‘Industrial agriculture hurts land — conservation farming heals it’

Subhrendu Pattanayak

is Oak Professor of

Environmental

and Energy Policy at

Duke University

. Discussing

land degradation

caused by industrial agriculture, the prominent environmental economist outlines healthier conservation farming in

Times Evoke

:

Conservation agriculture means a form of farming that is environmentally safe and has a conservation goal — that is, to grow enough crop (including food, fibre, wood and livestock) without drawing down natural capital too severely. This can be achieved by utilising less fertiliser and pesticide, using less water and applying more natural means to conserve soil quality and quantity.


Industrial agriculture is the opposite — it aims to grow more food cheaply and quickly. But the ‘cheapness’ here uses more expensive chemical inputs and ignores some of the true social costs of this type of farming — we need to be far more aware of this now because soil and land degradation are globally a rising concern. Worryingly, there is little evidence that this degradation is being reversed. Few of the successes in this sphere come from low and middle income countries (outside of, say, China or Costa Rica). And India faces the same risks as others, given how fragile our environment is in almost every dimension — consider the air quality in our cities, water conditions, the state of our forests, levels of ocean acidification, etc. There is no doubt that soil degradation will present India with a major challenge — and conservation agriculture is an absolutely vital mitigation strategy now.



I am often asked if conservation agriculture can work on small holdings of land as are typical in India. There is no data to suggest that conservation agriculture is viable only if you do lots of it — it is not as if it works only if you are pulling in so much land, labour and capital. The real hurdles in its adoption are that conservation farming depends on the incentives faced by farmers with small holdings, including being patient for longer periods of time to tide over the absence of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Eventually, their farms generate high enough yields — but they need support in the short run. This support could be in the form of higher premiums in the markets — that is, buyers are happier to pay more for conservation farming because they believe that the products they consume are safe (there are less chemicals in these) and because they like protecting the environment.

Subhrendu Pattanayak

When we discuss the differences between industrial and conservation farming, it is very important to distinguish between high ‘short run’ yields, which you get from pumping fields with fertilisers, pesticides and water, which is itself growing scarce, and high ‘long run’ yields. It is also very important to distinguish between a system that will give you more food (via high yields) versus another that will give you enough food, but also a cleaner environment, high water tables, fewer health complications and similar significant benefits.



But the most powerful difference is how the two systems weigh the importance of nature and ecosystems. Conservation farming is oriented to give a high weight and central importance to nature and ecosystems. Industrial farming, as currently practised, gives this zero or little weight — ecosystems and nature are simply not important in this system. Again, industrial farming is only responding to market and regulatory signals. If there is no direct cost to industrial farmers of using too much fertiliser, pesticide, water, etc., why should they change these practices? However, if they had to pay a high tax (commensurate with the damage associated with overuse), then they would use less and we would all benefit from greater land conservation. Incentives to move in the right direction arise from institutions that generate policies and signals — and right now, there are too few of these.

On the flip side, although conservation farming generates all these social benefits, such farmers are not rewarded amply. There are methods by which we could value the fruits of conservation farming more fairly. For example, if thousands of consumers were willing to pay a bit more for these products or the government, foundations or third parties would give conservation farmers subsidies to reward them for these benefits in terms of nature and ecosystem services, many more people would choose to be conservation farmers and fewer people would become industrial farmers. The signals are distorted — but to save the land, which is the very foundation of our lives, these need to be sorted out, and on a priority basis.

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