I think polarization results from the importance of the issues at stake. I would like to say that one aspect that also needs to be considered is the distributional aspect. The fact that more crops or livestock is produced does not necessarily mean that it will end up as food on the table of millions of undernourished people. This implies that, without being anti-technological and at risk of stating the obvious, food security is as much an ethical issue as a technical one.

Regarding SI or agro-ecology, I believe that they can be reconciled. The question is what do we mean by intensification. I suspect what agro-ecologists dislike is intensification in the forms of desert monocultures. I actually tend to agree with them. Moreover, given the increasing energy scarcity (and even ignoring for a second the environmental implications), I am not sure how feasible this form of intensification could be for vast areas of the planet.

On the other hand, there are other forms of intensification that may be much more feasible, less resource intensive and environmentally benign. A 2011 report by FAO (Save & Grow) makes this abundantly clear (the report is available at http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2215e/i2215e.pdf).

I have been working in agroecology research from a few years, as a PhD student. I also experienced such polarisation. At first I was scared of how much confusion did it bring into my early activities.

At present, I would say that concepts such as agroecology, SI, ecological intensification, etc. are better addressed as hypotheses, rather than concrete strategies for action. As such, these concepts are very dynamic and not necessarily mutually exclusive. The problem is that they are often "labelled" before their meaning is agreed at an acceptable level.

Works as Wezel et al. (2007) "Agroecology as a science, a movement and a practice", available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1051%2Fagro%2F2009004 can be helpful in understanding how differently concepts as agroecology can be addressed.

In spite of this (these) polarisation(s), I'm convinced that there is no reason for opposing increasing land efficiency vs. optimisation of ecological processes, traditional knowledge vs. a good use of technology, local scale vs. global scale, etc..

Research should propose new visions to overcome this polarisation, which can jeopardise the efficacy of innovations on both "sides".

Thanks for all the thoughts. I am interested in Ambrogio's notion that the "concepts such as agroecology, SI, ecological intensification, etc. are better addressed as hypotheses". In my view they are concepts and the issues arrive when they get turned into pathways. e.g. SI is the logical construct that if more yield is needed without expanding the land area used for agriculture (intensification, by definition) it needs to be done sustainably. The concept that intensification needs to be sustainable is not a hypothesis that "industrialised farming" or "labour intensive" (smallholder?) farming is the route to intensification. Clearly, any sustainability requires enhancing ecosystem services and therefore requires ecological inputs to agriculture. Hence, my puzzlement - SI and agro-ecology aren't "movements" and certification schemes for sets of practices... Ho hum.

Let me thank Tim Benton for expressing such a question.

In your last response you addressed a crucial point. in my opinion, there is a dangerous overlapping between a "scientific" and a "socio-political" dimension. This is not to say that researchers must only address "science" - as I've been answered while trying to mediate, and look for a way forward, the polarisation. On the contrary! Both the ecological and socio-political dimension are as important as complex, and must be addressed carefully, which seems impossible if we label a scientific hypothesis as a political one. Applied science should constantly monitor and adjust its contribution to human society, in my opinion: we are scientists and citizens at the same time, but not a hybrid of the two.

In Giampietro 2004 , http://icta.uab.cat/divulgacion/libros.jsp?id=13&id_idioma=2 , I found plenty of insight to understand "complex system thinking" in agroecosystem analysis. And also a nice story, (I've directly experienced several similar stories) I try to resume:

a researcher loves the landscape created by a chinese farmer and congratulates with him, but the farmer hates "his" landscape, and the labour it requires.

If we were the scientist, what would we reply? Is it a good exercise for all of us?

All the best to all of you.

To me agroecology is an essential part of sustainable intensification. Without understanding the underpinning ecology of food production systems they won't be sustainable in the long term . We only need to look at the boom and bust cycles in the last Green Revolution to see what happens. I specialise in crop protection and its environmental impacts and regularly see the same problems of over-simplification - pest and weed resistance to pesticides (now multiple pesticide resistance mechanisms in single pest species) or to single gene based pest resistance. IPM isn't a new idea but has come of age with the withdrawal of many pesticides, climate change impacts and a serious debate about food security. We need to re-diversify agro-ecosystems and crop management systems or selection pressures will ensure more boom and bust cycle (typically 10-20 years for pests under strong selectrion pressure). We need regional solutions that meet socio-economic needs - there is no simple solution that is adaptable and sustainable enough. Then we need to think about what we should eat - half the world is underfed and half is over-fed. Food and farming technologies have created new global epidemics like obesity, even when food is affordable and convenient . These are hidden costs that the notion of 'cheap food' mask - obesity and related illnesses like dabetes will cost Scotland alone >£30 million /year in health issues. So cheap food per se isn't the answer. We need healthy diets and sustainable lifestyles, coupled to ecologically sustainable farming methods at different scales.

I agree with you Nick. One of the interesting emerging notions is "sustainable nutrition" rather than "sustainable ag" - to consciously reflect that if we all chose to eat sustianably sourced and nutritious food there would be a win-win-win for planet, pocket and health. I read today (in prep for a talk tomorrow on this topic at the Dept of Health) that in the EU we eat >3x the recommended amount of meat for long-term health (and in the US this figure is even greater). If we ate 50-70g per day it would reduce land pressure globally considerably, allowing more "space" for sustainability.

My view for the future is that we need 'knowledge intensification' rather than input intensification. We can produce better food by being a lot smarter...but profit margins might go down for some of the bigger players. Yes, less processed food and less red meat, more locally grown fruit and vegetables would make us healthier and happier. Tasteless strawberries in the winter just detract from seasonal treats. Eat seasonally and buy locally when you can, supporting the good farmers who support ecosystem services (like LEAF farmers in the UK).

I see no particular conflict here. Flown over the Ukraine lately? Seems to be an awful lot of land not doing much. Altogether around the globe there's 1.4 billion Ha that could be better utilized according to FAO. Add in degraded land in semi-arid zones that could be remediated a la Alan Savory and I see little reason for intensification or expanding agriculture into virgin areas. What we need is wiser land use, not more of it, so integrating local knowledge with programmes which emphasise diversity and resilience seems the way to go.

How to do this? Farmers by nature are a conservative lot, especially the older ones who have seen disasters and farming fashions come and go. Innovation needs someone to drive it and that someone needs to be local, preferably the farmer that everyone looks up to (there's one in every district). Another approach could be a local demonstration/experimental farm, run by locals with external input when and if required ("experts on tap, not on top"). There are programmes like this out there - they need to be examined for what works and what doesn't, and then expanded. Some investment will be required but should only need to be small-scale, combined with low-interest loans.

This report on food security and waste is worth reading:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/IR8.pdf

'The alarming statistics show that, every year, consumers in rich

countries waste almost as much food (222 million tonnes) as the entire

net production of food in Sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes)

(FAO, 2011c). The world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be

fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US and

Europe (Stuart, 2009). According to Clay (2011), if we could eliminate

current waste levels, we would halve the amount of extra food needed

by 2050, thus allowing us to rethink the argument for more intense

production methods and changes to land management.'

Hi Tim,

I think one of the problems is that as it currently stands sustainable intensifcation is a somewhat hollow concept, in that it does not enage in a meaningful way with the (inherently normative) notion of sustainability. SI literature seems to start with a pretty weak normative assumption that we need more food (rather than more food security) and that somehow providing more food with less ecological impacts is a defintion of sustainable agriculture. I personally believe that this is a very problematic framing, particulalry when linked to global analysis of things link yield gaps. Given that much of the "agro-ecological" research comes from studying individual socioecological systems , where it is possible to see the context specific outcome (in terms of sustainability however defined) of particualr intesification interventions. then I think the deficits in the current SI frame become more obvious. Hence the polarization between SI and ago-ecology is to some extent about normative farmeworks and issues of scale.

I and several other (more competent and knolwedgeable people) currently have a paper under review in Frontiers addressing some of these issues. If/when it gets published I will send you along a copy.

Cheers

Dave

Thanks - sounds interesting. I'd appreciate a copy too. I agree that we need more food security (affordability of a healthy diet) rather than more food per se. We also need less waste and better distribution. SI seems to miss some of those key points and simplistically advocates technological solutions for increased yields (only a small part of the solution, imo).

Hi People

Whilst I like Dave's answer - kudos David - I think it doesn't really address the question that I asked. Yes, different framing have different sets of assumptions (see http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6141/33.summary for a more sophisticated framing of the SI issue that addresses some of the points that are oft cited as critiques). I think my question can be re-framed as "whatever the future, whatever the framing, surely ecology and ecosystem services are crucial for production and need to be utilised to the full?" So, finding ways to show that ecology is useful - whatever the farming system, whatever the scale, whatever the context - is a good goal for ecologists, huh?

I totally agree with Tim's summary: ecology is necessary "whatever the farming system, whatever the scale, whatever the context", to make agricultural systems work properly.

I would say something that may seem provocative to pro- and against GMOs partisans: adopting a correct agroecological approach is the only way to guarantee at the same time innovation in organic farming and a correct use and regulation of GM crops.

The polarisation in the debate "agroecology vs SI" is the symptom that there is no such common basis in the scientific community (nor in the public opinion!). So, what to do?

I'm focused on wine production and sustainability and I studied a lot about the sustainability science from the last years...For my point of view (I'm a naturalist) the most important thing to develop a real sustainable agriculture is to take nature as a model and study its organization in the energy and mass flows to improve the whole production system. For example a good example of taking nature as our model is the concept that in ecosystem the waste concept doesn't exist: in this way if I produce waste in my production system (e.g. wine production) I will integrate them into other part of the local production system 'cos my waste is still reach in organic matter. This means, e.g., extracting from them natural compounds for the pharmaceutic production, cosmetic production or textile production (natural dyes). These are the first examples that come to my mind....and this means to integrate the human production into ecosystem, reducing waste production (stop to the disposal when they are still usefull....) but all is sent to an enhancement.

So, to conclude, there are many and many cases where nature found a good technological solutions that could be applied to human needs: we just must to study nature's way to work in order to apply its architecture and technology to the humans...(I gives you the last example: go to see the discovery of a worldwide technology...used from 70 years and from you too: the "velcro" technology. The idea comes from the Arctium lappa flowers that has a lot of small hooks which allowed their diffusion by attaching to the mammals fur.....so what a clever idea!!!)

The last suggestion: the biomimicry is the study of which natures technology can be applied to humans.....and they are sustainable by definition.....

Best regards

Luca

The sustainable intensification concept is a version of the so-called 'Borlaug Hypothesis', explored by Angelsen and Kaimowitz http://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/Books/CAngelsen0103E0.pdf (PDF). They agreed that Borlaug's argument that we need to produce more food per acre was essentially correct, however, "that by no means guarantees that specific agricultural technologies that farmers adopt will help conserve forests... Technologies that make agriculture on the forest frontier more profitable and that displace labour present particularly strong risks, while technologies that improve the productivity of traditional agricultural regions and are highly labour-intensive show the most promise" (p.402)

The Borlaug Hypothesis was also explored in a recent paper in PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/110/21/8363.full The authors concluded that the Green Revolution technologies had saved 17-28 million hectares of land from being taken into cultivation, but this effect is much, much weaker than the 600+ million ha. that Borlaug estimated in his back-of-an-envelope calculation.

Sustainable intensification rests on an implicit logic that intensifying production on the land already in use will be a feasible and effective strategy to prevent the further encroachment of agriculture into virgin lands. That might make sense if agriculture were a single business directed by a central authority, which had the effective power to determine how technologies and methods are deployed, and how land is used.

The problem is that decisions about extensification - taking virgin land into cultivation - are taken at the local level and for local reasons. New farming technology might make production so profitable (reducing production costs, increasing market share) that capital has a strong incentive to open up the agricultural frontier. Soybeans in S America would be a classic example.

An alternative example is when small-scale farmers are pushed off fertile lands by agribusiness or industrial development, and have little choice other than to move further into the forests. Here, the small farmers are responding to intensification undertaken by others.

These two models are not mutually exclusive, of course, and often go hand-in-hand.

The same sorts of difficulties also face the agro-ecologists - no-one can declare by fiat that land-conserving agro-ecological methods must be used everywhere. But the difficulties with the Borlaug Hypothesis suggest that, if our goal is to prevent land from being taken into cultivation, then we need to pay careful attention to the type of intensification/technology being employed.

Moreover, we need to pay at least as much attention to issues of sustainable nutrition, sustainable consumption, and waste reduction. Two colleagues and I looked up some FAO food insecurity data for the opening paragraph of a recent introductory article for a special issue of Geoforum http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.09.017:

"The global supply of dietary energy reached 121 per cent of the global requirement in 2010–2012, continuing a steady rise from 114 per cent 20 years earlier. This substantial increase in the food surplus occurred during a period when the global population swelled from about 5.3 billion to an estimated 6.9 billion. Over the same period, the daily amount of protein available per person increased from 69 g (1990–1992) to 78 g (2007–2009) – the latter is about 139 per cent of the amount recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control for male adults. Evidently there is plenty of food."

In the light of those facts (and acknowledging the limitations of FAO data), shouldn't we wonder whether sustainable intensification is the primary answer to food security and sustainable agriculture? How much more food do we need to produce before we decide we have enough to work with?