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- Herausgeber: Bentham Science Publishers
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
More Food: Road to Survival is a comprehensive analysis of agricultural improvements which can be achieved through scientific methods. This reference book gives information about strategies for increasing plant productivity, comparisons of agricultural models, the role of epigenetic events on crop production, yield enhancing physiological events (photosynthesis, germination, seedling emergence, seed properties, etc.), tools enabling efficient exploration of genetic variability, domestication of new species, the detection or induction of drought resistance and apomixes and plant breeding enhancement (through molecularly assisted breeding, genetic engineering, genome editing and next generation sequencing).
The book concludes with a case study for the improvement of small grain cereals. Readers will gain an understanding of the biotechnological tools and concepts central to sustainable agriculture
More Food: Road to Survival is, therefore, an ideal reference for agriculture students and researchers as well as professionals involved sustainability studies.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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More Food: Road to Survival
Edited by
Roberto Pilu
&
Giuseppe Gavazzi
BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS LTD.
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FOREWORD
In a recent seminar on agriculture sustainability, an old Professor of agronomy, present in the audience, commented that all what was said was correct, but that he was grown in an age where the increase of agriculture productivity was a central dogma, today, apparently, correctly sacrificed in favour of a better interaction between environment and food production. His feeling is probably motivated by robust reasons that several agronomists and geneticists, me included, share: we feel almost out of place in a cultural landscape which has forgotten promises and achievements of the green revolution, effective in nourishing a planet at a time of rapid population growth, a condition persisting still today. In 1960 the global yield of cereal grains was around 10 billions tons, while in the next 40 years it doubled. The green revolution had to do with the creation of high yielding plant varieties capable to efficiently utilize increasing agro-technical inputs. This was achieved by a rational use of genetics to recombine in single genotypes the resistance to pests, insects and abiotic stresses. In Italy, genetic and agronomic progress based on improved varieties was impressive: from 1945 to 1995 average yields increased from 0.68 to 2.57 t/ha for durum wheat, from 1.04 to 4.51 for common wheat, from 1.14 to 9.01 for maize, from 3.68 to 5.74 for rice and from 22.9 to 47.2 t/ha for sugar beet.
One can ask what are the reasonings behind the adoption of new paradigms and priorities by scientists and institutions dedicated to the future of agriculture. The first consideration is that while the south of the planet still has to solve problems of true rural development, in the western societies the social implications of agriculture are part of the more general problem of finding a balance between food and feed production and care of the environment [1]. As a consequence, the theme is debated with contributions of social scientists and politicians not familiar with agricultural specificities; as a result, their genuine good intentions frequently ignore the technical consequences of the solutions they suggest. The second point to be raised concerns our poor capacity to adopt proper parameters defining agriculture sustainability, particularly in terms of maintenance of soil fertility. On the issue, two contrasting visions have emerged. The first supports the adoption of mild systems with decreased productivity, a wildlife-friendly agriculture reducing its impact on the environment while minimizing the negative effects of fertilizers and pesticides. The second suggests more intensive agricultural systems avoiding the necessity to plogh new virgin soils which, frequently, for climatic and edaphic conditions are marginal lands hosting peculiar sources of biodiversity.
In any case, a general agreement exists on the need to consider with priority the problem of future sustainability of agriculture. A possible evolution is that agriculture will remain intensive, but being based on methods and principles derived more from biology than from chemistry. Along this line of thought, new suggestions are currently emerging concerning the radical modifications of our agricultural systems [2]. This will imply that defining a possible future should reconsider the difficulties inherent both to the practical use of the biology of the living components of agricultural processes, and to the need that such components will be properly managed in terms of sustainability. This is the core issue of this volume dedicated to the breeding of tomorrow crops.
The first group of contributions introduces macro-agronomic and economic topics, related also to the comparison between industrial and subsistence agriculture. This part includes a discussion on the role and impact of genetics in support of future yield gains. The next four chapters take into account the biological-genetic components responsible for the interaction among plants and the environment: seed germination and plant nutrition; plant development; photosynthesis. Four contributions follow, grouped under the title Tools. This is the most evocative part of the volume: it illustrates the methodological revolution linking genomic resources and the capacity to predict plant phenotype and behaviour based on molecular markers; the adoption of new crops adapted to sustainable agricultural systems (one example is perennial cereal grains); molecular approaches to heterosis and apomixis; the role of epigenetics in determining the yield capacity of superior varieties. The volume ends with a chapter on quality and security of field-produced commodities and with a discussion on the state of art of the breeding of minor cereal grains.
The consideration of what the volume offers, allows to anticipate, at different levels, a vision on principles, methods and conclusions on the future sustainability of food production. A first level is the attention here dedicated to reappraise relevance and role of genetics in the sustainability context. Particularly in terms of resources dedicated, the possibility of future food crises should, in fact, suggest to stress the central role of the breeding of conventional and future-tailored varieties, once the social role of this activity is recognized, as done in the past with the peace Nobel prize assigned to Norman Borlaug.
A different level of discussion sees the future as interpreted in terms of targets to be assigned to plant breeding. Two cases are topical. The first regards the hybrid varieties in terms of contribution to yield increase. The adoption of hybrid crops as a final outcome of genetic selection, indeed, is becoming obligatory even for plants where autogamy does not favour an easy production of hybrid seeds. In this respect, molecular breeding, boosted by genomics, has contributed to bring again the phenomenon of heterosis to the attention to plant breeders, considering the possibility of revealing its molecular bases and of using effective prediction methods of hybrid value [3]. The second case has to do with perennialism. Compared to annual plants, perennials reduce the need of energy and agrochemicals, as well as of soil and nitrogen losses and of irrigation water.
A last consideration is proper to mitigate the impression that in the future food production may represent a problem of difficult solution. In the past plant breeders have successfully used genetics, but their approach to yield increase was essentially empirical. The incoming century, however, has already shown that varieties resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses can be developed using rational predictive methods based on molecular markers and exploiting genomics and transgenosis [4]. More recent molecular technologies allow to generate mutations, with positive phenotypic effects, at very precise nucleotide positions in genes with a known sequence. It can be concluded that the road to survival will be largely dependent on the accumulation of knowledge and on the evolution of methods capable to meet our future food needs.
REFERENCES
[1]Salamini F.. , . Conference delivered at the Adunanza Solenne di chiusura dell’Anno Accademico dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 26 giugno..[2]National Research Council, . USA. Toward sustainable agricultural systems in the 21st Century.. Washington, DC: The National Academy Press; 2010.[3]Wallace J.G., Larsson S.J., Buckler E.S.. Entering the second century of maize quantitative genetics., Heredity (Edinb).2014; 112(1): 30-38. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/hdy.2013.6] [PMID: 23462502][4]Kempken F., Jung C.. , . Genetic modification of plants: agriculture, horticulture and forestry.. Berlin: Springer Verlag; 2009.Francesco Salamini Onorary Professor University of Kӧln GermanyPREFACE
The need for more food is rapidly increasing as the world population is growing at a fast pace. The scientific community involved in crop production and its improvement is being called upon to find solutions to the expanding global demand for crop plants and their products. Two options are available to increase yields: the first consists of an increase in the areas under production, and the second, an improvement of productivity on existing farmland. Of the two options the second seems preferable, as it avoids the disruption of existing ecosystems as well as an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. In both cases two strategies can be adopted, one classical, of extensive industrial agriculture largely adopted in developed countries to produce major crops like corn, rice, wheat and soybean and another one, known as sustainable agriculture, characterized by a production more respectful of the ecosystem. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive and which one of the two should be adopted depends on the characteristics of local production methods and on economic and political considerations, as well as the choice of global versus local food production and consumption. In this context, to really improve the situation, we should focus our efforts on the areas of the world where the nutrition of the population should be improved, like Africa, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and some regions of South America. In these areas the solutions to solve the problem of hunger should be local and specific, related to the real needs of the population and respectful of local traditions. The knowledge, experience and know-how available to the western world could be invaluable tools for improving their agricultural production. Application of our model of industrial agriculture should be avoided. Only by trying to understand what are the needs of these populations and exporting our knowledge to improve their situation can we hope to contribute to solve their problems. These considerations are developed in the first two chapters of the book. The following chapter will deal with genetic variability as an essential source of plant improvement. The following chapters will analyse basic physiological processes which represent bottlenecks for productivity and the efforts that could be directed to increase the efficiency of these processes. The topics analysed will be the genetic control of seed size; germination and seedling elongation, representing crucial steps in plant development; photomorphogenesis and the effects of light on aspects related to yield, such as photoperiod and shade avoidance, photosynthesis and the sink-source flux; and mineral nutrition. These topics will be covered in chapters 5 to 9. We will concentrate on factors that are directly related to yield, omitting those indirectly affecting productivity like herbicide- and pest-resistance, drought tolerance and cold resistance. In the last part of the book, attention will be given to some of the tools available to the researcher to achieve plant improvement. We will focus attention on available tools such as molecularly assisted breeding, gene editing, domestication of new species, heterosis and apomixis.
IMPORTANCE OF THE FIELD
The importance of increasing productivity of the major crops to meet the demand of an expanding population is self-evident. What is not so obvious is how to achieve a significant improvement in a short time, and what tools we can rely upon to accomplish a second
“green revolution”. The great majority of the contributors to the chapters of the book are teachers of advanced courses to graduate students in Biotechnology or to post-graduate students in Ph.D. programs and they feel that this book could be of interest for their students.
List of Contributors
The Yield in the Context of Industrial Versus Sustainable Agriculture
Stefano Bocchi*Abstract
During the Green Revolution both the yield and the global production significantly increased. The yield increase was achieved, for some main crops, thanks to the so called high yielding varieties. Higher global production was also due to the increase of the crop production surface which took place especially in some areas of the planet. In the current scenario of rapid human population increase, with a sharp increase of livestock, the challenge is to achieve efficient, productive, sustainable and resilient land use, while conserving biodiversity and assuring, everywhere, food security inside a framework of sustainable diets. The paper, after a discussion on the meanings of such concepts as yield, yield gap, production and global production describes some of the main issues related to increased intensification of food security and global productivity in the current discussions on the potential of the Green Revolution approach and the agro-ecological paradigm.
BASIC TERMS
The issue related to crop yield, despite its fundamental importance for our future, even though extensively studied, has been poorly defined and discussed on a sufficiently broad time-space scale.
The role of the technology in yield change has often been confounded by other influences [1].
During the Green Revolution the crop yield has been the main, if not the only, goal to be considered and the farms have been viewed for decades as industries where input is converted in output thanks to an industrial-like production process.
Few studies have been carried out by referring to theoretical and practical analysis influences of the Green Revolution approach on the innovation in agriculture, including both the positive and negative consequences on the natural resources.
Crop yield is the weight of the so called economic products (i.e. grain, root vegetables, and fruits, etc.) at standard moisture content, referred to unit of land area cultivated per crop, conventionally and generally referred to in metric tons per hectare (t/ha). Energy, protein, oil, vitamin, micronutrients contents in the total weight are of fundamental importance in yield analysis taking into account the influence on the final utilization of the value chain (human diet and nutrition) when the nutritive, energetic, economic balances, also have to be considered.
As underlined by Fischer et al. [1] the energy contents reflect the cost of biosynthesis of the major constituents of the product. Cereals for examples are characterized by a total energy content of around 15 MJ/kg, whereas soybean contains about 24 MJ/kg, the comparison of the yield obtained from these crops must consider these different energy costs.
For agriculture the main figure is average yield in terms of t/ha, not only referred to field and farm, but also to different levels of the territorial systems i.e. districts, regional, and national. Farm Yield (FY), reported from yield measurements, or more often from surveys, are part of the local and national statistics annually collected without considering the cases where, for various reasons, the district is not planted to its full potential.
The possibility is not always considered, such as in warm climates, to have different crops/harvests, per year, in the same field. Nevertheless this FY is generally indicated as Real Yield, different from the so-called Potential Yield (PY), which is the uppermost end of the yield scale, which is reached with the combination of some important factors. When the most appropriate varieties are cultivated with the best agronomic management, there are no manageable abiotic and biotic stresses [2].
“PY defines what might be obtained for particular plants species when not limited in technology, i.e. when the best cultivars, fertilizer, machinery, labor, and knowledge are all available and applied in the best possible ways” [3].
The concept is close to the so-called Attainable Yield corresponding to the best yields achieved through skillful use of available technology. It is usually achieved in experiment centers or by the best farmers [3]. This simple theoretical definition does not have an easy method that actually measures it. The sowing date can be a complication. The optimal sowing date may be constrained in a multiple cropping system [4]. PY is usually determined with direct measurements or indirect estimates in plots, in two types of experiment: comparative variety ones and in plot/field experiments carried out by crop physiologists or agronomists. In this type of PY determination sampling errors occur. Crop modeling can be used to predict PY in different environments and their accuracy has significantly improved. Integrated methods, i.e. direct measurements, modeling and expert opinion can be used [5]. The integrated methods are particularly useful when the so-called water-limited potential yield (PYw) has to be determined. The crop yield depends on the quantity of available water and the PYw is generally calculated as a linear function of the water supply, but variation in rainfall during the development stages can create a more complex picture and modify this linearity.
Current yield in a given agricultural area is usually a poor indicator of potential performance, falling on a continuum between crop failure and potential yield. FAO defines Actual Yield (AY) as the average yield of a district.
The concepts of the actual attainable potential yields are useful for defining the agronomic concept of intensification of the farming system: where actual yields are close to the projected attainable ones. The farming system and the agriculture of the area can be described as intensive. The intensification of farming systems increases when the available technology is appropriately adopted and as the proportion of time in crop is relative to fallow increases. The yield can be referred to both the total biomass obtained from the growth/development process and the part of this biomass. The term biomass indicates the total dry biomass accumulated by the crop, where the term Economic Yield (EY or simply yield) indicates the portion useful to humans as food/fiber/fuel or as feed. The fraction yield/total biomass is defined as coefficient of economic yield, the Harvest Index (HI) is calculated as the useful fractions/above-ground biomass.
If we compare PY, AY (or FY), EY and calculate the differences (i.e. (PY-AY) we have a better knowledge on what is defined as Yield Gap (YG). It can be expressed in percentage on PY or on FY. The latter is more appropriate since it indicates how much is the possible, desirable increase in actual grain yields that is achievable by farmers. Scientific literature supports the notion of a minimum yield gap (FY equals EY depending strongly on prices). If the future prices will be favorable for the farmers it is suggested [1] that the minimum yield gap is 30% of FY; that is to say EY is 23% below PY [4]. The yield gap across 40 agricultural regions around the world was calculated to range between 25 and 400%. (For more information and more recent data refer to both [4] and http://www.yield- gap.org/). Many of the countries with the highest YG have the poorest access to technology, infrastructure and capital required for the model of Green Revolution agricultural development.
The so-called Global Crop Production (GCP) is referred to the global amount of commercial biomasses or products (grains, fruits, roots, tubers etc.) obtained with cultivation practices on a given total area. It is obviously dependent on cultivated area (total cultivated surface expressed in ha) and yield (t/ha of part of the obtained biomass). As observed recently [6], changes in land use for global crop production have been strongly driven by increases in land area devoted to the three major cereals (wheat, rice, maize). During last century’s two decades of the 1960s and 1970s, the area expansion for the three cereals represented more than 70% of land use increase for all crops, followed by two decades during which both total crop area and area in major cereals remained relatively constant. This stability period came to a sharp end in 2002, when the crop production area starts to increase at nearly ten million hectares per year, 60% due to increased production of wheat, rice, and maize. An additional 25% can be attributable to the enlargement of soybean area. This trend of crop-area increase has occurred in South America, Asia, and Africa [6]. It is worthwhile to note and remember that two crops out of four are strongly related to meat production.
At a global scale, rates of yield increase have been clearly linear for most major cereal crops since the beginning of the ’60s of the last century, the second phase of Green Revolution, when the trends were driven by rapid adoption of Green Revolution technologies that were largely a one-time innovation, including the development of High Yielding Varieties (HYV), and due to wide spread use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides, investments to expand irrigation infra-structures, and dependence on fossil-fuel energy. More recently a decline of this increase rate has been observed and strong evidence of upper yield plateaus in some of the world’s most intensive cropping systems has been observed. Despite the increase of around 60% in investment in agricultural Research and Development in USA “the rate of maize yield gain has remained linear, implying that the marginal yield increase per unit of research investment has decreased substantially over time. Approaches that rely on compound rates of yield increase or constant linear rates with no upper limit to yield growth are not supported by the analysis of historical yield trends and current understanding of crop physiology and they are likely to overestimate future increases in crop yields by a large margin” [6].
Moreover, some recent studies [7-10] on the phenomenon of the “paradox of the scale” analyzed “the inverse farm size-productivity relationship”. These studies established that small and diversified farming systems show higher productivity per area rather than the big monoculture farm.
The Green Revolution: Crop Innovation For Yield Increase
The analysis of the main features of the Green Revolution can be useful for better understanding our common future after recalling some basic concepts, definitions, trends related to the yield, production, and productivity,
In the 1970s, E. Rogers described as “Diffusion of Innovation” the introduction and diffusion of hybrid corn in the Corn Belt of United States of America (mainly in Iowa) from the 1940s [11] up to the 60s. The peculiar conditions that were within the USA system of production, the existing research centers and the network of farmers in the Corn Belt allowed to development and test: (a) an innovation scheme driven mainly by genetic (gene revolution) manipulation and agronomic intensification; and (b) a dissemination process useful for multiplying the research results (i.e. extension service). The corn hybrid has been developed in some U.S.A. research centers based on the concept of plant ideotype and on innovative genetic improvement techniques, crop physiology and agronomy. Several farmers by adopting corn hybrids were able to increase yields, specializing the farm and simplifying the agronomic schemes to meet the requirements of a new growing market of a new commodity.
Green Revolution, at this first step, occurred under the following conditions [12]:
most of the farmers of the area were producing for the same market the same commodity;each of them, too small for affecting the price of the commodities, was in competition for the current price, trying to increase the income through yield increases, possibly at a lower cost;due to inelasticity of the demand, every try to increase yield exerted a downward pressure on prices;most of the farmers had access to credit, fertilizers, information (radio, newspapers, extension agents) and were members of organizations.The new technology could produce a process of innovation, represented by an S-curve efficiently describing the trend: slow increase at first, then much more quick and finally stabilized or decreasing. Cochrane, proposed the so called Agricultural Treadmill theory: in the early stages, the first farmers able to adopt the new technology, achieve good results in a market condition characterized by pre-technology status. If the number of farmers modifying the production system increases, the total production increases, the state of the market changes with prices falling. Market forces, defined as the treadmill, propel these phases of the diffusion process. Elder farmers and small farms with intrinsic weaknesses tend to sell or lease the land, causing a growth towards an economy process of scale for the entire sector, an increase of the farm average size.
The diffusion of this type of innovation based on treadmill system determines new social and political conditions with strong consequences both at the micro and macro-level, such as:
strong increase of migration from rural to urban areas (farmers in industrialized countries currently account for only 4-5% of the total workforce; in the less industrialized countries farmers can be more than 70%);farmers do not maintain for a long period benefits of the adopted technological innovation;countries can improve their competitiveness on the global market only if and when their food policy is well defined and the industries become more efficient;not all the farmers have the same behavior; only the early adopters take advantages;the innovation is focused on a new ideotype of crop, more specifically new cultivars (High Yielding Variety) with expected/potential higher yield, requiring higher amount of macroelements, especially nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium during specific phases of the cycle. The macro-element uptake dynamics of HYV maintain a generally relatively low rate during the first vegetative phase. During the elongation phase the crop requirements sharply increase, so that the mineralizing patterns are not usually sufficient. The HYV-technological package include a significantly increasing use of chemical fertilizers (increased costs).The Green Revolution was enabled by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process, based on the production of high volumes of industrial nitrogen fertilizers, but also on the strong changes of many farms, extension services in the world. Before Green Revolution, the crop nitrogen uptake depended on manure, recycled organic matter, biological fixation and indigenous/local supply through mineralization. With GR the use of N fertilizers has grown sevenfold and nowadays 30 – 80% of nitrogen applied to farmland is lost to surface and ground-waters, and to the atmosphere [13]. The environmental cost of N loss, in Europe, has been estimated at 70 – 320 billion Euros per year; a value outweighing the direct economic benefits of N in agriculture [14]. Moreover Green Revolution was enabled by the extraction of phosphates. Since the end of the last World War, global extraction of phosphate rock has tripled to meet industrial agriculture’s requirements (90% of global use of phosphorus is for food production; ironically Africa is at the same time the world’s largest exporter of phosphate rock and the continent with the largest food shortage, FAO 2006). This type of P use is not considered sustainable, since the fossil phosphate rock reserves are finite and located in few and controlled sites of the planet.
The model tested in the U.S. on corn had specific peculiarities: (a) the innovation was initially based on one single product; (b) the progress was driven by researchers with a very focused set of goals (e.g. development of a new variety with a higher potential yield); and (c) the process of innovation diffusion followed a top-down approach, from researchers towards farmer, which could adopts both the new variety the entire technology package. Since the 1960s this type of innovation model adopted inside free market conditions became the model to be exported all over the world, aiming at making agriculture develop everywhere. Kline and Rosenberg [15] defined this approach as a linear model; Chambers and Jiggins [16] as transfer of technology model, implying that: (a) it could be transposed with no significant changes in every other agricultural area of the world; (b) there was a unique development pattern fitting all areas; and (c) a causal mechanism was underlying the production, distribution and access to food processes, so that for facing food policy issues it was sufficient to increase yields, as occurred in the original model.
This innovation concept, generally speaking, has marked an evolution during the last five decades. Before considering how and when this occurred, it is useful to clarify some basic concepts.
The innovation can be applied at different levels: products, processes and systems, with another possible distinction of the singular innovation from the plural innovations. Innovation is something that integrates activities and processes linked with the creation, dissemination, adoption and management of new technological, institutional/social and managerial knowledge that, in turn, cause technical, socio-economic and environmental changes. Innovation is thus related to the development/diffusion of new products, technologies, markets, institutions or policies. The World Bank [17] defines innovation system as “(the) system that comprises the organizations, enterprises and individuals that demand and supply knowledge and technologies, and the policies, rules and mechanisms that affect the way in which different agents interact to share, access, exchange, and use knowledge.” So, innovation can be described as the emergent property of interactions among the stakeholders/actors of a given system.
The modern concept of innovation implies technical and institutional innovation. The deep integration of the two dimensions requires inter-sectorial and interdisciplinary studies, reaching the transdisciplinary level.
In Table 1 a diagram with the stages of evolution of the concept of innovation in agriculture is shown. The passages from the transfer of technology to the so called innovation system are described, referring to the different phases from the 60s up to today.
From the above table it is easy to evolution of the concepts and the approach. The innovation system approach shifts the focus from top-down research and diffusion of knowledge and technology towards an interactive multi-stakeholder or multi-agents change of process. Technology dissemination and market development, of course, are some of the elements of the system, to be analyzed in the integrated frame.
It is possible to note that the historical trend was the constant updating of this notion through the decades: the meaning of innovation itself has changed from the push of new technologies, during the early stages, to the recent projecting/ planning of opportunities through institutional development. This deep change implies that the concept of innovation in agriculture requires system analysis to be framed in an integrated set of technical, agro-ecological, organizational, institutional and political components. That is to say that innovation in agriculture requires to move far beyond the old linear model, nonetheless still adopted by various international initiatives and/or proposed by some international agro-food industries.
Many Analysts working on the topic of innovation in agriculture pointed out that learning capacity of farmers is the critical point. Innovation processes at all scales of the system, must include all system stakeholders and actors, from farmers, to extensionists, consultants, researchers, civil society, private/institutional sector etc. – all together considered as innovation students [18, 19]. This approach, allowing creating links, relationships and alliances, is based on the principles of mutual learning, resource and knowledge sharing in ways for facilitating market and institutional change. This type of new partnership has been recently defined as participation and indicated as one of the five guiding principles of the activities (partnership, complementarity, subsidiarity, relevancy, participation) promoted by the European Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development (EIARD).
According to Pimbert [20] participation process should be described in different ways, with respects to its kind of relationships and research activities. From the so called passive participation (the target communities are only informed on what is happening) it is possible to implement functional participation (the target communities participate by composing groups to achieve some early goals) or interactive participation (the target communities participate in the joint analysis required for producing action/plans; interdisciplinary methodologies are employed for reaching different goals).
Pimbert [20] defines auto-mobilization, an additional form of participation, when communities participate by taking independent initiatives, even not directly related to the other actors, for changing (innovating) the existing conditions. This form of participation is similar to the Landcare experience [21] where Australian farmers and landowners drove an independent process for solving soil erosion, salinization and desertification, caused by the previous not appropriate adoption of European agricultural techniques in the Australian reality. This innovation process, born for developing new site-specific, appropriate land management techniques and for reactivating ecosystem services at landscape scale, required a great collective integrate effort, joint actions, new organizational structures and infrastructure, social learning and strong participation.
As mentioned before, innovation can also be described as the emergent property of interaction among stakeholders and actors in a natural resources or economic system service [22]. Roling [12] observed: “where the degradation of the resource or service is the collective outcome of each stakeholder’s trying to satisfy his/her individual preferences, more sustainable management of the resource or service necessarily must emerge from collective processes – social learning, conflict and negotiation, agreement, reciprocal sacrifice or benefits and privileges, and leadership – that lead to concerted action” and “when innovation is the emergent property of interaction, promoting innovation becomes a matter of facilitating the interaction process, and the institutional support and favorable policies at higher level are essential ingredients for success at the local level”. This last element is strictly connected to the epoch-making article that appeared in Science in 1968 “The tragedy of the commons” [23].
Given that innovation i) is a complex and adaptive process; ii) requires an appropriate period of time and resources for evolving and for producing significant assessment over its linkages to empowerment, environment and sustainability issues, it seems that an appropriate logical and a rigorous conceptual framework would be needed. With regards to the agricultural sector, agro-ecology represents an ideal approach to filling this gap.
An Agro-ecological Framework For Agricultural Development
The complexity of the above-described picture requires on one side a continuous updating of the basic concepts and the reference paradigm, on the other side a clear definition of the appropriate strategies to select conceptual and pragmatic tools. We can describe innovation strategy with the following scheme including three different levels of change(Table 2) [24, 25].
1) The first level is called substitution strategy, when the existing farming systems are slightly adapted, not modified; the plot size (few m2) is usually the scale of experimental activities and a single discipline drives research.2) The second agro-ecological level is when the strategy aims at building innovative technical scenarios at least at farm level. The farming systems are innovated relying on biological processes and regulation in integrated multi crop production schemes; the research is carried out at farm or regional scale within the agro-ecological framework and with a multidisciplinary approach.3) The third level analyzes and innovates agro-food systems with a global view; interdisciplinary, inter-sectorial, transdisciplinary research is carried out with the aim of tackling agro-food issues at the global scale. Linking local to global with inter-scale studies, re-assessing the relationships of the agri-food sector to the society as a whole and/or focusing on specific issues, such as intensive agriculture and its links to the economic-industrial model or its failure in sustainability terms. New trends in agro-ecology and new time/space scales of agronomic research, ranging from food shed to large regional areas are possible.Agro-ecology is gaining importance and it has been acknowledged as a strategic approach for pursuing sustainability agricultural system planning and manage- ment, particularly through the consolidation of stability and resilience of both the anthropic and the natural ecosystems. Indeed, the complex of scientific, conceptual and practical tools framed into the agro-ecology domain seems suitable for planning development initiatives with multiple purposes such as i) ensuring a sustainable management of all the resources involved in agricultural production processes (soil, air, water, biodiversity, human labor), ii) promoting food security and sovereignty, iii) protecting the landscape; iv) assuring equity. By analyzing a target agro-ecosystem, it is possible to identify and characterize the relationships between both the internal components, the system structure, the functions and the evolution at different scales of plot, farm and regional area, without neglecting the interactions among scientific, technological and socio-economic factors, and developing towards a transdisciplinary approach aimed at conflict resolution, inequality reduction for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Given the level of challenges that agro-food system is going to face in the next decades, it is indeed essential to support the planning and implementation of agro-ecological policies, starting from the detection of an appropriate set of advanced tools. Particularly, a key for empowering the actors involved in the activities of research, development, dissemination and application of new methods is the identification of information and communication technologies that farmers and policy makers need for coping with fast-changing conditions in a complex system.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Croplands cover currently 1.5 billion hectares (12% of Earth’s ice-free land), pasture cover around 3.4 billion hectares (26% of Earth’s ice-free land). Agriculture altogether represents the main land use on the planet.
Land suitable for agricultural activities (production, ecosystem services etc.) is a finite and vulnerable resource globally speaking, but there are big differences between areas. Global average of arable land available per capita amounts to about 0.45 ha, but there are strong declines to 0.10 ha taking place in the most densely populated regions of the world. In these areas food security is declining.
Soil degradation has been estimated to affect 16 – 40% of the terrestrial surface [26], everywhere meaningful soil losses causing reduced yields are forecast for the next future .
Closing yield gap, through agro-ecological principles and practices, could increase food supplies. If yields of 16 important food and feed crops were brought up to 75% of their potential, global production would increase by 1.1 billion tons (2.8 x 10 15 kcal), that is to say 28% increase [27].
The rise of meat consumption causes a sharp increase in the use of cereals for feed. Ironically, current diets are both not appropriate for human health (individually and socially) and are not compatible with sustainable resource use.
Moreover, globally more than a third of harvested food is thrown away. In industrialized countries, 40% wastes occur at retail and consumer level, whereas in the poorer countries 40% losses occur at post-harvest and processing levels.
Inefficient use of food stocks occurs also by feeding cereals and fodder starch to animals, very poor energy converters. Livestock requires about 7 kcal input (from 3 for broiler chickens to 16 for beef) (cereal grain feed) for every kcal generated. Cereals fed to livestock currently make up 30 – 50% of global cereal production (Corn contributes for 70%). Cereals and grain legumes convert energy into protein much more efficiently than animals. Shifting 16 major crops to 100% human food could add over 1 billion tonnes to global production (an additional 28% increase).
Shifting diets from beef to poultry or from grain-fed to pasture-fed beef would already increase significantly the food supply by closing a Diet Gap [28], improving people health, and reducing the impact on resources.
As stated by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IASTD, 2008), “technologies such as high-yielding crop varieties, agrochemicals and mechanization have primarily benefited the better resourced groups in society and transnational corporations, rather than the most vulnerable ones. To ensure that technology supports development and sustainability goals, strong policy and institutional arrangements are needed…”.
Like research and development in agriculture in general, seed policies must be driven, not by a preconceived view about the benefits technology can bring to farming, but by a careful and broad examination of their impacts on food security and sovereignty and, specifically, on the possibility of the vulnerable farmers to improve their livelihoods.
In the field of agricultural research for development the quantitative level of investments and number of organizations (research centers, universities, networks) does not seem the main limiting factor, which may rather be the set of strategic decisions taken by the international stakeholders and their coherency with the basic principles that should characterize this field. The sphere of agro-food research requires a clear, non-reductionist approach that would not limit its vision to the provision of products or processes (silver bullets) mainly originated by industries. Research should not only be focused on yield, productivity and profitability of agro-food value chains, but on agro-ecosystem functioning (stability, resilience, nutrient cycling) and agro-ecosystem services (biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water harvesting, landscape management), on agro-food systems management (sustainable healthy diets, food security, systems sustainability and resilience, food policy).The new approach is expected to review and replace the linear model by applying the agro-ecology principles and techniques at different scales, from farm to the whole agro-food system, addressing also landscape-related agronomy and bionomy issues [29].
As a result, it would be appropriate a revision of the funding system for agricultural research, specifically by conveying adequate resources to research programs and projects aimed at improving the whole agriculture and agri-food system (e.g. agro-ecology and agro-forestry, soil management techniques, composting, water management, agronomic practices, drought resistant varieties) or strengthening the institutional environment, particularly at community level (e.g. community seed banks, seed fairs and farmer field schools), rather than merely focusing on a single crop or variety.
Global food production is dependent on not only fertile soils, fresh water, biodiversity and informed and trained farmers, but also cheap energy, locally available. Alternatives to fossil-fuel-dependent agricultural systems will be required in the next future. Sustainable agriculture combines three main objectives: environmental health, ethical soundness, socio-economic profitability. Education plays a central role.
Strategies in the public agricultural research sector should be based on a set of shared values that can distinguish between the needs of society and environment versus those of big business firms, as well as the interest of farmers versus those of large international organizations that control the world markets.
There is a need to strengthen the inter-disciplinary attributes of innovation, as an integrated concept linking various scientific, policy and socio-economic fields. In this sense, innovation could lead to the improvement and conservation of local natural resources through participation of the agro-food systems’ actors, as well as strengthening full food sovereignty and guaranteeing that the results of public research could be systematically accessible thanks to open-source policies. Transdisciplinary approach is required in addressing the basic issue of the sustainable diet at both individual and global scales.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The author confirms that author has no conflict of interest to declare for this publication.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Declared none.
