Sustainable Agriculture: More than One Way Ahead

Recent discussions of the way ahead for agriculture have tended to centre around the frequently incompatible claims of the proponents of technological agriculture, now further developed through inputs from biotechnology , and ecological agriculture, of which organic farming is the best known example.There is a need for the claims made for these two versions to be put into a broader scientific and social context and to ask whether they might both represent different sustainable options for the future. Conventional and ecological agriculture are based upon distinct but different paradigms. Conventional agriculture has many similarities to other industries. Its management is dominated by a series of simple linear models e.g. weed plus herbicide equals solution and the aim of externalising many costs. In contrast ecological agriculture is based upon linked networks and an explicit view of objectives being achieved through the summation of a series of partial solutions. Such systems aim to internalise many of the costs of other systems. Such differences in philosophy require their driving areas of science to be compared so as to identify the contributions that they might make to sustainable objectives and to identify the extent to which they might be able to co-exist in the future. Ecological (organic) agriculture is centred around both the holistic system; a range of crops/animals are produced on a farm at the same time, and the rotation; the various farm activities occurring in sequence on a single field. In such approaches, all activities influence all others and result in there being no need for inputs such as chemical fertilisers or pesticides to enter the system. Key science needs are thus the understanding of ecological linkages, especially in respect of nutrient transfers and pest/disease control and an understanding of the autecology of key organisms, both crop and soil micro organisms. Studies of the development and ultimate fate of crop roots and root systems and the role of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi in the pro-24 vision of crop nutrients and the maintenance of crop health have a critical role in relation to these objectives. Although, crop properties are important to agriculture DNA technologies, which are claimed to enhance crop properties , have been rejected by the organic sector. The basis of this rejection lies with both the linear thinking which underpin them and because they are seen as unhelpful in respect of the key underlying issues which organic agriculture seeks to deliver, …