Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 100

tonnes of wood per year, or 3 to 5 mu of forest. Each year, these biogas
digesters are effectively preventing 6-7 million tonnes of carbon from
being emitted to the atmosphere, a substantial benefit to us all.
Confounding Factors and Trade-Offs
This agricultural sustainability revolution is clearly benefiting poor people
and environments in developing countries. People have more food, are
better organized, are able to access external services and power structures,
and have more choices in their lives. But like all major changes, this
revolution may also provoke secondary problems. For example, building
a road near a forest can help farmers to reach food markets, but may also
aid illegal timber extraction. This is not to say that depletion of natural
assets is always undesirable. It may be in the national and local interests
to convert part of a forest into finance, if that money is to be used for
investment in hospitals and schools, effectively producing a transfer from
natural to social and human capital. Equally, short-term social conflict
may be necessary for overcoming inequitable land ownership in order to
produce better welfare outcomes for the majority. Projects may make
considerable progress in reducing soil erosion and in increasing water
conservation through the adoption of zero-tillage, but may still continue
to rely on applications of herbicides. In other cases, improved organic
matter levels in soils may lead to increased leaching of nitrate to ground-
water. If land has to be closed off to grazing for rehabilitation, then people
with no other source of feed may have to sell their livestock; and if
cropping intensity increases or new lands are taken into cultivation, then
the burden of increased workloads may fall on women, in particular.
Additional incomes arising from sales of produce may also go directly to
men in households, who are less likely than women to invest in children
and the household as a whole.
There are also a variety of emergent factors that could slow the spread
of sustainable agriculture. Firstly, sustainable agriculture that increases the
asset base may simply increase the incentives for more powerful interests
to take over, such as landlords taking back formerly degraded land from
tenants who had adopted sustainable agriculture. In these contexts, it is
rational for farmers to farm badly - at least they get to keep the land. The
idea of sustainable agriculture may also appear to be keeping people in
rural areas away from centres of power and from 'modern' urban society;
yet, some rural people's aspirations may precisely be to gain sufficient
resources to leave rural areas. Sustainable agriculture also implies a limited
role for agrochemical companies, as currently configured - and these