Alternative Paths to Food Security - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 219

for risk taking and for activation of others. They can and do use institutions as platforms
for pursuing reforms and changes that fall within the institutions' purview, and they
work to bring about a convergence of institutional and individual values and objectives.
That a large majority of persons are disinclined to deviate from predominant paradigms
does not prevent institutions from being prodded or induced to move in new directions
by certain individuals within them, albeit often lurchingly, and sometimes stealthily.
Looking Ahead
Agroecological alternatives are gaining acceptance at an opportune time. “Modern agri-
culture” evolved in the latter half of the twentieth century under very different conditions
from those foreseeable for the decades ahead. Something like “postmodern” agriculture
(Uphoff 2007) will probably become more economically efficient and environmentally
tenable in the decades ahead. Modern agriculture, with its high degree of mechaniza-
tion to reduce labor inputs, has followed an extensive rather than an intensive trajectory,
being land-extensive and seeking economies of scale from ever-larger units of produc-
tion. By 2050, however, arable land per capita will be one-third what it was in 1950, due to
population growth as well as land degradation. This will make intensive strategies more
productive agronomically and relatively more profitable in economic terms.
Energy costs in the years ahead will be considerably higher than they were over the past
fifty years. This will make mechanized production processes as well as the long-distance
transportation of food to foreign markets more costly. More localized and more
labor-intensive production will become economically more competitive. Harnessing
biological processes, which ultimately are processing and providing solar energy as a
“free” input rather than depending heavily on petrochemical inputs for agriculture, will
become more attractive, especially if the full costs of negative environmental externalities
are calculated, and if those who create the costs must pay or reimburse them.3
Further, current agricultural production methods were developed within a fairly
stable set of water supplies and constraints, and for relatively predictable climates. In
the decades ahead, the parameters of water availability—and reliability—are going to
change considerably. Most of the expected changes will be adverse for agriculture—
droughts, storms, floods, hot spells, cold snaps, and other “extreme events.” These cli-
matic stresses are more debilitating for agricultural production than is gradual global
warming. Crops grown with agroecological practices, the most evident example being
SRI, are better able to tolerate a wider ranges of adverse climates because of larger and
deeper root growth, and because they promote greater abundance, diversity, and activ-
ity of the soil biota. Both roots and soil biology have been, at least until recently, mar-
ginal concerns in contemporary crop and soil science, receiving only a small fraction of
scientists' attention and agencies' funding.
There is considerable agreement that the twenty-first century will be “the century
of biology,” but there is less consensus on what kind of biology will be preeminent.