Post-Green Agriculture

Growing up in South Eastern Virginia, my family always maintained a large, roughly 1-acre sized garden in our backyard. But as a youngster, there were few things my sister and I enjoyed less than spending summer afternoons sitting in our garage-turned basement "picking beans". Our chore was to pull the tips off of string beans and snap them in half so they were ready for my Mom, who would boil them and pack them in the freezer. We equally disliked picking butter beans, which meant we had to squeeze their pods to pop them open and pick out the beans inside. It didn't take long for my sister and I to develop a system. We would divide up the buckets of beans between us and then try to be as mechanical as possible, reaching in one bucket, picking the beans and then tossing them into a pot. The entire time, making sure to minimize any wasted movements that would prevent us from finishing the task as fast as possible.

It wasn't until I moved off campus my third year in college, that I recall having my first conception of appreciation for those fresh grown vegetables I took for granted as a youth. In fact, it was quite a rude awakening, going to the grocery store with my roommate and realizing I had to buy my greens in a can. I never even knew that was an option!

At that moment, I became cognizant of the line in food culture. The line separating food we either grow ourselves or buy directly from local people who raise, grow or make it from the food that comes from farm factories, hundreds or thousands of petroleum-fueled miles away.

There was a time here in the US, prior to the mid-20th century, that agriculture was generally smaller in scale and used largely organic based methods. However, the surplus of chemical agents, ammonium nitrate (used in explosives) and various defoliants (i.e. - Agent Orange), created by chemical manufacturers between WWII and the conflict in Vietnam, became the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers used in the Green Revolution.

It was the era of the Green Revolution and development of hybrid corn which ushered a marriage between high-yielding crop varieties and management practices designed to meet these new varieties' high demands for nutrients and pest protection. This resulted in a replacement of internal ecological controls with external inputs like chemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides, which in essence, divorced agriculture from ecology. While these developments resulted in an increase of yields, we now recognize that farmers' dependence on these technologies have been problematic from an environmental and human health standpoint. Nitrogen (N) and toxic chemicals from pesticides and other external controls leak from these agricultural systems and can accumulate in soil, water, food and people.

With a world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, coupled with economic growth fueling higher per capita consumption, the challenge for sustainable agriculture becomes clear. How do we meet the food and nutrition needs of a growing population, without sacrificing the environmental integrity of local landscapes and the global environment?

Presently, some 13 million ha of land is converted annually to agricultural use, mainly from forests and woodlands, which unfortunately weakens an important part of our ecosystem that helps to mitigate the effects of climate change. In turn, climate change adds pressure on agriculture systems and exacerbates degradation and desertification of increasingly over-exploited lands. So there is tremendous need for sustainable land management and productive agriculture that promotes biodiversity and environmental integrity rather than degrading it.

The FAO has determined in their report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2014, that family farms (similar to that of my youth) are key to ensuring environmental sustainability and global food security. With most family farms ranging from small to medium in size, they are well positioned to uphold global natural resource management and environmental sustainability because they can utilize their labour more intensively and better manage their resources. As a result, small farms tend to have higher agricultural crop yields per hectare than larger farms.

Additionally, the sustainable increase in production from family farms will not only help strengthen household level food security and nutrition, but also improve rural livelihoods and incomes. Subsequently, helping to fight both hunger and poverty. However, the single biggest challenge they face is climate change. Thus, supporting rural communities and farmers in vulnerable areas build resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change will help to ensure global food security and poverty reduction.

It's now become clear that agriculture, climate change, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, soil fertility, hunger and poverty are all interlinked. Models of sustainable agriculture, like climate-smart agriculture and organic farming are necessary to help build resilience to climate change and increase agricultural productivity that takes care of and protects the natural environment. Agricultural systems must be managed as ecosystems that seek to not only build the vitality and strength of our communities, but also build life in the soil, avoiding the use of toxic chemicals, and seek to reduce agriculture's environmental footprint. The future will depend on how effectively we understand and manage the socio-economic and ecological elements of agricultural ecosystems.

Family Planning and Africa's Next Generation of Women

Today's numbers indicate that we are 7.2 billion human beings inhabiting the Earth. And projections forecast we will multiply to nearly double digits (9.6 bn) by 2050! These numbers raise clear concerns related to sustainability, such as resource scarcity and climate change.

So what lies at the heart of the population issue and why can't we control it?

Much of the developed world has managed to stint it's population growth with future expected increases due largely to migration. But the least developed countries of the world (most of which are in Africa) maintain high fertility rates and continue to grow somewhat uncontrollably. Researchers have confirmed statistically the perceivable correlations between large family sizes in poor countries to lower child survival rates.

But what is not as obvious, is that by focusing on improving child survival rate, you can as an outcome, reduce average family sizes in the developing world.

I realize this solution sounds paradoxical, so let me explain.

The equation for improving child survival rate includes family planning. A major function of family planning services is that they promote birth spacing methods that advise against having a baby within two years of a previous baby. Considering that there are regions in Africa where women can have between 4 to 6 babies before entering their late twenties, the potential implications for child survival and population sustainability become clear.

In addition, there are several other upsides to family planning interventions that I should mention.

They prevent unintended pregnancies that far too often lead to malnutrition, as extra mouths to feed trouble families already struggling for resources. Family planning also has positive implications for maternal health, because birth spacing methods can prevent 20-35% of all maternal deaths.

So what are the challenges for family planning and health-care advocates?

While it may be relatively easy for middle and higher income sexually-active couples to plan for child birth, their poorer counterparts living in rural villages, largely do not have adequate and consistent access to contraceptive supplies and reproductive health services (including staff) necessary to aid them in planning. These supplies and services are also complimentary and essential to maternal health as 20% of maternal deaths in Africa are due to HIV (pregnant women also die from malaria).

But even where condoms are plentiful, they presuppose a male's willingness to wear them. This reduces the women's agency in planning a pregnancy.

Furthermore, there is a huge cultural aspect that presents challenges for family planning advocates.

During my time living in a rural village in Tanzania, one of my personal highlights came from the time I was invited to accompany my host dad, who was the proud father of five daughters and two sons, on a small journey to negotiate and collect bride price for his youngest daughter who had been married several years before. For my host family and the tribe they belonged, bride price, which is an amount of money or property paid by the groom or his family to the bride's family, was compulsory in order to validate the marriage. The entire process was very formal from start to finish and included witnesses, a pastor, signed agreements, cash and cattle payment, and a ceremonial feast. Today, I can still vividly remember the pride and joy that exuded from my host dad on that day; and while he and his family were more "well-off" than most others in the village, the six cattle and huge stack of cash he received as bride price for his fifth daughter was nonetheless graciously accepted.

That example highlights a tradition practiced by many tribes and cultures in rural Africa. Many families rely on daughters being married in order to guarantee cattle and other wealth, and sons are likely the only form of life insurance a couple can hope to secure. These customs and circumstances make it extremely difficult to advance a trend towards smaller families in Africa.

Knowing these challenges, what can/should be done?

• African governments need to ensure health programs are adequately funded. While on aggregate, health spending has increased from 8.8% to 10.6% since 2001, when member-states of the African Union pledged in the Abuja Declaration to allocate at least 15% of their annual budgets to healthcare by 2015. But to date, only 6 governments have met their targets while about a quarter of AU member-states have regressed and are spending less.

• Appropriate health funding will help provide all regions and districts with access to consistent and adequate reproductive health and family planning services and supplies. Funding should also be used to supply and train health staff who can facilitate these services as well as help research new interventions for contraception that will grant agency to Africa's women.

• Lastly, trained local staff represent local voices using local languages that can support and reiterate family planning knowledge and it's importance to families in rural regions. 

But before I leave, I wanted to remind readers that it's easy to put all of the blame on the developing world for issues related to global sustainability. But let's not forget our responsibility in the developed world to practice sustainable living and examine our own policies and procedures that interrelate with global sustainability.

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