Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["Jillian Lenne" <<address removed>>]

I'm Dave Wood, with experience of working for DFID (in the old days) GTZ and
the CGIAR in Latin America and Africa.

Over the past decade or more a major problem for agricultural science for
development has been environmental conditionality, based on the belief that
agriculture destroys the environment and in particular, biodiversity.

As a result, throughout the developing world funds for nature reserves and
biodiversity have increased and funds for agricultural research have fallen.

This is not a problem of inadequate science, but of a neglect of
presentation and policy influence. I would urge DFID to be aware that
without past increases in crop productivity directly resulting from
agricultural science vast areas of `wildlands' would have been lost and
replaced by low-yield farming with some supposedly `environmental' bonus.

The signs are there throughout the past debate. First, a general
disparagement of `monocultures'. Yet all our staple cereals (rice, wheat,
sorghum etc.) have immediate wild relatives growing in natural monodominant
vegetation - natural fields. Multiple examples of simple stable and quite
natural vegetation bring into question the demand for `polycultures' (and
question the wisdom of desk-bound polyculturists against the environmental
management of early farmers).

Second, a belief in `local adaptation', whatever that means. Most tropical
crops have their centres of production on continents other that their home
(Purseglove got this right 40 years ago). This is the basis of plantation
agriculture - getting perennial crops away from all the co-evolved nasties
that are found at home. With all this local pest and disease pressure crops
are generally `dis-adapted'. This is why farmers worldwide want new
varieties and new crops. Yet there are still calls from those in developed
countries for poor peasant to go on growing their biologically-stressed and
failing varieties.

Third, following from the first two, a general belief that `biodiverse' and
indigenous agriculture is somehow better, more stable, more productive,
whatever. This is the credo of agroecology and the recently promoted
`ecoagriculture', and parts of organic farming.  Here the science kicks in.
These beliefs seem to be based on decades-old and now superseded beliefs of
ecological science on diversity and stability. Yet however old and
dangerous, such beliefs are presented to policy-makers as magic bullets.

Competent, productivity-increasing agricultural science is not enough -
witness the fatuous debate over the Farm Scale Trials of GM crops in
Britain, where the guideline was more weeds for bird food (tell that to a
lady with a hoe in Africa and hands up those who have ever seen or cared
about a grey partridge). Presentation of science (and also a strong
challenge to yet more tropical conservation) will be needed if scientists
wish to be heard. As a sign of slipping reality, the once critical
contribution of the CGIAR to feeding people is being diluted by fringe
activities such as the `Ecoagriculture initiative', seemingly an attempt to
get donors such as USAID and DFID to fund organic farming in developing
countries. This is not on any reasonable attempt to meet any market
opportunities, but on the conservationist absolute of making agriculture
`biodiversity friendly' (but without the subsidies we can afford in
developed countries).

And even the science of conservation biology cannot guard protected areas
against the real world. Despite billions of dollars in support, most
protected areas have been re-occupied by farmers, despite all the science
underpinning yet more conservation.

My recipe for DFID is simple. Introduced crops, simple fields,
productivity-increasing and land-saving agricultural science, and encourage
farmers back into the vast tropical protected areas from which they have
been excluded by imported, questionable, and even synthetic concerns over
biodiversity. And Britain must avoid protectionist rhetoric: example, recent
demands that Brazil must not develop the `pristine' Amazon by soybean and
wheat cultivation, and beef ranches. Guess where the rhetoric originates and
guess who is exporting wheat, soybean and beef in direct competition with
Brazil.

The message for development science is to learn to promote policy
aggressively. If we do not, others will promote their own brands and
agriculture and poor people will suffer.

In a debate on biodiversity and forest policy, the late Gene Namkoong said:
`By hesitating to enter the debate, we only accede the field to the
biologically naive and find ourselves able to serve only as peripherally
significant technicians in pursuit of the objectives of the uninformed'.
This wisdom is even more true for science in agricultural policy. If we
allow non-science, or `alternative scince' or do question supposed new
paradigms that are regularly called for, people will starve.














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