free markets seem to mirror hard line communism in so many ways.
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/18908939.html
Past innovations in agriculture forced farmers away from indigenous
crops -- or off the land entirely. Sustainability is needed.
By WILLIAM G. MOSELEY
Last update: May 13, 2008 - 6:52 PM
Urban West Africa is Ground Zero in the global food crisis. From Dakar
to Abidjan, the cities in this zone have experienced more protests
against rising food prices than any other region in 2008.
The solution pushed by many global leaders is to increase crop yields
in Africa via a new green revolution. They point to the apparent
success of the last green revolution in the 1960s and '70s, a
concerted global effort in Asia and Latin America to disseminate a
high-yield crop package of hybrid seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
The problem, they argue, is that these innovations never reached
Africa. They are wrong.
The green revolution did touch Africa -- in the form of cheap Asian
rice, which began flooding African markets in the 1980s. I have been
working or conducting research in West Africa on food and agriculture
for more than 20 years. When I lived with a family on the outskirts of
Bamako, Mali, in the 1980s, they still largely ate small grains
(millet and sorghum) produced in the surrounding countryside. Today,
they mostly purchase rice from Thailand, having developed a taste over
several years for this (until recently) relatively cheap im****t.
Research shows that this pattern has been repeated in cities across
West Africa, constricting markets for locally produced grains and
forcing farmers to switch to other crops (such as cotton) as a source
of cash or abandoning farming altogether for a life in the city.
The green revolution also was not of great benefit if you were a
small, poor farmer in Asia. While the new package of hybrid seeds,
fertilizers and pesticides did dramatically increase yields, the cost
of such inputs was prohibitively expensive for the poorest farmers.
The result was a silent reorganization of the Asian countryside: The
poorest of the poor couldn't compete, so they went to work for
wealthier neighbors or moved to the city. Even wealthier farmers faced
growing input costs as insects developed resistance to the most common
pesticides, forcing the farmers to apply more and more chemicals or
switch to expensive alternatives.
Global leaders are correct in asserting that the agricultural sector
in Africa deserves more attention and sup****t. The green-revolution
approach, however, is flawed. For starters, many of the inputs
required for higher-yielding crops, especially fertilizers, are
petroleum-based. The cost of these inputs will only rise in step with
the general upward trend in energy costs. Use of im****ted seeds
(hybrid or GMO) and other inputs also concentrates power in the
boardrooms of global agrochemical firms rather than in the hands of
small farmers.
An approach emphasizing local or national food provision and
appropriate technology is more sustainable and empowering for small
West African farmers. Agricultural experiments comparing intensive
African methods (involving the use of manure and compost as inputs and
the intelligent mixing of multiple crops) to conventional Western
cropping strategies have repeatedly shown the former to be more
efficient in terms of energy consumed per unit of output. These
methods have been inhibited by cheap im****ts and by agricultural
agencies that emphasized industrial approaches to crop production.
While some emergency measures will be needed to address the food
crisis in the short term, we can do better than another green
revolution in the medium to long term. This will involve building on
the knowledge of local farmers to develop agricultural approaches that
are sustainable and accessible to the poor. It may also mean
protecting national and regional food systems from unfair competition.
For years, global and national food policies have had an urban bias in
that the provision of cheap food has almost always trumped
environmental or social costs in the countryside. The results have
been predictable: more underemployed urban residents hailing from
rural areas and fewer small farmers. West Africa has some of the best
small farmers in the world. We should sup****t, not subvert, their
genius
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