Глобальный форум по продовольственной безопасности и питанию (Форум FSN)

A Proposal on the Scope of the Report on Use of Agro ecological approaches and other innovations for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition

Preamble:

It would be useful to try a human-need based approach to ascertain the scope of this report. There are two advantages in doing this. Then our analysis will be firmly grounded on daily reality viz., the need for sustainable, wholesome and adequate nutrition for all. Secondly, it keeps in the foreground over 800 million under-nourished and the many millions of inappropriately nourished in today’s world. These enable us to identify all the important aspects of its scope so that its completeness can be ensured, which is essential for any holistic endeavour.

Let us begin with our need for nutrition. The possibility of procuring it today depends on the following:

1. The sustainable availability of an affordable food supply necessary for the people to partake a varied, wholesome and a balanced diet.
2. What one group may consider wholesome may be rejected by another as unacceptable owing to cultural diversity which is generally conceded to be a right. Hence, a certain variation in types of food is necessary. Moreover, geographic and climatic variations often compel it.
3. However modified they may be every item of food is of animal or plant origin, and as such a biological constituent of our environment. The possibility of their existence depends on the equilibrium between the living and the inorganic resources they need. The possibility of that depends on the equilibrium among all living things.
4. The equilibrium among them is qualitative and quantitative; the former reflects their bio-diversity while the latter the optimal supportable population of each species. These two attributes of the inter-species equilibrium is crucial for the sustainability of adequate ecosystem services that include soil fertility, unseasonable fluctuations in rain fall, temperature, etc.
5. Even though the main purpose of eating is to obtain the nutrients we need, throughout the past five or six millennia, we have devoted a great deal of effort and ingenuity to heighten our enjoyment of food. This depends on having access to a variety of dietary ingredients and the knowledge and skill required to prepare them. This constitutes our food culture. En passant, it is noticeable even among the grazing animals that given the choice, they prefer to browse on certain species. Thus, it would be unreasonable to deny mankind the possibility of a varied dietary enjoyment or limiting it.
6. Since most people need to purchase all or a part of their food, its affordability is vitally important. Increasing world-wide unemployment and the number of under paid workers makes it an urgent issue.
7. Effect of the progressively depleted ecosystem services and population increase on the sustainable availability of wholesome affordable food is a matter of growing concern.
8. The recursive use of every component of the food systems seen today is increasing so that more and more intermediaries may benefit financially while it increases food wastage, lowering its nutritive value, flavour, texture, etc., while the actual food producers and the end-users are left not far from behind.

After this preamble of general points, not forgetting that we should be able to do certain things to procure our daily bread, let us look at what we have to be able to do that:

1. Some of us must be willing and able to produce (cultivation & animal husbandry) or harvest from our environment (fishing) items of food.
2. Most of us must have the means sufficient to procure an adequate amount of food.
3. Even when  1 and 2 above obtain, the need for food that may be satisfied cannot be infinite because---

• Ecosystem services including the available inorganic resources food production need are finite.

3. I., above has some major implications for planners. Release of those inorganic resources (water, mineral nutrients, etc.) as services provided by ecosystems takes some time, and depends on the inter-species equilibrium among the species. The latter is constantly undermined by population increase among man and a few other species, and the drastic opposite actions like deforestation of huge areas, some damming of rivers, etc. These have seriously threatened the resilience of our environment to regain the lost balance.

This situation is aggravated by the ecological consequences of extensive cultivation of the plant species used in animal husbandry.

The foregoing enables us to ascertain the attributes of the methods we propose to use to attain our objective, viz., sustainable wholesome, varied and adequate nutrition and food security for all at an affordable cost. Obviously, how we intend to attain this end must look at two logically inseparable aspects of the problem.

1. How to make a sustainable, wholesome, varied an adequate food supply available to all?
2. How to enable the end-users to procure such food from that supply? We must not overlook that a considerable number of people go hungry even when food is available, because they can’t afford it. Moreover, among the affluent living where food is available, the incidence of obesity is considerable in every country and their numbers are increasing. This shows it is not a simple question of having the money and the right food, but in the latter case, it could be due to not knowing what to eat (a balanced diet tailored to their individual needs) or not knowing how to prepare or secure suitable food, in other words, dietary incompetence.

So our objective has three facets:

1. Doing all we can do to put in place a sustainable, wholesome, varied and an adequate food supply at an affordable cost to people.
2. Enabling the people to acquire sufficient means to afford an appropriate diet (decent employment).
3. Enabling the people to gain sufficient dietary competence (dietary education).

Scope of the Questions for Consideration:

The somewhat loosely structured argument so far, nevertheless allows us to identify the questions the proposed report should attempt to answer.

1. In the light of the argument presented, especially with reference to the critical state of the ecosystem services in most areas of the world, will it contribute to make our food supply sustainable, wholesome and varied?
2. Will it help to make such food affordable to all?
3. Neither of the two questions above can be answered with sufficient completeness without ensuring simultaneously:

• Enabling a considerable number of end-users to earn sufficient means to procure the kind of food we have discussed.
• Ensuring a significant number of people to acquire an adequate dietary competence in order to make the best use of such a food supply. It must be noted this lack in some areas leads to wastage because if not purchased within a short time, fresh food gets spoilt.

Now, before we look at the specific questions presented for consideration, let us always remember fertiliser, irrigation and such ecosystem service supplementations tap the inorganic resource pool whose existential necessity we have noted earlier. Aral Sea disaster seems to be the largest of its kind as a warming to the danger in using that pool at a rate far in excess of the rate it may be used and is replenished. The huge area artificially fertilised for commercial monoculture and watered by tapping the Amurdarya River is now a wasteland due to salination, and the photos of the dead Aral Sea with its former trawlers now lying miles from the waterline are more eloquent than words.

Comments on the Questions:

• To what extent can agro ecological and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies 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?

The problem is that here we have a bag of diverse tools whose identities can be changed at will. Many previous contributors have noted this difficulty. 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, i.e., it encompasses a series of actions starting at the point of food generation to the point its ingestion (for the sake of simplicity I have excluded the plants). There are no sound scientific reasons to bracket tradesman’s perspective as ‘food system’.

After air and water, nutrition is the third vital need on which life depends, and its satisfaction cannot patiently wait for a ‘5-year plan’. So, the ‘acid test’ for any of those tools would be---

1. Are they benign to the environment? Recent accidental releases of ‘farm Salmon and Trout’ into the environment have raised serious questions on their effect on the survival of their wild counterparts. 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.

Moreover, 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 bio-diversity 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.

1. Do they enable the greatest possible number of local people to earn a decent living and discourage migration to cities?

Very often this is not the case. The general advocacy is to make use of new tools including electronics and others, requiring expensive extension of infra-structure and mastering pushy trade techniques, etc. A careful look at the human resources show most of the people involved lack the educational background needed to master their use and/or repair and maintenance. Acquisition of those skills takes time, and can they wait? From where to secure the funds and teaching resources needed here while hunger and ill health are pressing needs in those countries?

Even if they did, how could those capital-intensive ‘innovations’ help the numbers involved here when the rationale of the ‘new’ is ‘effectivity’ i.e., fewest possible number of people doing the greatest amount of work? If those tools are labour-intensive, it would be worthwhile to consider them.

When it comes to new trade techniques, they are based on competition to grab a demand as early as possible so as to get the highest price. Naturally, this is couched in many a sonorous ‘technical term’. This may enable a few to earn a good living, but it does not contribute to the affordability of food, nor yet help the other producers to gain a fair living. Besides, it may lead to food wastage.

I do not depreciate the usefulness of science and technology. However, in all discussions on improving some aspect of the human condition, we tend to ascertain the suitability of tools we use merely in terms of yield and expense. When they are in use for our benefit, it is imperative to evaluate them with reference to the number of it potential beneficiaries and its benignity to our environment. We must make certain that our tools do not encourage brute competition as they always entail some winners at the expense of many losers whose hungry number is now approaching a billion while leaving many a once salubrious land a barren waste.

What are their impacts on FSN in its four dimensions (availability, access, utilization and stability), human health and well-being, and the environment?

Before proceeding, I have divided the second question on the list into two parts according to their logical priority. My reason is quite simple. The difficulties with the tools used for a purpose can only be ascertained with reference to what it is intended to achieve. I have outlined that purpose as one having three facets. The possibility of its successful achievement depends on whether the tools used for the purpose entail adverse consequences for its success, particularly to sustainability of a food supply. It must be noted that resilience is an attribute of a system necessary for its sustainability, and sustainable systems are stable by implication.

Moreover, as discussed earlier, it is only a trivial truth to say that environmental felicity is absolutely essential for sustainability including its attributes like stability and resilience of a system.

And what is available is necessarily accessible, for it makes little sense to talk about inaccessible but available food. Let us avoid avoiding the dread word and say it, affordability is what we mean. After all, nobody today seems to produce all the dietary ingredients of one’s diet. As bartering is not a practical option, we have to talk about affordable rather than accessible food. Clearly, the sustainable availability of affordable food subsumes all other terms in the above question except ‘utilisation’, health and well-being.

‘Utilisation’s a little unclear, for it could mean how well a given tool is used as in ‘the hammer was put to its best use’ or it could mean a tool’s capacity to make the best use of the resources involved as in ‘certain metal catalysts greatly enhance the internal combustion engine’s capacity to utilise its fuel’. If it is suggested that what is meant here is a combination of both, we render us impotent to answer the questions about sustainability and its attributes as well as on human health and well-being.

Let me explain. When we evaluate how well a tool may potentially utilise something for a purpose, or how well it actually utilises something when in use by somebody, we ascertain that merely with reference to an end, and not with reference to what other consequences its use may have. So, as soon as we adopt this mechanical way forward, it is difficult for us to link those other consequences, good or bad, into the final assessment of whether to or not to use a new tool. This is a common attitude of the mind that glories in what is new and regrets it when it is a trifle late. Besides, it is based on the fallacy that the quality of utility can be ascertained independent of human interests when the raison d’etre of utility is in serving one or more of our interests.

Therefore, it would be more reasonable to replace ‘utilisation’ above with say ‘suitability’. The suitability of a tool depends on its capacity to perform a given task, and its appropriateness for the purpose. A capable tool is not always appropriate by implication. Consider now, DDT is a tool eminently capable of ridding many a plant pest, but it kills indiscriminately many beneficial animals and is injurious to human health. Hence, it is inappropriate to be used as an insecticide. Likewise, capital-intensive, mechanised agro-business farms may be highly productive and enrich the owners, but their appropriateness in rural areas of developing countries is highly questionable in view of high unemployment, low level of requisite knowledge and skills, and high population. It should be clear that its contribution to human health and well-being and the felicity of our environment are vital attributes of a tool considered to be suitable. These and other attributes of suitability indicate appropriateness for the purpose. Now, we can move onto the first part of the question under consideration.

• What are the controversies and uncertainties related to innovative technologies and practices? What are their associated risks? What are the barriers to the adoption of agroecology and other innovative approaches, technologies and practices and how to address them?

I think the distribution of the four negative terms ‘controversies’, ‘uncertainties’, ‘risks’, ‘barriers’ is rather unfortunate, and will therefore try to arrange them in a logical order.

The barriers to their use arise from the risks, uncertainties and controversies associated with them. I must first underline that some barriers are justified and indeed necessary, for instance, the use of DDT.

We ought to understand by ‘risk’ something more than immediate danger of illness, injury, etc. Since no specific types of tool have been mentioned, a general list of criteria to be used in the risk assessment of a tool might be as follows:

1. Does its use leads to job redundancy in food production and distribution to end-users to an extent greater than the job opportunities it would provide where its application is under consideration? Note that we are not concerned with job opportunities it may provide the people in another country or a distant district.
2. Does its use require moderate to long-term training of its proposed users? Is that training expensive relative to the living standard of the place of its application?
3. Does the use of the new tool require an expensive extension of infra-structure?
4. Does its use reduce the local dietary variation? Does it also results in any reduction in the local bio-diversity in general, and its agricultural counterpart in particular?
5. Does its application require use of ecosystem services at a rate greater than their natural replenishment? An example of this ‘deficit spending’ of resources would be heavy tapping of the local aquiphor.
6. Does it involve replacement of a food crop by a cash crop, or turning a local food crop into a cash crop? An example of the latter is the West African exports of pea nuts for cash, which in turn, resulted in protein malnutrition among the children of the countries that adopted the innovation.

A ‘yes’ to any one of the questions above disqualifies a new method however infatuating it may seem to some, for it entails much greater harm than the short-term good it may do to a few. Of course, the list above is not exhaustive; it is given as an example of what one should examine carefully before using any new way of doing a thing.

Following this line of argument in another direction, we can formulate a different set of questions. A ‘yes’ answer to all of them will ensure the suitability of a new tool for its intended purpose. The following is a non-exhaustive list of such questions:

1. Does it promote enhancing the local ecosystem services? For example, rain water harvesting, re-forestation.
2. Does it promote local bio-diversity in food production? Eg. Expanded cultivation of local cultivars and their re-introduction.
3. Does it involve a fuller dietary use of local produce? Eg. Better storage and preservation of local produce.
4. Does it make fresher local produce available to end-users at fair prices for them and the producers?
5. When what is produced can only meet a part of the total local dietary needs, does the regional and national food policy ensure a local variation in food production levels sufficient to meet the total national need?
6. If the new tool is used, is it possible to integrate local food productions into an equitable distribution mechanism so that a sustainable and adequate supply of wholesome food could be made available to each local area at a fair price?

Naturally, uncertainty is not something as easy as a risk to characterise, for it represents a state of mind under the influence of conflicting beliefs. As for the uncertainty of appropriateness of a new tool, its resolution requires an open and rigorous risk assessment undertaken by really competent people of unimpeachable integrity. This is much easier on paper than in real life, still it is possible to do a goodish part of this work in an open forum using the established facts from fundamental research in Biology, Chemistry, etc., as applicable to our field.

As for the controversies, most of those involve a skilled use of rhetoric, half-truths, and other tools of partisanship. When they arise from real concerns about the use of a new tool, it may turn out to be motivated by some well-meaning reductive thought. For example, partisans of ICT may be sincerely and keenly interested in promoting their use in agriculture as it is done in affluent lands thinking it will help to increase farmer’s income and ‘bridge’ the technology ‘gap’. But they overlook the cost, dangers monoculture entails, the existing knowledge and skill ‘gap’, and what’s more, how long it would take to train the people to use new methods before their results can benefit anybody. Moreover, technology gap is not per se a disadvantage. For example, an earthquake prone land may well be happier without nuclear power technology.

In dealing with the last three questions, I am afraid that I’ll have to look at them in a slightly different order. First, a note on methodology; induction has been rejected by scientific practice for more than century. In other words, it is impossible to know what constitutes the ‘best practice’ just by doing a thing in different ways N number of times and checking which one is the least bad N times. After all, we have a certain amount of fundamental knowledge, and it is more than sufficient to ascertain the appropriateness of a new way with reference to it expected results.

Here, one needs to be scrupulously honest. For example, the expected result should include not only the yield of some item of food, but also the presence of reduced bio-diversity, etc., in short the answers to questions on the non-exhaustive lists given earlier constitute an important part of the expected result. If it is appropriate, then it may be used on a limited scale with a view to assessing its appropriateness. Here, it is vital that we are always guided by the indisputable immediacy of hunger and malnutrition and the need to tailor our tool to suit the welfare of our environment, and the available human and material resources. Of course, it may be improved from there, but in a way that does not drop anybody behind in our mindless rush to embrace anything only because it is new.

Since 1970, there have been flashes of success in many countries with respect to increased cereal production as was seen in Mexico, Pakistan, India, etc. As these depended on capital-intensive methods that overloaded the soil with minerals and tapped an undue amount of water, their success was not sustained. Moreover, they were accompanied by a corresponding rise in population that could not be absorbed by agriculture in those countries. Thus, one might argue that success was one that is also successful in producing a greater number of hungry mouths.

• What regulations and standards, what instruments, processes and governance mechanisms are needed to create an enabling environment for the development and implementation of agroecology and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies that enhance food security and nutrition?

• What are the impacts of trade rules, and intellectual property rights on the development and implementation of such practices and technologies?

The two questions above are so intertwined, but they can be unified easily by logical analysis. First of all, let me underline that it is not enough to talk about enabling mechanisms, and a holistic approach will include filters to keep out harmful innovations that will either exert an adverse effect on the availability of natural resources and a felicitous climate for food production, or hinder its procurement through unfair competition that leads to redundancies in food production and related pursuits, unfair price increases etc. It is into this second category the current trade laws and patents often belong.

Next, let us spare a moment to have a clear idea of what we want to achieve. It would be generally agreed that we want to enhance global nutrition and food security, and we are interested in ascertaining what new ways forward are open to us with a view to incorporating their adoption into binding legal forms. But before we can go that far and begin to propose such action, we need to establish what we may justifiably recommend to adopt or reject.

This requires us to develop a standard of excellence each new tool should meet, be it agroecology, food selling technique, etc. Here, our guiding principal ought to be that global FSN is never reflected in that of one country, region or a village, but in each and every individual. When over a billion people are either hungry and under nourished or obese and malnourished, our attempts should be directed at a collective endeavour that would reach them now.

Such an effort will have to use methods compatible with their present condition with a view to increasing their sophistication gradually, and avoiding the mistakes we have already committed in food production elsewhere. Therefore, the standards the new methods have to meet are not connected with mechanical properties like yield per X, production cost, etc., but rather in its value as a means of enabling more people to procure adequate nutrition without harming our environment or leaving someone behind.

The two non-exhaustive lists given above can offer some useful guidance on the contents of such standards the new methods must meet. Naturally, they will include suitable standards of personal and public safety, pay, etc. What is important to note here is that it is not intended to promote magic yields nor yet riches unlimited, for neither is sustainable and will inevitably leave many more behind.

This is a radical departure from the traditional way of setting standards, which is reductive in the extreme and believes it to be justified by the assumption that if a proposed method should give a higher yield and a relatively low production cost, promote it, or otherwise enable someone to make a greater profit per unit quantity, then it is better than any of the previous ones used for the same purpose. Competition for gain is its modus operandi and ignores its implications for our environment, fairness in human exchanges and their social consequences. I cannot envisage any standard here worthy of its name unless it embodies as its principal elements those that have been ignored by the once currently in use.

While the methods that meet such new standards are legally permitted and encouraged through appropriate financial and technical support, a legal mechanism should be set up to gradually replace the ways of doing things that do not meet those specifications of personal and public felicity.

Indeed, one of the crucial steps towards such a felicitous state in nutrition and food security is to subject the current trade laws and treaties to the acid test of personal and public utility. The test is quite simple in spite of the highly articulate and arcane arguments of unlimited personal gain will rise against it. It is just this. Do the means of implementation of current trade agreements, laws, etc., meet the standards proposed here? An impartial investigator will immediately observe Janus in his glory and in glory.

Glory if that glory be, is in increase in GDP and such other impressive figures whose ‘reality’ few dare challenge. But, the other face of Janus shows developing countries strewn with semi-deserted villages with neglected fields and malnourished villagers, and towns and villages around which haunt the halos of misery, hunger, despair and human degradation containing millions of people beyond the risen GDP.

I have no fear as to patents and such, for if they do not involve methods that do not meet the proposed new standards, they will not be applied. And if they do, those who invent them are not motivated solely by personal gain, and are therefore open to a fair exchange of values for mutual benefit. Those who are guided by the ethics of fair play obey the spirit of the law by their own accord.

This is incomplete indeed. At the policy and implementation levels, such standards should be incorporated into all decisions, hence not only to that on agriculture and food, but also those on health, education, security and trade. Regardless of their level of design, i.e., global, regional or local, they should be mutually supportive. This requires them to display an inter-policy harmony at all levels. For instance, a trade policy that permits a foreign company to take advantage of cheap labour and to establish in a developing country an agro-industrial installation using monoculture so that industrial food may be produced for export hardly serves the purpose we have envisaged here. Nor yet a trade policy that allows the production and sales of industrial food and beverages whose effect on health is known to be deleterious.

• How to assess and monitor the potential impacts on FSN, whether positive or negative, of agroecology and other innovative approaches, practices and technologies?

My comments on this last question and the data collection procedures it includes, can easily stir up a hornet’s nest of objections, for the field of FSN teems with suggestions and information purported to be essential for this task. Let me begin by repeating my purpose unequivocally once more. We are trying to ascertain how successful we have been in enabling more people to adequately satisfy their need for nutrition by the use of a set of tools ranging from suitable policies to methods of food production, acquisition of dietary competence and food procurement.

Their overall success will be indicated by a significant reduction in the numbers of the hungry and over-weight people on a settlement to settlement basis. I think our success ought to have an even distribution in order to ensure its global relevance as well as its inclusiveness. Moreover, it will help us to pinpoint those tools that may be suitable for one location, but are unsuitable in another. This knowledge is very useful in the design of suitable tools.

Settlement may represent a village or a large city. Even though precision demands it, it is hardly practical to try to ascertain the individual state of nutrition of each person in every settlement. So, we are forced to agree on much less precise but more practical way forward. Bearing in mind the basic premises advanced here, the following suggestion may prove to be useful.

It is based on evaluating in a single or a suitable collection of settlements three crucial variables, viz., the availability of a carefully chosen set of local dietary ingredients, their affordability and the level of people’s dietary competence. Selection of those dietary ingredients should be undertaken with reference to the local food culture, and should not be imposed on the people. Their affordability is hard to determine with any precision, but the mean income of a settlement and the prevailing prices of the chosen dietary ingredients may serve as useful indicators, though of limited accuracy.

The same limitations apply to any means used to ascertain the level of dietary competence. An imperfect but nevertheless useful assessment of its status may be obtained by examining the status of suitable dietary education provided in a settlement. This is necessary because in no country does one encounter everywhere the same quality of even traditional education.

As policies and their implementation are tools as much as the specific methods under discussion, a word or two about their evaluation. Unlike the material tools, their success is only indirectly linked with the material tools used to implement them in the field. Therefore, once we have established the suitability of the field tools they require for their implementation, what guarantees the success of a policy and its implementation is its internal harmony and its harmony with other policies in its ambience. These can be easily ascertained by logical analysis.

Finally, the type of data we need to ascertain the availability and affordability of chosen dietary ingredients and the level of the local dietary competence. In designing its policies on the ‘big picture’, the FAO needs collective data, but at the national level, one must operate on a settlement to settlement basis in order to be inclusive and really effective, for the benefits of this approach are often more than merely additive. Here, we need to map the following information.

1. Current production of the chosen dietary ingredients in different areas. The size of such an area may be determined by the predominance of a few dietary ingredients there.
2. Demographic map of the country on settlement by settlement basis where the quantities of the available dietary ingredients and their mean prices as well as people’s mean incomes are given. It will also indicate the availability of suitable public and school education into which acquisition of dietary competence is integrated.
3. Re-drawing of the maps 1 and 2 above after the introduction of the new methods for evaluation.

Please note that the presence of surplus food was not taken into account, for it is difficult to see how one may establish a justifiable connection between it and adequate nutrition. I hope this would be some use.

Best wishes!

Lal Manavado.