January 04, 2014

"Small is Really Beautiful" -- Vandana Shiva

..."the reality is that “small is big” — ecologically, economically and politically. The future of food security in India and worldwide lies in protecting and promoting small farmers."

Published on Friday, January 3, 2014 by The Asian Age
posted on Jan. 4 by Common Dreams.org

Vandana Shiva makes the case for small-scale agriculture, from her experience and citing international studies concluding that "small-scale agriculture is the solution to the ecological crisis, the food crisis and the crisis of work and employment." 

Excerpt:
"Small farms produce more food than large industrial farms because small farmers give more care to the soil, to plants and animals, and they intensify biodiversity, not external chemical inputs. As farms increase in size, they replace labour with fossil fuels for farm machinery and toxic chemicals. The caring work of farmers is replaced by harsh and careless technologies. Thus, food production per acre goes down.

Yes, a social tragedy and ecological catastrophe morphs into “myth of more”. And this myth of more is being sold to the world as a solution to hunger. The trick is to not measure total output of a farm, but just the “yield” of a monoculture commodity. Essentially, productivity is manipulated in two ways to project large farms as more productive.

First, the only input that counts is labour, not chemicals, land, water or fossil fuels. So the more small farmers and family farmers are displaced and replaced by chemicals and machines, the false calculus says productivity has increased. When natural resources are taken into account, industrial agriculture is, in fact, an inefficient agriculture, using 10 calories of input to produce one calorie of food.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, in spite of all subsidies going to large farms, in spite of all policies promoting industrial agriculture, even today 72 per cent food comes from small farms. If we add kitchen gardens and urban gardens, the majority of food people eat is grown on a small scale.

What is growing on large farms is not food; it is commodities. Only 10 per cent of the corn and soya taking over world agriculture is eaten. Ninety per cent goes to drive cars as biofuel or to animals in factory farms as feed. Small farms feed the world. Big farms spread poisons and hunger.

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) 2013 Trade and Environment Report states that monoculture and industrial farming methods are not providing sufficient affordable food where it is needed, while causing mounting and unsustainable environmental damage.

An International Labour Organisation’s report — “Working towards sustainable development: Opportunities for decent work and social inclusion in a green economy” — shows that small-scale agriculture is the solution to the ecological crisis, the food crisis and the crisis of work and employment. The report cites examples of how small farms in Africa have increased food production through ecological agriculture."...

Read full report here