From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERthem farming over 1m hectares – 3 per cent of the total cultivated areain developing countries. These farms show a mean increase in yields of79 per cent, contravening the widespread supposition that sustainableagriculture necessarily sacrifices high yields. Over half of the projectsinvolving integrated pest management have reduced pesticide use andincreased yields. 51Sustainable agriculture may be more compatible with climatechange and other environmental constraints than a new GreenRevolution. For example, maintaining organic soil cover to minimiseerosion, a practice known as ‘zero tillage’, which has been hailed by theWorld Bank as ‘one of agriculture’s major success stories in the pasttwo decades’ 52 also sequesters significant amounts of carbon. Carbonconstraints, whether through higher prices or government regulation,may work to the benefit of sustainable agriculture and small farmersrelative to industrial and large-scale agriculture, which tend to bemore avid carbon users.To date, sustainable agriculture has received relatively little backingfrom governments, but political pressure from organised farmers andtheir allies could turn that around. That said, many sustainable practicesrely on highly specific knowledge of local ecosystems that it is hard toreplicate.THE BIOFUEL BOOMFarmers everywhere try to cash in when demand for a particular productrises, whether through shifts in consumption patterns (such as thetransition to meat-based diets in Asia) or technological change. Thelatest boom commodity, biofuels, uses plant-based ‘biomass’ to generateenergy, for example replacing oil-based fuels in transport or electricitygeneration. Driven by a combination of rising oil prices, fears overenergy security, technological innovation, and concern over climatechange, farmers the world over are now growing crops to be made intofuel. The main crops grown for biofuels are sugar, grain, palm oil, andwood.The impact of such fuels on carbon emissions and the ecosystemis highly disputed (especially in the case of maize-based ethanol).130