Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 96

variable at a time, while holding all the others unchanged - the so-called
ceteris paribus approach. But this ignores synergism - where the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts. Thus, soil and water conservation that
emphasizes terracing and other physical measures to prevent soil loss is
much less effective than combinations of biological methods that attempt
to increase the productivity of the system combined with finance for credit
groups that reduces the indebtedness of households.
Sustainable agriculture systems become more productive when human
capacity increases, particularly farmers' capacity to innovate and adapt
their farm systems for sustainable outcomes. Sustainable agriculture is
not a concretely defined set of technologies, nor is it a simple model or
package to be widely applied or fixed with time. It needs to be conceived
of as a process for social learning. Lack of information on agroecology
and the necessary skills to manage complex farms is a major barrier to
adopting sustainable agriculture. We know much less about these resource-
conserving technologies than we do about the use of external inputs in
modernized systems. So, it is clear that the process through which farmers
learn about technology alternatives is crucial. If they are enforced or
coerced, then they may only adopt for a limited period. But if the process
is participatory and enhances farmers' ecological literacy of their farms
and resources, then the foundation for redesign and continuous innovation
is laid. As Roland Bunch and Gabino Lòpez have put it about Central
American agriculture: 'What needs to be made sustainable is the social process of
innovation itself.'
Madagascar's System of Rice Intensification
I have already talked of the low-pesticide and high social-connectivity
revolutions in rice management. Another revolution may be about to
emerge from remote and impoverished Madagascar. It is called the System
of Rice Intensification (SRI), and it breaks many of the rules of rice
cultivation developed over thousands of years. It was first developed by
Father Henri de Laudanié during the 1980s, and has been tested and
promoted by the local Association Tefy Saina, with the help of Norman
Uphoff and colleagues at Cornell University. The system has improved
rice yields from about 2 tonnes per hectare to 5, 10 and even 15 tonnes
per hectare on farmers' fields. This has been achieved without using
purchased inputs of pesticides or fertilizers. The improvements have been
so extraordinary that, until lately, they have been disbelieved and ignored
by most scientists. SRI challenges so many of the basic principles of