Handout 3.1: Looking at Industrial Agriculture and Agricultural Innovation

Agricultural Innovation:1 “A form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish and crops. The methods it employs include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade.”

Benefits Downsides + Cheap and plentiful food ‐ Environmental and social costs + Consumer convenience ‐ Damage to fisheries + Contribution to the economy on many levels, ‐ Animal waste causing surface and groundwater from growers to harvesters to sellers pollution ‐ Increased health risks from pesticides ‐ Heavy use of fossil fuels leading to increased ozone pollution and global warming

Factors that influence agricultural innovation • Incentive or regulatory government policies • Different abilities and potentials in agriculture and food sectors • Macro economic conditions (i.e. quantity and quality of public and private infrastructure and services, human capital, and the existing industrial mix) • The knowledge economy (access to agricultural knowledge and expertise) • Regulations at the production and institution levels

The Challenge: Current industrial agriculture practices are temporarily increasing the Earth’s carrying capacity of humans while slowly destroying its long‐term carrying capacity. There is, therefore, a need to shift to more sustainable forms of industrial agriculture, which maximize its benefits while minimizing the downsides.

Innovation in food Example (Real or hypothetical) processing Cost reduction / productivity improvement Quality enhancement / sensory performance Consumer convenience / new varieties Nutritional delivery / “healthier” Food safety

1 www.wikipedia.org