The future of agriculture:
Challenges for environment, health and safety
regulation of pesticides from a presentation
made by Louise O. Fresco, Assistant Director-General, Agriculture
Department, Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations, to the OECD Working Group on Pesticides,
Paris, 4 February 2002.
I. Agriculture between the global and the location specific
By its very nature, agriculture is location-specific, and it is this
specificity of crops, soils and animals that, over
the centuries, has led to the great diversity and richness in agriculture
which we see today.
The principal change in the 20 th
century was the Green Revolution, during which all countries
experienced a massive increase in yield per unit area and time, owing
largely to greater control of production factors.
This resulted in a decrease in some of the location specificity that had
characterized agriculture in the past and led to a more centralized
or "blue print" approach. While the mid-19
th century marked the beginning of a more
scientific approach to agricultural production with
the introduction of fertilizers, it is the 20
th century that must be considered the
century of science-based agriculture. The 20
th century might also be characterized as
the "blue print century", in which a more
centralized or engineering approach to agriculture, including the setting of
production targets, was a principal driver for
increased agricultural output.
I believe
that the 21 st century
will be marked by a return to a more location-specific, ecological
approach to agriculture. While the public eye is focused on
globalization, globalization does not necessarily
mean homogenization or centralized control. However, advances in science
should allow greater specificity. In addition,
there is a strong counter current, driven by both NGOs and civil
society, towards maintaining local-specificity. Evidence for this may
be found in the increased
appreciation of local foods and the fact that globalization is increasingly
seen in the context of local issues and not only
of global concerns.
The other
side of the globalization debate is the fact that inequality and inequity
still exist in the world.
More than 1,000 million people live on less than one dollar a day, and an
estimated 800 million people are hungry. The World
Food Summit in 1996 pledged to reduce by half the number of hungry people
by 2015. It is clear that this goal will not be met. While there has
been success in some countries, the current annual
reduction of 8 million people a year will need to more than double to 20
million if the stated goal is to be met by 2015.
The movement to reduce hunger will result in a parallel increase in
employment and purchasing power and directly impact on trade and the
movement of goods around the world.
There is a need to double food production in developing countries, and, some
80 % of this increase will need to be gained from
land that is already under production. It is clear that this increased
intensification of production cannot be met without chemical inputs.
The question is how to avoid the mistakes of the
past and to fully benefit from the lessons learned and experience gained to
date.
II. Future
Trends
In the next decade I foresee a number of trends as a result of globalization:
1. One of the major economic trends will be downward pressure on cereal
prices. These are projected to stagnate until 2020
despite increased demands. This, coupled with decreasing farm
subsidies, will result in a need for greater efficiency at the farm
level.
2. Government is no longer the predominant player in food regulation.
Vertical integration of the food chain has been
accompanied by a declining role for government and an increasing role
for food retailers and the private sector. At the same, time consumer
demands - especially for “non-chemically
contaminated food”, are expected to boost to some 15-20% the market share of
organic food by 2020.
3. Trends to increased consumption of animal protein, particularly in South
East Asia, may be correlated with increased income.
This trend has resulted in greater production of animal
products, particularly poultry and swine, at a rate of 12% annually
in recent years and has placed increased pressure
on cereal markets.
4. A potential concern associated with the increased production and movement
of livestock (largely swine and poultry) across
the world is the transfer of epizootic diseases from animals to
humans. The increased trading in livestock and food crops has also
resulted in the creation of niche products in off-season
markets. However, it also raises a series of trade related questions on
market access.
5. There is a trend to increasing urbanization in many countries as people
are unwilling to remain on the land and to
continue to be involved in agricultural production. Agriculture in
general is declining in economic importance and hence in public
opinion. It is alarming to note that the number of
students in agriculture faculties is declining rapidly. The reduced numbers
of people involved in agriculture will also be a
driver for increased mechanization of farming and
raises a new challenge of how to find technologies that are ecologically
sustainable, particularly
for developing countries.
6. Increasing public concern regarding food safety must be met with a
massive education programme. One thing that has
become clear is that food safety and human health are generally
assigned higher priority than the environment in the public mind. It
will be interesting to see how this shift away
from the traditional focus on calories per hectare will evolve over the next
10 years.
7. The medicalization of agriculture is expected to continue. Two examples
that come to mind include further investigating
the use of nutriceuticals to improve diets and a better understanding
of the role of protective factors, found in certain foods such as
brassicas, in protecting against certain types of
cancer.
This leads me to believe that the sustainable intensification of
agricultural production will require a greater
reliance on precision agriculture and will be characterized by increased
attention to local needs and reduced labour inputs.
It will include greater attention to such concepts as fertilizing plants
rather than the soil, and a greater reliance on
the principles concerning ecological farming systems developed
through experience with integrated pest management (IPM). It will
also benefit from new sources of information such
as that available through global positioning systems including mapping of
soils, watersheds and ecological zones and using
this globalized information as the basis for local decisions.
III. Modern Technology, especially genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
Agriculture does not take place in a vacuum. There are other trends in the
area of research and sustainable development that
I would like to briefly consider.
Research on genetics is increasingly concentrated in a few countries and/or
companies and is characterized by a definite shift
away from the public to the private sector. This is paralleled by a shift
on the regulatory side to supranational bodies along with some
eroding of the national state, as there is more
autonomy at regional and sub-national levels. A major challenge will be
ensuring that the activities at these different
levels are not delinked.
Although
agricultural development in the 20 th
century was characterized by a centralized approach, it
was also evident that it was most successful where it was linked with
local ecological conditions. A case in point is
that an integrated approach to pest management has been shown to be
successful. A key reason for this success has been
as a result of helping farmers to understand the concept of critical
thresholds. The same principles can be applied to water and nutrient
management.
There is a need to further consider the role of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) in a broader IPM approach. For
example, incorporating the gene for Bacillus thuringiensus (Bt) toxin into
plantshas demonstrated little evidence of risk to human health or the
environment. However we must not be complacent and
the potential ecological effects of GMOs needs to continue to be monitored.
A more
important issue than risk at this point is the accessibility of this
technology to developing countries, which
frequently lack the necessary infrastructure.
The area
planted to GMOs has tripled in the last three years. Some 75% of this in
developed countries.
Most of the work has been focussed on four crop groups – maize, soybean,
cotton and canola – and has involved traits
relating to pest-tolerance and herbicide-resistance.
What will happen in the next five years ? At present there are up to 500
different crop-trait combinations under field
testing, most of which are in Latin America. The major products under
development to date reflect the interest of developed countries and
involve herbicide-tolerance, pesticide-replacement
and shelf-life in horticultural crops. Little of the research underway is
relevant to the needs of developing countries.
I am concerned that GMOs will be treated like the Green Revolution: a
centralized engineering approach where it is
presumed that one solution will fit all the needs rather than considering
how they might best be integrated into
ecologically based systems of farming in different countries and regions
of the world. One possible solution might be to consider the
development of an international code of conduct on
genetic resources.
A further challenge is how to improve/strengthen cooperation and
coordination at the national and regional levels.
In order to be fully effective, multilateral agreements such at the
Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent
(PIC) and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) require careful national coordination. The reality
is that, in many countries, there is often only
poo,r if any, inter or intra-ministerial cooperation particularly between
ministries of
environment and agriculture.
A good
example of where such inter-ministerial cooperation might be considered is
the OECD work in the area of development with that
on environment and agriculture. The experience gained by countries
through the OECD Pesticides Working Group would be relevant to
developing countries with limited resources and
experience.
A principal challenge will be to ensure that these discussions at the
national and international level are open and
transparent and based on sound science. At present the increased
availability of information to countries has both
a positive and negative aspect. For example the internet represents a useful
tool for information dissemination, but it also
represents a potential problem in that the information is
lumped together. One sees good science next to nonsense, which readers are
not always in a position to distinguish. There is
a need for a neutral brokerage of the information available to maintain the
credibility of the science.
Recent
estimates indicate that up to 30% of the pesticides in developing countries
are sub-standard.
The consolidation of the major pesticide manufacturers, where some 10
companies now control 80% of production, is
coupled with a trend to shift production, particularly of older off-patent
products, to developing countries. These smaller
manufacturers in non-OECD countries may not have the ability
to consistently meet established health and safety standards. This
potentially creates a new set of
problems and the need for greater monitoring of their output – for example
pesticides no longer permitted in OECD countries
may be used on food, which is then imported (the so-called "circle of
poison"). Many developing countries lack the critical mass to carry
out appropriate monitoring either of the quality
of the pesticides they receive or produce, or of the residues in the food
they plan to export.
A key challenge for members of the OECD Pesticides Working Group to consider
in planning its future will be how to take the
experience gained over the last ten years to other areas. For example:
explore opportunities to improve national coordination in order to
ensure that the achievements here are carried to
other international fora such as the standard-setting processes within Codex
Alimentarius and related work under the Rotterdam and Stockholm
Conventions. This is particularly noteworthy in
the case of Codex as many developing countries consider that they lack the
expertise to effectively participate in the
standard setting process.
Based on the
experience gained, consider developing tools to help countries to work more
efficiently and make better use of the existing
resources. These could include:
· development of a range of “easy to use” risk indicators , in particular
ways to combine information on hazard and exposure
that provide indications/trends of relative risk over time
for individual pesticides or total pesticide use nation-wide.
· criteria for the identification of chemicals that should be the subject of
targeted
environmental monitoring in order to facilitate comparison of monitoring
data across countries. These could focus on the
potential to persist in the environment, to bioaccumulate
or level of toxicity
· focus on methodologies for conducting lifecycle assessments of pesticides.
This could include promoting integrated policies
across production, consumption and disposal consistent
with the principles and approaches that characterize IPM.
It is also clear that, at the present time, there is little or no direct
link between the work of the OECD Pesticides
Working Group and development assistance, even though many of the issues
considered by the Working Group are also central
to developing countries.
Finally, we
need to bear in mind that small countries, small farmers and small companies
have small voices. We need to ensure that their
voices are heard and that we maintain an open dialogue with
them. We are increasingly well positioned to use the global advances
in science and technology, such as global
positioning systems and genetic engineering, to develop more and better
defined strategies
for location specific agriculture. Now more than ever we should recognize
the need to act globally but to think locally.
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