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NY Times Op-Ed, June 26, 2018
Bringing Farming Back to Nature
By Daniel Moss and Mark Bittman
(Mr. Moss directs an organization that funds sustainable agricultural
practices. Mr. Bittman writes widely about food and food policy.)
Farming the land as if nature doesn’t matter has been the model for much
of the Western world’s food production system for at least the past 75
years. The results haven’t been pretty: depleted soil, chemically fouled
waters, true family farms all but eliminated, a worsening of public
health and more. But an approach that combines innovation and tradition
has emerged, one that could transform the way we grow food. It’s called
agroecology, and it places ecological science at the center of
agriculture. It’s a scrappy movement that’s taking off globally.
Representatives of more than 70 countries gathered in Rome recently to
discuss this approach to creating a healthier and more sustainable food
system. (We were there.) It was an invigorating and encouraging
gathering, made more so when José Graziano da Silva, the director
general of the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, called
for “transformative change toward sustainable agriculture and food
systems based on agroecology.”
Agroecology isn’t rocket science. It simply takes full advantage of
nature’s assets, drawn from the farm itself and surrounding ecosystems,
to grow food. But in a $5 trillion food system dominated by ever-growing
corporate giants, an endorsement from the U.N.’s top food official for
farmers to use compost as fertilizer, to take steps to attract
pollinators as well as predators that consume agricultural pests and to
grow complementary crops for soil health is a significant poke in the
eye to a cynical, essentially self-regulating agriculture industry. It’s
an industry that would have us believe that we need rocket science to
grow a carrot.
Much of the world is waking up to the costs of the industrial approach
that defines most of American agriculture, with its addiction to
chemicals and monoculture. A new reckoning known as true cost accounting
is putting dollar figures on industrial agriculture’s contribution to
soil erosion, climate change and public health. At the same time, more
and more countries — pushed by networks of small and medium-size farmers
like La Via Campesina — are actively shifting to policies and
investments that support agroecological food systems.
In India, the state of Andhra Pradesh, home to 50 million people, is
investing $200 million to convert its farmers to the agroecological
practice known as zero budget natural farming, which uses from-the-farm
nutrients to grow crops without using costly chemical fertilizers or
pesticides, which can push farmers into debt. More than 100,000 farmers
there are already using this method, and an estimated 500,000 farmers in
3,000 villages will have moved to this method by the end of this year,
three years ahead of schedule, according to organizers. The government
plans to invest $2.3 billion to expand it to six million farmers within
five years.
In Africa, the African Centre for Biodiversity, a research and advocacy
organization, has urged the Tanzanian government to phase out subsidies
for chemical fertilizers and speed a transition to agroecology through
support to small farmers. In Ghana, the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge
and Organizational Development, a nongovernmental organization, is
working with local chiefs to promote sustainable forestry practices that
restore soil moisture to slow the encroaching Sahel desert.
Both organizations were vocal in Rome and are part of the Alliance for
Food Sovereignty in Africa, a network that pushes governments to pass
laws that ensure real food security by supporting farmers to breed and
distribute climate-resilient seed varieties. In West Africa, France is
planning to spend eight million euros to advance agroecology. (The
United States Agency for International Development should take note.)
In the Americas, the Agroecology Collective in Ecuador is strengthening
a network of municipal farmers’ markets to achieve a national goal of
food sovereignty that is enshrined in the country’s Constitution. The
Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, currently
leading in the polls, has endorsed a plan to make agroecological
principles the guiding force behind Mexican agriculture.
Rich countries are also getting onboard. France has committed one
billion euros to help a majority of its farmers adopt agroecological
practices by 2025 through training, support and research and
development. And in the United States, the Good Food Purchasing Program
has developed a system that helps cities and large institutions direct
their buying power to locally and sustainably grown food. It has already
been adopted by the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.
(We’re hoping New York City will be next, with several other cities in
the wings.)
These undertakings are even more encouraging because they are just a few
of many examples around the world of fostering agroecology, often in the
face of an industry-led system of farm and corporate subsidies that tilt
the playing field for agribusiness and large-scale, chemical-dependent,
single-crop commodity farms.
Big agriculture reacts to agroecology by painting it as nice, but
quaint, certainly not up to the job of feeding the world. (Of course
industry recognizes agroecology’s power, as seen by its increasingly
greenwashed marketing.) But agroecology is based 100 percent on science
and on-the-farm experimentation, with its roots in the practices of
farmers who know their land and crops, and the scientists who work with
them to improve their sustainable agricultural practices.
A 30-year-long comparison by the Rodale Institute of organic and
chemical agriculture in the production of corn and soybeans found that,
after an initial decline in the first few years of the transition from
chemicals, the organic method “rebounded to match or surpass the
conventional system.” And rather than treating soil like a strip mine,
these practices regenerate soil fertility biodiversity.
Growing more and more corn and soy per acre is a terrible measure of
success when it comes at the cost of destroying soil and damaging
health. Agroecology measures its success by a yardstick that includes
not only bushels and calories but by how well food nourishes people
while regenerating soil and water and helping more farmers make a good
living. Agroecological techniques also sequester carbon (industrial
methods release it); encourage multicropping, which regenerates the
ecology of the soil instead of depleting it; preserve local seed
varieties instead of replacing them with patented, unaffordable
varieties; sustain local food cultures and people; support local
businesses operating close to farms; and create jobs.
Agroecology is more than a set of clean techniques: It’s an ethos that
encourages defining what a food system really should be. If we believe
that food production should be about keeping people and the planet
healthy, we need nothing less than to reboot the current industrial
system and to create one that includes securing land tenure for farmers
and indigenous people, making local markets work for small- and
medium-scale farmers as well as consumers and workers, and practicing
more public policies like the Good Food Purchasing Program.
What was discussed in Rome won’t stay in Rome. This movement is not only
right, it’s alive and growing.
Daniel Moss is executive director of the AgroEcology Fund, which
supports agroecological practices and policies. Mark Bittman, a former
columnist for The New York Times, is a lecturer at the Mailman School of
Public Health at Columbia.
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