Dear Friends of Biovision
Exceptionally, you have had to wait two months for the current blog. I was so busy in April that I quite simply didn’t get round to writing to you. I hope you’ll understand and forgive me.
But perhaps through the media you have heard or read something I have said, in which case you will understand why I was so extremely busy. The world agricultural council IAASTD published its final report on April 15th. It was the outcome of four years work by more than 400 experts, including some from Switzerland. Its purpose was to make an assessment of agricultural practices worldwide, to look at the impact that knowledge, science and technology have had up until now, and on the basis of this assessment to draw up proposals to steer agricultural research in a useful direction.
I was one of the co-chairmen overseeing this comprehensive task and once the report had been concluded I had to – or rather, wanted to – put myself at the disposal of the media all over the world in order to explain it and answer questions. The Swiss media showed a lot of interest in the report. Swiss television, Swiss radio and all the major newspapers went into the issue, which I was very pleased about.
But the reason for their great interest was less encouraging: the worldwide food crisis has shocked us all. Suddenly everyone realised that – to quote the IAASTD report – “business as usual is no longer an option”. But of course the crisis was predictable, and people in the know had been warning about it for a long time. Now in the global agricultural report we have attempted to indicate the problems facing agriculture and to put forward suggestions for tackling them.
First, the main problems, which are most obvious in the developing countries. Agriculture there is in urgent need of support through research, training and access to information. And yet the budgets for this have been cut and cut in the past few decades. Another problem is that food is distributed very unevenly between north and south, with undesirable consequences for both sides: obesity and diabetes for us (and lately also in the cities of the newly industrialised countries), and hunger and malnutrition in the developing countries.
These problems are made worse by massive climate change, deteriorating soil fertility, increasing world population and rising energy prices.
These complex problems must be addressed and solved not by dealing with the consequences, but by removing the causes. So here we come to the suggestions for tackling them that we made in the report. What we propose is that we should not seek a single magic solution to deal with the whole range of problems, but should instead take a range of approaches.
Certainly the most important thing is to carry out more research into ways that would enable farmers in developing countries to practise sustainable agriculture, which can only be achieved if the soil is fertile. The allocation and ownership of land needs to be examined and changed in order to ensure that farmers have access to land. This requires political action.
The role of women in agriculture was recognised as being another decisive factor. But women still often lack suitable working conditions and proper training. It is also important that appropriate means of mechanising agriculture in poor countries should be encouraged. This is the only way to increase productivity.
One thing that is certainly not a solution is the use of pesticides or the planting of genetically modified crops over wide areas. Quite the contrary: well-founded research has shown that this has precisely the opposite effect to the one desired. The less species diversity there is, the greater the risk of diseases that are able to spread unchecked. That is why the IAASTD report calls for a more sensible approach to the land and a return to small-scale agriculture where the farmers can use their own seeds. That is the only way to preserve genetic diversity.
Although all of this appears perfectly logical, it is important to stress that by no means everyone has understood just how urgent the problem is. The major agro-chemical companies still have far too much influence on agricultural policy in the northern hemisphere. For of course a lot of money is at stake.
Business leaders and many politicians are therefore still trying to play down the problem. And what is very serious is that some scientists are backing them, claiming that industrialised agriculture with its monocultures, pesticides and genetic technology is the solution. But now in this detailed report 400 top class scientists have demonstrated that this cannot lead to an agriculture that is environmentally and socially just.
It is clear that we have to act. It is not a matter of profits, but of the shared future of all the people of our planet. The food crisis in the third world has more to do with us that we care to think.
Please do me a favour: follow the coverage of this issue and try to keep yourselves informed. We are all food consumers and our behaviour can have an influence on the way in which food is produced.
Best regards,
Hans Rudolf Herren