Community forum: Win-Win Situations: Myth or Reality?

Posted on 11 Jul 2007 by Marcus

We often read and talk about so-called ’win-win’ situations, in which there are high-value productive systems that also conserve the environment. I have heard some people express doubt about whether these really exist, and/or how common they are. Sometimes I worry about this myself.

So, does anyone have

- Any definite views on this issue- can we really have these kinds of win-win situations?

- Any experience of either successful or unsuccessful attempts to get this kind of ’win-win’?

Posted on 11 Jul 2007 by Per

In Kenya, the sales of traditional vegetables has recently increased dramatically as result of a project to stimulate their production and consumption. Hundreds of African leafy vegetables are used across the continent, but changing food habits and globalization of markets tend to sustitute cabbage for the traditional ones. This trend contributes both to ’hidded hunger’ (mictronutrient deficienty) and the loss of agricultural biodiversity. The project, led by Bioversity International in Kenya in collaboration with many local partners, has managed to turn these trends around. Supermarkets in Nairobi has increase sales of Kenyan traditional vegetables by 1100% in only two years. Participating farmers have done brisk business and the biodiversity of the traditional vegetables are being conserved on farms. This looks like a win-win situation indeed. More information is available at http://www.bioversityinternational.org/Publications/pubfile.asp?ID_PUB=1090

Posted on 12 Jul 2007 by Marcus

Thanks, Per.

I am glad you mentioned vegetables, because vegetable farming is something that I often see which worries me from a biodiversity standpoint. Even methods of farming that are quite responsible, such as GAP and organic-certified, in some cases, fall short of what I would like to see. Many farms certified under these systems have what is primarily a "do no harm" approach to conservation, i.e. don’t put toxic chemicals into the soil, don’t put GMOs into the environment, etc, but they don’t have the variety of land use and vegetation types that is needed to turn the farm landscape into a habitat that will sustain a rich and diverse ecosystem. I have been to a number of certified farms that are rather sterile and barren, for just this reason. So I would say that many vegetable farms that aspire to creating a win-win situation don’t do so, actually.

That being said, I don’t see why this should be a necessary feature of vegetable farming. One of the key requirements of biodiversity conservation is to get the farm landscape to simulate the characteristics of a natural landscape. So if farmers could be given the information and motivation to use more imaginative and natural-seeming cultivation systems for vegetables, perhaps they could get a win-win.

Posted on 13 Jul 2007 by T. Gibson

I am a somewhat reductionist pedantic so I like to define, in readily understandable terms, what ‘win-win’ really means. Does it mean, in this context, the adoption of an AD activity that results in benefits for both the natural environment and the poor, ex-illegal-drug producing farmer? (And, incidentally, what is the definition of ‘AD’ as used in this forum? Does it mean any means of improving the welfare of poor, ex-illegal drug producing farmers other than by producing illegal drugs?).

And, on another pedantic matter: I am not of the view that the retention of biodiversity at the farm level is necessarily in the best interests of the poor, ex-illegal- drug producing farmer. We should be aware that the most efficient means of producing food in terms of return to area, or labour or cash investment, is usually by monoculture of one particular variety on a contiguous area of land, not by maintaining biodiversity on a poor farmer’s land. Maintaining the genetic resources of vegetables or of any crops, livestock and related is important and, if necessary, special areas funded by the public should be set aside for this. But, if it is not in the poor farmer’s best interests to maintain biodiversity on the farmer’s land, then the farmer should not, in my opinion, be encouraged to do so. What is best for the poor farmer in the short to immediate term has always been my guidelines for advice and action, not what is in the long-term public good if the two matters conflict (Hence, I do not support any mention of activities that poor farmers should take to reduce carbon emissions or global warming that are not in best short-immediate term interests of the poor farmer – let the rich, much larger polluters pay for remediation, not the poor farmer who is struggling to survive).

With this rambling preamble out of the way, let me say in my experience, by my suggested definition of ‘win-win’ above in the situations I have been in (sufficient qualifiers?), that bunded, wet-rice farming is a win-win situation: it provides food for poor farmers who previously relied on opium poppy farming in such a manner so as not to further degrade the natural environment and to allow the production of that food for the foreseeable future in a sustainable manner. I am sure that there are many other examples of ‘win-win’.

Posted on 13 Jul 2007 by Marcus

Trevor- it’s okay to be pedantic. In the rush to get things done we shouldn’t lose our intellectual precision.

I believe that resource-poor farmers can/do have a long-term incentive to preserve biodiversity in their farm landscapes. Not so much in the sense of conserving genotypic variety in the way that Per mentions, but more in the sense of maintaining a diverse farm habitat that is a good home for birds and bugs and wotnot. The incentives are (a) this should be correlated with better soil quality/biomass, which should give yield, and (b) it should lead to lower pest attacks (if the agroecologists are right). In places like Thailand, where farmers get a hard time if they try to live in or near the forest, there is an possible additional benefit that the need to maintain trees and wild areas may placate enraged Forestry officials (maybe a bit hopeful...).

The problem is that the short-term incentive is always to go for the high-returning cash crop on the maximum available land- forget about excess nutrient extraction, erosion, biodiversity, and whatever else. And so there is a clear problem here- the short-term incentives and the long-term incentives are not aligned, and they need to be. This is definitely not the province of individual AD projects, or even perhaps national AD projects, though. There is a situation in which food markets do not give farmers the incentive to follow their long-term interests- this is what needs to be corrected.

But after your pedantry, an eminently practical and useful suggestion- thanks!

Posted on 14 Jul 2007 by T. Gibson

Marcos,
As well as being pedantic, I am also sometimes a sceptic (in a positive sense, I hope) which may lead to iconoclasm.

Birds are a major cause of complaint from poor farmers in my experience. Birds eat their grains and I would not, unless I could select beneficial birds, suggest to any farmer to encourage more birds on or near the farmer’s fields.

If soil quality is best defined as the ability of that soil to produce the most economical crops over the longest period of time, then I do not see why it is always necessary to encourage low-external input, diversified activities to achieve this. Bunded wet-rice farming has proven to be sustainable over a long period of time in a monocultural agricultural system. Soil quality can be improved by adding chemical fertilisers to them; soil quality is not necessarily reduced by poorly diversified agricultural systems e.g. bunded wet-rice; the “Green Revolution” included the addition of deficient and extracted chemicals to the soil by chemical fertilisers with no necessary long-term detrimental effects.

I think perhaps the main factor which would encourage poor farmers to maintain the quality of their farming land is to have guaranteed, long-term, user rights over that land with adequate compensation should that land ever be taken from them. In the situations I have been in, the most guaranteed land rights are on bunded, wet-rice land and farmers generally well preserve the quality of that land. In the situations I have been in, poor farmers do not often have satisfactory land use rights on upland which is the major category of land for poppy growers.

In general, I believe in ‘horses for courses’ – do what ever is best for the poor farmer in the particular situation that farmer is in without the recourse to any other overriding ideology.

Posted on 14 Jul 2007 by Marcus

Trevor, you are surely correct about the land rights issue. It is hard to see why farmers should be expected to take care of the land if they don’t own it, especially if they might be relocated at any moment.

I definitely don’t advocate pursuing a low-input system for the sake of it. If farmers have agricultural chemicals available they should use them. What I would say is that they should use organic fertilizer as well as chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers don’t replace the organic matter in soil, and so you get yield deterioration if you only use them. I recently saw the results from a study being done by the Ministry of Agriculture here where they observed the impact of moving from chemical to chemical + organic on some quite degraded soils in the highlands in Thailand and if I recall right, the yield doubled in just one year, and increased substantially again in the second year. So this is something I would advocate just for the farmers’ benefit.

As for birds, yes, they are indeed a major pest. So I wouldn’t say we should encourage them per se, but if we want to have some trees and hedgerows around (and I think in general we do) then they are going to be inevitable.

In general I agree with you. The interests of the farmers come first, at least with those really in need. I would go further and say that if conservation is an issue, then that needs to be paid for by the rich.

Posted on 16 Jul 2007 by T. Gibson

Marcus,
I do not believe that chemical fertilisers alone cannot increase soil-organic-matter (SOM); it depends on the appropriate use of chemical fertilisers and of appropriate farming practices. There have been many experiments that show an increase in SOM by the use of chemical fertilisers where stubble is retained and/or minimum tillage is practised. Even if all above-ground biomass is removed, chemical fertilisers can still normally be expected to increase SOM if the chemical fertilisers increase crop yield; this is because an improvement in crop yield is almost invariably accompanied by an increase in root growth and the roots are normally retained in the soil after crop harvest and so contribute to an increase in SOM.

I know the addition of organic matter to peasant farming systems has been, and is still been, promoted in the Third World. My cautious scepticism on this recommendation is due to the difficulty of finding enough external organic matter of suitable quality and price to apply to farming areas larger than a backyard vegetable garden patch. Generally some tons of organic matter are required to be applied per ha to achieve the same beneficial effect on crop yields as 1-200 kg of chemical fertilisers. The other caution I have is the labour required to make appropriate organic fertilisers (compost making) where labour is the major input constraint in peasant agriculture; it is so much easier to spend one hour spreading chemical fertiliser over a ha of land, than to spend days and weeks labouring to make sufficient compost for the same area for the same effect on crop yields and then to physically have to lump the organic fertiliser to the site and spread it.

I have been associated with attempts to convince farmers to add organic fertilisers to their cropping lands and have seen many projects dedicated to the practice. Except for small areas of land (e.g. backyard vegetable gardens) or in some situations where readily available suitable organic fertilisers are present (e.g. the farmer owns a piggery or a project supplies the organic materials), my observation is that farmers, even when presented with the benefits of organic fertilisers will, if left entirely to their own devices, will purchase and apply chemical fertilisers rather than organic fertilisers for the reasons I have outlined above.

However, I would be interested in reading the report of the Ministry of Agriculture and would appreciate a copy of it.

Posted on 16 Jul 2007 by Marcus

I am happy to see that you know much more about this topic than I do, Trevor. It’s nice to learn something.

I will get a copy of the presentation about the research project and send it to you- or put it on this site.

I forgot to mention in my previous post that one of the reasons I like organic fertilizers is that to get them farmers will usually have to take up livestock production, which is good for saving and income diversification. A nice example I know of is a project in Chiang Rai where an organic rice farming group opened a livestock farming group in order to meet their own fertilizer needs. This group also purchased some equipment for manufacturing fertilizer (the machine mixes manure and some cheap organic inputs and produces pellets of organic fertilizer), and sells the fertilizer to members at cost and non-members at a decent profit. They are a very successful group- their main problem is that they are constantly visited by study tours, and this sometimes interferes with their farming (one of the curses of the rural farmer- if you’re poor you’re continually doing surveys and if you’re rich you continually receive study tours). I really need to get some more detailed information about this.

I suppose I am posting based on conditions here in northern Thailand. Many of the areas in which we are working have seriously degraded soils and some treatment with organic material is direly needed. In many other areas there is much more good quality soil available, so this is much less pressing.