The report, Agro-ecology and the Right to Food, released yesterday, reveals that small-scale sustainable farming would even double food production within five to 10 years in places where most hungry people on the planet live.

“We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations,” Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report, said in a press release. “The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”

The report suggests moving away from the overuse of oil in farming, a problem that is magnified in the face of rising prices due to unrest in the Middle East. The focus is instead on agroecology, or eco-farming. “Agroecology seeks to improve the sustainability of agroecosystems by mimicking nature instead of industry,” reads a section.

The report shows that these practices raise productivity significantly, reduce rural poverty, increase genetic diversity, improve nutrition in local populations, serve to build a resilient food system in the face of climate change, utilize fewer and more locally available resources, empower farmers and create jobs.

Of 57 impoverished countries surveyed, for example, yields had increased by an average of nearly 80 percent when farmers used methods such as placing weed-eating ducks in rice patties in Bangladesh or planting desmodium, which repels insects, in Kenyan cornfields. These practices were also cost effective, locally available and resulted from farmers working to pass on this knowledge to each other in their communities.

While the report admits that agroecology can be more labor-intensive because of the complexity of knowledge required, it shows that this is usually a short-term issue. The report underscores that agroecology creates more jobs over the long term answering critics who argue that creating more jobs in agriculture is counter-productive. “Creation of employment in rural areas in developing countries, where underemployment is currently massive, and demographic growth remains high,” states the report, “may constitute an advantage rather than a liability and may slow down rural-urban migration.”
Mark Bittman put it aptly in his column on the UN report at the New York Times, saying:

Agro-ecology and related methods are going to require resources too, but they’re more in the form of labor, both intellectual—much research remains to be done—and physical: the world will need more farmers, and quite possibly less mechanization.

This is not the first time such a report has declared more productive ways to feed the world other than leaving that important task to large corporations. In April 2008, the IAASTD report (the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development)–which was supported by the World Bank, the UN Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization, among others, with the participation of over 60 world governments and 400 experts–found that not only would industrial food production not be able to feed the world in the long term, but the practices being employed are actually increasing hunger, exhausting resources and exacerbating climate change. However, the U.S., under the Bush Administration, was one of the countries that decided not to endorse the findings.

Though agroecological farming has benefits for industrialized countries too, both reports focus largely on what to do in the least-developed nations on the globe. The status quo for U.S. foreign policy in agriculture up until now has been to leverage our political muscle to force countries to except our subsidized crops, even if it meant destroying local agricultural economies. (Former President Bill Clinton apologized for this policy last year, saying that it has “failed everywhere it’s been tried,” and “we should have continued to work to make sure [Haiti] was self-sufficient in agriculture.”) Will the Obama Administration be more receptive to these findings and could there be a change in the way we work with other countries in our support for agriculture?

Looking back at this (proudly pro-business) administration’s follies in hiring a pesticide lobbyist as our Agricultural Trade Representative, maintaining the USDA in the confusing role of promoting and regulating agriculture, and focusing on “improved seeds,” which usually means funding for the development of genetically modified crops for poor countries and you might be discouraged.

But De Schutter argues that real change to improve the livelihoods of rural farmers requires governments to be on board. “States and donors have a key role to play here,” he said. “Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don’t open markets for chemical products or improved seeds.” In other words, feeding the worlds hungry should not be left to the market alone.

The report makes these specific recommendations for governing bodies:

• making reference to agroecology and sustainable agriculture in national strategies for the realization of the right to food and by including measures adopted in the agricultural sector in national adaptation plans of action (NAPAs) and in the list of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) adopted by countries in their efforts to mitigate climate change;

• reorienting public spending in agriculture by prioritizing the provision of public goods, such as extension services, rural infrastructures and agricultural research, and by building on the complementary strengths of seeds-and-breeds and agroecological methods, allocating resources to both, and exploring the synergies, such as linking fertilizer subsidies directly to agroecological investments on the farm (“subsidy to sustainability”);

• supporting decentralized participatory research and the dissemination of knowledge about the best sustainable agricultural practices by relying on existing farmers’ organizations and networks, and including schemes designed specifically for women;

• improving the ability of producers practicing sustainable agriculture to access markets, using instruments such as public procurement, credit, farmers’ markets, and creating a supportive trade and macroeconomic framework.

The report also gives recommendations for donors seeking to decrease hunger and improve rural livelihoods and for research organizations.

You can read the full report here [PDF]

While many of the more than 2,200 attendees of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s yearly gathering would have gladly entertained a dialogue with a Monsanto representative, it’s safe to say they view the conference’s central concept in a quite different light.

In his opening remarks, PASA President Kim Seeley borrowed a phrase from architect and designer William McDonough, a previous year’s keynote speaker, and asked: “Does the end result love all the children? We will condone all forms of farming that will love the children.”

It’s hard to associate the maker and marketer of Roundup pesticide and poison-withstanding genetically modified seeds with “loving all the children.” Yet, that is what Monsanto–newly crowned by Forbes “for persevering in the face of vicious criticism to feed the world”–would have us believe through what writer Ken Edelstein has called a “greenwash marketing” campaign that is “positively Rovian on the chutzpah meter.” Equally credibility-straining is Elanco, Ely Lilly and Company’s animal-health division, which in 2008 purchased the Posilac brand of synthetic bovine-growth hormone from Monsanto. Elanco’s president has been on a speaking tour promoting a technology-dependent program of “Sustainability and Feeding the World.”

Obviously, a different take on technology from that of most who attended the conference.

And in a recent call-to-arms speech delivered in Seattle, American Farm Bureau Federation President Bob Stallman railed against those he called “extremists who want to drag agriculture back to the days of 40 acres and a mule” and against “misguided, activist-driven regulation on labor and environment being proposed in Washington.” Further, Stallman called sustainability “the most overused and ill-defined word in the policy arena today.”

Finally, a patch, however small, of common ground.

“I completely agree that the term ‘sustainability’ is overused and often confused for something it’s not by those who try to use it,” PASA Executive Director Brian Snyder said in his stage-setting conference speech. “So, I have an idea–how about if you, Mr. Stallman, and your counterparts at Monsanto and Elanco stop using it! We can handle this one, and have been doing so quite ably for several decades now.”

Snyder said it is impossible to overlook the deliberate attempt by sustainable agriculture’s detractors to dilute the dream and goals PASA and its members aspire to in order that their objective of putting profitability above all else does not fail.

Not that profitability was ignored during the Farming for the Future conference. Quite the contrary. Neither was the concept of “small” farming, currently a pejorative term in Washington and elsewhere, where those who use that word, according to Snyder, “get immediately pigeonholed and tossed aside as a probable relic of the past.”

Here, the common-ground borderline was crossed.

“There is nothing ‘small’ about what any member of PASA is doing with respect to our food system, whether as a producer, processor or consumer, regardless of any volume specifications,” Snyder said.

“People like to hear about lots of acres or large numbers of animals and bushels of corn per acre measured in the hundreds,” he continued. “But models of farming that can gross $50,000 to $100,000 on a single acre, or Community Supported Agriculture programs that, in some cases and on relatively small acreage, are able to count their customers in the thousands and bank $1 million or more in the spring before even planting a seed, are anything but small!”

A non-genetically-modified seed, he might have added.

Snyder said that a second misconception held as incontrovertible truth in the halls of power is the notion that “we cannot feed the world this way,” that only industrial food systems can do so.

“We must encourage everyone, wherever they are and as a priority, to eat food produced as near to their own homes as possible,” Snyder said. “Secondly, feed thy neighbor as thyself. From this perspective, local food not only can feed the world, it may be the only way to ever feed the world in a healthy and just manner.”

Few involved with farming, even of the sustainable variety, relish increased government regulation. But Snyder likened what he called the “Stallman Doctrine”–a “Don’t Cap Our Future”-sloganed, war-like resistance to a cap-and-trade system or any proposal to limit farming’s environmental impact–to a modern re-emergence of Manifest Destiny, “wherein we take and use what we believe was divinely ordained for us to have, regardless of the consequences for others.”

By contrast, Snyder said a truly sustainable farmer wakes every morning with two thoughts in mind. The first is one of gratitude that the land we are privileged to own, rent or be paid to cultivate has been given to us, and we must give it back in better shape than we found it.

“Second,” Snyder said, “we as individual farmers are limited and essentially dependent on each other to figure out what’s best to do with this land in order to honor it, improve it and make a living from it and one day to deliver it back to the source from whence it came.”

“It’s all about maintaining a ‘right relationship’ with the land, which,” he said, “is analogous to the good relationships we hope for in other aspects of our lives as well.”

Or, at the end of the day, does it truly love all the children, and will it give them a good Earth to love, as well?

That–regardless of what corporate farmers and the companies they serve will tell you–is what sustainable agriculture is really all about.

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In contrast to the Stallman Doctrine – an unwillingness to work as hard as possible to save our beautiful planet – PASA Executive Director Brian Snyder offered the Promise of Sustainability.

“We understand that this world is not really ours to do with as we please and that we must work together to make it better,” Snyder said. From this perspective, here are some things sustainable farmers choose for themselves, rather than depend on government regulations or ballot initiatives to force upon them:

• We would do everything possible to protect the Earth, its water, air and climate systems, and to cherish and protect our great watersheds, including especially here in the Mid-Atlantic region, that which feeds the Chesapeake Bay.

• We would never lock up livestock of any kind for prolonged periods in restrictive cages or crates where they can’t even turn around or care for their young in a natural manner.

• We would not treat cows with artificial growth hormones, either for profit or the pride to be gained from seeing how much milk we can force them to give. We would also never feed antibiotics to animals for the sake of speeding their growth, especially in the absence of medical need.

• We would take whatever pre-emptive steps may be necessary – even if less than 100 percent certain – to protect our bees and other pollinators, and also to promote the diversity and integrity of seeds we depend on to produce food, avoiding advanced technological strategies that might otherwise undermine or diminish them.

• In dealing with our neighbors around the world, we would reject the political philosophy of Free Trade in favor of Fair Trade.

• We would treat with dignity immigrant and migrant laborers who are needed to work our fields, care for our animals and generally keep our food system moving, and welcome them as full members of our communities as they choose and are able to settle here.

• We would teach and assist the citizens, communities and countries of a hungry world to feed themselves as we would wish to be fed.

• We would build our entire food system on the concept that fair prices for farmers will keep wholesome, nutritious and safe food on our tables without fail.

Corporate entities such as Monsanto and Elanco–Ely Lilly Company’s animal-health division, which owns the Posilac brand of synthetic bovine growth hormone–lay claim to “sustainability,” thereby distorting its meaning and diluting its promise.

The president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, no ally of sustainable agriculture, recently called “sustainability” the most overused and ill-defined word in the policy arena.

Perhaps we can help.

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture has recently partnered with Food Alliance, based in Portland, Oregon, to deliver a trusted, third-party certification to our region’s farms, processors, food buyers and consumers. The Food Alliance Certified seal ensures safe and fair working conditions, humane treatment of animals and careful stewardship of ecosystems. Here is how Food Alliance answers the question, “What is sustainable agriculture?”

Sustainable agriculture:

• Provides safe and fair working conditions. It creates a work environment with open communication about workplace safety and job satisfaction, with incentives and opportunities for development of employee skills; it considers quality-of-life issues for farm workers and their communities.

• Ensures the health and humane treatment of animals. It raises livestock with respect for their physical needs and comforts; it provides livestock with access to sunlight, fresh air and an environment where they can socialize and express normal behaviors; it handles livestock with care to minimize fear and stress.

• Does not use hormone or antibiotic supplements. It raises animals without using hormones or antibiotics to stimulate growth or productivity; it uses antibiotics only to treat a sick animal and return it to health, not as a substitute for healthy living conditions.

• Does not raise genetically modified crops or livestock. It raises crops or livestock that are not derived from transgenic or genetically modified organisms in order to respect public concern over potential impacts on human or environmental health.

• Reduces pesticide use and toxicity. It practices integrated pest management by using field scouting and cultural and biological controls to avoid pest problems; it minimizes risks to human health and the environment by selecting least toxic pest treatments and using best practices for application.

• Protects water resources. It protects water quality and riparian habitat by providing buffer zones along streams; it manages tillage to maximize the ability of soils to absorb rainfall; it manages animal wastes to prevent ground and surface water contamination.

• Protects and enhances soil resources. It protect soils by maximizing plant cover, rotating crops and using cover crops to enrich soil and increase productivity; it uses management-intensive grazing; it uses tillage methods that protect soil quality and promote soil conservation.

• Provides wildlife habitat. It encourages vegetative cover, food and water resources necessary for habitat; it establishes biological corridors; it manages mowing and grazing cycles to minimize impact on wildlife; it protects and restores wetland, prairie and woodland habitats.

• Continually improves practices. It sets annual goals for improving performance in areas addressed under Food Alliance certification; it evaluates and reports progress on goals annually.

For more information, go to www.foodalliance.org.

Pro Food is primarily focused on driving entrepreneurial interest in solving the complex food system challenges we face. By attracting such talent and energy to sustainable food, from farming through retail to home cooking, it is my belief that the money will follow to support their efforts (new post coming on this subject).

Pro Food is not about debating the current problems by taking one side or the other. There is plenty of that already happening, and is my belief that the valuable time and energy being spent in such debates can be put to far better use if it is directed toward finding innovative solutions to our food problems.

For 20 years, Slow Food has been successful in reestablishing links between food and terroir. The most successful event at each Terra Madre convention in Bra, Italy, the birthplace of the movement, has always been Salone del Gusto. This event features local foods from around the globe, prepared and presented by the artisans themselves. In Europe, where the movement was born, the emphasis has been on reviving the culinary expression of local cultures.

When Slow Food crossed the pond to America it took some time to find its feet as our unique food cultures have endured decades of pressure to homogenize, thanks in large part to the dominant industrial food system. Every region has its specific culinary traditions, dating back in some cases to before the founding of the nation. In addition, our immigrant newcomers brought their respective food traditions with them, but soon found the need to adapt to locally available food stuffs.

Slow Food USA Vision: Food is a common language and a universal right. Slow Food USA envisions a world in which all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the planet.

Slow Food USA Mission: To create dramatic and lasting change in the food system. We reconnect Americans with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that produce our food. We work to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.

Slow Food USA recently started addressing food policy issues in earnest, sparked by Slow Food Nation, its first national convention held last fall in San Francisco. Policy-making efforts have been spearheaded by other organizations, working just as diligently to remake our food system, including Food Democracy Now!, Roots of Change (specific to California), Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), to name a few.

Pro Food stands apart in its efforts to revitalize the entrepreneurial side of the American food system, with the express purpose of re-establishing the link between food and source, bringing together eaters and farmers in new, innovative ways. This specific focus will make it possible to re-inject business sense into the sustainable production, distribution, preparation, and consumption of local foods with entrepreneurial savvy, adapted to each level of the entire chain.

Further information on Pro Food and Slow Food:

• Huffington Post: Sustainable Food Ripe for Entrepreneurs to Drive Forward
• Huffington Post: Closing the Farm to Plate Knowledge Gap
• Slow Food USA: Good, Clean and Fair
• Slow Food USA: From Plate to Planet
• Slow Food International: What We Do

I look forward to your comments regarding these two important efforts dedicated to solving our food system problems, in what I believe are unique and complementary ways.

Do you agree?

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

According to Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton, authors of the recent book A Nation of Farmers, it’s only natural that we think that technology will solve all of our ills, because technology has been reinforced through popular culture and our current growth-based economic model as if it were the sole means of moving us linearly forward into a better future. And, the authors add, “the short term gains of linear systems are incredibly intoxicating.”

Thus, our society has fully embraced the idea that technology can perfect human beings. But most of the problems we now face are the unintended consequences of the very technologies we hold dear. It is only obvious then that the same thinking could be getting us into trouble in agriculture, the very foundation and lifeblood of our society.

Astyk and Newton continue:

As if drunk and playing with fire, we have settled into a way of growing food that requires enormous inputs of limited resources and burned away the age old practices that not only fed human beings for thousands of years but also sustained the soil in which crops grow and nurtured the streams and waterways that give the gift of water and nutrients… The idea that the same system that depleted aquifers, created the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and enabled the transmission of mad cow disease will magically cease causing problems and merely create solutions is nonsense, and yet we are accustomed to believing it… because [the idea that technologies can perfect humanity is] all that has been offered, the instinctive reaction of many people who are told they cannot fix our problems is to assume that nothing can — the precisely parallel linear response.

Unfortunately, as hard as we try to say it ain’t so, we exist in a cyclical world, and we can choose to work within this existing framework, or deny it at our peril. Sustainable agriculture is that which embraces the necessary cyclical nature of agriculture systems. This doesn’t mean that no technology is to be employed, but that technologies will be employed that further that underlying aim.

By extension, today’s sustainable practices are not just a replay of the agriculture of our grandparents. As a commenter pointed out over at La Vida Locavore:

Organic operations here have some impressive remote sensing setups, with computer-controlled irrigation systems that check the weather, read moisture levels in the soil, and use satellite imagery to decide when and how much to water.

Organic farmers use drip irrigation and t-tape and other state of the art irrigation systems.

Organic farmers use studies that show what crops are best adapted to particular microclimates, which cover crops provide the best rotations, and which plants to grow together. Organic farmers use plant breeding to produce the qualities they want, which might be pest hardiness or drought tolerance or yield, or it might be nutrition and flavor.

Organic farmers use laboratory analysis of the soil to determine not only pH and mineral composition, but also the biological profile of the soil. Organic farmers use some of the latest science in helpful insects and bacteria to grow their best crop.

Organic farmers use tractors (sometimes biodiesel, sometimes not) to do the jobs tractors are good at.

So let’s finally put to bed the binary argument that sustainable agriculture proponents are all about hand tools and hard labor for little returns. We like technology, just not technology-worship.

*hat tip to Jill Richardson for her post pointing me to Federoff’s quote, and the commenter Elfling