Sustainable Agriculture: It's A Matter of People
John Ikerd
Professor Emeritus
University of Missouri
Sustainable agriculture is not just a passing fad. It's
not going to go away. Sustaining agriculture ultimately is about sustaining
people -- not just agriculture. People are becoming increasingly concerned
about today's agriculture -- about its ability to meet the needs of people
today and still leave opportunities for people in the future. People are
becoming increasingly concerned about the safety and healthfulness our food
supplies as we increase our reliance on an impersonal, global food system.
People are becoming increasingly concerned about the natural environment as
agriculture moves into the final states of corporate industrialization. People
are beginning to realize that since corporations are not people they have no
concern for farmers, for rural residents, or even for consumers -- in any
other sense than as markets for their products. Corporations have no heart,
they have no soul -- their only concerns are profit and growth. People are
becoming increasingly concerned about an agriculture that has no commitment to
people.
Sustainable agriculture became a public issue because of
the concerns of people about people. Sustainable agriculture first came to
national attention during the farm financial crisis of the 1980s. Farmers were
caught up once again in a reoccurring squeeze between declining prices for
agricultural commodities and rising prices for fertilizers, pesticides, fuel
and other farm inputs. The first USDA program was called Low Input Sustainable
Agriculture, or LISA, because farmers were concerned about reducing their
reliance on increasingly expensive inputs. Land Grant universities were
directed to help farmers find ways to reduce their purchases of off-farm
inputs. The SA part of the LISA program was supported by organic farming
advocates -- motivated by their concern for food safety and the environment.
But, the LISA program was mostly about helping financially distressed farm
families -- about helping people keep and care for their land.
The corporate agribusiness community reacted to LISA with
outrage. How could USDA and the Land Grant Universities even consider a
program that might reduce the demand for agricultural inputs? They had worked
hard to hook farmers on agricultural chemicals, and they weren't about to give
up their "junkies" or their "dealers" without a fight. So
agribusiness, and their industrial agriculture allies, set about to discredit
and destroy the LISA program. They used everything from making jokes about the
name, to raising the specter of mass starvation, to phony "research
plots" using "no fertility or pest management" to represent
LISA farming systems. It was a disgrace, but it worked. USDA abandoned the
LISA program and shifted the emphasis from reducing inputs to natural resource
management through a new Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE)
program.
SARE seemed less a threat to agribusiness than did LISA,
but still met with great resistance from the agricultural establishment. The
resistance was more passive than before but no less aggressive. The first
reaction was to cry foul because agriculture was being singled out as a
polluter -- even though other industries had been "under the EPA
hammer" for nearly two decades. The next strategy was for agribusiness to
appear to stand by the side of farmers, as trusted stewards of the natural
environment -- but only so long as the defense included farmers' continued use
of commercial fertilizers and pesticides. Next, they promoted "wise
use" of inputs by peddling costly, high-tech precision farming systems
that often as not called for more, rather than fewer, inputs. Finally,
agribusiness started capitalizing on environmental concerns in their marketing
schemes -- peddling first more costly high-tech inputs and then biotechnology
as means of protecting the natural environment.
The agricultural establishment has not, and will not,
embrace the social dimension of agricultural sustainability. A sustainable
agriculture must sustain people -- not just people as consumers, but people as
farmers, rural residents, and members of a civil society. Ultimately, a
society will not sustain an agricultural system that will not sustain its
people -- people as producers and citizens as well as consumers. We need look
only to the communistic farming systems of the former Soviet Union for a prime
example. A socially irresponsible agriculture can do great harm to society, as
it did in communist Russia. A corporate dominated, vertically integrated
agriculture, which looms of the American horizon, is a centrally planned
agriculture -- no different in concept from a communist economy. It is not a
socially responsible system, and thus, quite simply is not sustainable.
Sustainable agriculture research and educational programs
are being challenged today as never before. Funding for the USDA SARE program
is challenged each budget year and stays alive only through the diligent
efforts of politically active nonprofit organizations and grass roots support
groups. So far, SARE appears to be holding it own. However within the last
year, several major Land Grant Universities have dropped their sustainable
agriculture programs and others have integrated them into other less
controversial program areas.
Public universities have become increasingly reliant on
corporations to fund their research programs. In most cases, this means
increasing emphasis on biotechnology. Biotechnology has not and will not be
embraced by the sustainable agriculture movement. Biotechnology is a tool
designed to manipulate and dominate nature, and sustainability ultimately will
require that we instead farm in harmony with nature. The universities quite
simply are not willing to jeopardize their chances for multimillion-dollar
corporate funded biotech projects by protecting a few-thousand-dollar publicly
funded sustainable agriculture program.
Perhaps even more important, public universities have
lost faith in their ability to be of significant benefit to people -- at least
to people directly. They argue that they serve the public through their work
with corporations -- that scientific discoveries must be
"commercialized" before the science becomes of use to the public.
They seem to have forgotten that discoveries can be commercialized through
individual decision-makers, through farmers and other independent business
people, not just through corporations. It just easier and more comfortably for
Universities to work with a large agribusiness than to work with a similarly
large group of individual farmers or citizens.
The universities seem to have forgotten that tax dollars
are not only to be used to support research that benefits the public, but to
support only research "that the private sector will not adequately
support." Agricultural colleges were publicly funded because farmers were
too small to do their own research, and agricultural research had clear public
benefits. The giant agribusiness corporations are perfectly capable of funding
their own research -- all of it. In addition, these corporations don't operate
in competitive markets. Thus, most of the benefits will end up as corporate
profits, not lower prices for consumers or higher prices for farmers. Why
should the taxpayer be footing any part of the bill?
As public institutions worked less directly with people,
for the direct good of people, they have lost the support of people, and their
public funding has declined. Taxpayers were getting fewer benefits, and
ultimately, they refused to pay for benefits they weren't getting. They asked
their legislators to hold the line or to cut funding for public research and
education. So now the universities are turning to corporate support, because
of lagging public support, and the public is getting even fewer benefits for
their tax dollars. It's a vicious circle from which there is no easy way out.
Sustainable agriculture will never be funded, or even
tolerated, by agribusiness because it is fundamentally about reducing reliance
on off-farm inputs, protecting the natural environment, and empowering people
to free themselves from corporate domination. Sustainable agriculture will
never be funded, or even tolerated, by large farm commodity groups, because it
is promotes diversification rather than specialization -- it is about people
rather than production. If sustainable agriculture research and education is
to be funded, it will have to be funded publicly, by the people.
Sustainable agriculture promotes smaller,
more-diversified family farms because of its focus on people. It seeks greater
economic rewards to farmers, rather than more profits for input suppliers. It
seeks ways to farm in harmony with nature, rather than to conquer nature. And
it seeks to support farming as a quality way of life, as well as a way to make
a living. If agriculture is to be sustainable, we must have enough farmers to
sustain the productivity and ecological health of the land. Thus,
sustainability will require more, rather than fewer, farmers -- more who
understand their particular parcel of land, who know how to take care of it,
who are motivated to care for it, and who have the time and money to care for
it well. In a sense, sustainability demands that farmers "love the
land." And, each farmer can "love" only so much land.
Sustainable agriculture promotes greater concern among
people -- people making conscious, purpose decisions for the common good
rather than relying on the impersonal forces of the marketplace. The invisible
hand of theoretical economics that is supposed to transform individual greed
into the common good has been mangled in the machinery of corporate
consolidation. The markets will not ensure that the hungry will be fed. The
markets will not ensure that people willing to work will have an opportunity
to work. The markets will not ensure that future generations will have
adequate resources for food, clothing, and shelter. The only way to ensure
that the needs of the present and future are met is to make conscious,
purposeful decisions to care for the natural environment and to care for other
people.
This is the mandate of sustainable agriculture -- to care
about people of this generation and for all generations to come. It's a
mandate that too few are yet willing to accept, but a mandate that ultimately
cannot be denied. Sustainable agriculture must be about sustaining people
through agriculture, not just sustaining agriculture.
