Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic

11 Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph MYTHMAKERS SAY: ofHigh-Yield Fanning "Pesticides often leave the most resistant pests behind .... Then ... the resistant pests multiply ... soon, enormous quantities of pesticides are sprayed on the crops to kill just as many pests as were there when the process began. Only now the pests are stronger. And all the while, the quantity of pesticides to which we ourselves are exposed continues to Dennis T. Avery increase." Vice President Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, p. 5 2 Director of Global Food Issues "The second cause of slower food production growth is environmental degradation, which is damaging agriculture more than ever before." Lester Brown, State of the World 1993, Worldwatch Institute REALITY SAYS: "The Food and Agricultural Organization reported Sunday that the percentage of people in the developing nations who are hungry fell to 20 percent from 36 percent between 1961-63 and 1988-90." Paul Overberg, Gannett News Service, quoted from the Binghampton, N.Y., Press and Sun-Bulletin, September 21, 1992 "... [Plublic and private research institutions, commercial R&D enter- prises and especially the various international agricultural (research) centers ... are moving forward in concerted efforts to extend, redirect @nd Hudson fine-tune the original Green Revolution thrust. With the added impetus of biotechnology and other new scientific tools, we see clear indications that Institute ,many of the problems and constraints of the 1960s and 1970s have been Indianapolis, Indiana surmounted." 214 Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic Is High-Yield Farming Sustainable? 215 Dr. John R. Campbell, then-president, Oklahoma State University Don Plucknett. As senior science advisor to the Consultative Group and former dean of agriculture, University of Illinois, on International Agricultural Research, the key international Global Food Issues, Hudson Institute, 1991 network for agricultural research, Dr. Plucknett may have the world's best overview of agricultural research potential. "No doubt there is a [biological limit to yield] waiting for us some- where, but the evidence says we don't seem to be there yet in farm yields." Dr. Dr. Plucknett until recently was inclined to say that we didn't Donald Plucknett, in his farewell lecture as senior science advisor to the know where our next farm research breakthrough was coming from. International Network of Agricultural Research Centers (1) But in recent years, he has reviewed statistics from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization for the world and for individual "Sustainable farms cannot be constructed by going back to traditional countries around the globe. He also reviewed historic-even farming systems. The success of traditional systems lay in their archeological-evidence of yields in past centuries (4). nonextractive use of natural and human resources. Under intensification ... the systems collapsed .... [I]t is only in the unrealistic scenario of reduced population pressure that these systems can be made to work." Lightfoot, Pingali, and Harrington, "Beyond Romance and Rhetoric: Food Supply Systems in the Tropics Sustainable Agriculture and Farming Systems Research" (2) farming population system intensity density tools used One of the key charges of the environmental activists is the claim that high-yield farming is "unsustainable." This has resonated with gathering 0 0-10 9-4 None the public because it implies a lurking, hidden threat. forest-fallow 0-4 Axe, machete, Every serious study of the world's food production potential has digging stick Hoe, concluded that we have more than enough resources to support the bush fallow 10-40 4-64 axe, machete, current surge in population, and sustain the larger-but-restabilized digging stick Hoe, population expected in the future. The latest work to confirm the animal traction world's huge "carrying capacity" is by Dr. Paul Waggoner, distin- short fallow 40-80 16-64 Animal traction, guished scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Sta- tractor tion. His study, entitled How Much Land Can 10 Billion People Annual crops 80-120 64-256 Spare for Nature? was published by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) (3). Waggoner concludes that the current globe's cropland could Source: Pingali, Bigot, and Binswanger, Agricultural Mechanization ,7nd provide a vegetarian diet for 10 billion people right now with cur- the Evaluation of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, Baltimore, rent yield levels (if we converted the Third World land that is cur- Maryland, Johns Hopkins Press, 1987(5) rently in pasture for draft animals to crops instead). Plucknett says that yield takeoff marks a transition point when a farmer stops expanding his fields and starts getting more from the Is There a Yield Limit? land he is already using by benefiting from scientific advice on Perhaps the strongest endorsement of the Green Revolution's how to boost yields, Plucknett believes once a country's farmers continuing importance and potential has recently come from Dr. begin "yield takeoff," the potential for production keeps going upward. 216 Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic Is High-Yield Farming Sustainable? 217 Dr. Waggoner says we've been looking at agriculture through the wrong lens. We've assumed that crop yields are governed by the -Using supplemental irrigation on rain-fed land can produce law of diminishing returns. But he points out that high-yield still another yield surge in dry years, without even requiring agriculture has been cheerfully violating the "law" of diminishing much additional water or water delivery cost. returns for decades-and is still getting away with it! Diminishing returns would mean that after a certain level, more -Blocking insect and disease attacks with pesticides and pest- fertilizer wouldn't produce more yield. Better seeds wouldn't raise resistant breeding removes another yield constraint. yields much higher. Instead, we find that more nitrogen, for example, can add just as much yield at higher levels as at low ones- Confidence in the sustainability of yield-enhancing technologies assuming such constraints as moisture and trace minerals are dealt continues to be increased by new developments on almost a daily with. Artificial insemination keeps adding more milk per cow, as basis. One good example is the USDA’s newest pest-resistant long as we keep improving the cow's nutrition, comfort, and health soybean for hot climates. The new soybean resists nematodes, leaf- care. Improved seeds keep pushing yields higher. eating insects, and stem canker, all of which have taken a heavier toll Waggoner thinks what is happening is that farmers are remov- in hot climates than in regions with cold winters. Its yields, as a result ing limitations on crop yield rather than moving out on a diminish- of the pest resistance, match com belt levels (45 bushels per acre) and ing returns curve. Let us review the past surges in farm yields: double the yields of current Southern commercial varieties (21 bushels) (6). Waggoner asserts that science and technology should enable the -Mankind's first and most obvious crop yield limitation was developing countries to raise their crop yields fully as much as the weeds. We learned to do clean fallow, then plow and hoe, rich countries already have, by removing their yield constraints over and now no-till and conservation tillage with herbicides has the long term. He concludes that I 0 billion people should need no made a giant leap toward sustainability. more land for food production than they use today, assuming the world continues to support agricultural research and permit freer trade -Adding nitrogen (at first with animal manure) removed a in farm products (7). constraint on the plants' nutrient requirements. REALITY DATA: -Adding phosphate as well as nitrogen removed another nu- "Data from China's National Network of Chemical Fertilizer Experi- trition constraint, and yields surged again. ments (during 1981-83) revealed ... 74 percent of China's cultivated land was deficient in phosphate, . about 40 percent was severely deficient in P, and about 23 percent was deficient in potash.... This scenario of imbalance is, -Later we learned that the plants need up to 26 trace min- outside of the large alluvial plains and deltas, typical of most developing erals as well, and removing the constraint of mineral defi- countries, and is one of the reasons for stagnating yields, poor quality crops, ciencies raised yields again. increasing incidences of diseases, and soil degradation.... With few exceptions, organic manures alone will not support the yield increases in -Breeding shorter stalks on wheat and rice plants removed crop production that are required. ." two constraints: It allowed more of the plants' energy to go World Bank staff members Richard Grimshaw, Christopher Perry, and into the grain heads; and the plants could support the heavier James Smyle "Technical Considerations for Sustainable Agriculture:',4g- grain heads produced by heavy fertilization without failing riculture and Environmental Challenges" Excerpted from Hudson Briefing Paper, Number 190, May 1996 over. 218 Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic Is High-Yield Farming Sustainable? Z19 Sustainability Through Agricultural Research Farming to Sustain the Environment Agricultural research is the most important sustainability com- by Dennis Avery and Alex Avery ponent under humanity's direct control. Adequate research fund- ing is urgent now for two reasons: (1) it can take years or even The Main Sustainability Issues decades to develop new research thrusts and bring research find- ings into practice and (2) the next half-century is the most critical The single greatest challenge for global agricultural period-when the wildlife will be saved or lost to the production of sustainability is to save the world's remaining wild lands and natu- food. ral areas from being plowed for food. The world depends on the integrity of local ecosystems, climates, and water cycles.

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