Setting the Agenda for Global Agriculture - Roundtable discussion

Dr Claire Cockcroft

While we in the west are living lifestyles of over-consumption, a burgeoning global population is placing heavy demands on the planet. By 2020 there will be 2 to 3 billion more people to feed, about 90% living in the poorest parts of the world. This overcrowded world will be more polluted, ecologically fragile and vulnerable to disruption. With population growth outpacing the capacity to produce food, and a concomitant escalation in the use of agrochemicals, agriculture has reached a crossroads. Should we continue along the road to ruin or should science be allowed to save the situation?

Researchers from around the world gathered to discuss the issue at “Global Agriculture 2020: which way forward?” held at the John Innes centre, Norwich, a centre of excellence for plant research. Agriculture will come under renewed pressure in the years ahead and its future in guaranteeing food security depends on harnessing the benefit of contemporary science alongside traditional best practices and indigenous knowledge, to enhance productivity in a sustainable way, without compromising ecological security.

Technological revolution
Contemporary and emerging scientific technologies have unprecedented transformative power. They will become increasingly political because they shape the way we live and change not only nature, but also social and economic relations between and within countries. Technology sharing allows indigenous development of capability and competitiveness whereas subsidised access to markets does not. However, technology has yet to penetrate the everyday lives of billions of people living in rural regions of less developed countries (LDCs).

By 2020, 50% of the population will be living in cities, not engaged in food production. The shift towards urbanisation and rising consumerism places greater demands on an increasingly overstretched agricultural resource that is managed and maintained by a dwindling agrarian class. Agriculture provides a livelihood for about 55% Indians, but this year food production has dropped by 5%. Farming no longer represents guaranteed profitability. Future agricultural strategies must enable poor farmers to escape from poverty which is widespread globally – 60% Africans live in extreme poverty.

Prof Swaminathan pointed out that a major challenge already confronting world agriculture is attracting and retaining youth into farming and making it intellectually stimulating. Introducing new methods into the field, and improving access to information technologies that improve agricultural efficiency, could raise the profile of farming and attract young people into agriculture. The technological explosion has seen a digital divide develop between those who have access to information technology and those that do not, a kind of “technological apartheid” as Swaminathan calls it. Establishing mechanisms facilitating technology transfer and sharing of valuable resources are essential for enhancing agricultural productivity at the local level.

Identifying needs by listening to farmers and consumers
There is a well-established methodology for improving yields under the conditions found in the UK for example. However, it is hard to know how to raise yield and income under the conditions found on small farms in LDCs. Scientists are realising the importance of working with farmers to identify their needs, so that new, culturally-acceptable technologies can be offered. Introducing tissue culture and micro-propagation techniques into small rural farming communities has provided farmers with disease-free plantlets, raising yields and encouraging entrepreneurialism. This was successfully demonstrated on Kenyan banana plantations.

Emphasising that new methods or varieties will raise productivity is not enough because experience has shown that increased income does not necessarily follow. Farmers need to be assured of income incentive, not just yield increases, and want the ability to compete in the global market place. However, for small-scale farmers, the inherent financial risk associated with new methods could outweigh the potential benefit they might reap. It is not a question of making a poor versus a mediocre profit, but whether they will survive.

Support mechanisms from industry, education and communication are crucial for gaining acceptance and participation in new strategies. Public-private partnerships will be instrumental in ensuring that the poor do not lose out on the benefits of biotechnology, enhancing the capability of LDCs to produce food and access markets. But a local integrated infrastructure is vital.

At the Swaminathan research institute in Madras, traditional organic farming flourishes alongside modern methods of tissue culture, micro-propagation and genetic modification. “Designer potatoes” with enhanced amino acid composition have improved nutritional value and tobacco plants, tolerating high salinity, are a precaution against the rising tides brought by a changing climate, a trait that can be engineered into rice. Prof Swaminathan is also cultivating interest in technology and IT among rural communities, encouraging them to embrace new practices to improve farming where appropriate. The Bio-Village project is one example: internet facilities allow rural communities to access information of all kinds, from the weather forecast to more entrepreneurial issues about how to sell produce and access markets.

Climate concerns
Social, political and economic volatility are on the horizon, as water and fertile land become scarce commodities, compounded by increasing desertification and urbanisation. A changing climate will exaggerate the existing environmental disparity between developed and developing countries and may extend the geographical zones of pests and diseases, decreasing global yields and heightening the risk of hunger.

Drought, predicted to affect 4 billion by 2050, rising temperatures and soil infertility, affecting 50% of the world’s arable land, will limit crop yields and present new challenges for science. Engineering crops “shaped to the environment” to combat environmental stresses, or use nutrients and water more efficiently, will enhance agricultural efficiency and offer promise for sustainable local food production.

Sophisticated software analysis tools, genomic resources and private sector knowledge facilitate the identification of genes that have been selected for adaptation to environmental stress. This improves the speed and efficiency of crop design. Establishing appropriate mechanisms for transferring technologies and associated benefits to those most in need in LDCs, while compensating those providing access to biological resources, is key but difficult to orchestrate. Would corporations invest in and further develop technology for use in LDCs and would they oppose anyone who wanted to leverage that technology in a situation not commercially attractive to the IPR originator?

Synergy between ecology and biotechnology
The world is moving forward at different rates, in Asia, for example, agriculture provides a livelihood for 60% of the population compared with 2% in the UK. However, over 70% of land in the UK is used for agriculture compared to about 8% in Canada. Consequently the practices implemented in the UK can potentially influence the environment quite significantly.  This can also have a large impact on the political climate and local lifestyles in countries like Britain, where land use is such a significant part of the infrastructure, as demonstrated during the Foot and Mouth crisis.
 

Pest, nutrient, soil and water management strategies must be improved globally to prevent further damage to the environment and biodiversity. Issues need to be considered on a regional basis and the most appropriate technology chosen to solve the problems.

Pests are an ever-increasing threat, requiring vast quantities of pesticides to safeguard yields. Decades of intensive agriculture and pesticide use have had dire consequences on the environment, biodiversity and human health. Prof Jikun Huang of the Centre of Chinese Agricultural Policy reported that thousands of Chinese farmers suffer from pesticide-related illness and hundreds die every year. Transgenic technology offers an alternative to environmentally-unsound chemical treatments. 8 million hectares of cotton are cultivated in India, requiring 50% of India’s pesticide consumption. Despite this, yields are below the global average. Fields trials with BT , genetically engineered to contain a bacterial protein that protects plants against insect invaders, raised yields by 40-70% and decreased pesticide requirement. Professor Marc Van Montagu believes, “biotechnology can bring solutions to ecology by using fewer chemicals” and “by opposing this technology, the green movement should realise they are blocking a lot of progress for preserving ecology”.

Nutritional concerns
Professor Swaminathan called for an integrated nutritional strategy to address the nutritional security of the underprivileged. According to the WHO, malnutrition affects about 800 million worldwide — in India, 53% children aged 1-4 are underweight, over 50% are stunted, 47-90% are anaemic, and millions worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency, a cause of blindness and death. Malnutrition directly affects the physical and mental development of future generations, threatening the security of communities. One of today’s greatest nutritional problems is malnutrition in pregnant women. This has severe implications for foetal development causing a low birth rate and low birth weight, and has life-long repercussions.
 

Crop diversity 
There is a lack of diversity within current food production systems, which can lead to vulnerability and compromise food security. With about 6 crops providing over 90% of global food needs, agriculture needs to widen this currently very narrow food basket from the major staples, corn, rice, wheat and potatoes to include beans, pulses and legumes. While funding is plentiful for rice and wheat, support for cassava, yams, cowpeas and plantains, important crops for many countries including Africa, is not in the same league. Sweet potato, one of the first crops to be domesticated in man’s early agricultural days, holds tremendous potential for food security and sustainable agriculture in the long-term because it is well suited to low-input farming and some varieties are naturally very rich in B-carotene, aiding the battle against malnutrition.

Distribution
Food is a political weapon and distribution is often presented as the solution to food insecurity. For decades some have argued that food security could be overcome through addressing supply imbalances between regions such as northern and southern hemisphere. However, in many parts of the world food insecurity is caused by political unrest and lack of infrastructure or internal transportation. Between regions, the subject of imbalances has been discussed for decades with little or no resolution on account of the complex political dimensions encumbered within agreements such as the Common Agricultural Policy and WTO. Distribution of profits, however, is another matter altogether and may be a way of re-distributing the benefits of technology.

Towards Agricultural Multifunctionality
An increasingly diverse range of plants will be cropping up in agriculture, as scientists and farmers recognise the power of these “solar-driven production plants” to produce a spectacular selection of non-food products. As oil reserves become depleted, new windows of opportunity will open for agriculture with the farms of the future likely to be producing lubricants, industrial composites, biodegradable polymers, pharmaceuticals and improved animal feed – a truly “multifunctional agriculture”. Agriculture and food production may become separate cultural and economical entities.

Researchers at DuPont are using traditional breeding and biochemical-based approaches as well as transgenic methods to develop soybeans and corn with novel qualities. Commodity soybeans contain high levels of undigestable carbohydrates, like raffinose. Soybeans containing a higher proportion of sucrose are more digestable and “high lysine” varieties are nutritionally superior. Modifying soybean oil composition has improved flavour stability, shelf life and health attributes. This “high oleic acid” seed oil has other additional applications – as an environmentally-friendly industrial lubricant that has a similar performance to petroleum-based alternatives.

Public Perception
Huge financial commitments are being made by private and public sector to create novel products of many kinds, but a major hurdle for the near-term will be gaining public confidence in the technology. There is widespread concern about the implications of this roller coaster of technological change and consequential social change. As Robin Grove White, Chair of Greenpeace UK, puts it, “automatic deference can no longer be counted on”, it is a thing of the past. People are inherently suspicious of scientists. Those from the public sector are no longer seen to be impartial due to financial inputs from industry and multinationals are seen to have a vested economic interest. Furthermore, within a capitalist system as it is currently perceived, commercial interests are assumed to cynically take precedence over moral obligations and imperatives.

Science has a social function and communication is urgently needed on a global scale. But who will rise to the challenge since scientists and companies are not altogether objective or unbiased in their viewpoints? In the absence of facts presented in a clear and compelling fashion, the debate will be governed by misconception and misplaced fear of the unknown. As Prof Alan Gray from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said, “the future of agriculture may actually depend on the ability of the persuaders”.

Addressing the future
The progression of society has always been driven by myriad technological innovations. By 2020 the worlds’ people will be poorer and agriculture faces tough decisions if it is to supply enough food and a balanced diet for 8 billion. Transgenic plants, wisely designed and used, will add to the sustainability of agriculture: conventional practices require land to be adjusted to suit the plants whereas GM technology allows plants to be adjusted to the environment. Local, sustainable production is crucial for achieving food security and investment in communication and funding at a local level is essential, enabling technology to be developed and implemented where it is most needed.

The “green revolution” of the late 1960s averted widespread famine, largely by introducing high-yielding, “modern semi-dwarf” varieties of rice and wheat--. Future global agricultural strategies should adopt a “bottom-up” model as oppose to the “top-down” model on the basis that this approach will address the farmers’ needs. Prof Swaminathan advocates an “evergreen revolution”, through the application of appropriate technology, to provide a sustainable global agriculture that conserves natural resources, and a perennial green revolution in which everyone can share right down to the poorest farmer in the poorest part of the world.

While eco-terrorists destroy valuable GM test sites, brandishing “save the world” banners, they fail to see that this is what scientists are seeking to do. Incorporating contemporary technologies into traditional practices, within a global framework, represents a new renaissance for agriculture, enabling more food to be produced from less land using fewer chemicals and natural resources. But unless more acceptable levels of resource consumption and reductions in emissions are also achieved, the high-consumption lifestyles currently enjoyed by the few could irretrievably threaten the environment and global prosperity.

The conference emphasised we stand at a decisive crossroad. Science and technology offer a route towards global food security, improving the health of the most needy, as well as providing independence, income and personal fulfilment. Whether we are allowed to take this direction depends on the interplay between economic interests, the mechanisms established to facilitate technology transfer, improved accessibility to technologies in developing countries and public opinion. Agriculture must become more sustainable, blending innovation with traditional knowledge while preserving biodiversity and resources, but the future of farming may ultimately depend on the power of the persuaders.