Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
of “modern agriculture” are regarded by their proponents and practitioners as some-
thing scientifically established, and thus as fundamentally and ontologically true. The
challenge of SRI and other agroecological applications makes clear that there can be
more than one intellectual framework for organizing and evaluating technological
choices. The emergence of an agroecological paradigm as an alternative to the paradigm
of genetic engineering has been examined at some length by Vanloqueren and Baret
(2009). The issue of paradigmatic influences shaping the SRI debate has been consid-
ered also by Glover (2011), with elaboration by Uphoff (2012).
The language of “engineering” reflects a vision of agricultural production that equates
this with an industrial process. Much of our agricultural research, even before genetic
engineering was conceived of, considered plants as something like biological machines,
operating in standardized ways, with their genetic endowments ( G ) considered like
blueprints. Initially, through conventional plant breeding, and now increasingly
through transgenic operations, plants were expected to become ever more efficient pro-
cessors of inputs, particularly exogenous agrochemical materials manipulated by farm-
ers. These inputs were to be converted into crop outputs that could receive a premium
for becoming ever more homogeneous for mass-marketing purposes. Monoculture in
agricultural was developed in parallel with the assembly line for manufacturing, with
corresponding mechanization of production processes and similar labor displacement.
Economies of scale are a dominant attraction in “modern” agriculture, with “externali-
ties” such as environmental impacts largely ignored.
An agroecological perspective values diversity of biological forms and appreciates
the many interactions and synergies among them. This view was never incorporated
into the dominant paradigm, even when its application in farmers' fields exhibited sig-
nificant vulnerabilities to pests, diseases, and climatic and other stresses. A statistic that
is emblematic of “modern agriculture” is the parallel increase in pesticide use in the
United States and crop losses to pests. Between 1944 and 1989, the use of pesticides in
the United States increased fourteen-fold; in this same period, crop losses due to insects
rose rather than declined, from 7 percent to 13 percent (Pimentel et al. 1991). Pesticides
do indeed kill insect pests, but they also alter the populations of predator species, as well
as induce resistance to pesticides; so the “treadmill” of chemical crop protection may
not only continue, but accelerate.
Such statistics are seldom publicized, but this perverse relationship between pesti-
cide use and pest incidence, explainable by Chaboussou's theory of trophobiosis (2004),
has given impetus to the now widely accepted agroecological strategy known as inte-
grated pest management (IPM). By utilizing ecosystem dynamics, IPM aims to reverse
the chemical dependence that became a key part of “modern agriculture.” IPM initially
encountered scientific resistance, much like SRI. However, it has now gained scientific
and policy respectability, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) pres-
ently refers to IPM as “the preferred method” for crop protection ( http://www.fao.org/
agriculture/crops/core-themes/theme/pests/ipm/en/) .
Similarly, minimum or zero tillage—once regarded as primitive and atavistic, as back-
ward as the dibble stick—is now the basis for the worldwide “conservation agriculture”
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