Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 217

(CA) movement. CA farming systems, which minimize or give up plowing while main-
taining organic mulch on the soil and rotating crops, are increasingly being used around
the world ( http://www.fao.org/ag/ca/) . Depending upon the criteria used to classify
what constitutes minimal soil disturbance and/or zero tillage, numbers vary. But around
one-third of US cropland is now under CA systems, as well as over 125 million hectares
worldwide (Kassam et al. 2009). All three approaches—IPM, CA, and SRI—draw upon
the same agroecological principles outlined by Altieri (1995) and Gliessman (2007).
However, note that these innovations have their origins and roots more in rural civil
society than in the scientific research community.
Apart from the resistance that can be attributed to shifting paradigms, there has also
been a shift in the institutional stakes in agricultural research. In the first two-thirds of
the 20th century, most agricultural research around the world was done in the public
sector, by government agencies like the US Department of Agriculture and by publicly
supported universities. The scientific and technological knowledge produced was made
freely available in the public domain, because agriculture was thought to be a sector
that differed from manufacturing. Widespread access to and use of new technologies
for agricultural production was considered to be in the public interest. Public resources
could justifiably be invested in improving and extending new technologies, because
keeping food supplies abundant and low-cost was considered important for the econ-
omy, and for society as a whole.
In the last two decades of the past century, private-sector investments in agricultural
research grew as public-sector fiscal capabilities contracted, and as public funding of
agricultural research receded. These were separate trends, but not entirely independent
of each other. Agricultural research agendas in recent decades have favored innovations
that can be protected by patents to recoup private investments. Intellectual property
rights have become a major issue in the agricultural sector, where for many decades this
was only a marginal concern.
It is no accident that research investments in recent decades have focused on
improved varieties (seeds), on a succession of agrochemicals (the so-called chemical
treadmill), and on sophisticated machinery—all amenable to private patents, owner-
ship, and profitability. This has paralleled investment priorities in the health sector,
where research funding has been more abundant for marketable medications and costly
procedures than for preventive practices such as a healthful diet and exercise. As the
paradigm of “modern agriculture” has become well established and shaped research pri-
orities, the arguments for devolving research to the private sector have become more
dominant. The goals of research have been increasingly framed in terms of producing
more and better private goods with appropriable benefit streams, rather than for pro-
moting public goods and public welfare.
By achieving its productivity gains by making changes in the management of
resources that farmers have in hand, SRI shifts the locus of control and benefit back to
the public realm and to individual users. Rather than requiring the purchase of patent-
able inputs, SRI involves the dissemination of knowledge as a public good. Knowledge
is itself a positive-sum commodity, not diminished by its being shared with others.