Natures Matrix: Linking Agriculture, Conservation and Food Sovereignty

257 Pages·2009·2.97 MB·English

by  Ivette Perfecto

HB_NATURE'S MATRIX.qxd 12/8/09 13:00 Page 1
N a t u r e ’s
‘This well-written book is informed by sophisticated ecological theory applied to the
complexities of modern tropical development in a dazzling critique of conventional thinking.’
Susanna Hecht,Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California,Berkeley
and author of Fate of the Forest
‘Greens of every stripe – agro-ecologists,conservationists,regional planners – N
M a t r i x
recognize the need for ecologically farmed areas,an empowered farm population
and preserved areas in any sustainable,just and productive mosaic landscape.
We all advocate this integration.This book does it.’ A
Richard Levins,Professor of Population Sciences at Harvard University
and author of The Dialectical Biologistand Biology Under the Influence T
U
‘Nature’s Matrixmakes the powerful case that sustainable peasant agriculture L A , C
INKING GRICULTURE ONSERVATION
is a positive force for biodiversity conservation,contrary to a lot of misrepresentation
in the literature.It is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the connections R
F S
between food sovereignty and the environment.’ AND OOD OVEREIGNTY
E
Peter Rosset,author of Food Is Differentand Promised Land
’
‘As the authors demonstrate in this groundbreaking book,traditional agro-ecosystems S
are key for food sovereignty and the conservation of millions of wild species
as they promote high quality matrices.’
Miguel Altieri,Professor at the University of California,Berkeley M
and author of Agroecology:The Science of Sustainable Agriculture
Landscapes are frequently seen as fragments of natural habitat surrounded by a ‘sea’ of A
agriculture. But recent ecological theory shows that the nature of these fragments is not
nearly as important for conservation as is the nature of the matrix of agriculture that surrounds T
them. Local extinctions from conservation fragments are inevitable and must be balanced by
migrations if massive extinction is to be avoided. High migration rates only occur in what the R
authors refer to as ‘high-quality’ matrices, which are created by alternative agro-ecological
I
techniques,as opposed to the industrial monocultural model of agriculture.The authors argue that
X
the only way to promote such high-quality matrices is to work with rural social movements.
Their ideas are at odds with the major trends of some of the large conservation organizations
that emphasize targeted land purchases of protected areas.They argue that recent advances in
ecological research make such a general approach anachronistic and they call, rather,
for solidarity with the small farmers around the world who are currently struggling to attain
food sovereignty.
Nature’s Matrixproposes a radically new approach to the conservation of biodiversity based on recent A V
N A P
advances in the science of ecology plus political realities,particularly in the world’s tropical regions. D N E
W D RF
Ivette Perfectois Professor of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.John Vandermeeris Asa R ER EC
Gray University Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of I M T
Michigan.Angus Wright is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies at California State University GH EE ,O
Sacramento. T R
Front cover painting by Beatriz Aurora
Agriculture and Food / Ecology,
Biodiversity and Conservation /
Sustainable Development
www.earthscan.co.uk ISBN: 978-1-84407-781-6
I P , J V
VETTE ERFECTO OHN ANDERMEER
Earthscan strives to minimize its impact on the environment
A W
9 781844 077816 AND NGUS RIGHT
Nature’s Matrix

Nature’s Matrix
Linking Agriculture, Conservation and
Food Sovereignty
Ivette Perfecto,
John Vandermeer
and
Angus Wright
London • Sterling, VA
First published by Earthscan in the UK and USA in 2009
Copyright © Dr Ive�e Perfecto, Dr John Vandermeer and Dr Angus Wright, 2009
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-84407-781-6 hardback
978-1-84407-782-3 paperback
Typeset by JS Typese�ing Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Cover design by Clifford Hayes
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perfecto, Ive�e.
Nature’s matrix: linking agriculture, conservation and food sovereignty /
Ive�e Perfecto, John Vandermeer and Angus Wright. – 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84407-781-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-84407-782-3
(pbk.) 1. Agricultural ecology. 2. Agrobiodiversity conservation. 3. Food
sovereignty. I. Vandermeer, John H. II. Wright, Angus Lindsay. III. Title.
IV. Title: Linking agriculture, conservation and food sovereignty.
S589.7.P47 2009
304.2'8–dc22
2009012711
At Earthscan we strive to minimize our environmental impacts and carbon
footprint through reducing waste, recycling and offse�ing our CO emissions,
2
including those created through publication of this book. For more details of our
environmental policy, see www.earthscan.co.uk.
This book was printed in the UK
by the Cromwell Press Group.
The paper used is FSC certified.
Contents
List of figures and boxes vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xiii
1 Matrix Ma�ers: An Overview 1
The Birds of New York and the Coffee of Mesoamerica 1
The Argument 4
Towards a New Paradigm 9
Notes 10
2 The Ecological Argument 11
The Fundamental Pa�erns of Biodiversity 11
Why the Biodiversity Pa�erns Ma�er 21
The Ecological Background to Biodiversity Studies 22
Ecological Theory and Political Realities 31
Notes 33
3 The Agricultural Matrix 35
The Development of Agriculture 35
The Industrial Model 50
The Alternative Movement 59
Natural Systems Agriculture 71
Biodiversity as it Relates to Agro-ecology 73
Notes 75
4 The Broad Social Context for Understanding Biodiversity,
Conservation and Agriculture 79
The Importance of the Deep Historical Context 79
Difficult Socio-political Issues in Practical Conservation Work 93
Sources of Systematic Bias in Conservation Practice 97
The Brazilian Amazon: A Case Study in Conservation,
Livelihood and Social Movements 98
The Dependency Trap in Biodiversity Conservation 119
Grass Roots Social Movements 127
Notes 134
vi NATURE’S MATRIX
5 Coffee, Cacao and Food Crops: Case Studies of Agriculture
and Biodiversity 137
Coffee and the Technical Side of Biodiversity 137
Cacao and Biodiversity: The Historical Development of a
Biodiversity Landscape 157
The Production of Food and the Biodiversity Connection 172
Agricultural Potential in the Matrix 192
Notes 192
6 The New Paradigm 195
Recapping the Ecological Argument 195
Recapping the Agricultural Argument 198
Recapping the Social Movement Argument 206
Pu�ing the Three Arguments Together 211
Notes 213
References 215
Index 235
List of Figures and Boxes
FIGURES
1.1 Songbirds that are commonly found in coffee plantations in
the Neotropics 2
1.2 A shaded coffee plantation that serves as habitat for
Neotropical migrants 3
1.3 A fragmented landscape in Chiapas, Mexico 5
1.4 Small-scale indigenous farmers in the highlands of Peru
participating in the faena (collective work) 8
2.1 The theory of island biogeography developed by Robert
MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson 17
2.2 Two hypotheses about the relationship between management
intensity and biodiversity 19
2.3 Diagram of metapopulation dynamics 25
2.4 Two types of landscape mosaic 27
2.5 The various types of matrix that connect two forest
fragments 28
2.6 Extremely simplified landscape mosaic in which the matrix
between two fragments is composed of three types of
habitats 30
2.7 A fragmented landscape near Campo Grande, Brazil 32
3.1 The bo�leneck for wheat bread in the UK 51
3.2 The structure of US agriculture 52
3.3 The ‘pesticide treadmill’ 55
3.4 Manzanar concentration camp, California, in the mid-1940s,
and a recent photo of a broccoli farm in the Salinas Valley of
California 57
3.5 Global distribution of more than 400 ‘dead zones’ 58
3.6 Indigenous youth of the Andean region of Peru participating
in a programme oriented at the valorization of Andean
culture and agriculture, organized by the Proyecto Andino de
Tecnologías Campesinas (PRATEC) 65
3.7 (a) Distribution of global organic land by continent, in 2008;
(b) Growth of global organic land from 2000 to 2006 68
3.8 Two estimates of global organic food production in
comparison with actual food production in 2001 69
3.9 Root system of an annual and a perennial wheat 72
4.1 Soybean fields surrounding a forest fragment in Brazil 80
viii NATURE’S MATRIX
4.2 Chinampas: drawing of the ancient Aztec chinampas in
Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City); modern chinampas in
Xochimilco, Mexico 83
4.3 Houses and se�lements of Brazilian ribeirinho people, near
Belém, Pará 103
4.4 Raimundo Pereira Galvão, a se�ler in an MST land reform
community in southern Pará, Brazil 117
4.5 Zapatista farmers and students engaged in agro-ecological
practices and learning 130
4.6 One of the agroforestry systems used by se�lers in the
Pontal do Paranapanema, São Paulo, Brazil 132
5.1. Diagram of the coffee intensification gradient 140
5.2 Two types of coffee plantations: shaded polyculture and
monoculture or ‘sun coffee’ 141
5.3 Effects of birds on coffee through a complicated food
web 149
5.4 Azteca ants tending the green coffee scale on a coffee plant 150
5.5 Two types of coffee initiative 155
5.6 The cabruca cacao system in southern Bahia 160
5.7 The range of cacao systems extant in the world 164
5.8 Recently converted ca�le pasture in the cacao-growing
region of southern Bahia, Brazil 169
5.9 A march of 18,000 militants of the Landless Workers
Movement (MST) in Brazil during its 5th Congress in 2007 171
5.10. Man fishing in a rice field in Vietnam 179
5.11 Diverse and homogeneous rice landscapes illustrating the
loss of agrobiodiversity in Bali, Indonesia 181
5.12 A milpa in southern Mexico 184
5.13. A slash and burn landscape mosaic in Belize 185
5.14. A diverse organic farm near San Cristobal de las Casas,
Chiapas, Mexico 187
6.1 Women members of the Via Campesina participating at the
World Social Forum in Brazil in 2005 208
6.2 Policy options for achieving food sovereignty recommended
by the Summary for Decision Makers in the IAASTD’s Latin
America and Caribbean Regional Report 209
BOXES
5.1 Rice is life, culture and dignity 188
5.2 Ten urgent steps for Mexico 191
Preface
The burrowing be�ong, the golden bandicoot and the desert bandicoot
are all extinct. They were desert mammals from Australia that depended
on a patchwork of habitats created by fires that were set purposefully by
Aboriginal Australians as part of their ecosystem management strategies.
The European Australians ended this fire management system when they
set up reserves and forced the native Australians to move into se�lements,
thus ending the traditional and sophisticated system of fire control and
causing the extinction of a be�ong and two bandicoots. What ‘caused’
these extinctions? They were caused directly by the change in fire regimes,
but, more importantly, they were indirectly caused by ignorance of the way
the ecosystem worked and the role of Aboriginal management, combined
with an arrogant belief that the European system of knowledge was
unassailable. Ignorance and arrogance, we argue, are likewise major forces
in the current biodiversity crisis: ignorance of fundamental ecosystem
processes and the role of humans in them, and an arrogance asserting that
current dominant political ideologies are universal and sacrosanct.
This text is based on our repeated observations of three key issues that
seem to become more important as time passes. The three are intimately
related to one another, yet have been mainly treated as isolated issues by
academics, conservation managers and in the popular media. The first
is the crisis of biodiversity loss, universally acknowledged as a major
contemporary problem. The second has to do with food and agriculture,
a crisis issue for the past two decades. The third is the political unrest in
rural areas of the Global South, engendered most recently by collapse in
rural product markets and resulting in massive rural–urban migration
as well as international migration. This book contains an argument of
how these three issues are interrelated in complex ways, focusing on the
need to understand that interrelationship for the generation of effective
conservation programmes, while at the same time recognizing the global
need for agricultural production.
Our analysis stems from the current (and probably future) nature
of tropical landscapes as being mainly fragments of natural habitat
surrounded by a ‘sea’ of agriculture. Recent ecological theory shows that
the nature of those fragments is not nearly as important for conservation
as the nature of the matrix of agriculture and other management systems
that surrounds them. Ecological science has come to understand that local
extinctions from those fragments are inevitable and must be balanced by