How to encourage sustainable farming (and food) systems?

1. How to encourage sustainable farming (and food) systems? STOA Workshop 4 Dec 2013 European Parliament, Brussels José Lima Santos Instituto Superior de Agronomia University of Lisbon

2. Sustainable farming and food require both: • Technologies that deliver innovative solutions for sustainable farming (and food) systems; • Policies that change priorities, choices and behaviours of all agents in the food chain: • Research institutions • input industries; • Farmers; • Food industries and retailors; • Consumers. I will try to discuss both in a simplified setting, which starts by defining the basic problem to be solved, or the intensification dilemma.

3. Land scarcity, food security and the intensification dilemma Ifthe problem is: “How to get enough food for more than 9 billion by 2050 … … without the biodiversity loss and carbon emissions that would result from expanding farmland?” The solution will be some form of intensification, that is: more per-hectare output.

4. Land scarcity, food security and the intensification dilemma • Past, input-based intensification actually saved land for nature and ecological processes, • … but at the cost of increasingly inefficient input use and excessive input losses, which expanded… • … pollution loads (nitrates, GGE, pesticides …) and • resource depletion (water, soil, biodiversity and energy).

5. Sustainable intensification Hence the need for a deep technological change driving us away from input-based intensification while keeping its sunny side (rising per-hectare output). • two basic ways: • more targeted, precise and efficient input use (information-technology, remote-sensing based intensification); • redesigned agro-ecosystems where internal ecosystem processes efficiently substitute for industrial inputs (ecological-knowledge based intensification).

6. Sustainable intensification – is it possible? • Sustainable intensification aims at getting more per-hectare output … • … while also getting more output per unit of any other input (e.g. more crop per drop, or per Kg of fertiliser). • Is it possible? (SOME DOUBTS: There are no free lunches out there…) • It has never been completely achieved in the past, when… • … to increase per-hectare output we accepted reducing e.g. per-Kg-of-fertilizer output … • …because prices said fertilizer (and energy) were less scarce than land, and we have developed our farming technologies accordingly.

7. Sustainable intensification – food security through efficient and resilient agro-ecosystems (all in one) Today, land is getting scarcer while energy and other inputs are also getting scarcerand more expensive. (Rational) farmers are, therefore, reducing input use. Is this already sustainable intensification? …or simply the reversal of input-based intensification? Ecologically-based intensification depends on strengthened, resilient provision of pollination, biotic control, soil fertility and other ecosystem services, … which all require healthy ecosystems, … to reduce our reliance on price-rising energy-based industrial inputs. Energy input prices Energy input consumption

8. Ecologically-based intensification: the need for a research policy agenda to trigger relevant research Ecologically-based intensification thus requires: • protection ecosystem services that are valuable farming inputs; • technological innovation based on agro-ecological knowledge. Like the light of a lighthouse (and differently from patentable precision-farming or drop-irrigation implements, or GMOs), ecological knowledge is largely a public (not excludable, nor easily patentable) good. It is thus not attractive as a research outcome for private research. Ecologically-based intensification is, therefore, quite under-developed when compared to e.g. information-technology-based intensification. A strong public research policy agenda is essential to develop the relevant eco-agricultural knowledge.

9. More than research and technology: change behaviours and the need for policy But addressing the intensification dilemma (as well as related, broader issues) requires more than a deep technological change, it requires changing people’s behaviours. Altering behaviours is the realm of policy.

10. Many tasks ahead in the transition to sustainable farming and food require behavioural change, and thus policy intervention: • Stopping desertification and adapting to climate change; • Controlling soil sealing by urban expansion; • Protecting ecosystem services that are relevant for food production; • Reducing the dependence of agro-ecosystems on fossil fuel by substituting ecosystem services for industrial inputs; • Reducing other GGE by agriculture and land use changes; • Increasing water use efficiency; • Increasing the efficiency of animal conversion of feed into food; • Reducing food waste from the field to the table; • Changing human diets: moving down in the food chain.

11. More than technology – models for sustainable farming and food policy Three possible policy models are explored here for comparative purposes. The last task in the previous slide, changing diets is taken as the basic example because it is technologically simpler and thus allows us to focus on policy models rather than technology options. The technology of the example is simple: our current global cereal output would allow us to feed: • 10 000 M ‘forced-vegetarian’ people (well fed Indian or Chinese), eating 200 Kg cereal/year • 5 000 M ‘Mediterranean’ people (Greeks, Italian) eating 400 Kg cereal/year • 2 500 M ‘carnivore’ people (average USA citizen) eating (direct and undirectly) 800 Kg cereal/year.

12. More than technology – models for sustainable farming and food policy Policy can lead people to reduce meat consumption by: • not acting, that is: leaving the relevant adjustments to the market mechanism – as meat gets more expensive, because of scarcer and more expensive cereals (combined with inefficient use by livestock), people would eat less meat; • resorting to ethics, common sense or enlightened self-interest– through information & underlining food-related health concerns; • domesticating (mimicking) the market mechanismto incentivise diet changes by e.g. taxing cereals or other human food diverted to feed (or other uses) to deliver inexpensive cereal food for the world’s ‘forced vegetarian’. IMPORTANT: these are policy models (parables), not policy proposals!

13. More than technology – conclusions for the sustainability policy agenda I hope that this shows that an appropriate research agenda for sustainable farming and food should include policy, economic and all social (behavioural) sciences as much as the hard sciences (ecology, information, genetics, remote sensing…). The reports presented in this session also provide a full demonstration of the need for this requirement.

14. How to encourage sustainable farming systems – fresh research results • 2014 AGEE article: contracting farming systems and not directly environmentally friendly farming practices – cutting red tape without loosing effectiveness (targetednessvs effectiveness and the CAP simplification agenda) • 2011 LUP article: why is marginal HNVF being lost for scrub and forestry? How to deal with market and policy failures in this context? • 2013 JRC report: Up-scaled valuation of multiple Public Goods and Externalities of EU agriculture – demonstrating value to capture it (putting the TEEB approach into practice)

20. Open marginal farmlandlost for profitableforestry (Eucalyptusplantations)

21. Open marginal farmlandlost for subsidised pine plantationsandscrub (landabandonment)

27. THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR ATTENTION! 