Groundbreaking report offers holistic remedies for famine relief and environmental protection in developing countries

Regenerative farming practices, local knowledge and regionally appropriate technology favored over biotech and industrial agriculture.

By Dan Sullivan

Diabou Balde (foreground) and Carrie Miner walk Diabou's Systems of Rice Intensificatin (SRI) fields. The rice transplants are spaced further apart to boost food production, which seems counterintuitive. The increased space per plant actually triggers the development of secondary shoots that produce grain. So while the number of plants may be fewer in SRI, each plant generally yields more.

Agribusiness-as-usual was dealt a swift blow in Johannesburg April 7 as 57 nations signed onto a groundbreaking action plan that set a bold new course for developing nations to feed themselves while also addressing pressing environmental concerns.

The report, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Global Report, was commissioned in partnership with the United Nations after a group of biotech companies asked the World Bank what it thought of genetic engineering technology as an agricultural strategy for developing countries. Ironically, the ensuing report roundly rejects biotechnology and modern industrial farming as a viable solution to the problems confronting the developing world, such as soaring food prices, hunger, social injustice and environmental degradation. The report instead calls for a major paradigm shift that would place strong focus on small-scale farming and agro-ecological farming methods to feed local communities, address social inequities and protect the environment while scaling back broadly on energy-intensive, chemical agriculture and addressing trade imbalances that hurt the rural poor.

“Decades of industrial agriculture and harmful economic policies have contributed to massive chemical pollution, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and climate change, and to the destruction of farmers’ livelihoods when Northern governments dump cheap subsidized produce overseas,” said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network and a lead author of the IAASTD report. “This (and unfair trade regulations) has trapped rural communities in persistent hunger and poverty. The problem comes back to deep structural inequities in and between our societies that must be reversed.”

By integrating livestock more intensively into their crop production systems, farmers in Thiawène have created an economic safety net for themselves, while improving food production and food security.

The good news, she said, is that the report concludes we have options. Investment in organic farming practices, ensuring poor farmers have control over resources, creating more equitable trade agreements and increasing local participation in decision-making are a few. “What remains is for governments to take action before it’s too late.”

“This marks the beginning of a new, real Green Revolution,” said Benny Haerlin of Greenpeace Germany. “The modern way of farming is biodiverse and labor intensive and works with nature, not against it.”

Authors of the report included more than 400 scientists from around the world representing a variety of disciplines, with input coming from governments, major research institutions, industry and the public at large, including farmers, the rural poor and other traditionally underrepresented members of society.

“Agriculture is not just about putting things in the ground and then harvesting them," United Nations Environmental Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner proclaimed at an intergovernmental plenary outlining the plan in Johannesburg. “It is increasingly about the social and environmental variables that will in large part determine the future capacity of agriculture to provide for 8- or 9-billion people in a manner that is sustainable.”

Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States are among a handful of countries that have yet to endorse the report, with the U.S. repeating allegations coming from the agrochemical and biotech industries some months before that the report was unbalanced. Those defending the process said the report’s lack of support for further industrial and globalized agriculture—and for modern biotech in particular—was based on intensive, peer reviewed assessment of empirical data by development experts and scientists across a wide variety of disciplines. These experts, they say, were chosen by the same governments and companies now calling the report biased.

Abderahmane Sow (his son pictured here) intercrops his bananas with a variety of other crops, including sugar cane, corn, cowpeas, sweet potatoes, and eggplants. The many benefits he sees in this system are backed up by research worldwide that has demonstrated synergistic relationships between intercrops such as improved yields and reduction in pest and weed pressure.

“This assessment is by far the most comprehensive and rigorous report of its nature, involving more than a thousand practitioners and scientists from all over the world,” said Rodale Institute International Program Director and IAASTD co-author Amadou Makthar Diop, PhD. “The scientist in the sub-Saharan Africa report are, in majority, Africans who have capitalized on many years of experience in research, extension and training in agricultural and rural development. Those industrialized governments who are still hesitant should realize that it is time that they listen to the voice of those whom they want to help. This is critical if we want development aid and assistance to be effective.”

Bob Watson, PhD, director of the IAASTD, and the World Bank’s chief scientist at the time the project got under way, echoed that plea in a press release sent out following the Johannesburg meeting.

“To argue, as we do, that continuing to focus on production alone will undermine our agricultural capital and leave us with an increasingly degraded and divided planet is to reiterate an old message. But it is a message that has not always had resonance in some parts of the world. If those with power are now willing to hear it, then we may hope for more equitable policies that do take the interests of the poor into account.”

IAASTD executive summary

Full IAASTD Global Reports