From cbenbrook@igc.apc.org Fri May 13 10:48:44 1994 Date: Fri, 13 May 1994 06:53:46 -0700 From: Charles Benbrook Subject: Sustainable Development in the U.S. Agricultural Sector - Better Late than Never: Sustainable Development in the U.S. Agricultural Sector Remarks To: Sustainable Agriculture Scoping Group President's Council on Sustainable Development Presented By: Charles M. Benbrook, PhD Benbrook Consulting Services Consultant, United Nations Development Program April 28, 1994 Back in 1991-1992, I had a chance to work with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on a pre-UNCED report. It describes ways to promote progress toward sustainable agriculture through reforms in the programs and policies of multi- lateral development institutions, working in concert with governments, other development partners, and non-governmental organizations. My work focused on the need for different approaches to agricultural development, emphasizing diversification, self-sufficiency and resiliency, working with nature and within the limits of natural resources, and more broadly spreading the benefits of agricultural development in order to lessen poverty and resource degradation. The draft report I produced for FAO became part of the enormous volume of paper feeding into UNCED's Prep Com process. Many of its themes and recommendations emerged in one form or another in Chapter 14 of Agenda 21. As I watched the Prep Com drafts evolve, I often thought to myself, "Won't it be interesting when European and U.S. agriculture is held to the same stan- dards...". Perhaps a glimpse of such a test will emerge today. A. Global Food Security and Sustainability -- Which Path? I would like to make a few opening remarks about the status of world agriculture and the U.S. role within it. Concern is growing, rightly so in my judgement, about the tightening of global and regional food stocks. Technological optimists argue that the world can produce adequate foodstuffs, if just...Africa infrastructure could be transformed by a genie to resemble Iowa's, if a few billion could be invested in irrigation efficiency in India and coastal regions of Asia, if the developed world becomes vegetarian, if the harvest index can be pushed ever higher. Meanwhile, back in the real world, global food security is growing ever more tenuous. Per capita grain production is declining in some regions, and ominous signs of natural resource decline and biological breakdown in major cropping systems can no longer be ignored. Emerging signs of trouble has led two newly appointed leaders of UN system institutions -- Gus Speth, Administrator of UNDP and Jacques Diouf, Director General of FAO -- to speak forcefully of the need to move global food security to the top of the UNCED implementation agenda. Most worrisome is the decline in the growth of rice yields, and declining response to fertilizer, irrigation, and pesticide inputs. Dr. Kenneth Cassman and Dr. P.L. Pingali work for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and have completed a comprehensive study of rice yields. They write -- * "In the 1980s, area expansion [of rice production] virtually halted. Most of the increase in rice output from 1964-81 resulted from increased yield, but growth rates decreased from 2.6% per annum in the 1970s to 1.5% from 1981-88." * "Concurrent with the decrease in yield growth rate, aggregate data from some countries suggest declining partial factor productivity for certain inputs...In Indonesia from 1976-86, for example, total rice production increased by 70%, mostly due to increases in yield, whereas estimates of nitrogen (N) fertilizer use on rice increased by 440%." (Quotes from "Chapter 5: Extrapolating Trends from Long-term Experiments to Farmers' Fields: The Case of Irrigated Rice Systems in Asia", in Agricultural Sustainability in Economic, Environmental, and Statistical Terms, forthcoming 1994). Farm land receiving high levels of fertilizer and pesticides in specialized, monoculture-based systems, are showing signs of biological trouble, in some cases collapse, all over the world. Tropical and sub-tropical regions are proving the most unforgiving when farmers ignore the need to sustain soil quality. Changes in microbial activity and soil structure are altering the efficiency of nutrient uptake, and probably also heightening susceptibility to root pathogens. Adverse changes in soil quality can occur when high levels of nutrients and pesticides are added to certain cropping systems, materials which in combination exert profound, albeit often short-lived, pressure on soil life. Over time, microbial communities have become less diverse, and more frequently subject to rapid, distinct spikes/troughs in population levels. The outcome is greater periodic vulnerability of plants to pathogenic microorganisms, leading to impaired root development, the onset of disease, and/or poor expression of a plant's genetic immune capability. It is possible that convent- ional breeding and selection for resistance has contributed to heightened vulnerability to once innocuous soil pathogens, in effect trading broad-based resistance to most pests and environmental stresses for high levels of resistance to particular pathogens and insects. B. Shifting Gears Modern agricultural science and technology, despite its vital contributions to meeting food security needs, has been, in a sense, blinded by success. Some chemical-intensive systems have been pushed beyond the breaking point. A growing cadre of scientists, most working in the developing world, recognize its time to pull back from the global food security precipice we now are approaching. The search is on for the most reliable path to sustainable agricultural development, a search now guided by the sound principles and strategies embodied in Agenda 21. It is indisputable that crop yield increases per unit area must carry the lion's share of the burden in increasing food production in step with food demand and population growth. Given that yields are stabilizing or declining in most of the intensively farmed regions of the world, is it realistic to expect another "Green Revolution" to come along, pushing average yields higher, perhaps through the wonders of biotechnology? Not if we stick to the present paradigm of agricultural development, which views farming largely as an input-output, materials handling process. Achieving a higher degree of global food security will depend on reversing the decline in natural resource productivity, and in enhancing the biological productivity and resiliency of farming systems. The answer is not more pounds of hotter fertilizer and pesticides per hectare. It will arise from success in restoring the biological integrity of soils, worldwide, so that they support higher and more diverse microbial communities, hold and provide more nutrients per acre (both from fertilizer and natural sources), and take in and store more water. Farmers, agricultural institutions and policy-makers, the USDA, and agribusiness need to re-think the importance of building soil quality -- those well-known physical and biological properties that must be steadily enhanced in order for farmers to consistently increase levels of production. The wise use of inputs will remain an integral part of this process, but natural cycles and ecological processes must be its foundation. This will not happen without a paradigm shift in farming system design, without major change in the conduct and priorities governing agricultural research, and in policies shaping decision-making on the farm. Beginning with the 1985 farm bill process, the U.S. government has been engaged in important debate on policy and institutional changes needed to accommodate the shift from engineering-based, to biologically-based farming systems. Ideally, policy reform should accommodate gradual, systematic change, and in this way avoid the need for more draconian measures. I turn now to some issues the President's Council could address in advising the Administration on ways to move ahead with such a gradual, science-based transition toward sustainable agriculture here in America. C. Sustainable Development: Leading Indicators for the U.S. Agricultural Sector Sustainable agriculture is now accepted in the U.S. as a worthy goal. Disagreement persists regarding whether we are moving toward or away from sustainable agriculture, and whether changes in policy and priorities are needed. In debating policy reforms and judging whether they are working we need a way to "keep score". One constructive step the President's Council could take would be to issue, or call upon the government to develop (and report in the annual Economic Report of the President), a set of "Leading Indicators" of sustainable agriculture. Such indicators should be designed to provide insights into the direction and rate of change in agriculture -- its economic status, environmental performance, capacity to meet both domestic and global food security needs, and stewardship of resources. Exemplary indicators are discussed below, reflecting the breadth of considerations inherent in the concept of sustainable agriculture. For the sake of discussion, some national goals are described which could be recommended to the Executive Branch for incorporation in the 1995 farm bill, or other appropriate legis- lative vehicles, like re-authorization of the Clean Water Act or the long-awaited pesticide reform package released last Tuesday. Resources and Environment 1. Efficient use of plant nutrients Two key measures involving nitrogen: 1) the efficiency of nutrient utilization (percent of total N available to the system relative to N utilized by the crop); 2) dependence on off-farm sources (percent of total nutrients available in the farming system that are derived off the farm, by volume and on the basis of BTU equivalents). National Goals -- 75% nutrient use efficiency per farm, 85% in high priority, vulnerable water-sheds. No more than 50% of total nutrient needs from off-farm, energy intensive sources 2. Soil quality and conservation Erosion: 1) monitor percent of land in given area eroding over 5 tons per acre, and percent over 10 tons per acre; 2) include in USDA natural resource surveys and research measures of the biological integrity of soils, including data on compaction, organic matter content, and biological activity. Goals -- Erosion control: no more than 20% of cultivated land in any year eroding over 5 tons/acre, in a county/water-shed size region; no more than 5% over 10 tons per acre. Soil quality: 1) assure that by the end of the 1995 farm bill (year 2000), soil quality is increasing on more acres than it is declining in the U.S.; 2) establish a research and policy agenda to assure that soil quality is stabilized or growing on virtually all farm land in America by 2010. 3. Pest management and food safety Monitor attainment of the President's goal of significant reduction in the number of pesticide acre-treatments, and the volume of use weighted according to risk. Establish risk- weighted pesticide use baselines by crop/state for high priority foods, using averages for 1990-1992. Goals -- 1) reduce risk-weighted volume of use by 50% by 2000 through reduction in use and/or phase out of the most hazardous B/2 carcinogens and Tox Category 1 pesticides; 2) reduce use by 80% by 2010 through adoption of bio-intensive IPM on 90% of all areas of high consumption fruits and vegetables. Economics and Communities 4. Rural economic growth and activity Monitor diversity of the economic base and the extent to which income generating activities are kept within the community, in predominantly rural counties. Measure: 1) % total income from sale of agricultural commodities in unprocessed form; 2) diversity of ag/food sector income base; and 3) % of agricultural income spent on inputs brought into region. Goals -- within a region: 1) increase by 33% the total "value-added" income stream derived from raw agricultural products produced in a region, striving toward at least 50 percent; 2) assure that at least 50% of total agricultural/food industry income is derived from value- added activities; 3) increase diversity of ag/food industry economic base, such that no crop/product accounts for more than 25% of total sales in unprocessed form, or 40% in processed form. I appreciate the chance to offer these comments before the Scoping Group. The world is looking to the United States for creative ideas and motivation in acting on the challenges of Agenda 21. Given the global significance of U.S. agriculture, our remarkable agricultural S+T infrastructure, and influence on international development policies and priorities, there is no more important area for the U.S. to fully rise to UNCED's challenge.