By JEAN MARC VON DER WEID*
In the current conditions of the capitalist market, what motivation can family farmers have to adopt the agroecology proposal?
Introduction
Research from numerous national and international institutions (FAO and other UN agencies, IPCC, World Bank, US National Academy of Sciences, Universities, others) confirm agroecology as the most (if not the only) sustainable option for agricultural production.
This paradigm makes it possible to overcome all the problems posed by the conventional, currently dominant, model of food production: dependence on inputs in the process of depletion (oil, gas, phosphate, potassium); destruction of renewable natural resources (soil, water, biodiversity); greenhouse gas emissions; deforestation and destruction of biodiversity; rising costs and need for subsidies; contamination by pesticides and fertilizers of water resources, soils, workers and consumers; vulnerability to climate variations; between others.
The same research points to the ability of agroecological systems to guarantee correct nutrition for all consumers on the planet, without the negative impacts highlighted above.
What prevents the widespread adoption of this production system? Firstly, the economic and political strength of practitioners of conventional agriculture and, even greater, the power of mega-companies that control the production of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and veterinary products, in addition to processors and traders, a group known by the generic name of agribusiness.
However, the peculiarities of agroecology currently pose several obstacles to its widespread use and the discussion of these obstacles is the aim of this article.
Characteristics of agroecology
Unlike traditional systems, which adopt the paradigm of artificializing the environment as much as possible to favor production, agroecology seeks to minimize environmental impact.
To explain further: conventional agribusiness systems use genetic manipulation (via conventional selection or transgenics) of cultivated plants. The initial objective was not, as one might expect, to increase productivity, that is, the quantity of product per cultivated area.
The first modifications introduced to plants since the end of the 19th century aimed to obtain varieties with characteristics that facilitate mechanized harvesting, such as erect stalks of appropriate height. Intense and ever greater mechanization is a goal of genetic improvement in order to increase labor productivity. It is also this objective that has led to the adoption of monoculture systems on gigantic scales, with thousands of hectares of identical plants, operated by super tractors and harvesters, giant sprinklers, airplanes.
The genetic improvement of plants and animals carried out over the last 70 years has also focused on increasing productivity and has been largely successful. However, the paradigm that guided this venture was based on the search for varieties that produced the best response to the use of chemical fertilizers, reducing the genetic diversity of crops. This uniformity generated greater vulnerability of crops to attacks by pests, pathogens, fungi and invasive herbs.
Monocultures, typical of agribusiness, cause intense environmental disruption and generate reactions from the entire chain of living beings (plants and animals) that depended on the ecosystem eliminated to make room for an ultra-simplified agricultural system. Monocultures become subject to attacks by pests and invaders (a natural reaction of the disturbed ecosystem), requiring the use of pesticides (pesticides, fungicides, nematicides, herbicides) for control. However, nature reacts to these controls, generating resistant insects and invaders, demanding the formulation of more powerful pesticides, in a vicious circle without limits.
These efforts have led geneticists to produce plant varieties capable of producing their own pesticides or being able to resist the application of herbicides, facilitating the elimination of invasive species. But nature continues to react to control mechanisms by generating more resistant species (insects, fungi or invasive herbs).
The vicious cycle continues, only postponing the disruptive effect on cultures for a while. To give you an idea of the futility of this system, just remember that the exponential increase in the use of pesticides in the world, since the great acceleration after the Second World War, only maintained the level of impact of pests, diseases, fungi, nematodes and invasives. oscillating at an average of 28 to 32% of crops. This was the average loss rate in the period before the explosion in the use of pesticides.
The agribusiness system also depends heavily on the use of irrigation and today the use of water in agriculture already represents 70 to 80% of the consumption of fresh water on the planet, which is on the way to depletion.
Finally, large monocultures quickly deplete the soils where they are grown and depend on the increasing application of chemical fertilizers to produce.
Agroecology, as stated above, seeks to mimic (imitate) natural systems and these, according to each biome, are more or less diversified in terms of plants and animals. In tropical forest biomes this diversity can be hundreds of tree species per hectare and thousands of other species (shrubs, herbaceous, lianas, others). In biomes such as prairies, the diversity of herbaceous plants is enormous, but shrubs and trees are much less significant.
Seeking to mimic nature means, from the outset, eliminating monocultures and adopting combinations of plants grown in the same space. It also means integrating, as much as possible, elements from the original biome in the design of production systems. There are countless ways to make this combination, from growing in alternating rows of cultivated plants and preserved native plants. Or patches of native vegetation around crops and/or on “forest islands” within cultivated spaces. Even more complex systems, such as the one developed by the Japanese Manabu Fukuoka or the Swiss Ernest Goetsch, insert managed crops within natural systems.
This characteristic of highly diversified productive designs in agroecology implies several limitations in its management.
Limits on crop size
Firstly, by using several crops in the same space, these systems do not allow the use of mechanization in several agricultural operations, particularly harvesting.
Secondly, the very complexity of these systems requires a finely elaborated management of the use of space and work. To clarify: this is not just a more intensive use of labor, but a delicate distribution of work throughout an agricultural year so that the different operations in the various crops combined do not cause bottlenecks in which the demand for labor exceeds the available labor supply.
Thirdly, both the design and operation of agroecological systems require significant knowledge about the dynamics of each crop as well as its interactions and relationships with the native plants incorporated.
It is said in the literature on agroecology that conventional systems are “input intensive”, while agroecological ones are “knowledge intensive” (in plain Portuguese: input-intensive and knowledge-intensive). The implication of this requirement is the need for highly prepared and motivated workers for careful and complex activities. Traditional family farmers have an inherited culture of managing complex systems (although less complex, in general, than agroecological systems) and this facilitates their appropriation of agroecology methods and practices.
Modernized producers, on the other hand, have to learn to deal with diversity and complexity. Furthermore, these conditions limit the use of salaried labor, except for simpler occasional operations.
In summary: the characteristics of diversity and complexity of agroecology point to its adaptation for properties operated by family labor and with limited complementation with salaried labor. And all this indicates that agroecological systems cannot be operated on a large scale or even on an average scale.
Limits on financial gains from agroecological production
Studies carried out around the world and by different institutions, comparing conventional systems with different types of agroecological systems (we will discuss this later) have proven their competitiveness, indicating that the volumes produced by the latter equaled or exceeded the former. They also showed that the more in-depth (in diversification and complexity) the application of the agroecological paradigm, the better the results.
It can be said that the results of agroecological systems are directly proportional to their degree of diversity and complexity. The more diverse and complex the systems, the greater the total production and the greater their stability and resilience.
When the focus of comparisons is (economic) profitability per hectare, however, we find an important paradox in the aforementioned studies. The highest profitability per cultivated area was that of organic vegetables in an area of two hectares. The lowest profitability per cultivated area was that of a monoculture of 10 thousand hectares of transgenic soybeans. But this result also shows that, obviously, the mega soybean producer was much richer than the micro vegetable producer. Although less profitable per hectare, the soybean monoculture farmer had many more hectares than the organic farmer and therefore made much more money.
This obviousness, however, hides the potential of agriculture based on small family farming properties to replace the agribusiness system of mega monocultures. The first would be able to produce more food at lower costs than the second and this is what matters for society as a whole.
The other important conclusion is that there would be no space, in an agroecological system based on family farming, for the paradigm of unlimited enrichment as a motivator for producers. The engine of capitalism (maximization of profits) is not compatible with the model in question. In agrocapitalism, every producer's goal is unlimited growth in their production and profits, which implies always concentrating more land, more inputs and more machinery. In an agroecological system there is a ceiling on enrichment.
In other words, there are no limits on the size of a conventional mechanized monoculture system, but there are imposing limits on the size of a diversified agroecological system, regardless of the profitability per hectare of one or the other.
It is clear that a more rigorous comparison, including the costs of so-called “externalities” (i.e. environmental and health impacts) in the assessment of conventional systems, the latter could hardly survive. Furthermore, if subsidies of all types that benefit conventional systems were removed, the comparison would be even more negative for large monocultures.
What can motivate the adoption of agroecological systems?
In the current conditions of the capitalist market, what motivation can family farmers have to adopt the agroecology proposal?
While family farmers do not have access to the financial facilities available to large producers, the biggest attraction is the lower production cost. In a simplified agroecological model (input substitution) in the production of black beans in the center-south of Paraná, for example, farmers preferred to adopt organic inputs produced on the property rather than chemical inputs sold on the market.
And they preferred to use native seeds, which are more efficient in using organic inputs. With fewer costs and fewer financial risks, the primary motivation is still the biggest profit from their crops. Those who managed to place their products in organic markets still had higher profits, due to the quality premium paid in this consumer niche.
In another reality, traditional Northeastern producers who adopted agroecological practices and improved their systems did not experience gains in cost savings, as they did not use purchased inputs. They had the effect of greater productivity and, above all, greater security in the face of external threats such as pests or instability in the water supply. Even without access to markets with differentiated prices for agroecological products, gains in production and safety were the motivators. With the more diversified and complex production designs that came to be adopted with agroecology, they saw improvements in family nutrition and in the commercialization of surpluses.
These motivations were not enough to attract a massive adhesion of farmers in the northeastern example, certainly due to the difficulty of guiding the agroecological transition, especially for the poorest and least organized producers. In the case of farmers in Paraná, the limitations of the organic bean market and the ease of access to subsidized credit and, above all, agricultural insurance for users of the conventional system led to a setback in the use of organic inputs.
For farmers with more land, the temptation to focus on better-paying monocultures, such as soybeans, has led them to accept greater risks and lower yields. Many paid for this choice with debt and bankruptcy.
This does not mean that agroecological producers are not well paid, but that there are limits to the increase in their earnings, defined by the possible size of their production systems.
In the future we will see the dismantling of the conventional system, either due to the increase in input costs or the deterioration of renewable natural resources. But it would be more than fair if not only conventional producers were forced to pay for the external impacts of their production systems, but also agroecological farmers were rewarded for the environmental services they provide to society.
At the present moment we live in a fiction: we seek to offer the cheapest food possible, while accepting that society pays for the negative impacts of conventional systems and that they receive gigantic public subsidies with resources from the taxes of all taxpayers.
Limits on labor availability
We already mentioned above that an agroecological system is more labor intensive and uses small mechanization as support. It was also clear that the most suitable workforce is family labor due to its members' interest and knowledge of agroecological techniques and the management of agroecosystems. All of this leads us to an obvious observation: the correlation between the size of the system and the availability of qualified work.
In the Brazilian reality, the world of family farming is undergoing rapid change, under the impact of the brutal expansion of agribusiness. There are fewer farming families, there is a vast majority in poverty and even misery, there is a huge outflow of youth, fleeing poverty and exhausting, poorly rewarded work to seek urban alternatives. And there is a marked aging of those who remained in the field. Families with just one or two retired people (but who continue to work on their properties) are increasingly common.
This limits the scope of agroecological transition processes and points to the necessary redistribution of more than 200 million hectares in conventional agricultural establishments held by just over one million owners. Even among these agribusiness owners there are extreme inequalities. In 2017, the census indicated that less than 0,5% of rural landowners (around 25 thousand) accounted for 60% of the Basic Value of national agricultural production.
The discussion about replacing agribusiness with agroecological family farming is too extensive for the purposes of this article. Both the unsustainability of the first and the sustainability of the second will lead to this result, but the process could be much more difficult if we do not start reversing the emptying of the field now. At another point I intend to demonstrate that the universe of peasantry necessary to meet Brazil's food needs (in addition to other raw materials) should reach between 30 and 40 million families, that is, between 8 and 11 times the current numbers.
If readers are astonished by these numbers and the prospect of a true historical reversal of the rural-urban migration process that marked the expansion of capitalism in the world, remember that this is not an ideological option or economic rationality, but an imposition of reality future of meeting food production demands. When agribusiness becomes unviable, non-rural people will be completely at the mercy of the productive capacity of family farming and the immense food crisis will push millions of people into the countryside, starting with recent emigrants.
Without delving into the example that will be presented, the world should look carefully at what happened in Cuba in the 1990s, when the so-called “socialist camp” collapsed in the Soviet Union and Western Europe. Cuba depended on the supply of chemical fertilizers, fuels and pesticides to operate a conventional agricultural model in large state-owned production units. Once these supplies were suspended, Cuban agriculture came to a standstill and the island experienced years of deep food crisis.
The Cuban government adopted two solutions that could only operate in conjunction: it redistributed land from state-owned rural companies to hundreds of thousands of “neo-family farmers” and adopted organic farming practices. The residual family farming that had survived the years of nationalization of the Cuban rural world began to apply more in-depth production models based on agroecology.
State investment in the transition to organic and agroecological agriculture was subsequently halted and conventional agricultural methods returned to predominate, once the “special period” had passed.
It is not important here to discuss why this happened and the consequences for Cuban food production. What matters is the reflection of the strategic impasses of the conventional agribusiness model (state or private) and the inevitable conversion to agroecological production (even in its most simplified, organic variation) and to a productive peasant social base.
In Cuba this happened overnight due to a set of national and international political conditions. In the world as a whole, the erosion of the material, social, environmental and financial conditions that allow the existence and “success” of the agribusiness model is gradually generating the same dramatic situation faced by Cubans in the 1990s.
The obstacles posed by the capitalist market
So far, the vast majority of the approximately 60 certified organic producers and the (estimated) approximately 150 agroecological or transitional producers place their products in a niche market. Certified organic products (increasingly dominated by green agribusiness) are integrated into medium and large commercial circuits, filling the shelves of all large supermarkets. Among agroecological and transitional sectors, most of the production is sold at neighborhood or, at most, municipal fairs, especially in small municipalities. In these spaces, the diversity of foods and varieties of each of these products is not important.
In a market with a direct relationship between seller and buyer, these differences are not essential. But from the moment the volume of production and sales grows and begins to require intermediation between buyers and sellers, whether in the mere packaging and transportation operation, or in transformation or processing processes, another criterion becomes valid: the the uniformity of the product and its aesthetic characteristics. Formats, colors, size, durability on the shelf, ease of transport, among others, come to define the production itself.
On this scale, it is impossible to deliver to the market the hundreds of varieties of black beans (for example) used by family producers in the center south of Paraná. Processors and cereal growers only buy one or two varieties, recommended by agricultural research for the region. They are not the best beans, neither from the point of view of their adaptation to the different production conditions of family farmers, nor from the point of view of product quality.
In the region mentioned, farmers call commercial varieties “cascudões” and do not consume them in their homes. But if you want to sell to this market you have to submit to this requirement. This meant that production using creole seeds (those most adapted to agroecological practices) was restricted to home consumption, local fairs and consumer groups integrated in a direct relationship with producers. Most of the production of black beans (or corn) continued using conventional methods, as the “cascudões” varieties have low productivity with the use of agroecology techniques.
Another problem with agroecological systems is the logistics of marketing. In a conventional system, a gigantic monoculture is harvested by huge harvesters that, in grain crops, thresh them in simultaneous operation and deposit them directly in trucks that accompany the machine and leave to deposit the harvest in silos or even to take it to the processing or packaging industries.
This process has a high energy cost and is threatened by the crisis inherent to the depletion of fossil fuels and the resulting financial costs. But as long as oil and gas reserves (and subsidies for their use) last, the rationality of these post-harvest operations is a huge advantage for the conventional system.
Comparative research published a few decades ago by National Academy of Sciences of the USA indicated that almost all organic crops in that country had higher yields and lower production costs than in conventional systems, but the commercialization costs of the former made them less competitive in regular markets, requiring the payment of quality premiums in organic niche markets.
Agroecological systems (even more so than less diverse organic systems) offer a wide diversity of products, but in small quantities per property. The marketing operation, in this case, requires a stage that brings together small quantities of different products on several properties in a volume that makes transportation to processing or packaging companies less costly.
The researchers assessed that these collection costs could be minimized once organic production became more dense, reducing the distances to be covered by collecting means of transport. But even with a high density of producers, these operations will not be able to compete with the large-scale model of conventional systems, as long as fossil fuel reserves last.
As long as markets are dominated by large wholesale and retail processing and distribution units, the system will work against the expansion of agroecological production. As long as these conditions prevail, agroecological production will be conditioned to occupy market niches. This is what is happening at the moment, with the proliferation of organic and agroecological fairs and markets, sales for school meals, especially in small municipalities or in the Food Acquisition Program. Or cooperation projects between producers and consumers.
The supply of large supermarkets provides space for agroecological suppliers capable of organizing themselves into marketing cooperatives, especially for vegetables and fruits, but as explained above, grains come up against the market's demand for uniformity.
*Jean Marc von der Weid is a former president of the UNE (1969-71). Founder of the non-governmental organization Family Agriculture and Agroecology (ASTA).
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