THE DILEMMA OF PRODUCTIVITY VS SUSTAINABILITY

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Introduction

• Agriculture faces the daunting challenge of producing more food to meet the nutrition needs of a growing world population while at the same time coping with climate change and ever-tightening natural resource constraints.
• This challenge is made even more complex by the fact that unless safe and nutritious food is affordable, and reliably accessible, food insecurity and malnutrition will persist.

 

Concerns about Agriculture

• There are many concerns about agriculture. They include sustainability of the agricultural enterprise, the use and role of pesticides, the place of biotechnology and genetic modification, and agriculture’s effects upon the environment.

 

Sustainability

• Current agricultural practices may threaten future global food security and will have negative effects on global food production. The total agricultural area has decreased since 2000, fertilizer and pesticide consumption have increased, water use efficiency has increased, and available water sources are already being used for irrigation.
• Water use for agriculture peaked in 1980 and has decreased every year since due to improved irrigation system efficiency, in spite of an increasing number of acres irrigated.
• Population growth and increasing living standards around the world will intensify the risks of a global food crisis in the coming decades.
• It is crucial that any sustainable agricultural system must increase crop yields and simultaneously decrease the environmental effects of agricultural intensification.

 

Pesticides

• Pesticides and other agricultural technology have made it possible to feed a growing human population and protect millions of people.
• Pesticides increase crop yields and cause harm to the environment, to people, and other creatures.
• Pesticides have been aggressively promoted and are generally accepted within the agricultural community, as essential to maintaining yields and feeding a growing world population. But there are also legitimate global human rights concerns because of their detrimental effects.
• The UN General Assembly report denies the claim that pesticides are necessary to feed the world. It regards them as a short-term, but not a sustainable solution that helps achieve adequate food and health for all.

 

Antibiotics

• There is great concern about the increasing incidence of poor performance of antibiotics for treatment of human diseases due to bacterial resistance because of their use in livestock enterprises.
• These very effective, necessary medicinal products originally developed to protect human health, have become less and less useful as resistance to them has become more common due to widespread use in animal/poultry production for disease prevention and growth promotion and over-prescribing them for human problems.

 

Loss of Biodiversity

• Between 0.01% and 0.1% of all known species become extinct every year. We are losing between 200 and 2000 species every year.
• The earth is undergoing a sixth extinction and global warming and man’s activities, including agriculture, are the primary causes.
• Scientists estimate that we are losing species at a rate 1000 to 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate, the rate that would occur if humans were not involved.

 

Summary of Main Challenges for Food and Agriculture
	Structural challenge	Productivity challenge	Sustainability challenge	Climate change challenges and opportunities
Argentina	Investment in rural and transport infrastructure	Regional and product differences in productivity growth	Deforestation, increased use of inputs affecting water and air quality	Increasing frequency of extreme weather events, melting of glaciers
Australia	Increasing differences between small and large farms. Remoteness of some farms	Availability of new technology. Drought and water shortages constrain productivity growth	Water and soil constraints, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions	More severe water constraints
Brazil	Dualistic structure	Large productivity gap between subsistence and commercial farms	Land management, GHG emissions	Not included in the review
Canada	Production quotas, weak food industry, and small domestic market	Mainly in the dairy sector	Land management affecting biodiversity, regional water quality issues from excess nutrients	Better growing conditions in some regions, increased frequency of extreme weather events (floods, droughts), potential increase in pest and disease
China	Small farms dominate. Income gap between rural and urban households	Water resource constraints, small farms	Water resources constraints, pollution of soils and water, and expansion of intensive livestock production	Rising temperatures, more frequent extreme weather events, spread of pests and disease
Colombia	Small, subsistence farms	Large differences by commodity sector. Low productivity in dairy farms due to small scale, high input prices, poor transport infrastructure and inefficient value chain	Land management affecting biodiversity, GHG emissions, and intensive use of inputs	Rising and more erratic precipitations causing soil degradation. Rising temperatures requiring moving production in higher altitudes (Coffee). Melting of glaciers and disappearance of moorland
Estonia	Dualistic structure	Productivity driven by a small number of larger farms, high growth rates reflecting catch up	Local water pollution by nutrients	Better growing conditions despite potential increase in pests and diseases, and rainfall variability
Japan	Increasing differences between small and large farms	Labour shortages and ageing	High nutrient surplus driven by intensive use of fertiliser, GHG emissions.	Increased frequency of extreme weather events (typhoons)
Korea	Small farms dominate. Income gap between rural and urban households	Productivity gap with manufacturing sector, small farms	High nutrient surplus. Expansion of intensive livestock production, increasing nutrient surplus and GHG emissions	More typhoons; more erratic monsoons; warming in the South
Latvia	Dualistic structure	Productivity driven by a small number of larger farms, high growth rates reflecting catch up	Local water pollution by nutrients	Better growing conditions, increase in pest and disease, and rainfall variability
Netherlands	High land prices	Sustain growth with higher constraints	Water pollution by nutrients, GHG emissions and biodiversity	Increased frequency of extreme weather events, Water management
Sweden	Areas with natural handicaps (northern latitudes)	Low and declining growth rate for some sectors	Eutrophication, biodiversity and GHG emissions	Better growing conditions, prolonged cultivation period, climate favourable to other crops
Switzerland	Areas with natural handicaps (mountains)	Low and declining growth rate	Nitrogen surplus does not meet country targets	--
Turkey	Large number of small farms	Productivity gap between small and larger farms	Water scarcity, water quality and soil erosion	Increased water stress and temperature increase affecting agriculture
United States	Labour shortage	Declining growth rate	Water scarcity, pollution and soil erosion particularly in certain regions	Higher frequency of extreme weather events, higher water constraints in some regions

 

• Whether it is protecting the inherent value of forests and soil quality, migrating during dry seasons, or accessing better technology to boost crop yields, farmers are already driving solutions to the interconnected problems of food insecurity and climate change.

 

The case of India

• Less than 4 per cent of Indian farmers have adopted sustainable agricultural practices and systems, according to a study by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW).
• The study, supported by the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), found that scaling up sustainable agriculture would be critical to improve farm incomes and bolster India's nutrition security in a climate-constrained future.
• States such as Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim have already taken a lead in sustainable agriculture.

 

Way Ahead: Climate-resilient Agriculture

• Climate-resilient agriculture (CRA) is an approach that includes sustainably using existing natural resources through crop and livestock production systems to achieve long-term higher productivity and farm incomes under climate variabilities.
• This practice reduces hunger and poverty in the face of climate change for forthcoming generations.
• Improved access and utilisation of technology like Gene Editing, transparent trade regimes, increased use of resources conservation technologies, an increased adaptation of crops and livestock to climatic stress are the pre-requisities.
• Most countries have been facing crises due to disasters and conflicts; food security, however, is adversely affected by inadequate food stocks, basic food price fluctuations, high demand for agro-fuels, and abrupt weather changes.

 

Strategies and technologies for climate change adaptation

Gene Editing

• Gene editing is a method to generate DNA modifications at precise genomic locations.
• These modifications can result in the knockout or knockdown of one or undesirable multiple genes.
• This could have a very significant impact in reducing antimicrobial and antiparasitic drug usage and help overcome the challenges of resistance to chemical treatment, as well as the problem of environmental contamination with drug residues.

 

Tolerant crops

• Patterns of drought may need various sets of adaptive forms.
• Example: To reach deficient downpour conditions, early maturing and drought-tolerant cultivars of green gram (BM 2002-1), chickpea and pigeon pea (BDN-708) were brought on selected farmer’s fields in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra (rainfall of 645 millimetres).
• This provided 20-25 per cent higher yield than the indigenous cultivars.

 

Water management

• Water-smart technologies like a furrow-irrigated raised bed, micro-irrigation, rainwater harvesting structure, cover-crop method, greenhouse, laser land levelling, reuse wastewater, deficit irrigation and drainage management can support farmers to decrease the effect of variations of climate.
• Various technologies based on a precision estimation of crop water needs; groundwater recharge techniques; adoption of scientific water conservation methods; altering the fertilizer and irrigation schedules; cultivating less water requiring varieties; adjusting the planting dates; irrigation scheduling; and adopting zero-tillage which may help farmers to reach satisfactory crop yields, even in deficit rainfall and warmer years.

 

Agro-advisory

• Response farming is an integrative approach; it could be called farming with advisories taken from the technocrats depending on local weather information.
• The success of response farming, viz., decreased danger and enhanced productivity has already been taken in Tamil Nadu and many other states.
• Response farming can be a viable choice for climate change adoption strategies, for the variations of climate is not a sudden one.
• The main cause for the success of response farming is because of both location and time-specific technologies.
• It is time to take forward the success of response farming to the entire farming community.

 

Soil organic carbon

• Different farm management practices can increase soil carbon stocks and stimulate soil functional stability.
• Conservation agriculture technologies (reduced tillage, crop rotations, and cover crops), soil conservation practices (contour farming) and nutrient recharge strategies can refill soil organic matter by giving a protective soil cover.
• Integrated nutrient management deals with the application of organic and inorganic fertilizers, in addition to farmyard manure, vermicompost, legumes in rotation, and crop residue for sustaining soil health for the long term.
• Feeding the soil instead of adding fertilizers to the crop without organic inputs is the key point for the long-term sustainability of Indian agriculture.

 

National Programmes for climate change adaptation

• The National Mission of Sustainable Agriculture was implemented in 2010 under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) to promote the judicious management of available resources and this was one of the eight missions under NAPCC.
• The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY) was launched in 2015 to address the issues of water resources and provide a permanent solution that envisages Per Drop More Crop, by promoting micro / drip irrigation for the conservation of maximum water.
• The Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana mission was executed to extensively leverage adaptation of climate-smart practices and technologies in conjunction with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and state governments of India.
• To mitigate climate extreme actions, Green India Mission was launched by the GOI in 2014 under the umbrella of NAPCC with the primary objective of protecting, restoring and enhancing India’s diminishing forest covers, thereby reducing the deleterious effects of climate change.
• To protect the soil health, GOI has launched the Soil Health Card scheme with the main objective of analysing cluster soil samples and advocating farmers regarding their land fertility status. Additionally, Neem-Coated Urea was also introduced to minimise the excess addition of urea fertilizers, thereby protecting soil health and supplying plant nitrogen.
• To encourage farmers with more income benefit and ecosystem protection, programmes such as the National Project on Organic Farming and National Agroforestry Policy was introduced in 2004 and 2014 respectively.
• These policies are aimed at supplying plant nutrients in the form of organic amendments, soil carbon stock improvement, and soil protection from erosion loss.

 

Role Models

• Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, etc, have already initiated several programmes to adopt and promote organic farming practices on a wider scale. Sikkim is an organic state.
• The ICAR, through its network research Institutes, state agriculture universities and all line departments is implementing agriculture contingency plans in about 650 districts of India towards climate change preparedness for the last seven years.
• These models are taken forward to SAARC countries towards adaptation to climate change impacts like floods, cyclones, droughts, and heat waves and seawater intrusion.
• ICAR has established climate-resilient villages across India in 151 districts, which are replicated by the state governments towards the overall objective of building carbon positive villages.

 

Way ahead

• In a nutshell, following steps are crucial to build climate resilient agriculture systems and achieve sustainable development goals (SDG) in India:

1. Adaptation of appropriate mitigation technologies such as the cultivation of tolerant breeds to overcome the climate stress
2. Water and nutrient management for efficient productivity and resource utilisation
3. Agro-advisories for timely crop monitoring
4. Conservation agricultural practices to build soil organic carbon and to build congenial environment for plant growth, manure management
5. Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from all agriculture and non-agricultural sources has to be prioritised. The introduction of neem-coated urea is one such policy intervention
6. Structured training is essential to build confidence in stakeholders and sensitise them to understand the climate change events
7. Fine tuning the gap between current management practices and essential agro-advisories
8. Flagship farmer-oriented programmes are needed to improvise skills in agriculture and allied sectors
9. Collaboration between farmers, research institutions, funding agencies, governments, and non-government organisations and private sectors combine strengths to promote CRA.

 

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/8/7/116/htm