Inefficient productivity or productive inefficiency?

New research demonstrates – again – how deceptive the concepts of productivity and efficiency are in agriculture. Huge increases in labor productivity and modest increases in land productivity are gained by a massive increase of use of external resources, while natural capital is depleted. Is that efficient?

There is a growing body of research measuring resource flows to better understand the impact of developments. It is argued that only if economic growth can become substantially decoupled from material use, waste, and emissions, it can be sustainable. By measuring total use of resources, the total social metabolism, of the economy and not just measuring one parameter, one can avoid being distracted by the fact that usage of one resource has declined, while others have increased.

A sub set of the metabolism of society is the agrarian metabolism which refers to the exchange of energy and materials between a given society and its agrarian environment. In the article The agrarian metabolism as a tool for assessing agrarian sustainability, and its application to Spanish agriculture (1960-2008) in ECOLOGY AND SOCIETY, January 2018, Gloria I. Guzman (Universidad Pablo de Olavide) and colleagues assess how the metabolism of Spanish agriculture has changed through the increased use of mechanization, irrigation, chemical fertilizers and massive use of imported animal feed, to mention the most important drivers.

We are told again and again that modern agriculture and the Green revolution are wonders of efficiency and productivity. But when one look closer into the Spanish figures they give a different picture.

The researchers studied the use of external inputs such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), carbon (C), and energy flows, as well as the “fund elements” that they sustain such as soil, biodiversity, and woodland. The results show that the growing use of external inputs has broken the equilibrium between land and biomass uses required by traditional farming and broken or made redundant internal loops of energy and nutrients. On cropland, the relative fall in unharvested biomass had a negative effect on both biodiversity and the soil, which reduced the replenishment of organic C between 1960 and 1990. A sharp increase in imports of animal feed, and corresponding increase in the use of animal manure, hardly contributed to increasing soil organic carbon between 1990 and 2008. The massive importation of N in feed and mineral fertilizers increased the surplus and the losses of N, which has a negative impact on biodiversity, water, and the atmosphere.

There is also the question of the effect of the production of imported animal feed to consider. That is not included in this research, but one can assume that the large scale export of animal feed, mainly corn and soy, from monocultures in Latin America also leads to depletion of soils there. For those not so well informed about Spanish agriculture, we are talking about a massive increase in the breeding of pigs and poultry.  

It is a prerequisite of a sustainable agriculture system that the material basis, the fund elements or the natural and social capital needed, is managed in such a way that it is reproduced and preferably improved. If the farming system leads to the erosion of top soil, depletion of water resources or biodiversity or to the decline of the appeal of farming it is undermining its own foundations. The reduced ability of the system to produce is compensated for with the increased use of inputs of different kinds. In theory, external inputs could be used to improve or replenish the fund elements, e.g. by building fertility in the soil. But the practical experiences is mostly the opposite; increasing use of external inputs and the degradation of the fund elements are often twins in real life.

The research from Spain supports that. Between 1960 and 2008, Spanish agriculture increased the use of external energy more than five times. Meanwhile human labor input decreased to one-fifth, industrial inputs increased five times and the import of biomass, mainly feed from Latin America, rose fifteen times. Despite this massive use of external inputs, the total primary production from the agricultural system increased with only 17% in the period. The total biomass ”socialized” (appropriated, taken, delivered) from the agriculture system increased in the same period with 37%, of which most of the growth was a huge increase in pork meat based on imported feed stuff. It is hard to call such a system “efficient”.

As a result of the intensification and increased importation of animal feed, many different aspects of the production system changed. Big areas of pasturelands and marginal croplands were abandoned, while the remaining lands were used more intensively. A greater share of what grows on the land is taken by humans. Earlier 50% of the biomass remained in the field and provided for soil carbon and biodiversity. This share has now fallen to 38%. This change is a result of the use of herbicides as well as plants and varieties with a higher harvest index (i.e. the share of the total biomass of the plant which is allocated to the parts we harvest, e.g. the kernels in grain). The proportion legumes in the crop rotation as well as the supply of nitrogen from biological nitrogen fixation also fell considerably. The efficiency of the use of supplied nitrogen shrank while emissions and leaching of N20, nitrate and ammonia increased by a factor between two and three.   

This research confirms that the current model of farming is not sustainable. The much promoted intensification of farming is a mistake as long as intensification means further specialisation and increased use of inputs.

There is another way to intensify; to increase all the internal linkages and energy loops in a regenerative agriculture system with integration of animals, plants, soils and grassland. And much more human energy, people, and less fossil energy.

Using development aid to support multinational fertilizer companies.

The African Fertiliser and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP), under the guise of empowering smallholder farmers in Africa, is subsidising multinational fertiliser and financial corporations on African soil. AFAP, established in 2012, with a grant of US $25 million from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

According to a new report from the African Centre for Biosafety, AFAP's main focus is the provision of credit guarantees to importers and distributors of fertilisers in Ghana, Mozambique and Tanzania.
In essence, AFAP is using development funds, as well as money from the Ethiopian government-one of the least developed countries in the world-to subsidise multinational fertiliser companies such as Yara, which dominates the fertiliser trade in Africa. ...Far from enabling African smallholder farmers to grow food and profits, this scam will trap small- scale farmers into a never ending cycle of debt and increasing poverty," said Gareth Jones, a researcher with the ACB.

Recent ACB fieldwork in Malawi found that small-scale farmers are using extremely high levels of fertiliser, on soils that are technically infertile, at great additional expense, but with very little material benefits. ACB's research report shows that the adoption of Green Revolution inputs by small scale-farmers has resulted in net transfers away from farming families to multinational agribusiness. Read more;  Running to stand still: Small-scale farmers and the Green Revolution in Malawi.

The findings concur with my own findings from Zambia and Tanzania recounted for instance in:
Millennium Villages: the Great Experiment
Markets don't distribute food to those without money

I have also summarized other reports about Malawi: The Malawi Fertilizer Myth?

Millennium Villages: the Great Experiment

The Millennium Villages is one of the most prestigious humanitarian aid projects that have been launched in Africa in the past years, and a lot has actually happened. Yet, the project’s central question remains unanswered – how do you eradicate extreme poverty?

By Ann-Helen Meyer von Bremen & Gunnar Rundgren

-          I have learned a lot through this project, and I have become much more self-confident. I have a plan for the future that I am already working towards, says Mama Sarah, while showing us her well-kept fields. 

            We are in Inonelwa, one of the fifteen villages of Mbola, outside Tabora, in Tanzania. Mbola is one of Africa’s Millennium Villages*, a high-status, ten-year humanitarian aid project that was launched by Jeffrey Sachs, in order to show that it is possible to reach the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. 

            Seven years into the project, Mama Sarah is undoubtedly one of the winners. She emanates strength, energy and stability. A brand-new brick-house has been built next to her old, much simpler home, and a new storage shed for harvested corn and peanuts has also been set up in the courtyard, which enables her to sell her products when prices are at the highest. Mama Sarah earns an income from her farming practices, which is not a given in Tabora, or in Tanzania, for that matter. A brand-new bicycle is also leaning against the wall. It was given to Mama Sarah by Tanzania’s president when he came to visit.

            According to Eliezer Kigaya, who is responsible for agriculture in the Millennium Villages’ local office in Tabora, the secret behind the project’s success resides in its focus on financing chemical fertilizers and seeds, which increases the amount of corn harvested. This is one way to look at it. Another explanation is that Mama Sarah is not any farmer, but one of 67 agriculturists who have been chosen as good examples, to inspire the remaining approximately 6,000 households living in the villages. Prior to the implementation of this project in this particular village, she already belonged to a leading group of farmers. 

            Ruth Kirunda picked the shorter end of the stick.  We met her in the neighbouring village, carrying her young boy on her shoulder. Here, the harvest has been poor, and there are large gaps between the corn plants. She is one of many farmers who have not had the means to pay back her part of the financed package of chemical fertilizers and modern hybrid seeds.

-          We entered the project when it started in 2006, but in 2011, we were unable to pay back the loan. My brother, who I manage the farm with, and I had to leave to care for our aunt who got sick. We therefore could not properly care for the weeds, the harvest was poor, and we were unable to pay back the loan, says Ruth Kirunda.

            When the project was launched, all farmers were included. The reason was simple – for the first two years, chemical fertilizers and seeds were given out for free. After that, farmers were meant to pay for parts of the cost themselves, an investment that they could take out a loan for. Only one per cent of the farmers paid their loan back. Yet, the project persisted and farmers were still asked to pay a certain portion of the invested money back, and today, more farmers are able to do so. However, the majority still cannot pay back, and around two thirds of the farmers are thus not receiving the subsidies.

           

As opposed to many other humanitarian aid projects that tend to focus solely on one particular area, the idea behind the Millennium Villages is to implement solutions in various different fields, such as health, schools and income-generating activities (more specifically, agriculture). According to the Millennium Villages’ coloured publications, poverty is decreasing, as is hunger and the number of illiterates, while health, food production and economic welfare are increasing. The closer we come to reality in Mbola, the more nuanced this picture becomes. The reports claim that corn production has increased three to four times, but during our visit, the Tanzanian government is distributing food to the villages of Mbola. 

           

When we visited one of the cooperatives that process corn and peanuts, we discovered a tragic, and all too common, scene in the humanitarian aid world – the machines have been broken for about a month, and all activities have been put on hold. We did not see any signs of the remaining market investments that were mentioned in the reports. The school meals have not worked out as planned.

-          The idea was that each parent should contribute with two bags of corn (about 440 Pounds) per year, but this has never been the case, says Katherine Mbando, director of Madaha Primary School.

            At the same time, a lot has actually happened. Prior to the project launch, there was barely any clean water in Mbola, whereas today, 64% of the inhabitants have access to it. Three health centres have been built, and as many have been renovated. Sixty health workers have been employed, schools have been restored, mosquito nets that prevent malaria have been distributed, toilets have been built, and electricity has been installed in schools and in health centres. Amongst the positive results, fatality rates have decreased, and so has the rate of undernourished children and the cases of malaria. Moreover, the number of children including girls, attending school has dramatically increased. Maternity care has been expanded, but the rate of mothers dying from childbirth is still high. 

Girl cycling to school in Tabora

            And yet, the two most important questions remain unanswered – are the poorest being reached, and is the agriculture intervention successful? Since the idea is that monetary gains obtained from agriculture should enable households to invest money into public or community services, without a striving agriculture, development will never be sustainable. 

            It is highly likely that the Millennium Villages will not meet the expected Millennium Development Goals, at least Mbola will not. Jeffrey Sachs, founder of the Millennium Villages, and heading the work of establishing the Millennium Development Goals, observes from New York that so far – seven years into the project – not all efforts have reached out to the poorest.

-          You chose to focus on rather expensive investments in agriculture, such as chemical fertilizers and seeds. Was that the right path to take?

-          In order to increase production, you need costlier means of investment. Mbola was also shockingly poor; it was one of the poorest areas that we chose. When we started the project, there was no market, people were hungry during the months leading up to harvest, and there was barely any real housing. This has become better, but it is not the case for everybody, not for the small farmers, and not for those who do not own land.

Tobacco is grown without any subsidies and provides most of the income in Mbola

 

On our way back from Tabora to Mwansa, we saw a group of women and children of different ages sitting crushing stones by hand with sledge-hammers, while the youngest children were playing in the piles of stones. Later, we drove past a gravel pit where a stone-breaker was used for the construction of a new road. The question is whether this new road will be the beginning of economic development, and the end of a market for labour-intensive hand-crushed stone? Or is the new road going to be as meaningless as the more than a hundred-year-old railway? Will it mostly be used to transport the young people of Tabora into cities, where they will sell telephone cards, bananas and lighters? – Third World Network Features.

*The Millennium Villages

The Millennium Villages is a ten-year-project that will last until 2015, and its aim is to reach the Millennium Development Goals. The villages that have been selected exist in ten countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. According to project data, it reaches out to half a million people. The initiative was launched by Jeffrey Sachs at Earth Institute, Colombia University, and he is also heading the project. 

Published as a TWN Feature in July 2013

The road to food security: What works and what doesn’t?

Considering that donors spend some US$ 150 billion per year in development aid, and that much of this is oriented to poverty alleviation and food security it is perhaps surprising to know how few thorough international reviews that have been made to assess  what works and what doesn’t work. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now reviewed existing evaluations in the field and make a summary in the study A systematic review of the impact of interventions in agricultural production, value chains, market regulation.  One conclusion is that most evaluations and impact assessments are not solid enough to allow for any far-reaching conclusions. Of 365 evaluations screened only 38 fulfilled the quality criteria the reviewers had developed.

The review assessed four pathways to food security: increasing production; development of value chains; market reform and land security. Interventions based on access to credit; development of non-farm sector; social safety nets; stabilized prices, hygiene and sanitation were thus not part of the review.

Overall conclusions

Interventions improving land tenure security scored mostly positive, especially when combined with other interventions.

Interventions increasing agricultural production scored generally positive, except for sustainability.

Value chain development scored well on increasing trade, but the most vulnerable people did not benefit.

Market regulation reform interventions score lowest, due to the combination with reduced support to the agricultural sector in several African countries.

Success was most likely where different interventions were combined in a favourable national climate.

As I have been working a lot with value chain development I took a particular interest in that: Intervention in value chain comes out as one of the better strategies for improving food security. The report highlights that there is a big potential in the development of domestic value chains. For example, in Kenya approximately 500,000 smallholders produce vegetables and fruits for the domestic markets while only 11,500 smallholders were engaged in the export market. The export market involves many more large plantations with employees. They employ in total also around half a million people, who are food secure through their income. The evaluation also studied value chains built around GlobalGAP, Organic and Fairtrade.

Number of farmers producing certified products for export markets          

Standard	Worldwide	Developing countries	Africa
GlobalGAP (2007)	97,000		2,871
Organic (2009)	1,808,000	1,526,000	511,000
Fairtrade		977,000	589,000

source: IOB study 363, 2012

Clearly donors are disappointed with the very limited impact of all the efforts spent to train smallholders in GlobalGAP systems. There have been many donor financed projects for linking smallholder farmers in developing countries to organic markets in developing countries. For example the Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa. In that programme, more than 120 thousand smallholders in Uganda and Tanzania were linked to organic markets in Europe, USA and Japan. The estimated earnings reached some US$ 30 million per year.  The review assess the impact of organic value chains as successful, but can’t conclude if the efforts have reached the most vulnerable or not. Successfactors have been linking of farmers to commercial exporters (as opposed tp supporting farmer to export themselves), group certification and efforts to improve quality. Also for Fairtrade it was unclear if the most food insecure people were reached and perhaps surprising the report states that, Fairtrade seems to have reinforced men’s role in household an cooperative decision making around cash crops; in one case women’s income had even declined. For the total household income, in four of six cases in Latin America, there had been no increase of household income with Fair trade: ”The low income for Fairtrade farmers is due to the competition between the Fairtrade crop and other farm and non-farm activities, the additional costs for inputs and (hired) labour, and the limited Fairtrade market - only part of the produce is sold as Fairtrade.”

On the opposing side to organic stands a strong drive to increase use of chemical fertilizers, and sometimes GMOs and pesticides. The reports says that the subsidised fertilizer schemes in Zambia and Malawi have been successful. However, another recent special review of such schemes, Agricultural input subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa from DANIDA comes to a much less positive conclusion after studying such schemes in Malawi, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania:

• Significant increases in agricultural productivity and food production is possible, and the potential for improving agricultural productivity by subsidising agricultural inputs exists. However the estimates are somewhat uncertain. Costs are very high, and given uncertainties it is unclear whether the programmes provide value for money.

• There is very little convincing evidence to suggest that outcomes are likely to persist after termination of the programmes. However, the subsidy programmes are designed to address the distortions created by market imperfections rather than the market imperfections themselves. When (if) the programmes are phased out, input use is likely to decline again.

It also concludes that none of the programmes managed to reach the poorest households

On the, rather controversial, effects of market deregulation, the Dutch review shows how market de-regulation in China and Vietnam, in combination with land reform, has contributed tremendously to growth and reduction of poverty. ”The impact of domestic trade reform alone was not evaluated, but together with the other pathways in Vietnam’s agricultural development, it contributed to the production increase, from a deficit of 27% in 1980 to a surplus of 40% in 1999. And for China:

In China, during the so-called household responsibility system reform between 1978 and 1984, national grain production increased from 305 to 407 million tonnes. Increases in efficiency increased labour productivity and reduced production costs and food prices. [... ] As a result, per capita grain consumption increased from 195 to 250 kg per year, and household income increased by 15% per year between 1978 and 1984. The efficiency gains in agriculture made labour available for the rural industry sector that absorbed about one third of the rural labour force by 1996. Poverty declined from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001.

On the other hand the report also points to that during the period of big de-regulation

In most African countries, the increase in food import was larger than the increase in agricultural export. The ratio of food import to agricultural export has worsened for all African countries plus Guatemala and Peru, remained the same for Guyana, and had improved for China, India and Chile (1970-2002). In the period 1995-2002, the situation was worst for Senegal which imported food worth more than three times their total  agricultural export. Farmer income from export crops increased in all countries. In contrast, farmer income from liberalised food crops decreased in all countries, except in Chile. Farmer income from food crops that were still protected increased in Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco, China, India, Chile, Guyana and Peru.

That land reform the report highlights that land titling and solutions based on individual, private ownership may not be the best. As a matter of fact they are likely to benefit more those that are already better off, and exclude women and disadvantaged groups.

As the report points out, there is no silver bullet that by itself can guarantee food security. It stands clear to me that food security – poverty and equality are intrinsically linked, and that the reason for food insecurity is found in an unjust society and unequal access to resources, and therefore,  that the path to food security is to correct those injustices.

Markets don't distribute food to those without money

Seb's maize. Photo Richard Mulonga

The maize is towering over a sea of vigorous weeds. In some cases the greenery has pulled down the stalks and it is almost hard to believe there will be any harvest out of that field. Seb Scott, however, assures me that his maize will yield some 7 tons per hectare. The weeds are actually intentionally planted Lablab beans (Dolichos lablab). Seb is growing maize without machinery; i.e. he and his partner hand-hoe the fields, or just sow by hand in the mulch with an ingenious piece of tube. They also grow organically; instead of using government subsidized fertilizers he use green manure crops to supply nitrogen to his plants.

Some of the Mkandawire children eating their breakfast

Seb is not the only farmer I visit this day in Zambia in the end of April 2012. My first visit went to Fred and Susan Mkandawire. They grow maize on a hectare of land and they harvest a ton, just enough to keep the family alive. Maize is what they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They don’t starve, but their margins are very small. It seems that they can sell a surplus of 250 kg, worth around 50 dollars this year, which is far from enough for the school fees for the five children. The Mkanadawires are using chemical fertilizers and work totally manually on their farm.

Godfrey Boma and his sunflower, Photo: Richard Mulonga

When he stands next to his great organic sunflowers, it is hard to believe that Godfrey Boma is 81 year old. After all, life expectancy in Zambia is below 40 years. Godfrey is a former miner and small business man who became a farmer at an age where the normal Swede stops working altogether. His and his wife Katherine’s farm is 9 hectares of which 4 hectares are farm land. He uses own oxen for plowing. A better – and more timely - land preparation, better weeding and higher use of chemical fertilizers are all contributing to that he harvest around 5 tons per hectare of maize - more than double the national average. That is five times as much as Fred and Susan, but still less than Seb. 

Godfrey also has a plot of organic production, Instead of the monoculture of maize which is typical for conventional maize production (such as Mkandawire’s and his own) the organic plot has ten different crops in smaller plots or grown together (so called companion cropping). When I asked how organic and non-organic compares, he says: ”It is 50-50. Organic is nice, there are no problems with disease, I don’t use any chemicals and have less cost. But it is more work”.

The visits show that it is possible to increase yields a lot. It is possible to do it with conventional methods and it is possible to do it with organic methods. It is possible to do it in a small scale farm or in a large scale farm. It also shows that poverty, in the sense of limited resources, as for the Mkandawires, is most likely a cause of low productivity in farming, rather than low productivity being the cause of poverty.

Zambia has been used as an example of successful agriculture policy, a proof that with more fertilizers one can produce ”more food”. Perhaps there is limited success on that count, even if the Ministry of agriculture’s own research shows that most of last years high yields crops can be explained by good rains.

Zambia’s agriculture budget is to a very large extent orientated to subsidies of chemical fertilizer and government procurement of maize, to a price considerably above world market prices. And clearly it works in the sense that it results in increased maize production. Anything else would be highly surprising.  Higher prices will lead to higher production, as it pays to use more resources for the same piece of land. As we can see above productivity per hectare can increase with different production methods. Fertilizer probably plays a marginal role for the increase of maize production in Zambia. In 2010/11 Zambia had a bumper crop of maize, and the result is that Zambia has a stock pile of more than 1 million ton, when the new season starts. The minister of agriculture, Emannuel Chenda tells the Post (May 1) that the huge surplus is a challenge, but continues by saying ”I am aware of that potential markets exist beyond our region in places such as the Horn of Africa. He doesn’t seem to understand that there is no shortage of food in the world; the people of the Horn of Africa simply can’t buy it, as little as the poor in Zambia.  The Zambian Farmer reports in their April issue that a very big proportion of the maize stock pile is simply rottening. Approximately a third of the maize in stock has gone to waste in bad storages. The authorities are now burning the rotten maize to make space for the new crop!

Many are critical to the fertilzer support:

”A ‘one size fit all’ approach to fertilizer and seed regardless of differences in agro-ecological zones and soil types has been responsible for poor yields per hectare experienced each year. All farmers are made to plant the same variety or range of seeds (short maturing or medium maturing or long maturing) using same type of fertilizers (D-compound and Urea) despite agriculturists knowing that differences in soil fertility require adjustments in input applications. This has resulted in significant drop in yield against yield potentials to as low as 10 bags per hectare against the potential 50-70 bags.”

says Action Aid in a report.

Daniel Kalala from the Kasisi Agriculture Training Center says that ”fertilizer subsidies is the number 1 election campaign strategy”. Others point to the rampant corruption involved in the program. The Farmer Input Support program costs Zambia 700bn Kwacha per year (some 133 million dollars).  This is enough to buy more than 500,000 ton maize – enough to feed some 2-3 million Zambians. By only supporting maize production with fertilizers and seeds, the government induces bad management practices (mono-culture) as well as bad nutrition of rural families, as they will grow more maize  and less of other crops.

All those issues aside, the story of food and who gets it and who doesn’t has very little to do with agronomic issues or with the use of more GMOs, or more fertilizers. The farms I visited show that it is access to resources (including know how) as well as markets that is most important for the productivity of the land and not if the farm is organic or not. How we farm is still a very important issue for how we maintain and enhance our social and natural capital, When it comes to food, distribution is a much bigger challenge. And distribution, in turn, has a lot to do with markets. And markets don’t distribute food to those that have no money to buy for.  

GRAIN: The food system causes half of greenhouse gas emissions

The current global food system, propelled by an increasingly powerful transnational food industry, is responsible for around half of all human produced greenhouse gas emissions: anywhere between a low of 44% to a high of 57%. 

writes GRAIN from where the graph below is also taken

You can download the full report here

Some of my earlier posting relating to the food system, farming and carbon sequestration 

Nitrogen fertilizers destroy soil organic carbon

carbon projects drives land grabbing and GMOs?

It takes more energy to eat than to farm

Energy and Agriculture

Climate; doing the things right or doing the right thing?

We can argue about details in the data set, but by and large the picture is clear. Our food system, despite industrialization is still the most fundamental part of our existence on the planet. To a very large extent the combination of capitalism and fossil fuel (who are mutually reinforcing) is the main driver in this development. And dealing with the problem will have to deal with those two. 

To believe that low resourced smallholder farmers would be able to compete on staple food in free world markets - with energy access being the main factor of competitive advantage - is simply very far from reality. In reality, we instead see how country after country become net food importers. Cheap energy could be seen as their way out of the situation, but the reality is quite different: it is cheap energy that has pressed down the prices of agriculture products - and thereby the market value of their labour to a dollar per day; it is cheap energy that has allowed the gaps to increase to unprecedented heights because the rich could always use more cheap energy than the poor, and the gap between those relying on their own labour and those relying on use on fossil fuel has just increased. Energy scarcity, higher energy prices will result in less global competition and higher food prices. While being painful for many societies and for net food buyers in the short run, is still better for the smallholder farmers in developing countries than the opposite. Policy-makers should better grab this opportunity for a turn of agriculture development, instead of promoting continued or increased external input dependency (fertilizers, GMOs, credits) and continued global competition in a market where the big players are all on steroids in the form of cheap oil.(Agriculture: How cheap energy (and capitalism) increased the gaps between rich and poor)