An Assets-Based Approach to the Sustainable Use of Land and Water

An Assets-Based Approach to the Sustainable Use of Land and Water

Professor Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK

Contribution to “Presentation on Sustainable Use of Land and Water for Food Security”, FAO Committee for Food Security, Rome, 1st June 2001

1. Scale of the Food Poverty Challenge

Over the past 40 years, per capita world food production has grown by 25%. Yet the world still faces a fundamental food security challenge, with some 790 million people hungry in the year 2000. Despite progress on average per capita food consumption (up 17% in 30 years to 2760 kcal), consumption in 33 countries is still less than 2200 kcal per day. Food demand will both grow and shift in the coming decades as: i) population growth increases absolute demand for food; ii) economic growth increases people’s purchasing power; and iii) growing urbanisation encourages people to adopt new diets, with demand for meat expected to double by 2020 in developing countries (Popkin, 1998; Pinstrup-Andersen et al., 1999; Delgado et al, 1999; UN, 1999; ACC/SCN, 2000; FAO, 2000; NRC, 2000; Smil, 2000).

It is clear that adequate and appropriate food supply is a necessary condition for eliminating hunger. But increased food supply does not automatically mean increased food security for all. What is important is who produces the food, who has access to the technology and knowledge to produce it, and who has the purchasing power to acquire it. The conventional wisdom is that, in order to double food supply, we need to redouble efforts to modernise agriculture. It has been successful in the past. But there are doubts about the capacity of such systems to produce the food where the poor and hungry people live. They need low-cost and readily-available technologies and practices to increase food production.

There are three strategic options for agricultural development:

1. expand the area of agriculture, by converting new lands to agriculture, but likely to result in losses in ecosystems services from forests, grasslands and other areas of important biodiversity;
2. increase per hectare production in agricultural exporting countries (mostly industrialised), so that food can be transferred or sold to those who need it;
3. increase total farm productivity in developing countries which most need the food.

An important question centres on the extent to which a more sustainable agriculture can address the third option. This is not to say that modern agriculture cannot successfully increase food production. Manifestly, any farmer or agricultural system with unlimited access to sufficient inputs, knowledge and skills can produce large amounts of food. But most farmers in developing countries are not in such a position, and the poorest generally lack the financial assets to purchase costly inputs and technologies.

The central questions, therefore, focus on:

i)to what extent can farmers improve food production with cheap, low-cost, locally-available technologies and inputs?

ii)what impacts do such methods have on environmental goods and services and the livelihoods of people who rely on them?

2. Assets for Sustainable Land and Water Management

Agricultural systems at all levels rely for their success on the value of services flowing from the total stock of assets that they control. Five types of capital, natural, social, human, physical and financial, are now being addressed in the literature (cf Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988, 1990; Putnam, 1993, 1995; Costanza et al, 1997, 1999; Daily, 1997; Carney, 1998; Butler-Flora, 1998; Grootaert, 1998; Ostrom, 1998; Pretty, 1998; Scoones, 1998; FAO, 1999; Uphoff, 1999; Pretty and Ward, 2001):

Natural capital produces nature’s goods and services, and comprises food (both farmed and harvested or caught from the wild), wood and fibre; water supply and regulation; treatment, assimilation and decomposition of wastes; nutrient cycling and fixation; soil formation; biological control of pests; climate regulation; wildlife habitats; storm protection and flood control; carbon sequestration; pollination; and recreation and leisure.

Social capital yields a flow of mutually beneficial collective action, contributing to the cohesiveness of people in their societies. The social assets comprising social capital include norms, values and attitudes that predispose people to cooperate; relations of trust, reciprocity and obligations; and common rules and sanctions mutually-agreed or handed-down. These are connected and structured in networks and groups.

Human capital is the total capability residing in individuals, based on their stock of knowledge skills, health and nutrition. It is enhanced by their access to services that provide these, such as schools, medical services, and adult training. People’s productivity is increased by their capacity to interact with productive technologies and with other people. Leadership and organisational skills are particularly important in making other resources more valuable.

Physical capital is the store of human-made material resources, and comprises buildings (housing, factories), market infrastructure, irrigation works, roads and bridges, tools and tractors, communications, and energy and transportation systems, that make labour more productive.

Financial capital is accumulated claims on goods and services, built up through financial systems that gather savings and issue credit, such as pensions, remittances, welfare payments, grants and subsidies.

These five assets are transformed by policies, processes and institutions to give desirable outcomes, such as food, jobs, welfare, economic growth, clean environment, reduced crime, and better health and schools. Desirable outcomes, when achieved, feed back to help build up the assets base, while undesirable effects, such as pollution or deforestation, or increased crime or social breakdown, reduce the asset base.

The basic premise is that sustainable systems, whether farms, firms, communities, or economies, accumulate stocks of these five assets, thereby increasing the per capita endowments of all forms of capital over time. But unsustainable systems deplete or run down these various forms, spending assets as if they were income, and so leaving less for future generations.

The assets-based model described in Figure 1 shows how farms and rural livelihoods take inputs of various types, including renewable assets, and transform these to produce food and other desirable outputs (Pretty, 2000; Pretty and Hine, 2000). These can be processed for home consumption, transformed through value-added processes for sale, or sold directly as raw product. The inputs are shown as:

1. Renewable natural capital – soil, water, air, biodiversity etc;
2. Social and participatory processes – including both locally embedded and externally-induced social capital, and partnerships and linkages between external organisations;
3. New technologies, knowledge and skills – both regenerative (eg legumes, natural enemies) and non-renewable (eg hybrid seeds, machinery);
4. Non-renewable or fossil-fuel derived inputs (eg fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics);
5. Finance – credit, remittances, income from sales and grants.

Availability and access to these five inputs is shaped by a wide range of contextual factors (on the far left). These include unchanging ones (at least over the short-term), such as climate, agro-ecology, soils, culture; and dynamic economic, social, political and legal factors shaped by external institutions and policies. These contextual factors are an important entry point for shaping agricultural systems (such as national policies, markets, trade).

3. Choices of Transformation

Two vital feedback loops occur from outcomes to inputs: agricultural systems shape and impact on the very assets on which they, together with many other sectors of economies, rely on for inputs. More sustainable agricultural systems, therefore, tend to have a positive effect on natural, social and human capital, whilst less sustainable ones feed back to deplete these assets.

For example, an agricultural system that depletes organic matter or erodes soil whilst producing food externalises costs that others must bear; but one that sequesters carbon in soils through organic matter accumulation both contributes to the global good by mediating climate change and the private good by enhancing soil health.

Equally, a diverse agricultural system that protects and enhances on-farm wildlife for pest and disease control contributes to wider stocks of biodiversity, whilst simplified modernised systems that eliminate wildlife do not. And agricultural systems that offer labour-absorption opportunities – through resource improvements or value-added activities – can help to reverse migration patterns.

A key policy challenge (for both industrialised and developing countries) is clearly to find ways to maintain enhance food production. But a key question is: can this be done whilst seeking both to improve the positive functions and to eliminate the negative ones. It will not be easy, as past agricultural development has tended to ignore the pervasive external costs (Conway and Pretty, 1991; Altieri, 1995; Pimentel et al, 1995; Pingali and Roger, 1995; Conway, 1997; Norse et al, 2000; Pretty et al, 2000). Fortunately, there has emerged in recent years much evidence to illustrate that it is indeed possible to produce more food whilst enhancing natural, social and human capital.

Figure 2 illustrates the approach to agricultural modernisation on the assets-based model. These systems have become efficient transformers of new technologies, non-renewable inputs and finance to produce very large amounts of food, but with substantial negative impact on renewable capital assets (eg reduced natural capital, diminished labour).

What then do we understand by sustainable use of land and water assets? And how then can we encourage transitions in both `pre-modern’ and `modernised’ systems towards greater sustainability?

In the first instance, a more sustainable farming seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services whilst not damaging the environment (Altieri, 1995, 1999; Thrupp, 1996; Conway, 1997; Pretty, 1995, 1998; Drinkwater, 1998; Tilman, 1998; Hinchliffe et al, 1999; Zhu et al, 2000; Wolfe, 2000). It does this by integrating natural processes such as nutrient cycling, nitrogen fixation, soil regeneration and natural enemies of pests into food production processes. It also minimises the use of non-renewable inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) that damage the environment or harm the health of farmers and consumers. It makes better use of the knowledge and skills of farmers, so improving their self-reliance. And it seeks to make productive use of social capital - people’s capacities to work together to solve common management problems, such as pest, watershed, irrigation, forest and credit management (Figure 3).

Sustainable agriculture jointly produces food and other goods for farm families and markets, but it also contributes to a range of public goods, such as clean water, wildlife, carbon sequestration in soils, flood protection, landscape quality. It delivers many unique non-food functions that cannot be produced by other sectors (eg on-farm biodiversity, groundwater recharge, urban to rural migration, social cohesion).

Sustainable agriculture is, therefore, defined as agricultural technologies and practices that maximise the productivity of the land whilst seeking to minimise damage both to valued natural assets (soils, water, air, and biodiversity) and to human health (farmers and other rural people, and consumers). It focuses upon regenerative and resource-conserving technologies, and aims to minimise harmful non-renewable and fossil-fuel derived inputs in the short-term and eliminate them in the long-term.

As sustainable agriculture seeks to make the best use of nature’s goods and services, so the technologies and practices must be locally-adapted. They emerge from new configurations of social capital (relations of trust embodied in new social organisations, and new horizontal and vertical partnerships between institutions) and human capital (leadership, ingenuity, management skills and knowledge, capacity to experiment and innovate). Agricultural systems with high social and human capital are able to innovate in the face of uncertainty.

4. Results from Recent Research

The University of Essex[1] recently audited progress in developing countries towards sustainable use of land and water in agricultural systems, and assessed the extent to which such projects/initiatives had improved food production. We purposively surveyed 208 projects in 52 countries using a mixture of questionnaires, project reports and evaluations, and verifying experts (Pretty and Hine, 2001). This was a self-selecting set, as we specifically set out to find out what could be achieved with sustainable agriculture, rather than analyse what was being achieved in a typical agricultural project. We rejected cases: i) where there was no obvious sustainable agriculture link; ii) where payments were used to encourage farmer participation (there are doubts that ensuing improvements persist after such incentives end; iii) where there was heavy reliance on fossil-fuel derived inputs, or only on their targeted use (this is not to negate these technologies, but to indicate that they were not the focus of this research); iv) where the data provided was too weak or the findings unsubstantiated.

This is the largest known survey of sustainable agriculture in developing countries. There were 45 projects in Latin America, 63 in Asia and 100 in Africa. In these 208 projects/initiatives, some 8.98 million farmers have adopted sustainable agriculture practices and technologies on 28.92 million hectares. As there are some 960 million hectares of land under cultivation (arable and permanent crops) in Africa, Asia and Latin America, sustainable agriculture is present on at least 3.0% of this land (total arable land comprises some 1600 million hectares in 1995/97, of which 388 million ha are in industrialised countries, 267 million ha in transition countries, and 960 million ha in developing countries: FAO, 2000).

The largest country representations in the dataset are India (23 projects/initiatives); Uganda (20); Kenya (17); Tanzania (10); China (8); the Philippines (7); Malawi (6); Honduras, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, Burkina Faso and Ethiopia (5); and Bangladesh (4). The projects and initiatives range very widely in scale - from 10 households on 5 hectares in one project in Chile to 200,000 farmers on 10.5 million hectares in southern Brazil. Most of the farmers in the projects surveyed are small farmers. Of farms in the total dataset, 50% are in projects with a mean area per farmer of less than one ha, and 90% of less than or equal to 2 hectares. There are some 8.64 million small farmers practising sustainable farming on 8.33 million hectares, and 349,000 larger farmers in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay farming with zero-tillage methods on 2.59 million hectares. Most of this sustainable agriculture has emerged in the past decade. Using project records, we estimate that the area a decade ago was between 100,000-500,000 hectares.

We found improvements in food production are occurring through one or more of five different mechanisms:

1. intensification of a single component of farm system (with little change to the rest of the farm) - such as home garden intensification with vegetables and/or tree crops, vegetables on rice bunds, and introduction of fish ponds or a dairy cow;

1. addition of a new productive element to a farm system, such as fish or shrimps in paddy rice, or agroforestry, which provides a boost to total farm food production and/or income, but which do not necessarily affect cereal productivity;

1. better use of natural capital to increase total farm production, especially water (by water harvesting and irrigation scheduling), and land (by reclamation of degraded land), so leading to additional new dryland crops and/or increased supply of additional water for irrigated crops (so increasing cropping intensity);

1. improvements in per hectare yields of staples through introduction of new regenerative elements into farm systems (eg legumes, integrated pest management);

1. improvements in per hectare yields through introduction of new and locally-appropriate crop varieties and animal breeds.

Thus a successful sustainable agriculture project may be substantially improving domestic food consumption or increasing local food barters or sales through home gardens or fish in rice fields, or better water management, without necessarily affecting the per hectare yields of cereals. In the dataset, the most common mechanisms were yield improvements with regenerative technologies or new seeds/breeds, occurring in 60% of the projects, by 56% of the farmers and over 89% of the area.

Home garden intensification occurred in 20% of projects, but given its small scale only accounted for 0.7% of area. Better use of land and water, giving rise to increased cropping intensity, occurred in 14% of projects, with 31% of farmers and 8% of the area. The incorporation of new productive elements into farm systems, mainly fish and shrimps in paddy rice, occurred in 4% of projects, and accounted for the smallest proportion of farmers and area.

As mechanisms 4 and 5 were the most common, we analysed these in greater detail. The dataset contains 89 projects (139 entries of crop x projects combinations) with reliable data on per hectare yield changes with mechanisms 4 and 5 (Figure 4). These illustrate that sustainable agriculture has led to an average 93% increase in per hectare food production through mechanisms 4 and 5 above. The relative yield increases are greater at lower yields, indicating greater benefits for poor farmers, and for those missed by the recent decades of modern agricultural development.

5. Technical Improvements for Land and Water Assets

Two key technical improvements have played substantial roles in these food production increases: i. more efficient water use in both dryland and irrigated farming; and ii. improvements to soil quality.

i) More Efficient Use of Water

At present, irrigated land globally accounts for about 20% of arable land, and contributes some 40% of all crop production. FAO (2000) projects the area of irrigated land to grow by 23% to 2030, from 197 to 242 million hectares. But such an increase will depend upon a significant increase efficiency of water use. Water is also a constraint in many rainfed contexts and, when better harvested and conserved, may be the key factor leading to improved agricultural productivity by allowing new lands to be brought under farming, and increased cropping intensity on existing lands.

Water harvesting can lead to improved production in both drylands and extra crops in wetlands. In the Himalayas, in one village in the Doon Valley Integrated Watershed Development programme, water harvesting led to 30 ha being irrigated during the dry season, so producing an extra rice crop. One farmer was reported as saying: “Earlier there were fights daily over the sharing of water, but today there is absolutely no need”. The same effect has been reported in Tamil Nadu, where watershed improvements have led to single villages of 30 households producing an extra 50 tonnes of rice per year through a doubling of cropping intensity (Devavaram et al., 1999).