Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 202

production by optimizing the growing environments for crops (and livestock), rather
than by making modifications in their genes or by utilizing more synthetic or inor-
ganic materials in agricultural production. It is true that further improvements made
in crop genetic potentials can contribute to better results from the agroecological man-
agement of plants and animals. And some use of inorganic fertilizers may help farm-
ers optimize their yield levels, provided there are no adverse effects on the microbiome,
the communities of microbes that inhabit all plant and animal organisms, interacting
with each other and with their host organisms. Agroecology is not necessarily “organic,”
although it generally favors organic nutrient amendments as a matter of pragmatics and
economics.
The potentials of agroecological management to meet food needs—particularly for
households with the most limited resources and with the greatest food insecurity—are
considered here with reference to improvements being made in rice production. The
System of Rice Intensification (SRI), developed some twenty-five years ago by a French
priest during three decades of grassroots work with farmers in Madagascar (Laulanié
1993; Uphoff 2006), can raise paddy yields by 50 to 100 percent, or more, with less inputs
of seed, water, fertilizer (although with more provision of compost), and often with less
labor once the methods are mastered or mechanization is introduced. Producing “more
with less” is, however, a challenge to the currently prevailing scientific paradigm, which
is based on introducing external inputs, as well as to many commercial interests that
benefit from providing these inputs.
One might expect that an opportunity to produce more output with less input would
be seized upon quickly and widely. However, getting SRI accepted and utilized has been
a slow and difficult process, although it is now finally gaining speed as the merits of SRI
ideas and methods are demonstrated in Asia, Africa and Latin America ( http://sri.ciifad.
cornell.edu/countries/index.html) . This case study on SRI does not suggest that making
further genetic improvements is not desirable; only that these may be less necessary and
less urgent than argued by proponents of “modern agriculture,” and especially by those
who promote transgenic plant breeding. Creating new varieties with certain genetically
determined traits has been presented as a sine qua non for “feeding the world.” However,
this may not be correct.
Whether (or to what extent) food production can be improved without requiring
development of new varieties and without increasing the use of external inputs is of
considerable significance for this chapter, looking ahead as well as to the past and pres-
ent. Given the adverse effects of climate change on crop performance anticipated in the
decades ahead, crops' resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses, to pests and diseases, and
to climatic hazards will become ever more important to meet world food needs.
This case gives evidence of the ways in which political and institutional interests can
impinge upon making changes in agricultural theory and practice. Even getting SRI
methods evaluated has been resisted by some scientists who work within the estab-
lished paradigm for crop improvement (Sinclair 2004; Sinclair and Cassman 2004).
Conservation agriculture, an agroecological strategy that eliminates tillage (plowing) in
conjunction with maintaining vegetative cover on the soil and rotating the crops grown,