Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
is increasingly appreciated in wealthy countries, and accordingly a greater diversity of
products and services are being demanded of agriculture (Van Acker 2008; Renting
et al. 2009). Similarly, it is recognized that smallholder farming must also serve many
needs for producers as well as the larger landscapes and populations (Amekawa et al.
2010). Agricultural policies will influence equity, dietary diversity, and environmental
services such as water quantity and quality. Even a secondary focus on conservation of
natural areas and biodiversity would require assessments at the landscape scale to assess
impacts of agricultural strategies on forests and species (Leach et al. 2012).
Strategies for Improving the Performance of
Smallholder Agriculture
Three main types of strategies are evident in debates about how to increase agricultural
productivity. The first depends mostly on purchased inputs, the second on enhancing
ecological processes, and the third on a combination of the two. The first envisages a
market-driven pathway to prosperity that takes key lessons from agricultural suc-
cesses that have been achieved elsewhere based on a “Green Revolution” (GR) model.
Modern agriculture, in this view, is based on production systems in which the mar-
ket supplies the inputs (e.g., fertilizers, pesticides, fuel for traction and transport) and
receives the outputs; the main performance measures are yield and income. The Green
Revolution took the input-based trajectory to Asia and Latin America, achieving wide-
spread increases in cereal yields through the use of improved varieties, fertilizers, and
irrigation between 1960 and 2000 (Evenson and Gollin 2003). While it did not have a
major impact in Africa during this period, there are current efforts to achieve a Green
Revolution in Africa through improved access to inputs and markets (Toenniessen et al.
2008).
In the first-world context, organic agriculture is often seen as the alternative to indus-
trial agriculture (Seufert et al. 2012; Pollan 2006; Bennett and Franzel 2009). The debate
on the future of food and agriculture is polarized, and those with a stake in “real” (indus-
trialized) agriculture have seen “sustainable” or “organic” agriculture as an enemy camp.
This unconstructive stand-off may be easing as concerns about the economic and envi-
ronmental costs of reliance on purchased inputs becomes more mainstream in both
industrialized and developing country contexts. The term “sustainable intensification”
is increasingly widely used (Pretty 2008; Pretty et al. 2011; Godfray et al. 2010; Tilman
et al. 2011;
http://www.feedthefuture.gov/)
. This term suggests the aims of reducing the
environmental costs of agriculture in the industrialized world and increasing produc-
tion in poor countries with a minimum of damage to the environment (Balmford et al.
2012). The term does not imply much about how these aims will be achieved or assessed,
and perhaps this ambiguity is the basis of its popularity.
The term “agroecological intensification” (AEI) also implies a concern for sustain-
ability, but it suggests a further commitment to intensification strategies that emphasize
the use of biological processes to achieve this. Other authors have used “eco-efficient
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