Farming for Food and Water Security

277 Pages·2012·4.926 MB·English

by  Catherine L. Gerrard, L. G. Smith, B. Pearce (auth.), Eric Lichtfouse (eds.)

Sustainable Agriculture Reviews
Volume 10
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Organic Farming, Pest Control and Remediation of Soil Pollutants
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9654-9
Climate Change, Intercropping, Pest Control and Bene fi cial Microorganisms
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Sociology, Organic Farming, Climate Change and Soil Science
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Genetic Engineering, Biofertilisation, Soil Quality and Organic farming
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8741-6
Biodiversity, Biofuels, Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture
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Agroecology and Strategies for Climate Change
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Organic Fertilisation, Soil Quality and Human Health
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Environmental Chemistry. Green Chemistry and Pollutants in Ecosystems
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Environmental Chemistry for a Sustainable World
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rid/F-4759-2011
Eric Lichtfouse
Editor
Farming for Food
and Water Security
Editor
Dr. Eric Lichtfouse
UMR1347 Agroécologie
AgroSup/INRA/uB
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21000 Dijon, France
ISSN 2210-4410 ISSN 2210-4429 (electronic)
ISBN 978-94-007-4499-8 ISBN 978-94-007-4500-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4500-1
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Contents
Public Goods and Farming............................................................................. 1
Catherine L. Gerrard, L.G. Smith, B. Pearce, S. Padel,
R. Hitchings, M. Measures, and N. Cooper
Pesticides and Sustainable Agriculture ......................................................... 23
Patrick Drogui and Pierre Lafrance
Nitrogen Use Efficiency by Annual and Perennial Crops ........................... 57
Corina Carranca
Microalgae for Bioremediation of Distillery Effluent .................................. 83
Nirbhay K. Singh and D.B. Patel
No-Till Direct Seeding for Energy-Saving Rice Production in China ........ 111
Min Huang, Bing Xia, Yingbin Zou, Peng Jiang, Yuehua Feng,
Zhaowei Cheng, and Yali Mo
Agricultural Water Poverty Index for a Sustainable World ....................... 127
Masoumeh Forouzani, Ezatollah Karami, Mansour Zibaei,
and Gh. Hossein Zamani
Participatory Rural Appraisal to Solve Irrigation Issues ........................... 157
Albert T. Modi
Bioavailability of Soil P for Plant Nutrition ................................................. 177
R.S. Yadav, S.C. Meena, S.I. Patel, K.I. Patel, Mohd. Sayeed Akhtar,
B.K. Yadav, and Jitendra Panwar
Animal Manure for Smallholder Agriculture in South Africa ................... 201
Alfred Oghode Misaiti Okorogbona and Lasisi Olaosebikan Adebisi
Vermicompost and Soil Quality ..................................................................... 243
Supradip Saha, Debashis Dutta, Deb Prasad Ray, and Rajib Karmakar
Index ................................................................................................................. 265
v

Public Goods and Farming
Catherine L. Gerrard , L. G. Smith , B. Pearce , S. Padel , R. Hitchings ,
M. Measures , and N. Cooper
Abstract There has recently been an increase in interest in the “public goods” that
could be provided by a farm alongside its primary function of agricultural produc-
tion. This paper reviews recent reports on the topic of public goods and, in particular,
the public goods provided by agriculture and then goes on to discuss the develop-
ment of a tool which can be used to assess the provision of public goods on a farm
across a range of areas: soil management, biodiversity, landscape and heritage,
water management, manure management and nutrients, energy and carbon, food
security, agricultural systems diversity, social capital, farm business resilience, and
animal health and welfare.
Keywords Public goods (cid:129) Sustainability assessment (cid:129) Tool (cid:129) Organic farming
(cid:129) Field margin (cid:129) Insect (cid:129) Water management (cid:129) Earthworm (cid:129) Wind power (cid:129) Air quality
(cid:129) Animal health (cid:129) Social capital (cid:129) Biodiversity (cid:129) Food security (cid:129) Landscape
1 Introduction
There has recently been an increase in interest in the bene fi cial co-products that
could be provided by a farm alongside its primary function of agricultural production.
In particular it is possible that in the future policy makers may wish to encourage the
C. L. Gerrard (*) (cid:129) L. G. Smith (cid:129) B. Pearce (cid:129) S. Padel (cid:129) R. Hitchings
Organic Research Centre, Elm Farm , Hamstead Marshall , RG20 0HR ,
Newbury, Berkshire , UK
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Measures
IOTA , Cow Hall, Newcastle , SY7 8PG C raven Arms, Shropshire , UK
N. Cooper
Natural England , Victoria House, London Square, Cross Lanes , GU1 1UJ Guildford , UK
E. Lichtfouse (ed.), Farming for Food and Water Security, Sustainable 1
Agriculture Reviews 10, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-4500-1_1,
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
2 C.L. Gerrard et al.
provision of “public goods” such as ecosystem services and rural vitality as a reason
for continuing to support farming through EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. As
discussed by Cooper et al. (2 009 ) , a public good must be non-excludable, i.e. avail-
able to all, and non-rival, meaning that its consumption by one individual does not
diminish its availability to others. As such, bene fi ts such as an improved environ-
ment or better water quality can be perceived to be public goods. Pure public goods
are rare as most are non-excludable and non-rival only to a certain extent (Cooper
et al . 2009 ; European Network for Rural Development 2 011 ; RISE 2 009 ) . It is sug-
gested that all the environmental services associated with land management show
these public good characteristics to some extent (RISE 2 009 ) .
Public goods are not frequently encouraged by market forces and so it can be
argued that, if public goods are deemed valuable to society as a whole, it is reason-
able for governments to intervene via subsidies to ensure their provision. If this is
the case then it will become important to have a means of assessing the provision of
public goods on a range of farms to evaluate the impact of such subsidies and to
ensure that they are delivering the desired outcome.
Given the current interest in this topic a tool was developed to assess the provi-
sion of a wide range of public goods covering economic, social and environmental
aspects, i.e. carrying out triple bottom line reporting. This paper discusses public
goods and farming, sustainability assessment tools and then presents the develop-
ment of the public goods assessment tool and initial in- fi eld testing on a pilot study
of 40 organic farms in England.
In S ect. 2 recent reports on public goods and, in particular the provision of public
goods by agriculture are reviewed. In S ect. 3 the development of the PG (Public
Goods) tool is described. In S ect. 4 the review and discussion of the tool are brie fl y
summarised and concluded upon.
2 Review of Public Goods from Farming
and Sustainability Assessment Tools
2.1 Public Goods and Farming
The idea of a public good was fi rst established in economic theory. An externality
is de fi ned as a by-product of a process that affects third parties e.g. pollution
(RISE 2 009 ) and a ‘positive externality’ may be said to be a ‘public good’ if it is
non-excludable and non rival. Thus a public good should be a good that, if available
to one person, cannot be withheld from others and if consumed by one person this
does not reduce the amount available to others. As discussed by Cooper et al. (2 009 )
and RISE (2 009 ) pure public goods are very rare and public goods can show differ-
ent levels of these two characteristics. The example that Cooper et al . ( 2009 ) and
European Network for Rural Development (2 011 ) give is that a cultural landscape
may be regarded as a public good but that if too many people wish to enjoy it in situ
then it may become congested and so its value will be decreased suggesting that it
Public Goods and Farming 3
is not entirely non-rival. European Network for Rural Development ( 2011 ) gives a
less technical de fi nition of public goods as “things of bene fi t to the public which
cannot be bought in the marketplace and for which there is no incentive to pay …
but which are valued by society as a whole”. This suggests that policy-makers are
moving from the technical economic theory de fi nition of a pure public good to a
looser de fi nition which is more inclusive.
A s discussed by European Network for Rural Development ( 2 011 ) , agriculture
has, over many centuries transformed the environment in many parts of Europe, for
instance reducing the amount of forest in the UK and replacing it with heath, crops
and pasture. This has had both positive and negative environmental impacts depend-
ing on local soil and climate conditions and the farm management practices employed
(European Network for Rural Development 2 011 ) . It is suggested that recent trends
have been towards high intensity agriculture with high productivity of food and
other direct agricultural products which has caused environmental damage although
some farming systems such as extensive livestock systems continue to provide public
goods (European Network for Rural Development 2 011 ; RISE 2009 ) .
RISE (2 009 ) suggest that market failures are occurring with regards to the provi-
sion of public goods through agriculture. They point out that the majority of land in
Europe is managed with around half of the land in the EU being used for agriculture
and so farmers, alongside foresters, play a vital role in the provision of many public
goods. They state that “Quite naturally farmers will respond to market signals for
their food and saleable outputs, and pay less attention to the impacts of their activities
where there are no markets. They will tend to provide fewer “goods” such as habitats,
species and cultural landscapes, which no one pays for; and too many “bads” such
as pollution of the atmosphere, soil and water as long as they are not required to pay
the relevant full social or environmental costs.” As discussed by European Network
for Rural Development (2 011 ) , the market failure with regards to public goods
occurs because consumers cannot, in general, be persuaded to pay for them because
they cannot be excluded from consumption if they do not pay. As a result producers
of public goods have no incentive to continue to produce them as they are not
rewarded for doing so via the market. It is suggested (Cooper et al. 2009 ; European
Network for Rural Development 2 011 ; RISE 2009 ) that if the market fails to reward
the provision of public goods then it may fall to governments and the EU to guaran-
tee that it continues by providing fi nancial incentives through subsidies.
European Network for Rural Development (2 011 ) suggest that farming has a key
role in the provision of public goods as hundreds of years of farming have created
cultural landscapes and farm-speci fi c habitats which support animals and plants and
also because farming plays an important role in food security which makes the pres-
ervation of natural resources a matter of increasing importance.
Cooper et al. ( 2009 ) suggest a number of public goods which they believe to
be provided by agriculture. They classify these as environmental public goods
(agricultural landscapes, farmland biodiversity, water quality and water availability,
soil functionality, carbon storage and climate stability, greenhouse gas emissions,
air quality, resilience to fl ooding and resilience to fi re) and social public goods (rural
vitality, food security, farm animal welfare and animal health). Similarly European
Network for Rural Development (2 011 ) lists the main, most widely recognised public
4 C.L. Gerrard et al.

Fig. 1 One example of a traditional agricultural landscape in the UK, an upland landscape
goods from farming as: environmental (farmland biodiversity, agricultural landscapes,
high water and air quality, water availability, the functionality of soils, climate
stability, resilience to fl ooding and fi re), food security (maintaining longer term
capacity to produce food, husbandry of resources such as land, skills and essential
infrastructure), rural vitality (social viability of rural communities), and farm
animal health and welfare.
2.2 Speci fi c “Public Goods”
As mentioned in S ect. 1 Cooper et al. (2 009 ) and European Network for Rural
Development (2 011 ) identify a number of bene fi cial by-products of agriculture
which they deem to be public goods. Some of these will be discussed in a little more
detail here.
2.2.1 Agricultural Landscapes
As mentioned previously farming has had an in fl uence on the landscape in Europe
for many centuries. As such, agricultural landscapes have become valued as the
“traditional” landscape of many areas (Fig. 1 ). Some landscapes are a “mosaic” of