A thank you to the FSN Forum for hosting this consultation on 'agroecological approaches and other innovations for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition'. The work of the HLPE Steering Committee on the scope and building blocks of the report is appreciated.
In this contribution to the consultation, I have provided three sections. The first examines the language and ideas of the draft scope and building blocks of what will become the HLPE report on this subject. A second considers some of the contributions which in my view constitute sound advice to the Committee (and indeed the HLPE). The third section dilates on the substantial matters that face the question of agroecology.
Section I
We need to examine concepts, terms, assumptions, positions, implications and statements. This will help the HLPE arrive at a descriptive language which conveys true meaning.
Here is the first para:
"Innovation has been a major engine for agriculture transformation in the past decades and will be pivotal to address the needs of a rapidly growing population and the increased pressure over natural resources (including biodiversity, land and water) in a context of climate change."
"Agroecology and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies can play a critical role to strengthen sustainable agriculture and food systems in order to successfully combat hunger, malnutrition and poverty and contribute to the advancement of the 2030 Agenda."
The related questions are: what is "innovation", what is "agriculture transformation", what are the food needs of a growing population, what applies pressure on natural resources, how does climate change affect these? And also, what is meant by "agrocecology" for the HLPE and is this the only meaning (which others can be considered?), what are "innovative technologies", what is meant by "sustainable agriculture" for the HLPE and how does it differ is at all from agroecology, what are the connections between this scope and the 2030 Agenda?
The second para:
"Building sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition (FSN) will require not only to develop new knowledge and technologies but also: to fill the technology gaps; to facilitate the effective access and use of existing technologies; and to develop context-specific solutions, adapted to local food systems and local ecosystems."
The related questions are: what are the new knowledge and new technologies envisaged as being required to build sustainable agriculture (does it not already exist - if not what is the HLPE then calling agroecology?), what is meant by "technology gaps" and what are the connections the HLPE sees between what it considers agriculture-related technology and agroecology, what is meant by "effective access and use of existing technologies" (what are these that already exist which the HLPE would like to see being more accessed?), who has asked for the "solutions" pertaining to local food cultivation practices and ecosystems, why does the HLPE think they are at all relevant?
The third para:
"Beyond technical issues, this report will assess the importance of bottom-up and people-centered approaches, building on different forms of knowledge, as well as the role of good governance and strong institutions."
"It will explore the enabling conditions needed to foster scientific, technical, financial, political and institutional innovations for enhanced FSN."
The related questions are: what are the "technical issues" pertaining to agroecology which the HLPE is attentive to and what kind of technical issues apply to agroecology in the first place, which are the forms of knowledge that the HLPE is willing to consider while recognising the importance of "bottom-up and people-centered approaches" (examples will be needed), and whose governance and whose institutions does the HLPE advise as being able to serve "bottom-up and people-centered approaches", what is the connection between agroecology that is people-centric and the "scientific, technical, financial, political and institutional innovations" which the HLPE would like enabling conditions for?
The fourth para:
"Agroecology, described simultaneously as a science, a set of practices and a social movement, will be studied in this report, as an example of such holistic innovative approaches combining science and traditional knowledge systems, technologies and ecological processes, and involving all the relevant stakeholders in inclusive, participative and innovative governance mechanisms."
The related questions are: howsoever agroecology in described in the many regions and sub-regions in which it is found, what is the HLPE understanding of agroecology (or agroecologies) on which this report will be based, on what basis is HLPE calling an innovative approach one that combines "science and traditional knowledge systems, technologies and ecological processes" (when all people-centric agroecologies do not), what does "innovative governance" mean?
The fifth para:
"This report will also examine the limitations and potential risks of innovative approaches for FSN, human health, livelihoods and the environment."
"Confronted by major environmental, economic and social challenges, policy-makers need to understand how to optimize and scale-up the contributions of agroecological and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies, while harnessing these potential associated risks."
The related questions are: what are considered "innovative approaches" by the HLPE which may have "limitations and potential risks", particularly as agroecological methods of cultivation cannot be considered risky to FSN, human health, livelihoods and the environment, what is meant by "optimize and scale-up" particularly with reference to "agroecological methods of cultivation", and likewise what does it mean with reference to "other innovative approaches, practices and technologies" that have not been named?
The HLPE scoping statement then poses four questions which the report is to address. These speak of "controversies and uncertainties", "associated risks", "barriers to adoption", impacts on human and environmental health, "regulation and standards", "governance mechanisms", the enhancement of food security and nutrition, "impacts of trade rules and intellectual property rights", assessing and monitoring of impacts.
Agroecological cultivation as it is known and practiced in many parts of the world, where it may be identified in a myriad different ways, is not associated with any of these questions. What then is the purpose of posing these questions? It is clear that they pertain to "other innovative approaches, practices and technologies" which the HLPE steering committee has not named. This is what will be examined in Section III.
Section II
A number of well-informed contributions to the consultations have already commented on some of the central thoughts expressed by the Steering Committee and also on thoughts which in their view should be expressed. In several contributions, agroecology as a concept, practice, system, or philosophy has been further explained, and I advise the Steering Committee to take special note of these. The contributions that I have marked here are those that signal to me, in one way or another, the problems inherent in the scoping statement and the role of influences that lie behind their having been stated in this way. They also signal the kinds of interests and outlooks found among members of this consultation group.
Claudio Schuftan (a long-time contributor) has said that agroecological practices have already proven they improve resource efficiency, minimize ecological footprint, strengthen resilience, secure social equity and responsibility, and create decent jobs, in particular for youth, in agriculture and food systems. He notes that "case studies abound and La Via Campesina is the best repository of them". He notes "the influence of corporate agriculture to keep the industrial agricultural model, the reprehensible effect of ever increasing land grabbing displacing small farmers, the growing vertical integration of mega corporations now involved in mega-mergers". He has said these are "never valiantly and proactively addressed by the HLPE. Why can so many of us see this as affecting agroecological approaches and those who are at high decision-making levels do not?"
Noa Lincoln has pointed out the need for more inclusion of indigenous cultures. "What we call agroecology has been standard operating procedure for many indigenous cultures for hundreds of years, if not millennia." Lincoln would like to see better definition, "creating border plantings or incorporating a few trees into monoculture is in no way equivalent to a multi-storey food forest. I think we do a disservice to the different forms of agro-ecology by grouping them together under a single umbrella without better distinguishing the differences."
Mónica Knopoff considers it essential to focus on gender equity, and has noted that a fundamental issue in agroecology is the importance of organisation, considering the analysis of communities and their organisations, and has highlighted the role of universities in contributing to FSN, as "not the only generators of knowledge" (an important distinguishing point) as needing "to accept other knowledge and to share such knowledge".
Adrian Muller has asked for the inclusion of consumption aspects in the assessment of agroecology and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies, and to "adopt a food systems perspective when doing such an assessment, not focusing on agricultural production only", which is an important perspective.
Walter Alberto Pengue has provided a definition of agrocology as "a complexity of farm practices, social movement, holistic approaches and scientific challenges and views that is growing strongly during the last two decades". He has said that "agroecology adopted a complex systems approach to understand agricultural systems as indivisible wholes" and has referenced Altieri, "supported by interactions and synergies between and among biological components that enable these systems to sponsor their own soil fertility, productivity enhancement and crop protection". He has pointed out that instead of focusing on isolated factors to increase productivity through targeted technical interventions (application of agrochemicals, irrigation or biotechnology), agroecology advocates a knowledge intensive focus on the health and co-evolution of the entire indivisible social and ecological system".
Tarek Soliman has provided a lengthy and very useful contribution. "Unless linked to a wider socio-technical context, this [cultivation] cannot be considered agroecology. Social justice, including but not limited to gender equality is an important feature of the holistic character of agroecology". He has mentioned, importantly, respect for natural cycles, and for productivity to include ecosystem services. He bluntly said that "an agricultural system that fails to deliver on all these fronts should be abolished, regardless of the labels" as "there is, and can never be anything ecological about pushing the productivity limits of an ecosystem, hence intensification cannot be ecological, and cannot be sustainable". Soliman has advised the Steering Committee to "highlight how innovations related to agroecology integrate with agroecology principles, rather than create further divide between smallholders and large scale farmers". I appreciate his listing of different versions of agroecology: "peasant agroecology (Via Campesina), science agroecology (universities and research), hipster agroecology (permaculture) political agroecology (French and Brazilian governments), corporate agroecology (claims that precision agriculture, sustainable intensification, and climate smart agriculture are agroecology!)". Well done.
Lal Manavado has contributed what is in fact a full essay and is well worth reading. He has said "the separation of agriculture and 'food systems' is not only arbitrary, but it is also unjustifiable. All animals depend on a food system for their nutrition. There are no sound scientific reasons to bracket tradesman’s perspective as 'food system' ". He has asked, concerning cultivation methods or approaches: are they benign to the environment? "It is uncertain what long-term effects the GM animals and plants will have on the other species. It has been established that pollen from GM maize is toxic to some bee species and this has contributed to their disappearance from those areas in the USA where it is grown." An important point he has made is about the energy quotient. "Most new methods are energy intensive and require the use of fertilisers, biocides, irrigation, etc., which overloads the soil with excess residues that disturbs the local ecological balance and reduces the general biodiversity of the area. Further, they usually promote monoculture that undermines the local food culture. Local food culture derives from a very long trial-and-error routine from which plant and animal species best suited for the local geographic, soil and climatic conditions emerge, in other words, they are the optimal users of local resources." This is a valuable addition towards defining the benefits of a true agroecology.
Several contributions are critical of agroecologies (or what we may broadly understand as cultivation that is not industrial, not predicated on biotechnology and genetic engineering/modification, not monocultural, in concert with natural cycles and the local biosphere).
Lotte Woittiez and Renske Hijbeek have also asked for clearer definitions, including of agroecology. They have noted that " 'other innovative approaches' also needs more specification, as this could now mean anything". They see " 'agroecology' is a tool, not an objective" which I fully disagree with as it is neither, for reasons (among others) given by Walter. They have suggested differentiating (presumably for the purposes of clarifying agroecological cultivation and "other innovative approaches, practices and technologies") crop-growing regions by yield and risks (they single out environmental pollution and soil nutrient mining).
Pradip Dey has focused on development of new fertiliser materials, value addition of fertilisers and the agronomies that fertiliser use is supposedly associated with. He has mentioned "fortified fertilisers where micronutrients are made available to the plants by incorporating with or coating the micronutrients over the fertiliser" such as "zincated urea, phosphor-gypsum coated urea, sulphur coated urea". This is typical of the industrialised agriculture approach and has nothing whatsoever to do with agroecological cultivation.
Dave Wood has criticised the well-known IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, 2008) and what he has called its claims about the basic paradigm of agroecology, which is that such cultivation requires alignment with biodiversity. He has made several statements concerning "monodominant vegetation" as being natural. This I disagree with, not only for reasons concerning the reality of agroecological cultivation methods in all their variety, but also because domestication of the cereal grasses did not occur because of "monodominance" but for traits and their being locally suitable (one of the reasons for the destruction wrought by Green Revolution techniques was to hybridise cereals for use in environments alien to them, therefore requiring immense and ultimately toxic application of chemical fertiliser). Plantations are not examples of successful monodominance but aberrations defended by high doses of pesticide and herbicide. Every one of the natural reserves, sites, protected landscapes and reserved forests under multi-lateral conventions such as the Unesco Man and Biosphere programme – the World Network of Biosphere Reserves currently counts 669 sites in 120 countries - or under the Ramsar Convention – 2,288 sites in 169 countries – proves the opposite of the "dogma" he dislikes.
Section III
The HLPE reports "serve as a common, comprehensive, evidence-based starting point for intergovernmental and international multi-stakeholder policy convergence in CFS" for which, says the HLPE, its studies are "based on existing research and knowledge". This is what should be but not what is. I have been a contributor to this and other FAO fora and consultation groups for a number of years, and am witness to the growing marginalisation of "existing research and knowledge" which either do not fit the preconceived direction of a HLPE report, do not emerge from academic literature which is produced by a 'science' directed partly or wholly by industry and/or state, are expressed in forms and languages unfamiliar to the HLPE and its committees. This situation has persisted for years. That is why Claudio Schuftan has categorically asked the HLPE and therefore the CFS to fulfil what it has claimed to stand for.
The HLPE says it "strives to clarify contradictory information and knowledge, elicit the backgrounds and rationales of controversies and identify emerging issues". The question is: whose clarifications count and whose are included? Why does the HLPE's "scientific dialogue" which takes place between Steering Committee and Project Teams members (and external peer reviewers) find expression in its reports whereas the social, environmental, political, economic and scientific dialogues that take place in the FSN e-consultations do not in any substantial way?
This is a systemic problem that the HLPE and CFS currently suffer from, and has been diagnosed as a problem for several years. Rather than get to the root of the problem - separate the corporate, industrialised research and finance interests from the subjects - the HLPE and CFS have regrettably chosen to attempt to please all constituents in their reports. This cannot be done without compromising, as is now the case, the output of the CFS and rendering its conclusions and recommendations open to misinterpretation by the very forces that I and many other competent groups and individuals have, over the years, identified as having perverted cultivation systems and commoditised the very processes of nature.
Every single cultivation 'model' today, wherever it is observed and studied, is now at risk of either serving a transnationalised economy or being wiped out by it. This transnationalised economy (the globalised food system) intensifies the use of common goods on a massive scale, and it thrives because of the powerful alliance between global financial capital (the food multinationals are their tools) and national elites, with what a generation ago was the 'First World' no longer exempt and with the OECD/'developed' countries all included. In such a scenario, there is no more need for socio-political agrarian 'reform' of any kind.
Several countries in South America are seeing prolonged struggles between peasant farming communities and indigenous peoples, and those who would grab their lands, forests and rivers. This is true also of countries in South-East Asia (consider palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, and timber logging and mining in Papua & New Guinea). These are the drivers of agricultural change as much - and more than in those countries where such impunity rages on - as the "drivers of food system changes" which have hitherto been identified by the HLPE and CFS. Yet in not a single report of the CFS have I seen a mention of these conditions and their effects.
If "the HLPE strives to clarify contradictory information and knowledge" then it and the CFS cannot be silent on such matters. Drivers of food system change? Consider seeds. Small farmers in most countries of Africa, Asia and South America use their own seeds, but under a web of trade agreements both multi-lateral, regional and bilateral, there is a growing tendency to criminalise their sale, which has been part of the informal rural economy for hundreds of years. Laws that protect patents and 'plant breeders' rights' on the production and reproduction of seeds are reinforced but not those of farmers' rights to seeds that they have inherited and exchanged for generations.
There have in the last five years been numerous calculations to show that food production (taken as 'current' for any given year among the last five) at a global level easily feeds the world's population. Yet in its latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report (2017) the FAO stated: "In addition to an increase in the proportion of the world’s population that suffers from chronic hunger (prevalence of undernourishment), the number of undernourished people on the planet has also increased to 815 million, up from 777 million in 2015." This number should be taken as indicative because the provision of food and adequacy of consumption has become such a complex matter, but also because a number like this only includes the people who suffer from hunger often. Furthermore, the calorific needs established by the usual methods to measure hunger, or deprivation of food, are for persons whose lives are sedentary, which is not the case for a farmer, the very grower of food. The true figures for hunger are higher.
More land being used to grow crops, but fewer of these food crops, and the increase in cultivated land and commodity crops both accruing to corporate farming not smallholders. Undoubtedly an important driver of agricultural change, but one the CFS and HLPE must name and explain, as much for the effects on food cultivation by smallholder farmers as for the consequences to people’s health because of the residues of agrochemicals, antibiotics, hormones and chemical additives, these having caused directly or contributed to unprecedented rates of obesity, cancers, diabetes, allergies and cardiac conditions. This is what is meant when several of us have pointed out the need for HLPE and CFS to honestly enquire into the complexities of cultivation and of food systems. And this where the misguided attempt by the Steering Committee to conflate agroecologies with "other innovative approaches, practices and technologies" goes entirely off the rails.
What do the four questions of the HLPE scoping statement pertain to? Because these speak of "controversies and uncertainties", "associated risks", "barriers to adoption", impacts on human and environmental health, "regulation and standards", "governance mechanisms", the enhancement of food security and nutrition, "impacts of trade rules and intellectual property rights", assessing and monitoring of impacts, the questions point in a very worrying direction indeed. And this is synthetic biology, or the next generation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which includes gene drives, a new gene-editing technology that enables species-wide genetic engineering by spreading genetic changes through the wild. These are far ahead of regulatory oversight and of assessment for health and environmental risks. These are by no stretch of imagination to be considered "other innovative approaches, practices and technologies" by the HLPE and CFS, and I advise the Steering Committee in the strongest terms possible to rechristen this report 'agroecological approaches for sustainable cultivation and the provision of culturally appropriate food' to do justice to the principles which the CFS is bound to abide by.
Regards, Rahul Goswami
Adviser, Centre for Environment Education Himalaya
Adviser, Centre for Social Markets, India
UNESCO Asia expert facilitator on intangible cultural heritage
Rahul Goswami