IDEOLOGY AND THE LANDSPARING VERSUS LANDSHARING DEBATE

In recent debate concerning the relationship between agriculture and biodiversity a rather contentious issue seems to have emerged, the contradictory normatives involved in the so-called land sparing versus land sharing (wildlife-friendly farming) positions.  This debate is not very useful if your concern is either the production of food or the conservation of biodiversity.  On the other hand, if the concern is with the expansion of lands devoted to the industrial model of agriculture with the immense profits due to agents such as Syngenta, Monsanto, ADM and the other giants, this framing of the debate is indeed quite useful.  Indeed, it is not surprising that it is in Europe that this debate has largely been concentrated, with Monsanto especially anxious to obtain access to European markets for their GMO products.  The land sparing debate is a winner for them and, as has been noted by Chomsky and others before, setting the terms of the debate is far more important than the debate itself.  And the land/sparing versus land/sharing framework is a marvelous example of setting the terms of the debate so that one side is almost certainly going to win (interestingly, even with this framing, it is not a slam dunk).

The notion that the framework you chose can frequently generate enormous bias is an accepted fact in serious sociological work, yet in politically charged situations (like the present example) partisans pretend that it somehow does not matter -- that “the science speaks for itself.” Of course the science does speak for itself, but what you hear that science say is filtered through your framing.

The classic example of this phenomenon is the often cited work of Kahneman and Tversky (1984).  A group of experimental subjects was posed the following problem:

“Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people.  Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed.  Assume that the exact scientific estimates of the consequences of the programs are as follows: If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved.  If Program B is adopted, there is a one third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved.  Which of the two programs would you favor?”

72% of the subjects chose Program A.

Alternatively a group of experimental subjects was posed the following problem, after the same initial setup:

“If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die.  If Program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that nobody will die and a two thirds probability that 600 people will die.”

22% of the subjects chose Program C (which, of course, is the same as program A).

In other words, neither your concern for people dying from the Asian disease nor your ability to read the relevant “scientific” evidence was the major determinant of the decision.  Rather, the precise way in which the problem is framed is almost exclusively responsible.  Many other examples of this framing problem can be cited.  Indeed sophisticated psychological industries associated with marketing have evolved to take advantage of this particular human foible.  Scientists seem particularly vulnerable because of their naïve belief that theory and data are politically neutral.

As an archetypical example the recent summary, Phalan et al., (2011) repeat the errors made by Green et al., in their original Science piece (Green et al., 2005; also see the critique by Vandermeer and Perfecto in the subsequent issue of Science and the response of Green et al. therein).  In an attempt to summarize their position, they present the framework presented in figure 1, as if it were an ideologically neutral framing. 

                       

                        Figure 1

If you were concerned with biodiversity conservation and natural habitats, it would be difficult not to conclude that the land-sparing option is best.  Ironically, in this same piece, the authors also make a strong case that ideological biases be excluded from the analysis of this important issue.  Of course I disagree.  Ideology is an inherent part of any academic analysis, from the choice of topic to the method of analysis to the standards of proof.  The framework of figure 1 could easily be redrawn from a different ideological point of view, as I have done in figure 2.

                       

                        Figure 2

Focusing on figure 2 it would seem foolish to conclude that land sparing (promoting expansion of industrial agriculture) was better for biodiversity conservation than wildlife-friendly farming (construction of high quality matrix).  It is naïve to suppose that either figure 1 or figure 2 is non-ideological – both are.  The relationship between ideology and academic pursuits is not easily cancelable, given the social nature of our species.  The honest way forward is to be open and aboveboard about one’s ideological position.  I, for example, believe that figure 2 is more consistent with my own ideology, born of the basic tenants of the Enlightenment (e.g. , social justice and participatory democracy), and I do not apologize for that position.  However, while ideology certainly constrains the formulation and analysis of a problem, scientific fact within those constraints nevertheless drive (or should drive) normative prescriptions, a point hardly requiring assertion. 

            The land sparing/sharing framework is based on a set of sometimes explicit, sometimes only implicit, assumptions.  First, among the frequently implicit assumptions is the need to produce more food globally, at least in the near future.  The problem with this assumption is that the production of calories in the world already can accommodate the future population expected to stabilize at about nine billion sometime in this century.  It is true that more than a billion of the current population remain hungry and malnourished, but it is widely acknowledged that such a state is due to the distribution of food, not to how much is available worldwide.  Then, the assumption of the need to produce more food should be stated with the qualifier, “assuming the state of access to food remains the same or gets worse.”  Focusing on the overall supply of food traps us into ignoring the current reason that one segment of the population goes hungry while another segment of the population arguably eats too much for its own health. 

            Second, the negative secondary environmental consequences, the collateral damage so to speak, of the industrial agricultural system are tacitly ignored.  Just how much more of the world’s oceans are we ready to sacrifice to dead zones?  How many more aquifers will we permit to be poisoned with pesticides? How much more soil will we allow to be washed away?  While agroecological techniques are also implicated in some negative consequences, these are trivial compared to the massive consequences generated by the industrial system.

            Third, the negative secondary social consequences of the industrial system are minimized.  As documented in many studies, intensification along industrial lines can lead to further erosion of natural areas.  For example, if a development plan promotes easy availability of chemical fertilizers in one area, it is most natural that migrants will thus be encouraged to come to that area and, if only natural areas remain uncultivated, there will be a tendency to claim those areas for agriculture.  While such consequences could also be imagined under an agroecological framework, previous evidence suggests that the industrial system is far more likely to engender such patterns.  On the other hand, those of us who promote agroecological solutions need also remain mindful of the sometimes technology-neutral secondary negative consequences (excessive nitrogen runoff is excessive whether it comes from the Haber-Bosch process or Rhizobium).

            Fourth, increased per area productivity is always to be encouraged.  Although this proposition apparently seems obvious to many people, it is not evident when viewed in a larger historical and social perspective.  In many areas of agriculture today the most pressing problem is over production, and has been so for many years.  Dealing with this problem, frequently under the generalization of supply management, has captured a great deal of analytical thought over the past century.  That Brazil, in the early 20^th century purchased and subsequently burned almost 50% of its national coffee harvest is only an extreme form.  The famous coffee cartel of the Cold War, instituted as a part of the West’s struggle against international communism is another.  And subsidy structures for maize production in the United States even today, allows giant grain companies to purchase maize at a price considerably below the cost of production, allowing grain exports to be competitive with even peasant producers in developing countries.  While the desire to increase production by an individual farm may be universal, the knowledge that overproduction by all farms is destructive to all those farms is not information lost on farmers, even if some economists may have trouble fully appreciating it.

            A somewhat more complicated issue is suggested in recent land sparing literature.  The notion of “sustainable intensification” has emerged as a solution to the negative issues involved in standard assumptions of industrial intensification.  The idea is that the environmental consequences of pesticides, excessive runoff of nitrogen and the like, can be mitigated through technological advance, yet high productivity can still be pursued.  In many ways the notion of sustainable intensification appears almost the same as agroecological production (and thus the invention of a new term perhaps questionable).  Yet both frameworks enter the debate with previous baggage.  The sustainable intensification side of the debate emerges from the earlier ideas of intensification, which is to say substitute natural pest control with pesticides, natural soil fertility with chemical fertilizer and so forth.  Most recently that debate has ben entered by giant seed companies eager to find entrance to reticent markets for their transgenic products.  The agroecological side of the debate emerges from ecological ideas associated with natural systems agriculture where the structure of local ecosystems is taken as a system of cues as to how  the agrecosystem should be designed and from farmer-originated ideas of agroecosystem structures that would sustain farming systems into future generations.  The intensification framework carries the baggage of attempts to enter agricultural production as an extension of generalized investment opportunities, the agroecological framwork as an extension of attendance to natural processes – in short, the intensification argument gains most support from economics the agroecological from ecology.  When they come together, as they appear to some workers, is that background baggage lost?  Perhaps, but I doubt it.

            Finally there is a slightly more complicated problem with the sparing/sharing framework.  A tacit linear assumption is made regarding the ecological dynamics of biodiversity.  If an area is divided into fractions that are devoted to 1) natural vegetation, 2) intensive agriculture, and 3) wildlife-friendly agriculture, the total biodiversity in that area is assumed to be given by B₁ + B₂ + B₃, and total food production given as P₂ + P₃ where B_i is the number of species and P_i is the production contained in the ith habitat type.  It is then assumed that B₁ is greater than B₂ or B₃ and that P₂ is greater than P₃.  Given these constraints it is a trivial exercise to construct, at least in theory, an “optimality” model that will almost surely demonstrate that reducing the area devoted to wildlife-friendly agriculture is the best strategy. As in the case of the Asian disease, the data don’t really matter much once the framework has been set.  The problem with this assumption is that biodiversity does not really work this way in the real world.  Determining the biodiversity in each of the three areas and then summing is known, from elementary facts of community ecology, to be misleading at best.  Biodiversity does not accumulate in a linear fashion.  Yet more important, this assumption fails to recognize the dynamic nature of landscapes with regard to the community structure contained therein.  Spatial structure is now recognized as an important component of community dynamics, with metapopulation and metacommunity theory developing rapidly and largely negating the simple linear assumptions. 

            In the end, I argue that the framework of land sparing versus land sharing is more obfuscating than enlightening.  I would urge that we begin with a simpler framework, rooted in the elementary ideas of landscape ecology.  There are those areas that are largely untouched by humans and they exist in a matrix of human-dominated areas, the latter of which are largely agricultural.  In most areas of the world the untouched areas are highly fragmented so it makes sense to talk of natural fragments in a matrix of agriculture. Local extinction is a natural process that cannot be detained by politics.  Extinctions, local ones, will happen and they will happen more frequently in smaller fragments.  The focus should not be on stopping local extinction, a fool’s errand, but rather on insuring that migration among fragments is sufficiently large that the equilibrium condition retains the species extant in the landscape. My position is that the untouched areas should largely remain untouched, and the main question is how to make the matrix as high quality as possible, with the definition of “quality” a negotiable issue, highly dependent on local factors. The overall landscape (or countryside) then becomes this simple combination of fragments of natural vegetation within the matrix, and the key guiding question should be “how do we make as high quality matrix as possible?”  The combination of corridors of natural-like vegetation and archipelagos or biodiversity trampolines can certainly be part of that matrix, but most important is the promotion of agroecological techniques of food production that do as little harm to biodiversity as possible and that aim at sustainability as a goal that supersedes the productivist mentality.     

             Once we acknowledge that the quality of the matrix is the major goal in pursuing a biodiversity rich landscape (or countryside), it naturally follows that we ask who constructs that quality.  On the one hand, it is clear that certain levels high up in bureaucratic structures determine many of the background characteristics within which the structure will emerge (e.g., “decision makers” will decide on zoning or tax structures or roadway construction), but the ultimate decisions about land use will normally be local, decisions that individual farmers, farming families and farming communities make.  How to generate sociopolitical structures that will encourage ecological thinking in reaching those decisions is not completely obvious, but clearly necessary.  Should one concentrate on those upper bureaucrats who appear to hold all the cards in decision making, or should one concentrate on the farmers who actually work the land and thus do the job of transforming the matrix?  Do we try to influence the architect or the stonemason?  It is a question deeply riddled with ideology.

Kahnenan, D., and A. Tversky. 1984. American Psychologist, 39:341-350.

Phalan, B., et al.  2011.  Food Policy 36:561.

Green et al., 2005. Science 307:550.

AGROECOLOGY: BALANCING A PLATFORM ON THREE LEGS

As agroecology emerges as a multidisciplinary topic combining many traditions, both popular and academic, I sense the emergence of a consensus on something of a megastructure.  It is possible to recognize three, sometimes competing but mainly converging, lines of thought that, in a classical Marxist sense seem to be “interpenetrating.”  Science (in the sense of the Western tradition), traditional knowledge (frequently connected to popular social movements), and the natural world, are what seem to be emerging as the three pillars supporting the emerging platform of agroecology. 

            It is convenient to acknowledge, as is so often noted, that to the extent we have anything at all to offer that is new is due to our position on the shoulders of giants.  In Europe we can trace important influences from the English Revolution of 1640 in which peasant farmers changed the world through demands that today would be referred to as sovereignty (it also involved a King having his head cut off).  Subsequent to Cromwell’s defeat of King Charles I, the peasant class became again marginalized and by 1649 their situation was reverting to the former conditions of serfdom.  At that point a movement known as the “diggers” developed a radical agrarian program based on the idea that "true freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth.”  From their “Declaration of the poor oppressed people of England” they note, in part,

“[we] give notice to every one whom it concerns, . . .  that some of you, that have been Lords of Manors, do cause the Trees and Woods that grow upon the Commons, . . .  to be cut down and sold, for your own private use, Thereby the Common Land, which your own mouths doe say belongs to the poor, is impoverished, and the poor oppressed people robbed of their Rights, while you give them cheating words, . . .Therefore we are resolved to be cheated no longer, nor be held under the slavish fear of you no longer, seeing the Earth was made for us, as well as for you.. . . . Therefore we require, and we resolve to take both Common Land, and Common woods to be a livelihood for us, and look upon you as equal with us, not above us, knowing very well, that England the land of our Nativity, is to be a common Treasury of livelihood to all, . . . ”

The diggers may have been short lived, but their ideology lives on as a militant attachment to the land and the right to use it, and a rejection of illegitimate power, especially a power that cynically abuses and sometimes destroys the “Common Land,” or in modern parlance, the natural world.  Perhaps the diggers were the first agroecologists.
            But primacy is frequently accorded the agronomist Sir Alfred Howard, dispatched to India by Queen Victoria to teach the Indians the modern techniques of agriculture.  Working with his first wife Gabrielle, the Howard team developed a variety of techniques that would today be regarded as organic.  Most importantly, it was their associating with, and willingness to learn from, local traditional farmers that lead them to reject, at least in part, the growing industrial system.  As Sir Howard is so frequently quoted:

“By 1910 I had learnt how to grow healthy crops, practically free from disease, without the slightest help from . . . all the . . . expensive paraphernalia of the modern experiment station.”

His willingness to listen to and learn from small-scale Indian farmers was key to his development of several agricultural processes that today appear almost standard, such as composting.  The Diggers and the Howard team represent the beginnings of what we argue is one essential feature of today’s agroecology – social organization and political actions, combined with the intimate knowledge of local farmers.
            A second tendency also has deep historical roots.  Anthropologists rightly emphasize that prehistoric people not only had an appreciation and knowledge of local ecological forces, they applied that knowledge to construct their agricultural systems.  From the Chinampas of Mexico to the terraces of Peru, technological inputs into agricultural systems bore the stamp of intimate knowledge of local ecological principles.  Although the articulation of those local ecological principles may not have been recognizable in modern ecological terms, and frequently took on the semi-religious form of veneration of “mother earth,” the close association with the natural world that inevitably was the case with early farmers required them to become ecologists in principle.  Although their knowledge may have been quite restricted in that it was based on their experience locally, it was nevertheless deep, and, most importantly, was based on their understanding of how the natural world works.
            In more recent times we see the important influence of Richard St. Barbe Baker who served the British Empire in Africa and developed an almost religious tie to forests.  As a formally trained forester he was sent to Kenya where he found a scared landscape, the result of a century of irresponsible farming under British rule.  He set out to reforest large sections of the country, a task for which he formed the “Men of the Trees” movement (today’s International Tree Foundation).  Much of interest is to be found in Baker’s writings about forests, but for purposes of this essay, he saw in the forests lessons that would become important for agroecology (e.g., natural cycling of nutrients occurred in natural forests but not in many of the agricultural systems that displaced them).  He sought insights from “natural” ecosystems (for him, forests) that would guide the planning of agriculture, a forerunner for what would become “natural systems agriculture.” 
            A third tendency, is likely as old, if not older than the Digger’s movement.  When Galilio trained his telescope on Jupiter, he saw the moons.  Several sequential drawings of the position of those moons led him to imagine that they were orbiting around the far larger mass of the planet Jupiter itself.  He deduced that they were nothing special, that as those moons orbited the planet, the planets orbited the sun, which Copernicus had deduced earlier, a deduction that got Galileo confined under house arrest for the best part of his later years. A half century later Newton noted:

“. . . a leaden ball projected from the top of a mountain . . . parallel to the horizon. . . is carried in a curved line to [some distance] . . .  [by] increasing the velocity we may at pleasure increase the distance to which it might be projected, and diminish the curvature of the line, which it might describe, till at last it should fall at [a greater distance] . . . or even might go quite round the whole earth before it falls [or even] so that it might never fall to the earth.”

Thus from the simple observation that “gravity is the thing that attracts masses to one another” and the practical observation that almost anyone could easily see (the leaden ball), Newton imagined the generation of a mass orbiting another mass and deduced that the orbits Galileo and Copernicus had seen were a simple consequence of this “law,” which today we know as the law of gravity. The fact that there was some simple mathematics that could be applied to the system should be viewed as a technical footnote to the main insight of a lead ball propelled parallel to the surface of the earth at great velocity. 
            Newton had a goal that would not normally be associated with the modern scientific method.  He wished to understand the nature of God, a point that is made crystal clear in his own writings, completely uncontested by later historians.  It is, of course, true that every scientist has important underlying goals in mind as he or she does science is, and the admonition that he or she should examine those goals carefully is something that any thinking colleague should encourage. Much as Newton felt he was discovering the laws created by the Christian God, which unquestionably supported the theocratic basis of monarchy, Darwin felt he was discovering a way to eliminate the institute of slavery.  In either case there was a moral background that provided meaning to their activities. We moderns would likely condemn one and applaud the other.
            Science and the scientific method have become foundational in the modern world.  While it is true that “science” is frequently used and abused to support nefarious ends, the basic principles of science, so eloquently expressed by Newton himself, remain a powerful way of understanding those parts of the natural world that are amenable to its application.  It is evident that there are myriad “ways of knowing” and it would be foolish to suggest that some of them were illegitimate a priori.  However, when it comes to organizing human interference in the natural world, the use of classical scientific principles, whether in the construction of an airplane or an agroecosystem, is essential.  Rejecting science, for whatever reason, burdens us with trying to solve problems with our hands tied.  Worse, in contested terrain (e.g., the debate over GMOs), allowing the other side the use of science but rejecting it ourselves, would be consigning our side to a huge handicap.
            These three tendencies form the three essential legs upon which the agroecological platform should, must, be based.  Although I am certain that other framings could be imagined, and I admit that the issue is far more complicated than the three dimensional version I offer up here, this simplified framing provides us with a readily understandable philosophical foundation and enables practitioners to see connections among diverse activities.  The simplified tripartite classification is that 1) local natural systems provide the underlying clues, 2) traditional knowledge (and political pressure from organized small-scale farmers) provides the local practical guidance, and 3) science provides a broader vision and practical guide for construction.  The science of agroecology lies at the intersection of these three tendencies and the fact that practitioners seem to always specialize on one or the other can be viewed not as debate on relevance, but rather contribution to the central goal.