Leopold Center - Balancing ecology and technology

We live in a culture that seems to assume that all of our problems can and must be solved with technology. It is easy to see how we came to this conclusion. Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have created one technological marvel after another. Technologies have increased our productivity, reshaped our world, and improved our quality of life.

One thing we seem to have forgotten along the way is that there is a cost to every technology. We haven't always done a good job of assessing the costs, particularly those with long-term consequences, and now some of those costs are catching up with us. Our global water systems contain 50 dead zones. The planet's temperatures are on the rise. There is a hole in the earth's ozone layer. Evidence linking the byproducts of our technologies with health-related problems is increasingly disturbing. The loss of biodiversity from our technologies not only threatens the stability of the planet, but—according to separate studies issued by the World Bank and the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology—also imperils further agricultural productivity.

Farmers face another disturbing circumstance. Even though agricultural technologies have enabled producers to dramatically increase their productivity and solve many of their immediate production problems, technology does not appear to have helped them improve their net income. According to a recent study by Mike Duffy, associate director at the Leopold Center, Iowa farmers' gross income and total expenses both increased thirteen-fold from 1950 to 1998—while their net income remained flat! This seems to indicate that all of the improved technologies ultimately didn't help farmers' bottom line.

At the same time, evidence surfacing in many parts of the world suggests that we should consider an alternative approach.

Our technologically-oriented culture remains skeptical of this new approach to agriculture. News media have carried articles suggesting that without intensive technological management the world's people would suffer extensive malnutrition and/or we would have to plow up all of our wilderness areas and fragile lands to feed a growing population. It is ironic that such propositions occasionally appear even in respected scientific journals, although dire predictions are based largely on conjecture rather than field-tested data. At the same time, extensive on-farm research now suggests that ecological approaches usually are both more productive and more profitable.

A newly published study by Jules Pretty and Rachel Hine at the University of Essex (UK) looked at 208 cases from 52 countries to assess the performance of sustainable agriculture. They define sustainable agriculture as an agriculture that "seeks to make the best use of nature's goods and services as functional inputs"—in other words, farms that use an ecological approach. They found that in these projects—which involve 8.98 million farmers who have adopted sustainable agriculture practices on 28.82 million hectares—yield increases for rain-fed crops went up 50 to100 percent, and yields increased 5 to 10 percent on irrigated crops.

A study in the April 19 issue of Nature magazine, conducted by John Reganold and his colleagues at Washington State University, compared the economic, energy and environmental performances of organic, integrated and conventional farms from 1994 to 1999. The study demonstrates that organic apple orchards (one type of ecological farming) in Washington state produced "sweeter and less tart apples, higher profitability and greater energy efficiency" than the conventional apple farms. Additionally, their data show that "the organic system ranked first in environmental and economic sustainability, the integrated system ranked second and the conventional system last." Soil quality ratings for the organic and integrated farms also were "significantly higher than those for the conventional system."

The October 1999 issue of the Ecologist magazine reported that Japanese farmer Takao Furuno developed a new system on his two-hectare farm with similar results. Rice paddies occupy 1.4 hectares; the rest is devoted to organic vegetable production. A few years ago, Mr. Furuno decided to incorporate ducks into his rice paddies. He discovered that the ducks ate the insects and snails that normally attack the rice. They ate the weed seeds and weed seedlings, so he no longer needs to weed his rice paddies. The activity of the ducks also appears to oxygenate the water "encouraging the roots of the rice plants to grow." Other species (fish, duckweed, etc.) in his paddies provide fertilizer.

Farmers who have adopted similar methods in various parts of the world report a 20 to 50 percent increase in rice yields the first year. Furuno's small farm now annually produces "seven tonnes of rice, 300 ducks, 4,000 ducklings and enough vegetables to supply 100 people." From the perspective of the bottom line, it is worth noting that Furuno not only has dramatically increased his yield, but once he is finished with the inputs (namely the ducks) they, too, become a source of income. Isn't this a model we should consider for "feeding the world?"

These studies and others that tell similar stories suggest that we should be putting at least 25 to 30 percent of our research dollars into exploring such ecological approaches to solving production problems. Investing virtually all of our dollars in technological solutions means that farmers not only will continue to see their potential profits eaten up by input costs, but also will be forced onto a treadmill that eventually puts them out of business.

Nature always finds a way to adapt to the technologies we create, quickly developing resistance to all our efforts to eradicate pests. And on top of that, we continue to degrade our environment with technologies that we always initially assumed were "safe." -- Frederick Kirschenmann