Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Australian agriculture is faced with a hoice in relation to climate hange adapt-
ation. It can adapt
within
the present system of productivism, or it can seek to trans-
form farming by placing agricultural production on a less environmentally-destruct-
ive pathway. This is adaptation
outside
productivism. Adapting
within
productivism
means leaving all the current fundamentals in place (Gray
et al.
, 2009). Farmers will
use the latest high-teh products from agribusiness in a quest to ahieve productiv-
ity increases, and agribusiness will facilitate this via new genetically-modified plants
and animals. In the case of plants, the new generation seeds the farmers purhase
will be the intellectual property of companies like Dow, DuPont and Monsanto, and
they will be designed to produce the best outcomes only when expensive propriet-
ary agrohemicals are used in tandem. he system will remain dependent upon the
petrohemical industry, so the costs of farming will accelerate. Financial institutions
will come to play a more important role in farming, seeking ever-higher returns for
shareholders from investments in products suh as beef, coffee, sugar and grains.
The financialization of Australian agriculture will have a speculative element to it -
leading to the increasing price of farmlands, and increases in the cost of food (Burh
and Lawrence, 2009). his will do litle to address issues of food security and food
equity, particularly in a world where cropping and pasture land continues to decline
in availability (Hanjra and ureshi, 2010; Lawrence
et al.
, 2010). As indicated earlier,
the trajectory in Australia will be one of fewer farmers producing larger amounts of
output while continuing to exploit the environment.
Adaptation
outside
productivism is something of an unknown, and will be a
hallenge for farmers who embark on this course. We do, though, understand some
of its likely contours: decreasing reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides; less
dependence on commercial agribusiness firms; a move away from monocultures and
the factory-farming of animals; rejection of genetically modified organisms; the ap-
plication of low-input and organic farming practices; recycling; the reduction of
'food miles' via a grass-roots led re-localization of food production; the protection of
local and global agro-biodiversity; and the utilization of urban space for agriculture.
Many of these ideas accord with the principles of 'agro-ecology' - defined as the
'application of ecological concepts and principles to the design and management of
sustainable agro-ecosystems' (Altieri, 2010). There is evidence that organic and agro-
ecological methods have out-performed productivist approahes by providing envir-
onmental beneits suh as soil water retention (and through this increased drought
tolerance) and improvement in soil fertility (Environmental News Service, 2009). The
