Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 101

companies will not accept such market losses lightly. Sustainable agri-
culture, furthermore, suggests greater decentralization of power to local
communities and groups, combined with more local decision-making,
both of which might be opposed by those who benefit from corruption
and non-transparency in private and public organizations. Research and
extension agencies will have to change, too - adopting more participatory
approaches in order to work closely with farmers. These agencies must
adopt different measures to evaluate job success and reasons for promotion.
Finally, social connectivity, relations of trust, and the emergence of
significant movements may represent a threat to existing power bases, who,
in turn, may seek to undermine such locally based institutions.
There will be many who actively dispute the evidence of promising
success, believing that the poor and marginalized cannot possibly make
these kinds of improvements. But I believe that there is great hope and
leadership in these stories of progress towards agricultural sustainability.
What is quite clear is that they offer real opportunities for people to
improve their food production while protecting and improving nature.
Sustainability will be difficult to achieve on a wide scale because many
individuals will oppose these ideas, dismiss the innovators, or resist policy
reforms. Yet, here lie some pointers to salvation, if we all could but listen
and learn.
Concluding Comments
Food poverty remains a daily challenge for more than 800 million people,
despite great progress with industrialized agriculture. Hunger accom-
panies increased food productivity. We know how to increase food
production with modern methods and fossil-fuel derived inputs; but
anything that costs money inevitably puts it out of reach of the poorest
households and countries. Sustainable agriculture, in seeking to make the
best use of nature's goods and services, combined with people's own
capacities for collective action, offers many new opportunities. There has
already been great progress, though sceptics remain unconvinced that the
poor can be innovative. Sustainable agricultural systems improve soil
health, increase water efficiency and make the best use of biodiversity for
the control of pests and diseases. When put together, there are important
synergistic interactions that improve the system's performance as a whole.
Sadly, there remain many confounding factors that will make wider
adoption of, and transition to, sustainable agriculture difficult without
substantial policy reform.