SCIENCE, AGRICULTURE AND RESEARCH

Last week I attended a debate on GM foods at the Byre Theatre in St. Andrews between Patrick Holden of the Soil Association and Dr. Gavin Ramsay of the Scottish Crop Research Institute. When Patrick advanced the idea of positive health as a defining concept of the organic and holistic movement, it was clear that Gavin could not relate to this language at all. This demonstrated a philosophical divide between the two approaches, which was reflected in the attitude of the founders of the Soil Association to the chemical agriculture of their day. Sir Albert Howard, who carried out pioneering research in India, wrote that 'the birthright of all living things is health. He added that this was true of soil, plant, animals and man, who formed an unbroken connected chain. Thus agriculture becomes a primary element of a national health service.

This led on to some of the central issues of current agricultural debates: is modern agriculture, like modern medicine, just treating the symptoms rather than the causes of problems? Can GM fix the environmental degradation brought about by modern agriculture or will it add to the toxic load? Can traditional agricultural methods feed the world? If not, what role might GM foods play? Are GM foods and organic approaches compatible in any way if both aim for sustainability? This series of books addresses these questions in detail, which is an urgent requirement when one considers that 800 million people are undernourished under the current agricultural, economic and political systems and that precious little progress has been made in meeting the target of halving this number in 20 years since a major FAO conference in 1996.

The first book provides insider views of working in agricultural research and asks if it is a 'compromised participation'. It takes a critical look at participation - very much a buzz word these days - which tries to be 'inclusive of the views, needs and desires of the supposed beneficiaries of research into agricultural systems, thus empowering people in the decision-making processes involved in project and technology development and implementation'. This contrasts with large companies following their own agenda and trying to market the results to the general public. The book explains how agricultural research works, then takes a fascinating look at the origins and development of agricultural research systems, including the foundation of Rothamsted in 1843. . The legacy of empires is seen in the plantation monocultures of cash crops, a pattern that continues to this day and is encouraged by structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank. The rise of agribusiness since the 1940s is described and brought up to date with current biotechnology debates and the relationship between universities and industry. The last two chapters outline the rise of the participatory approach, which is treated in much greater detail in the other three books.

Agroecological Innovations is the outcome of a conference held in 1999 on the contribution that traditional techniques might make to meeting world food needs in ways that support rather than degrade the environment. For all the hype about GM foods, this book provides the real news of case studies showing massive increases in output through the use of agroecological approaches, in which comparatively little investment has been made. There is no doubt that we need to find ways of raising yields that do not further erode the environmental resource base and that are also socially desirable as well as economically sustainable. Agroecological approaches implement the philosophy of participation, drawing on local expertise and knowledge while involving the farmers directly in experiments that do not make them hostages to the large chemical companies striving to control the world food supply for their own benefit. This is the book for the reader who wants to get to grips with the detail of this new research. It lays out the issues for analysis and evaluation in the first part. The bulk of the book describes experiences from Africa, Latin America and Asia, while the third part looks at the impact of participatory practices in human and social terms.

Agri-Culture is the latest book by Jules Pretty, who is Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex and the UK's foremost expert on sustainable agriculture. It follows his excellent 1999 book The Living Land and is subtitled 'Reconnecting People, Land and Nature'. Its diagnosis is that something is wrong with our agricultural and food systems if, after the increased productivity of the last century, 800 million people are still undernourished. Furthermore, hundreds of millions of people eat too much, or the wrong sorts of food, which creates another set of problems! 'Real progress, Pretty contends, 'can only come from a synthesis of the best of the past, eliminating practices that cause damage to environments and human health, and using the best of knowledge and technologies available to us today'.

Part of our challenge is that we have become disconnected from nature. On the one hand we have the monoscapes created by monoculture that turns food into a mere commodity divorced from its roots in rural communities, while on the other we create enclaves or enclosures where wilderness can be preserved. Few of us realise that we are 'buying a system of production when we buy our food'. And if we lose our traditional countryside, we also lose a part of our collective memory along with our intrinsic connection with nature. Pretty then considers the real cost of food in terms of externalities such as pollution, ill-health and animal disease. This gives the lie to the assumption that we currently have a cheap food system: in 1996, these external costs were in excess of £1.5bn a year. As a specific example, consider that the UK pesticide market is £500 million, but we spend £120 million a year to clean them out of drinking water! It turns out that only Cuba and Switzerland have truly sustainable agricultural systems.

Pretty's next chapter covers the agro-ecological innovations that we have already covered, putting them within a philosophy and policy of sustainable agriculture. The most needy people need these low-cost and readily available techniques. This means maintaining soil health, minimising environmental damage and making optimum use of scarce water resources. He provides a level-headed analysis of the genetics controversy in the next chapter, pointing out that many techniques are contained within biotechnology, all of which require their own analysis. He discusses the risks associated with agricultural biotechnology and concludes that the companies have yet to deliver on their rhetoric. Interestingly, this conclusion was echoed by Gavin Ramsay in the St. Andrews debate when he said that he had not been impressed by the current GM crops, adding that their real contribution might lie a decade or two down the line. The rest of Pretty's book advances ideas of ecological literacy and redefining our embeddedness in nature. He makes a good case for a radical overhaul of agricultural systems, institutions and policies.

Food for All is perhaps the best place to start for the beginner. Madeley's line of argument echoes that of Pretty and Uphoff by contending that sustainable agricultural practices have a vital role to play in future food production. It is a chilling thought that we fight a hugely expensive war costing upwards of £100bn triggered by the death of 3,000 people on September 11th 2001, when 16,500 children under the age of five die every day of the year. Humans are not geared to dealing with the everyday so much as responding to eye-catching crises. The arguments of these books are put in perspective by Madeley's statistic that 1,500 million people on 437 million farms in developing countries make a living out of small-scale farming. This means that the introduction of capital-intensive techniques may raise yields but is likely to displace millions of people into already overcrowded cities, so that the priority must be the maintenance of self-sufficient rural communities.

Madeley lists the foods grown for health, pointing out that the Green Revolution benefited only farmers with irrigation and that, amazingly, a study from the 18th century shows rice yields identical to those of the present. One of the pressing problems for developing countries is finding the right balance between food grown for domestic production and exports. If the latter is expanded too quickly, then increased production will lead to a drop in prices and the economic balance will shift. Ironically, the policies of the World Bank have created this very situation more than once! Madeley concludes that the application of knowledge rather than chemicals is the key to increasing farm output on small holdings in developing countries.

The book considers the effect of dams (large ones seem to have been disastrous but smaller schemes beneficial), land tenure, the role of women in producing food, the use of microcredit, the nature of rural development, the role of trade, the likely impact of climate change and the role of international agricultural institutions. He concludes that the encouragement of smallholder agriculture forms a central part of poverty-reduction strategies and that governments need to give the world food situation much higher priority.

The overall message of these books is that a rethink of agricultural research, policies and practice is required, and that small-scale agro-ecological approaches have a major role to play. As for the role of GM technology in a sustainable agriculture, the jury is still out, even if the current political and economic climate gives large chemical companies immense leverage. Governments need to decide whether to allow continued centralisation of economic and political power of whether to empower local initiatives and give more funding to agro-ecological research, which corresponds to holistic science and holistic health and an integration of agricultural and health policies.