When working in international politics, you realize that efforts to improve (or, I daresay, save) the world revolve around buzzwords. Clearcut visions and concepts are required to form alliances, formulate action plans and (most importantly!) pledge political and financial support.
In agriculture, it seems we have passed ‘green’ (too reminiscent of the green revolution and its controversies) and ‘sustainable’ (too vague and multi-faceted) and arrived at ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA). Climate-smart ag fits into global climate action, is quantifiable (via CO2-equivalent emission savings) and can encompass both mitigation and adaptation actions, making it a catch-all for a plethora of initiatives that can satisfy both the global North and South in their aims. So far, so good.
Thus, at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in New York on 23 September, 180 senior officials and stakeholders attended the inaugural meeting of the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. The Alliance aspires to be a “food security and nutrition focused, agriculture-driven and action-oriented coalition of entities committed to incorporating climate-smart approaches encompassing all scales and types of agriculture systems, across all climates and approaches to farming, including crop, livestock, fishery and forestry activities, providing farmers an innovative toolbox of options from which to choose”. Its goals (which match the FAO definition of CSA) are to contribute simultaneously to “sustainable and equitable increases in agricultural productivity and incomes; greater resilience of food systems and farming livelihoods; and reduction and/or removal of greenhouse gas emissions associated with agriculture (including the relationship between agriculture and ecosystems), where possible” (quoted from the Alliance’s Framework document available here).
According to a number of research projects, organic farming can indeed contribute to climate change mitigation. First and foremost, its use of nitrogen-fixing rotations, cover crops and organic compost increases the carbon sequestration potential of soils and boosts their carbon content. There are also secondary effects, such as lower fossil fuel use, a lesser reliance on imported feed concentrate and the transportation and land use change consequences stemming from it, and a decrease in methane emissions from landfills.
Thus, organic farming and the CSA idea should be born allies, right? However, as always, it gets more complicated once you dig a bit deeper.
Looking at livestock production, for instance, the longer lifespan of organic animals translates into more methane from the gastric fermentation from ruminants. Should the goal of a natural and healthy animal life be abandoned to decrease their greenhouse gas impact, though? And what about the other important aspects of sustainable agriculture – related to nutrient cycles, biodiversity, the provision of nutritious and diversified diets and the empowerment of smallholders – that cannot as easily be connected to either climate mitigation or adaptation? This worry leads organic pioneers and other NGOs to watch the CSA movement with interest, but some doubt as to its aims and inclusiveness.
What it boils down to, essentially, is the challenge of reducing complex problems to one, or few, indicators. Such an approach will never be able to be all-inclusive and respect the diversity of solutions available. Yet, the quantification of environmental improvements is an easy way to appreciate them, and to remunerate efforts undertaken by farmers to provide such public goods.
Reblogged this on Dr. B. A. Usman's Blog.
Hm. I have a lot of sympathy for your take as someone who wants to build bridges as well. Though I would say that “what is good in [CSA] is not new, and what is new is not good”, in that CSA does not involve any kind of conceptual or technical breakthrough, it is (as you refer) another rallying cry. But it is one that as phrased has two major problems:
(1) It emphasizes productivity first–when productivity should not be goal, livelilhoods, resilience and food security should be. Increased food security without increased productivity is more or less an unalloyed good; increased productivity without increased food security is a tragic farce. Which is all to say: you often get what you measure, and ignore (or underemphasize) what you don’t. Productivity should be a tool. It should not be the first mentioned goal.
(2) It (or at least, the Global Alliance for CSA) declares that it has no preference for certain kinds of agriculture over others. This is, to me, an a-scientific view, as not all kinds of agriculture are as responsible for climate change as others.
And I suppose a third problem, which you referred to in a previous post–it doesn’t do anything to address power relationships and imbalances, which are at the heart of much food insecurity, to my mind. Food sovereignty is one proposal to address this; I also like the term “agency” (as in, political agency); Amartya Sen formulated a similar idea under effective democracy and a reasonably free press. But sociopolitical rights, under whatever name, are key–and sociopolitical power is not one of the indicators most prominently mentioned in CSA, let us say. (For a very, VERY long treatise that includes the conclusion that relative equality is a prerequisite for solving complicated problems, see the new conceptualization, “cognitive democracy” — http://www.lapietradialogues.org/area/pubblicazioni/doc000071.pdf ). While politically challenging, I think the issue of relative and substantive (political) equality is one of the most vital of our times. We court disappointment and failure when we do not include it prominently. (In my opinion.)
These are really, really good points, thank you for them! I had a feeling I was leaving out a lot of other considerations regarding the criticism CSA has received recently, so thanks for complimenting my post. I agree that agency and power relationships are key in achieving a truly sustainable food system. However, I sometimes ask myself how to achieve a transition toward a more democratic system, and how to behave on the way there – it’s no secret that currently, there are huge concentrations of power at every level of the supply chain, so while strengthening actors at grassroots level is paramount, it might be necessary to take big business on board in the meantime at least for the climate component – and there, I think, CSA (esp. when it relates to efficiency improvements) might be a reasonable approach. But again, I’m new to the whole concept, so I welcome a debate obviously!
It is a thoroughly fair question, but my response tends to be “what is the evidence taking big business on board does more to change them than it does to change the expectations of others involved”? I would say the evidence for influencing big business more than them influencing the expectations on them is scant. On the other hand, the power of “oppositional frameworks” — people pushing *against* bad practices and criticizing corporations & big business — would seem to have much anecdotal and circumstantial evidence in favor of it. (To be fair, so does “cooperating with big business”; my more nuanced argument would be that the relative importance of engage vs. oppose is rarely disentangled.)
We do need good and intellectually honest people “inside” and working with groups that sincerely want to do better (and those who don’t, actually, perhaps more so!) But my analysis is that those on the inside are constrained by a far greater degree than those outside, and the space those “inside” have to operate within is far more dictated by external societal pressures than on internal actions.
A simple thought experiment is whether/when/how big corporations would have, on their own, chosen to address the concerns of the environmental movement without the decades of largely critical and oppositional actions? Given the potentially *huge* externalities involved, how much can we reasonably expect business to do “willingly” as opposed to resulting from social mobilization and pressure?
Piven and Cloward in “Poor People’s Movements” found that these movements were most effective when they were the least collaborative; Ana Maria Doimo, in her research on Brazilian social movements, found both “oppositional” and “collaborative” moments were present, and contributed to change, but certainly found the “oppositional” stage to be vitally important, and to essentially lay the groundwork and open the “space” for the collaborative stage, where some changes would get implemented, but the larger agenda weakened, arguably necessitating more “oppositional” organizing.
I’m open to the idea that we need people–perhaps even businesses–“on board”. I suppose my quibble/preference, however, is that I much more rarely see the recognition (in US/Canada at least) that people criticizing, protesting, and opposing is–from all that I can tell from the evidence–no less important. In fact, it is arguably (but hardly incontrovertibly) *more* important.
I should say, we’ve commented negatively about CSA, as has Action Aid. So not coming to this impartially. I can see the alternative point of view, but I am more in agreement with Action Aid than not.