some people can find to be different. One could legitimately argue that
the number of those experiencing poverty and hunger is too large and
should be declining faster, but to do so requires improving upon the
agronomy that has taken us thus far, not destroying it.

Absurdists tend to be oblivious to facts but some of their fellow
travelers, at least, hunger for facts. The hardcore believers are probably
beyond redemption, but they must traffic in back-up factoids to strengthen
the resolve of the marginal believers. So, the obvious abundance and
cheapness of food is countered by the assertion that it is less nutritious
than "organic" food. Just add in a bit of spiritualism about immeasurable
mystic potencies in "organic" food, and you can even get people to ignore
or discount important evidence such as the nutrition-related increase in
height and health of humans in developed countries and in a growing number
of developing countries.

But What About the Planet?
When the belief that "organic" food is in some inchoate manner better
cannot be sustained, there is the ever-present claim that modern food
production is bad for the environment. But to compare modern agriculture
performance with that of some utopian past or some putative alternative,
one ought to compare the environmental impacts in each case from output
sufficient to feed the world's current population at the impressive per
capita caloric intake that is now possible. By this reasonable criterion,
the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of modern agriculture. A brief
review of this evidence is order. The peer-reviewed literature on these
issues is clear and substantial:

1. Yield increases have meant that we are producing about 2.7 times as
much food to feed a doubled population on virtually the same land area
under cultivation as in 1960. For grains, the staple of the Green
Revolution, it has meant a mere 4% increase in land under cultivation.
Stated simply, 1960 yields would require virtually all of the land not yet
being used for crops - or taken out of cultivation for habitat and
wildlife conservation - to be cultivated.

2. Green Revolution crops are more efficient in using nitrogen, requiring
less nitrogen input for each unit of output. As Norman Borlaug stated in
his Nobel acceptance speech: "The old tall-strawed varieties would produce
only ten kilos of additional grains for each kilogram of nitrogen applied,
while the new varieties can produce twenty to twenty-five kilograms or
more of additional grain per kilogram of nitrogen applied." Synthetic
nitrogen fertilizer costs money, so farmers attempt to become more
efficient in its use. The best measure of this is the ratio of nitrogen in
the fertilizer applied to the nitrogen in the crop. This ratio fell for
American farmers by 2% per year from 1986 to 1995. Another measure of
increasing efficiency in nitrogen use is the feed-to-meat ratio. Waggoner
and Ausubel (2002) report that the "calculated feed to produce a unit of
meat fell at an annual rate of 0.9%" from 1967 to 1992 and that with
increasing crop yields per acre, "cropland for grain-fed animals to
produce meat for Americans shrank 2.2% annually."

3. Modern conservation tillage (or reduced, minimum, or no-tillage)
agriculture using pesticides for weed and pest control conserves water,
soil, and biodiversity better than its "organic" competitors and better
than any previous forms of tillage (DeGregori 1985, 111-112). Conservation
tillage is building up soil and soil quality. Planting with a drill
preserves soil structure and vegetative cover (and the diversity of life
therein) and preserves the earthworms and other lifeforms that are often
destroyed by the deep plowing used in "organic" and older forms of
conventional agriculture.

These gentler modern practices have been expanded in recent years with
crops genetically engineered for pest resistance or for herbicide
tolerance, allowing forms of conservation tillage in which a less toxic,
broad-spectrum pesticide is substituted for multiple sprayings of an array
of targeted pesticides and herbicides, thereby reducing overall pesticide
use. "Precision agriculture," using computers and GPS to monitor inputs
and outputs over a farmer's entire cropland, creates still more
efficiency, as does software advising farmers on the most efficient input
use.

Where Will Get Water, Though?
The environmental resource that is generally considered most threatened is
water, and many worry about its sufficiency for sustaining a growing world
population. Vandana Shiva has an unverified belief that "food crops for
local needs" are "water prudent" (Shiva 2000). The claim is often made
that modern agronomy has some "voracious" need for water, much as claims
were made about the Green Revolution crops requiring huge amounts of
synthetic fertilizer.

FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) has just
released a study that brings together the literature on water use in
agriculture, once again challenging the absurdist claims of those opposed
to modern agronomy (FAO 2003). Contrary to the claims of Shiva and others
about the Green Revolution's voracious water use, in agriculture "water
productivity increased by at least 100% between 1961 and 2001" (FAO 2003,
25). "The major factor behind this growth has been yield increase. For
many crops, the yield increase has occurred without increased water
consumption, and sometimes with even less water given the increase in the
harvesting index" (FAO 2003, 25).

For wheat and rice, two major crops of the Green Revolution, "water
consumption experienced little if any variation during these years" as per
capita water use in food production fell by half (FAO 2003, 25). FAO
argues that genetically engineered crops can contribute to increased
"water use efficiency" (2003, 28). A 100% growth in efficiency means that
"water needs for food per capita halved between 1961 and 2001" (FAO 2003,
26).

FAO does not stop with merely reviewing past performance but lays out an
agenda, including genetic engineering, for sustaining growth in output
without destroying the environment. "Plant-level options rely mainly on
germplasm improvements, e.g. improving seedling vigor, increasing rooting
depth, increasing the harvest index (the marketable part of the plant as
part of its total biomass), and enhancing photosynthetic efficiency...The
modern rice varieties have about a threefold increase in water
productivity compared with traditional varieties. Progress in extending
these achievements to other crops has been considerable and will probably
accelerate following identification of underlying genes" (FAO 2003,
27-28).

The FAO study brings together data from literature in journals on water
use that many of us working on issues of agriculture do not always follow
as closely as we should. The FAO study is a must read. The question
remains as to how our intrepid "organic" afictionados will respond to it.
Undoubtedly they will ignore it until they can conjure yet another
specious reason that all of modern agriculture is a failure.

This does not mean that modern agriculture cannot be improved or that it
does not merit constructive criticism -- all human endeavors warrant and
benefit from criticism -- but as the FAO water study shows, the path to a
sustainable future requires that we continue the research in science and
technology that brought us this far. I believe it because it is not
absurd. There is massive evidence supporting it.

References:
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Unlocking
the Water Potential of Agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, 2003.
tp://www.fao.org/ag/AGL/aglw/aquastat/kyoto/index.stm.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/agl/aglw/docs/unlocking_e.pdf. DeGregori, Thomas R. A
Theory of Technology: Continuity and Change in Human Development. Ames,
IA: Iowa State University Press, 1985. Shiva, Vandana. BBC Reith Lectures
2000, BBC online network, May 12. Waggoner, P. E. and Ausubel, J.H. A
Framework for Sustainability Science: A Renovated IPAT Identity, PNAS
(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) 99(12):7860-7865, 11
June.
--
Thomas R. DeGregori (http:www.uh.edu/~trdegreg), Ph.D., is a professor of
economics at the University of Houston. Material for this article comes in
part from his books Bountiful Harvest; The Environment, Our Natural
Resources, and Modern Technology; and the forthcoming Origins of the
Organic.