Successful ‘Science of Sustainable Agriculture’ series wraps up

by Jenny Broome, Lyra Halprin and Gail Feenstra, SAREP

(Note: This article summarizes the 10 speakers featured during the fall lecture series. Spring series lectures were summarized in Sustainable Agriculture, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer 2003, available online here.)

The major lecture series The Science of Sustainable Agriculture: Measuring the Immeasurable concluded its spring/fall presentations at UC Davis in December with the final 10 of 19 internationally recognized experts on sustainability in agriculture, the environment and society. The series began in April and continued weekly through December 2003.

“SAREP was pleased to help organize and coordinate this highly successful multidisciplinary speaker series,” said Jenny Broome, SAREP associate director. “It was standing room-only at every lecture.” More than 1330 attended the 19 talks, and video lectures online have been accessed more than 1000 times at www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/seminar/.

The series received support and leadership from the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Unilever Bestfoods Corporation, Kearney Foundation of Soil Science, UCD Department of Agronomy and Range Science, UCD Department of Land, Air & Water Resources, as well as the UCD Center for History, Society, and Culture.

Economics, Rangelands The fall series began with professor Jeff Krautkraemer from the economics department at Washington State University, Pullman, who discussed “Natural Resource Scarcity and Sustainable Agriculture.” Economists have often been concerned with the question of resource scarcity; Krautkraemer provided an overview of how technological innovation has improved the efficiency of renewable resource use, particularly fossil fuels, when the resources are treated solely as commodities.

But addressing broader public costs/ benefits related to fossil fuel use and links between scarce resources and unintended effects like global warming (and the unknown ability of technical innovation to address these) is harder to assess and accomplish, he said. Krautkraemer addressed ways to account for resource abundance and scarcity, including measuring physical reserves or cost measures of scarcity including price, user and opportunity cost. He also provided historical data trends for energy use and fossil fuel availability.

Speaker Jill Landsberg shifted gears and addressed “Managing Rangelands to Conserve Biodiversity.” Landsberg is a theme leader, Tropical Savannas Cooperative Research Centre, and adjunct associate professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. She noted that although rangelands are inherently unproductive, infertile, and not suitable for cropland, these biophysical properties can also provide opportunities for mixed land use.

Landsberg described the social context of Australian rangelands, which includes population pressures, isolation, low income, and large numbers of indigenous peoples. She said Australian cooperative research centers focus on integrative research that attempts to address academic, political, and on-the-ground change simultaneously to benefit a range of stakeholders. This differs from principal investigator disciplinary-directed research more typical of university settings.

She noted that integrative rangeland studies have focused on researching and improving the management of rangelands with fire, which if properly managed can address biodiversity, grazing access, and the social and economic needs of the community.

Soils, water
Pete Smith’s lecture addressed “Sustainable Soil Management to Help Mitigate Climate Changes: Opportunities and Limitations.” Smith, a reader in Soils and Global Change, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom, discussed unequivocal evidence from the last 1,000 years that shows global warming is caused by human activity.

According to Smith, 1998 was the warmest year over the last millennium. He discussed data that show carbon dioxide and methane gases account for approximately 85 percent of the warming trend, and presented four scenarios (world market, provincial enterprise, global sustainability, and local stewardship) for the next 100 years showing how CO2 concentration may change and influence global warming. He addressed the potential for carbon sequestration in farming and forestry systems that include the use of organic amendments (animal manure, sewage sludge), no-till practices, deintensified farmland, and increases in woodlands and biofuel plantings.

Smith cautioned that while this approach can assist Europe in complying with the Kyoto Protocol, it is not a “cheap” option to avoid the hard choice of limiting fossil fuel use. He explained carbon markets and carbon credits as well as creative commercial links that fund reforestation efforts (including those supported by consumers purchasing “Foo Fighters” music CDs!). He stressed that social and economic issues such as poverty and education are also key to addressing global climate change challenges.

“Land and Water Management in Arid Regions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” was addressed by Daniel Hillel, senior research scientist at Columbia University, professor emeritus of plant, soil and environmental sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an internationally renowned environmental scientist and hydrologist who has worked throughout the Middle East. Hillel provided fascinating historical data on land and water management in the Middle East.

He noted that the Middle East, which is the juncture of the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, has been subject to human exploitation for the longest period of time of any region on Earth. Hillel discussed destructive practices that occurred in the Middle East, including the twin processes of terraced farming on mountain slopes that caused erosion in the uplands, and overgrazing that caused rivers to carry loads of silt that created levees, which broke and flooded. He noted that areas prone to flooding are notoriously ill-drained and prone to rising water tables. As water rises from flood-irrigated soils, it begins to infuse the topsoil with salt. He pointed to Egypt as an example of more stable fertility because of the annual pulsation of rivers that irrigated, fertilized and drained the land. It supported a generally stable civilization for more than 5,000 years until 1964, when Egyptians interfered on a massive scale with this natural cycle and built the Aswan Dam. The dam was built to increase food production to support its increasing population, but the effect has been to contain the water in canals at high levels year-round, which has resulted in salt accumulation in the soil. Additionally, by containing river silt behind the dam, offshore erosion and seawater intrusion into the agricultural lands of the Delta has occurred, which has destroyed fisheries fed by the plankton supported by nutrient-rich silted water.

“These things are happening today in California, Australia and all arid regions that are under irrigation and injudicious cultivation,” Hillel said. “Sustainability is not to be taken for granted. It is conditioned on very careful control.”

Hillel said he is not a pessimist, and is convinced that irrigated agriculture can be sustained if environmental consequences are taken into account. He noted that parts of California, Israel, India and Pakistan support sustainable systems of irrigated agriculture with proper drainage and cultivation. Hillel predicts that by 2050, agriculture will be withdrawn from marginal lands, increased in more fertile lands and made much more efficient. He said we must concentrate and invest in these intensive and sustainable systems, and offer assistance to countries without the resources to do it carefully. He said international cooperation and investment is necessary to sustain us as a species.

Quality of life, food
Several talks looked at the roles of consumers and citizens in the food system and how to measure “quality of life.”

Cornelia Butler Flora, Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology at Iowa State University, and director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, Iowa State University, posed the question, “How do we know the impact of sustainable agriculture on quality of life?”

She said there is no correlation between standard of living and quality of life, noting that standard of living primarily looks at indicators such as possessions. She noted that it is important to determine whose quality of life is being examined, as many individuals are impacted by quality of life and standard of living in a broader and broader way, i.e., there is a relationship between increased pollution from some agricultural practices and children who can’t play outside due to asthma.

She noted that agriculture has long been the ultimate “modernization project,” which asserts that knowledge is cumulative, and the increased use of “sound science” will increase productivity. She said productivity is an easier variable to measure than profitability or environmental impacts, which are often ignored because of the difficulty in quantifying them.

Butler Flora noted that the increasingly fragmented nature of our society affects agriculture and has different effects on managers, farmworkers, custom pest control applicators, harvesters, and farm families. She noted that the advent of digital technology has speeded up the work of biotechnology, and provided us with an overload of information. Additionally, technology has helped turn us into a 24-hour society: Americans work more hours per day than any other nation, and more per day then five years ago. The 24-hour society has changed concepts of community and family by separating people from each other, she said.

Butler Flora noted that a new “post- post modernist” revolution is evolving, which increasingly identifies sets of choices with multiple indicators that might vary in different communities and with different contexts.

Joan Dye Gussow spoke about “Why You Should Eat Food and Other Nutritional Heresies.” Gussow, emeritus professor of Nutrition Education, Columbia University, described how difficult it is to “eat by the numbers.” She noted that we couldn’t patch together the right amounts of dozens of vitamins and minerals and newly fashionable phytochemicals recommended by experts from package labels or nutrient charts. She described how the current food marketplace developed, and how, despite all these “newly popular micronutrients,” it has contributed to a national eating disorder. Gussow has spent the last 20 years trying to show why and how the foods people eat should be whole, minimally processed, locally grown and, therefore, mostly seasonal.

Ag education
The final discussions returned to the university and education and outreach efforts needed to increase the adoption of sustainable farming and food systems.

Charles Francis talked about “Developing a Curriculum for a Sustainable Agricultural: Educating the Researchers and Farmers of the Future.” Francis is a professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and visiting professor of agroecology in Sweden and Norway and frequently teaches in their MSc courses. He noted that there is interest in studying sustainable agriculture or agroecological systems because there is increased consumer demand for sound practices, there may be cost reductions and a possible competitive advantage for farmers, farmers face increasing regulations, and there is increased interest in the social and environmental responsibility of agriculture.

Francis noted that agroecology courses are being offered throughout the country that require students to think, process and fit information into context, explore new options, and include whole systems approaches to production, processing, marketing and consumer issues. Those in agriculture must understand intensive management in farming and food systems, be life-long learners in a complex and unpredictable future, value nature and biodiversity in local contexts, and understand linkages and partnerships, he said. He noted, as an example, that more than 170 environmental organizations are working closely with the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State.

Francis said Nordic countries use the term “ecological agriculture” for organic farming, which is seen as a practical application of principles rather than an academic discipline. He said Nordic MSc. programs he works with focus on economics (direct markets, local food systems), long-term impacts of alternative systems, social impact of systems (family farm emphasis, local business, cooperatives, fair wages, social capital), and nature as guide (using the study of natural systems to provide guidance for the design of cultivated crops and crop/animal systems).

In those programs, there is a broader concept of faculty that includes farmers. Francis said researchers often become co-learners, and the focus is on life-long learning and how to adapt. Universities include “just-in-time” and “context” education, which tailors students’ learning experiences to their needs; some work in the field first, and learn chemistry or statistics as they apply. He said a more fluid university organization, in which multidisciplinary faculty work in teams with students moving in and out of the university setting, is a worthy goal.

Fred Kirschenmann, director of the Leopold Center at Iowa State University eloquently described “Unfolding a Sustain-able Agriculture for the 21st Century: Some Challenges for Education and Extension.” He discussed the “hollowing out” of rural America as mid-sized farms, or “agriculture of the middle,” is disappearing from the American landscape in the face of the current global economy. Nationally, these farms still make up the largest share of “working farms” where the chief source of income is farming. They are also the farms that have sustained rural communities by making local purchases, creating jobs, and maintaining local tax bases.

Kirschenmann framed a convincing rationale for developing new value chains—connecting new sustainable production systems with new food microenterprises on a regional basis. These new food system approaches would explore links between mid-scale producers and regionally based food processors, distributors and retailers. They could take advantage of the new market climate, which Kirschenmann said highlighted “memory, romance and trust”—the attributes that an increasing number of food-conscious consumers are looking for. Kirschenmann ended with a few examples of farmers and food systems entrepreneurs who are using new enterprise structures and value chains to simultaneously serve the environment, rural communities, farmers and a public that wants to support this new agriculture.

Science of organic
John Reganold, professor in the crop and soil sciences department at Washington State University, Pullman, focused on “The Science Behind Organic and Biodynamic Farming.” He presented results of his 15 years of farming systems research recently featured in Nature and Science, where he compared organic, conventional, and integrated farming systems. In the late 1980s he studied wheat in Washington State and found organic farming systems to be equal or better in yield, crop and soil biological and physical quality parameters, lower in energy use per unit produced, and soil erosion was three times less in the organic compared to the conventional systems.

Reganold also discussed his work with organic, conventional and integrated apple production systems in Washington State, where he found the organic apples to be firmer and slightly sweeter than those produced in either the conventional or integrated systems. This multidisciplinary study included economists and engineers; the economists calculated the breakeven point for organic production at six to nine years, compared to eight to 15 years and nine to 17 years for conventional and integrated production, assuming a 50 percent price premium on the organic with the range related to the russetting challenges in all three systems. His study used the Environmental Impact Quotient developed at Cornell, and found that organic production had the lowest (best) score. The study combined all data collected, developed a sustainability ranking and found that organic production ranked first in environmental and economic sustainability, with integrated production second, and conventional third.

Reganold also presented his work in New Zealand where he compared biodynamic and conventional management of crop and pasture systems, and impacts on crop and soil quality. He is currently on sabbatical in Mendocino County working with Fetzer Winery and its Bonterra vineyard, and writing a book on organic and biodynamic winegrape growing.

UC Davis’ own William Horwath, associate professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, ended the series with an overview of research and education in sustainable agriculture at UCD, and offered a vision for the future. His talk, “Past, Present, and Future of Sustainable Agriculture at UC Davis,” provided historical context by discussing the creation and intended role of the land grant university. He drew on some of the previous speakers’ themes and provided specific California data on the impacts and contributions of California agriculture.

Horwath used the rice industry as an example of how research needs and priorities have changed, from focusing solely on increasing yields to adding additional environmental elements such as winter wildlife habitat and protecting air quality. He described the milestones over the past 30 years that have culminated in demands for sustainable agriculture and food systems that included social movements critical of environmentally damaging farming practices and legal challenges about who benefits from publicly funded mechanization research, as well as the rise of the organic farming and natural foods and cooperative movement.

He discussed the key and complimentary roles that the Student Experimental Farm, SAREP, the Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems (SAFS) project, the Long Term Research in Agricultural Systems (LTRAS) project and others have played at UCD. He reported on the recently released report by the UCD College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences on sustainable agriculture at UCD released in 2003 and available online at www.aes.ucdavis.edu/ AcadProg/SustAgCmte.htm. In looking to the future, Horwath highlighted the need for multidisciplinary, long-term collaborative efforts and creative but grounded educational approaches that will support the next generation as they work to develop sustainable food and agricultural systems.

An undergraduate and graduate seminar course linked to the speaker series was held with additional discussion sessions. See the SAREP Web site for more details and video archives www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/seminar/.

Members of the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Subcommittee on Sustainable Agriculture speaker series:

Janet C. “Jenny” Broome, associate director, SAREP (chair) Chris van Kessel, chair and professor, Department of Agronomy & Range Science William Horwath, associate professor, Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources Leisa Huyck, Sustainable Agriculture Farming Systems/IA Conservation Tillage project Karen Klonsky, extension specialist, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Wolfgang Pittroff, assistant professor, Department of Animal Science Kate Scow, professor, Department of Land, Air, Water Resources; director, Kearney Foundation of Soil Science