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Publications
Griffith University and the Department of the Environment, Sport & Territories, 1997
Jo-Anne Ferreira
Griffith University
Australia
While the quantity of food produced has increased dramatically in the last few decades, many people remain hungry. Furthermore, attempts to increase food production have often resulted in massive degradation of the world's agricultural resource base (eroded soil, salination, the effects of pesticides and fertilisers, etc.). This workshop examines a range of sustainable agriculture practices and contrasts these with conventional farming methods. It also explores the links between these practices and integrated rural development schemes. The activities in the workshop aim to develop key concepts and explore means of promoting sustainable agriculture practices and integrated rural development schemes through participants' work in their communities.
Through participation in the activities in this workshop, participants will develop the skills to:
This workshop consists of activities organised around three themes:
The introductory activity encourages participants to explore their understanding of the topics to be examined in the workshop and gives an overview of the workshop. This is followed by a mini-lecture which examines the concept of conventional agriculture. Case studies are then used to examine the concept of sustainable agriculture.
A case study is used to examine the concept of rural development.
This activity uses a consequence wheel to explore the consequences of the different concepts examined in the workshop. This is followed by an activity in which participants analyse statements about sustainable agriculture and rural development. Participants then develop a set of criteria for promoting SARD. The final activity provides an opportunity for participants to use themes explored in this workshop to plan a lesson which can be incorporated into the syllabuses they teach.
Overhead Transparency Masters
OHT 1: Overview of Workshop
OHT 2: Conventional Agriculture: Problems
OHT 3: Key Elements of Sustainable Agriculture
OHT 4: Rural Development: Questions
OHT 5: Rural Development: Core Principles
OHT 6: Consequence Wheel
OHT 7: Definitions of Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD)
Resources
Resource 1: Sustainable Agriculture Case Studies
Resource 2: Integrated Rural Development Case Study
Reading
Reading 1: Farming with Nature: Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity
Activity 5: Chart or poster paper.
Activity 8: Develop a range of lesson plan headings commonly used by teachers in your area.
Auberbach, R. (1994) Sustainable Development: Developing What to Sustain Whom?, New Ground, Autumn, pp. 38-41.
Auberbach, R. (1993) Farming with Nature: Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity, New Ground, Autumn, pp.24-26.
Bell, G. (1992) The Permaculture Way, Thorsons Harper Collins, London.
Blake, F. (1987) Organic Farming and Growing, The Crowood Press, Swindon, Wiltshire.
Coetzee, H. (1991/2) Sustainable Development: Goodbye to the Good Life, New Ground, Summer, pp. 31-33.
Cooper, D. (1990) Sustainable Agriculture, New Ground, December 1990, pp.16-17.
F.A.O. (1994) Development and Education Exchange Papers (DEEP): Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development: Part 1: Latin America and Asia, Rome.
Ramphele, M. and McDowell, C. (1991) Restoring the Land: Environment and Change in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Panos Publications, London.
Rowley, J. (1993) Bhorletar: The Sustainable Village, People and the Planet, 2(4), 14-19.
Reijntjes C., Haverkort, B. and Waters-Bayer, A. (1992) Farming for the Future: An Introduction to Low-External-Input and Sustainable Agriculture, Macmillan Press, London.
This workshop consists of activities organised around three themes:
1. Sustainable Agriculture
2. Rural Development
3. Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD)
Source: Cooper, D. (1990) Sustainable Agriculture, New Ground, December, pp. 16-17.
Source: Adapted from Coetzee, H. (1991/2) Sustainable Development: Goodbye to the Good Life, New Ground, Summer, pp. 31-33.
Source: FAO (1994) Development and Education Exchange Papers (DEEP): Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development: Part 1: Latin America and Asia, Rome, p. 5.
Agriculture is sustainable when it is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just, culturally appropriate and based on a holistic scientific approach.
NGO Sustainable Agriculture Treaty (1992).
Low-External-Input and Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) is agriculture which makes optimal use of locally available natural and human resources (such as soil, water, vegetation, local plants and animals, and human labour, knowledge and skill) and which is economically feasible, ecologically sound, culturally adapted and socially just.
Reijntjes, Haverkort and Waters-Bayer, Farming for the Future (1992).
Sustainable development is the management and conservation of the natural resource base, and the orientation of technological and institutional change in such a manner as to ensure the attainment and continued satisfaction of human needs for present and future generations. Such sustainable development (in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors) conserves land, water, plant and animal genetic resources, is environmentally non-degrading, technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable.
Document CL 94/6 94th Session of the FAO Council (1988).
Source: Adapted from FAO, (1994) Development and Education Exchange Papers (DEEP): Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development: Part 1: Latin America and Asia, Rome, pp. 25-26.
A: Integrated Farming Using Traditional Knowledge in Thailand
Talad is a village of 80 families in Khonken Province, Thailand. Since April 1984 Thongdee Nantha, a monk for 21 years, has been cultivating 1 ha of lowland village land using integrated farming methods. He works the farm with his wife and children and produces more than enough for their needs. He has rice fields, a fish pond and a garden. In the centre of the farm, he raises pigs - a native breed - and rabbits; they are not given artificial feed or supplements but eat grass, weeds and vegetables from the farm. Ducks and chickens provide eggs and meat for the family and some eggs for sale; they eat the weeds from the rice fields, vegetable waste and leftover food. There are seven different varieties of fish. Rice bran, duck and pig manure, and aquatic weeds from the rice fields are food for the fish; insect- and fish-eating fish are kept in a separate pond in the corner.
The main crop is rice, which occupies about two-thirds of the land; one-quarter has the rice-fish combination. The trees on the farm, mostly mango, custard apple, banana and papaya, are grown in the centre around the animals and poultry. On the southern edge of the farm there is a road where neem and nitrogen fixing trees are planted. On the western edge bamboo and mulberries serve as a windbreak. Thongdee grows many kinds of local vegetables, mostly along the dykes around the pond, as well as medicinal herbs. A reed used for roofing material, the lalang, is also grown around the pond. Then there are some cotton plants from which thread is spun and cloth woven for use by the family.
Thongdee as a monk is a traditional leader whose farming models are followed by almost half the families of Talad. He was inspired by another monk, Maha Yu Sunthornchai, who has given an example to farmers all over Thailand.
Since 1973, Maha Yu has been practising integrated farming with a combined production cycle of rice, fish, ducks and pigs. This system has remained productive and stable by using the natural cycle of nutrients.
Maha Yu's success in producing his basic needs and marketable surplus from an average-sized farm is based on observation of nature, emphasis on self-reliance and analysis of markets. This technique is not suitable for an absentee landlord or an industrial farmer. For effective integration, every farm procedure, e.g. selection of species and breeds, timing of sowing, mixing of crops and pond design, needs regular and keen observation and analysis. Marketing produce at the right times also optimizes the returns.
Maha Yu Sunthornchai's farm in Surin Province of northeastern Thailand has inspired many, and today throughout Thailand hundreds of farmers are taking up integrated farming, i.e. a mixture of field crops, fruit crops, vegetables, birds, animals, and aquatic plants and animals that is ecologically sound and economically viable.
Similar farms existed traditionally in many parts of China, India and other South Asian countries in the natural wetlands and high-rainfall (1,500 mm and above) zones until the introduction of pesticides disrupted the rice field ecosystem. Even in areas with lower rainfall, integrated farming or agroforestry systems based on combinations of trees, crops, birds and animals are being tried.
B: Self-sufficiency Close to the City, Santiago de Chile
The Centro de Educacion y Tecnologia (CET) has implemented an agro-ecological production system that guarantees household food security with half a hectare of land. The programme has been established in the Central Valley of Chile a few kilometres north of Santiago. It has two major components: the first is an attempt to maximize production around the home with fruit trees, small stock raising and an intensive vegetable garden covering 800m2; the second is a production system of 4,200m2 with six-year crop rotation and grass cover of 50% in summer and 66% in winter. The management criteria emphasize physical and sequential diversification through strict crop rotation and the utilization of mixed cropping and intercropping; the combination of plant and livestock production; and a high level of recycling of plant material and animal waste.
The results in the seventh year of uninterrupted operations show that there are no nitrogen deficiencies in the crops, the level of available phosphorus has increased from 5 to 15 ppm, there has been a considerable improvement in soil profile and the soil pH has fallen from 8 to between 7.4 and 7.7. Pest infestation is decreasing and soil-borne diseases are practically unknown.
The labour requirement is modest enough that there is no conflict with a full day of off-farm work, yet the system pays over three times the market rate for a day's work. From the economic point of view the system is profitable, as with only 22 hours of work per week a family can earn a net income of US$1,600 per year, which is equivalent to 1.6 times the minimum monthly wage, with additional earnings possible from off-farm work.
The results are more than satisfactory in nutritional terms, as production covers 100% of international nutritional requirements, leaving a surplus after on-farm consumption to cover production costs.
This venture has combined peasant knowledge with the benefits of basic sciences. It shows that a holding can be viable despite a shortage of land and relatively infertile soil. It is noteworthy that the productivity levels of only three of the 17 crops have been below the average obtained by conventional producers in the area.
C: Transition and the Market, San Juan de la Sierra, Chile
An experiment in San Juan de la Sierra, Chile is aimed at disseminating an ecologically and economically viable form of agriculture and strengthening the peasant community, especially its teachers who have to negotiate with the sugar agro-industry (Industria Azucarera Nacional, IANSA), the dairy agro-industry (Sociedad de Productores de Leche, SOPROLE) and the powerful buyers of kidney beans for export. The local peasant production system has production potential and is appropriate for agro-ecological sustainability.
The programme demonstrates the difficulties of moving towards an agro-ecosystem with low external inputs but with a high capacity for internal regulation, in which the biomass and biological interactions have an important role.
The agro-ecological proposal put to these producers by the Centro de Educacion y Tecnologia (CET) has two main components: economic viability and biological sustainability. It is based on diversification and recycling. Production strategies are worked out with the producers' committee; they involve six-year rotations to facilitate land-use and nutrient management and to produce sufficient forage for the winter months. The system is supported by nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer which is applied in the first year of organic cultivation and thereafter as required.
The transition has taken between three and five years depending on cropping system, quality of soil and type and quantity of agrochemicals previously applied. The farmers' experience shows that mixed systems combining recyclable resources with synthetic mineral nutrients can be used at the start. The gradual transition prevented losses from the change in form of land use.
In the case of sugar beet, organic cultivation with a high dose of nitrogen in the first year produced an output of 99.47t/ha and the pure organic system reached 110.35 t/ha after five years, against the 111.91 t/ha of a conventional system.
Milk production rose from 3,600 to 7,200 litre/ha in five years, while kidney bean production increased by about 70% from 11 to 18 q/ha.
Programme monitoring revealed that all the peasant farmers in the San Juan de la Sierra watershed need to participate in the CET operation, for if those in the upper reaches use agrochemicals there will be downstream contamination of organically grown crops via the irrigation water. This was proven by the detection of diazinon residues on organic holdings of five years' standing at levels similar to those on conventional holdings.
Producer income has clearly risen, leading to an important capitalization process, particularly in technologies that facilitate the agricultural work. Although these producers would be subject to a fall in agricultural profitability, their competitive position is strengthened because of their low operating costs and high productivity.
Source: Adapted from Rowley, J. (1993) Bhorletar: The Sustainable Village, People and the Planet, 2(4), 14-19.
Bhorletar, Nepal: The Sustainable Village
Bhorletar is a rapidly growing settlement of some 150 houses which is run by an elected Village Development Committee (VDC). The village centre is growing fast, with 35 new houses built in the last year - 20 of them by newcomers to the area. Without any town planning, the results are beginning to show in terms of pollution of the village canal, uncollected garbage and poor sanitation.
In many respects it is a typical Nepali village. Land is scarce, yet most of the villagers depend on farming. Roughly half the village land is cultivable but there is less than half a hectare for each of the 3,000 people living there.
The task of drawing up environmental plans for Bhorletar began in 1990. A system of 'participatory rural appraisal' was used to collect information about every aspect of village farming and life. This included drawing up detailed land use maps. A local teacher was trained to carry out these activities, working with the local steering committee and the community as a whole. With the help of two non-government organizations and the IUCN planning team, the village began by preparing a profile of itself.
A local geography teacher took the lead in writing up the village profile, which then went through various revisions. It includes details such as the number of springs, forest patches, tree species, landslides, cropping patterns and hazard-prone areas. The profile highlighted a number of problems: rapid depletion of forest resources because of increasing population and encroachment on the forest; a lack of latrines now made essential because of population growth; flooding and erosion in the river valley; domestic animal diseases; a lack of clean drinking water and a problem of increasing numbers of landless immigrants.
Finally, an environmental plan based on this profile was defined by the villagers themselves, and approved in meetings with the local District Council and representative from the various line agencies of the central government.
The village selected its own activities for priority action and drew up a series of recommended solutions. These included community forest conservation; improved fuelwood stoves; new latrines; protective dams and afforestation to stop flooding; raising ducks to control snails; improved roads, vegetable gardens and marketing; and a new health post. Top priority for immediate action was given to clean drinking water, to be provided by a system of gravity fed pipes and taps alongside a system of long-term community maintenance, watershed protection, toilet building, fruit tree planting and vegetable growing to take advantage of the convenient supplies of water. All the villagers helped in building and laying of the pipeline which feeds 22 taps. This includes one extra tap for the primary school for which the parents provided all the materials. Rules have been agreed for using the various taps (some being kept only for drinking water).
Such community planning shows the potential for self-help development in the villages of Nepal. Bhorletar's experience has proved that local communities can plan and carry out their own development programmes and that given the authority and skill, villagers can plan their resource use system and carry out plans far more effectively than the usual top-down government processes.
Source: Adapted from Auberbach, R. (1993) Farming with Nature: Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity, New Ground, Autumn 1993, pp.24-26.
Sustainable development. Biodiversity. Sustainable agriculture. Permaculture: recently these four concepts have become buzzwords. They are symptomatic of a growing together of concerned rural development workers and the environment and conservation movements, but they are often used in a whole range of documents to try to legitimise the illegitimate.
Economic Development
After the second world war, the focus was on economic growth using technology developed by scientists to increase productivity while reducing labour requirements. In agriculture 'green revolution technology' successfully reduced labour inputs and increased yields where rainfall was adequate but required large amounts of expensive energy-intensive inputs such as nitrogen fertiliser. Wherever it was applied in the developing world green revolution technology transformed society as well as production, leading to increasing inequalities as farmers able to afford the inputs prospered at the expense of those who could not. Eventually, recognition of the importance of reaching the more vulnerable people and helping them access resources led to the introduction of concepts such as 'growth with redistribution' and the 'basic needs approach' in the 'sixties and 'seventies.
As Niels Roling, a Dutch extension specialist points out, this matched a shift in extension philosophy from 'Doing To' (Technology transfer: we are the experts) to 'Doing For' (Diffusion of innovations: we have the expertise). More recently, there have been attempts to 'Do With' (Participatory Rural Appraisal: let us join our expertise with yours). This latest shift comes at a time when problems of environmental degradation have become so serious that they can no longer be ignored, and it is realised that the future of human life on Earth is in question.
Those involved in development are recognising that unless resources can be used in a way that 'does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs', development will not be sustainable in the long term. Sustainable development, it is argued, will have to encourage growth in such a way that the knowledge of local people is used as the starting point for any development, and resources are given a value which takes a long term view of the environment.
Sustainable Agriculture
For agriculture to be sustainable, four key areas have to be considered. Firstly, correct land use is essential; ploughing steep areas or planting unsuitable crops is clearly folly, even in the short term. Secondly, a long term approach to soil fertility is needed. Pietermaritzburg's 'tree man' Robert Mazibuko sums this up by saying, 'Don't feed your plants, feed the soil'. A third aspect involves reducing the use of fertilisers and other chemicals. Although third world agriculture is very different to first world agriculture, the problems caused by high levels of inputs are just as serious, both in terms of financial dependency and in environmental terms. Finally, we come to biological diversity; if arable agriculture in Africa continues to be based on mono-cropped maize, then environmental degradation will continue no matter what production systems are used.
In a temperate European climate where the soil is moist for most of the year, the process of humus formation is naturally encouraged. In such a climate, one can get away with ploughing every year, as the soil's organic matter is converted to humus without major losses. Here in Africa, however, it is a different story. Our thin topsoil cannot manufacture large quantities of humus, and what little organic matter there is, is rapidly oxidised by the hot sun. Forming humus in our climate requires careful attention to creating the right micro-climate.
The underlying principle here is to keep the soil covered at all times. This can be done by use of mulch, by planting trees together with crops, or by mixing crops in such a way that the soil is covered by plants for most of the year.
Permaculture
The permaculture system of agriculture applies these principles to agricultural design by finding which plants naturally like to grow together. Some of these 'plant guilds' are known to traditional farmers; an example is the practice of planting maize with beans and ibhece (melons). New guilds can be developed by trial and error, or by developing an understanding of the principles of plant succession, and the cultural requirements of plants which thrive in your area.
Plants can either be grown together at the same time or rotated by planting different crops one after another in the same area so that the demands and benefits of each type of plant can contribute to nutrient cycling and the development of soil fertility. A natural way of designing guilds takes the micro-climates provided by trees into account, using the tree as a support framework for creepers, and planting shade-loving plants under the tree, plants requiring moisture around the drip line, and sun loving plants out in the open, where they still enjoy the benefit of a wind break. Moisture is harvested and conserved as much as possible, using the three principles of water management: slow down, spread and sink. The farm is treated as a system which must be planned to meet the requirements of each activity with the products of some other activity so that all products are useful to the system, either directly or as products for barter or sale.
Westerners are stuck with the idea of straight lines of a single crop in a single field. Perhaps a change is in the wind. The emergence of 'Chaos theory' in physics has revolutionised scientific thinking, leading New York Times Science Editor, James Gleick, to observe that disorder in nature has always been a vexing problem for science because biological processes simply do not obey linear laws. Gleick (and the growing band of scientists who are working on applications of Chaos theory) argue that only by discovering how to apply non-linear thinking to biological problems will we understand how natural systems work.
Diversity and Stability
This is probably more true in agriculture than in any other branch of natural science. Ecologists have recognised that increasing diversity brings about increased stability in biological systems. If a system is subjected to a shock or stress such as a drought, flood or fire, the greater the variety of species in that system, the more likely it is that the system will survive.
Modern production agriculture relies on about 30 species of plants and only five animal species for 90% of our food. Animal parasites and plant pests and diseases, subjected to a barrage of poisons over the past 50 years, have shown an amazing resilience in developing resistance to the ever more toxic chemicals used to enable man to maintain a tenuous control over food production. Once again, we are stuck in the linear mode: seeds need soft soil with no weeds and no pests or diseases. Plough the soil, plant fast-growing, high yielding varieties, pump in as much fertiliser as we can, kill off any problems that may arise.
Instead of this resulting in well-regulated agricultural production, we find ourselves sinking into a quagmire of surpluses and shortages, of more and more chemicals and fertilisers, and ever increasing risk for the farmer and society, faced with the prospect of poison in the food chain and in our own food, polluted air and water, and the risk that super-resistant pests and diseases could develop as we use more and more antibiotics in medicine, and similar chemicals in agriculture.
To develop sustainable farming systems, we need to learn from the patterning of nature, and relearn the art of farming, rather than the science (or technology) of production. We need to follow the contours of ridge and valley, leading water in such a way that it can be as much use as possible to us before we allow it to leave our farm. The farm must be designed around the needs of those who live on it, and each tree, plant, building or animal must be built into the system so that it is efficient and sustainable, even in difficult circumstances such as drought.
Specialisation and Efficiency
One of the major arguments against diversified farms is that they are too labour intensive: the effort of milking one cow is not very different from the effort of milking two or ten cows, the argument goes, so why don't we milk 300 cows and not bother with pigs, chickens, crops or vegetables. If we specialise, we only need one set of equipment, and we can become experts in dairy farming.
The argument sounds plausible, but the result is a series of unbalanced enterprises. In Holland, for example, there are so many cattle that the manure has become a major pollutant, contributing 80% of Holland's acid rain through evaporating nitrogen compounds. Large-scale specialisation of this sort creates huge environmental imbalances and enormous mountains of surplus dairy produce because the balance of animals which could be maintained on healthy pastures has been upset. Aah, but we need all those cows to eat the mountains of grain produced by the huge inputs of fertilisers, and we must have the fertilisers to stimulate industry to create jobs for all the people who are out of work because of the mechanisation of agriculture!
Is the solution then a return to some form of 'noble' subsistence agriculture? Not at all, mechanisation has an important part to play in reducing the back breaking drudgery of agriculture. Equally, technology such as plant-breeding for high yield and for disease resistance can contribute (and has contributed) to the well-being of millions of farmers. But if we are to develop sound technology, we need to be cautious about destroying the wonderful variety of plant types on this planet, because once they are gone, we will not be able to find out what they could have been used for.
The more we can build agricultural systems which include a variety of strange and little-known plants, the more stable will our farming systems become; plants which will grow only in a certain environment can help farmers in that environment to establish a market niche, specialising in those crops or animals which thrive especially well in a given environment. At the same time, the market economy is here to stay and it would be irresponsible to suggest that farmers should abandon tried and tested crops and production systems entirely.
However, the challenges of adapting our systems to make them more stable, sacrificing a small amount of apparent short term profit for the advantages of long term stability and sustainability, makes good sense in any language.
If any one of the four principles of sustainable agriculture outlined (correct land use, feeding the soil not the plant, reducing the use of chemicals and encouraging biological diversity) can be regarded as the most crucial, then surely it is biological diversity. Simply substituting manure for fertiliser will not make agriculture sustainable; only when the diversity of a system has been built up by the introduction of a range of species, which together cycle nutrients effectively, form appropriate microclimates, conserve moisture and build an environment conducive to life, will agriculture be truly sustainable. Anyone flying over South Africa today will be forced to conclude that we have a long way to go.
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