Sustainability: The Intensive View

CAES Concurrent Session: Sustainability in Agriculture:

Addressing the Coming Crunch18 June 2012, 3:15-4:45

2012 CAES Annual Meeting, Niagara Falls

Sustainability• "Sustainable development is development that

meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". – Gro Harlem Brundtland, The Brundtland Commission

• Raises fundamental conflicts about: – Current and future use of resources– What resources, and their global distribution– Time value of resources: market, social and political– How do we value both positive and negative and externalities?

• Internally in Canada, or globally

• Combination of market and non-market efforts needed to achieve sustainability

Demand Growth• Demand growth for food: Δ demand = Δ population + Δ Income * εI

• By 2050, increase in demand for food is estimated at 70 percent, but we need to add non-food use

Δ demand = Δ population + Δ Income * εI + (Current uset * (1+r)38 – Current uset)

• About 100 percent increase including non-food uses of agricultural feedstocks

• Current productivity growth well below rates required to meet demands at stable prices

• Major pressure on resources

Resource Base• Land base: very limited potential growth … without

significant environmental damage– Limited margins between forest, natural savannah, improved

grassland and annually arable soils • Water: very unevenly shared globally

– Water use in agriculture rarely market-priced – Shadow price on water and land in commodity trade?– Conflicting demands across agriculture, industry, urban and

recreational uses for land, water, landscape• Climate: changing climate can sharply alter sustainable land

and water use, changes disease and pest regimes, season length, water availability

The Intensive View• Significant productivity gains can and must be made• These gains must increase output with the same or fewer

resources: increased resource intensity• Major attention to environmental impacts on land, air and

water use needed• This is not strictly another “green revolution”

– Science must be more broadly-based than earlier to include more emphasis on:• Environment impacts• Greater quality, safety, taste segmentation by consumer demand• Traceability• Markets

The Intensive View

• Productivity, both factor productivity (land, capital and labour) and multifactor productivity rates must rise– The alternative is soil and water degradation,

deforestation, natural savannah land broken• Crowding the margins of forest, savannah and

improved pasture land to expand arable land

• Climate change increasing the difficulty of achieving productivity gains

Research Investment

• Major decline in research investment on productivity increases in productivity research for 20-30 years, relatively flat in past 5-8 years– World-wide as well as in Canada and USA– Rates of return to research• See: Alston, Andersen, James and Pardey, 2011. AJAE,

October 2011, Vol. 93 No. 5, pp.1257-1276– Rates of productivity growth for crops in private

sector higher than for self-pollinated crops

Research Investment• Agricultural productivity gains are “different”– New varieties and their traits have a limited life span– Diseases and pests eventually overcome virtually all varieties;

speed and virulence vary– Zoonotics also mutate with time

• Major investments needed to simply maintain crop and animal yields

• Only investments in addition to maintenance offer potential gains in productivity

• “Different” because once a space arm, for example, is developed, it stays developed!

Managing Sustainability

Large-scale livestock operations placementAnimal disease reporting and managementAntibiotic useGenetically modified plants and animalsTransportation infrastructure useStorage and handling of crops and animalsHandling of straw, haulms, and stoverTerracing; managing soils on slopesOccupational health and safetyLimiting soil compactionGrazing limits

Vegetated buffer strips (VBS)BermsConservation tillageManure handling, applications and treatmentCrop rotationsSlow release fertilizersPesticide selection and frequency of applicationTiming of pesticide and fertilizer applications

Best management practices (BMPs)Codes of Conduct

Regulatory measures

Do We Know Enough?

• Apart from increasing productivity of plants and animals…– Need to include some or all of BMPs, CoC and regulatory

systems in research– In many cases, two to five years of research is not

enough to determine effects on resource sustainability• Long gestation periods for increases in productivity

alone• Longer periods for verification and application of

sustainable practices

Do We Know Enough?

• Many farming practices proven over generations• New technology presents challenges regarding

our knowledge of sustainability• Climate change alters what we know about

sustainable practices• Early BMPs or regulation may be intuitive only,

and incomplete in assessment • Compliance versus Sustainability

Case Study

• Conservation/low/no tillage – Seen very positively as BMP– Lower production costs, lower GHGs– Lower soil compaction– Greater flexibility and scale in planting– Potentially higher yields (under some conditions)

• Vegetative Buffer Strips– Positively viewed, increased habitat– Protects water courses from nutrient run-off

Case Study

• Experimentation began in 1993, final results published 2011 (17 years of research effort)– Manitoba flat land location, Assiniboine basin– Phosphorus run-off 12-42 percent higher with low/no

tillage compared to traditional tillage– Buffer strips minimal net effect on P run-off, sometimes

higher, sometimes lower• Not intuitively obvious• Results specific to the flat areas, may not apply to

hilly or sloped land

SourcesSteve Sheppard, Armand Belanger, Colleen Cuvelier, Cliff Greenfield, Stephen Carlyle, Rachel Evans, David Lobb and Don Flaten, 2011. “Investigation and Evaluation of Vegetated Buffer Strips within Manitoba Landscapes”. Final report 28 October 2011.

K.H.D. Tiessen, J.A. Elliott, J. Yarotski, D.A. Lobb and D.N. Flaten, and N.E. Glozier, 2010. “Conventional and Conservation Tillage: Influence on Seasonal Runoff, Sediment, and Nutrient Losses in the Canadian Prairies”, Journal of Environmental Quality. 39:964–980.

S. C. Sheppard, M. I. Sheppard, J. Long, B. Sanipelli, and J. Tait, 2006. “Runoff phosphorus retention in vegetated field margins on flat landscapes”, Canadian Journal of Soil Science. 86(5): 871- 884.

Importance

• Sustainability is a long term endeavour– Often slow emergence of impacts of change– Long term sustained funding needed to provide

evidence on which to base recommendations– Very wide set of metrics need to be used in

evaluation: economic, social, environmental– Multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional approach

needed– Combines government, private sector, universities,

producers, local municipalities

Our Research System

• Mostly project based, 2-5 years, not long term program-based funding

• NSERC:• Governing Council • Standing Committee on Grants and Scholarships (COGS) • Committee on Research Partnerships

– Only one member with disciplinary background in agriculture, food and/or veterinary medicine

• Public-private linkages mostly short term problem-based: e.g., clusters, WGRF, commodity check-offs

Our Research System

• Stylized as:– Researchers publish project results in Journals– Other researchers may build on it– In hopes that private sector interests will see it– Large gap between research and moving to pre-commercial

applications• Academic freedom/tenure trumps the research needed to move

closer to pre-commercial applications• “Valley of death” for innovation

• Productivity growth and sustainability cannot be separated

Our Research System

• Many obstacles:– Governments fear that the private sector will make

money from promising public research results– Corporations hesitate to collaborate with competitors– Publicly funded and publicly available innovations

often ignored: private sector cannot recoup design and marketing expenditures based on innovations available to all

Source: Harvey Drucker, Technology Transfer: A View from the Trenches. Proceedings from the conference ``Maximizing the Return From Genome Research,'' held 23-24 July 1993.

What do we need?

• Long-term program/problem-based research and innovation with a funding platform– Multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional– Public-private partnerships:• To define 5-15 year problem areas• Start with initial science to show promise• Establish joint efforts between basic and applied research

with public and private sector partners willing to innovate and contribute throughout the development stages

• Build evidence-based BMPs and regulatory systems

• Without greater productivity investment in research and commercial use, sustainability at serious risk

• BMPs, CoC, regulations may lack evidence-based approach

• Increased social, economic and political costs, particularly in the developing world– Local hunger, refugees, food aid, health risks

Thank you