5.1. The New Green Revolution - Technologies for Marginal Lands
5.2. Current Activity and Future Options for the CGIAR
Poverty cannot be addressed for those living on MAs if there is not some improvement in productivity on the MLs and FLs within the respective areas. Productivity increases depend to a great extent on improvement in the technologies available to meet the particular conditions found in the specific MA being addressed. Correcting policy and institutional distortions is only part of the picture; and which, in practice, have proved to be an intractable question in many countries. As indicated in Chapter 3, the poor in MAs regions in most cases are not poor only because of the biophysical quality of their land resources. In fact, in many cases, the significant areas of land within a MA may only be missing a few technical adjustments in order to take off in terms of production. Local knowledge, combined with research can often provide the answer on how to address the problems.
Marginal areas are marginal for many reasons. In some cases, technologies can be developed that move lands from marginal productivity to higher productivity. The most obvious example is irrigation of deserts - where such is economically feasible and desirable. However, there are other, less obvious, but just as important examples, e.g., greater integration of range livestock systems into mixed farming or agroforestry technologies that increase productivity and farmer incomes, while at the same time reducing risk through diversification.
Estimates from FAO suggest that over the next couple of decades, about 80 percent of the production expansion will be associated with yield increases and some 20 percent with agricultural land expansion13. There is no reliable breakdown for MAs and non-MAs. However, yield increases will be an important source of growth on both areas.
13 FAO 1996. 'World Agriculture: Towards 2010'. N. Alexandratos, ed. John Wiley & Sons.
The past approach to solving the food crises of the sixties and seventies in developing countries was through the introduction of Green Revolution technologies. The result was agricultural intensification on those areas which were more favoured in terms of biophysical conditions, market access, infrastructure and supporting institutions or policy; heavy doses of fertilizers, - high-yielding fertilizer responsive varieties, fast maturing species, irrigation, improved soil and water management, and use of chemicals to control pests and diseases. There is criticism of the Green Revolution technologies, e.g., that they have resulted in increased income inequalities, in problems of salinization and waterlogging in irrigated areas, and in health problems due to heavy use of chemicals. The evidence on the seriousness of these criticisms is mixed (FAO 199614, and Freebairn 199515).
14 FAO 1996. 'Lessons from the Green Revolution - Towards a New Green Revolution'. FAO Technical Background Document 6, World food Summit, 13-17 November 1996, FAO, Rome.15 Freebairn, D.K. 1995. 'Did the Green Revolution Concentrate Incomes? A Quantitative Study of Research Reports'. World Development. Vol. 23, pp. 265-279.
While agriculture (including ranching) legitimately can be blamed for most of the deforestation that has taken place in the world, it also is the case that the Green Revolution technologies for agricultural intensification have had some positive indirect environmental impacts related to forests. For example, the CGIAR estimates that without the technological advances brought about by the Green Revolution, some 280 million ha more land would have been needed to produce the same amount of wheat, maize, rice and other food crops that are part of the CGIAR mandate. It is doubtful whether such a large area of land would have been available, particularly in the areas where needed to meet the food requirements. But if even part of the 280 million ha would have been converted for agricultural production, a great deal more forest and fragile land would have been cleared and degraded without the Green Revolution.
Despite the advances in technology and agricultural productivity, and land savings that have taken place due to increases in per hectare productivity, forest land clearing for agriculture continues. Almost two thirds of the forest land that is deforested every year goes into agricultural expansion, including cattle ranching, particularly in the case of Latin America. On that part converted to slash and burn agriculture the result is marginalization of the lands cleared after three years or so. A key point here is that most of the deforestation is done by those poor people who were not the direct target of the Green Revolution - the poor who either come from the MAs or from the MAs via the cities (the rural to urban migrants coming home to the land).
The way forward, in terms of reducing poverty and food insecurity and in terms of improving the environmental impacts of agriculture in MAs regions, will involve a complex of factors. It will involve taking the best from the old Green Revolution technologies and combining them with a new generation of ideas, technologies, and institutional arrangements - what FAO (1996, op. cit.) calls the Second Agricultural Paradigm:
It takes the natural constraints largely as given and explores the possibilities for increased yields by improved genetic material and changes in management without recourse to large amounts of external inputs. It recognizes that there will be sizeable groups in the fanning communities that are de facto excluded from the broader socio-economic enabling environment.... Examples of approaches under this second paradigm include: breeding of crop varieties that are tolerant to adverse soil conditions;... soil nutrient cycling;... reliance on genetic pest and disease resistance to replace, either partially or fully, chemical and mechanical pest control; the active use of functional biodiversity, where predators and other natural control agents of pests and diseases are actively encouraged through the maintenance of complex ecosystems within and adjacent to fanning activities; and increased production from naturally trypanosomiasis-tolerant cattle and small ruminants that can lower the need for large-scale tsetse fly eradication, with its many ecological implications (p.4).
In the recent review of CGIAR priorities and strategies, TAC concluded that for poor countries where much of the labour force is in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors and much of the average budget is spent on food and non-food products from these three sectors, increases in the productivity of biological products (foodstuff, fodder, feed, fuelwood and raw material for people, livestock and industry) offers the best opportunity to stimulate economic growth. The rural poor engaged in the production process and/or the post-production processing activities benefit directly from such economic growth, whereas the urban poor benefit indirectly through lower prices.
A significant proportion of research by the centres has been oriented to production issues which have directly benefited the poor. A good example is the work by IITA and their NARS partners on the biological control of the cassava mealy bug. This work led to integrated control of striga for improving total factor productivity of small farmers in the moist and dry savanna of sub-Saharan Africa. This benefited the poor regardless of the type of land. There is evidence that tree fallows and fodder banks promoted by ILRI have benefited poor producers in a wide variety of marginal areas in the same region. Additional examples relate to ILRI's production systems research in the semi-arid tropics in maintenance of land productivity for livestock farmers, and the streak virus-resistant maize and the mosaic virus-free cassava cultivars released by IITA. In Asia, there is evidence that farmers' incomes have increased in recent years as a result of the adoption of ICRISAT's cultivars of pearl millet, sorghum, groundnut, and pigeonpea. In the case of pearl millet, the aim is improved productivity and stability in semi-arid tropical environments through development of downey mildew and ergot resistant cultivars and hybrids with drought tolerance for poor farmers. Similar examples can be cited for Latin America, e.g. the acid-tolerant rice and sorghum cultivars. For the WANA region, ICARDA's work in the area of soil fertility and water management has provided direct benefit to the producers. In addition, its research on the rehabilitation of pasture lands has played an important part in control of degradation on grazed hillsides.
Development of new and improved technology has been, and likely will continue to be, the main strength of the CGIAR. In the area of technologies that can help in the battle to alleviate poverty for those living in the MAs of the world, the CGIAR has made significant progress. The need now is to shift somewhat the focus of selected strategic research on commodity improvement, land use management, and other subjects to fit within the (diverse, site-specific MA) poverty alleviation focus suggested here.
This means, among other things, more attention to drought resistance and varieties tolerant to salinity and focusing additional efforts on the problems of the acid soils, issues related to nutrient mining, water harvesting and other water management technologies, to name a few examples. The choice of focus should be made by the centres, in the context of the MAs to which their research applies, either individually or in concert with others.
The role of biotechnology in genome mapping and the development of cultivars resistant to abiotic and biotic stresses also is of importance when looking at the potential contributions of the CGIAR to marginal lands research. There are many opportunities to develop "...technologies that can be usefully employed given the existing, often adverse, conditions"16 found in the MAs. Such technologies can be of immense benefit to the poor; and, if coupled with activity in the other areas discussed here - institutional and policy reform, diversification and niche opportunities - they can provide one important input for poverty alleviation.
16 Ravenborg, H.M. 1993. 'Targeting International Agricultural Research Towards the Rural Poor'. CDR Working Paper 93.4 (Centre for Development Research in cooperation with IFPRI).
Within the context of working on poverty alleviation for those living in MAs, the Panel believes that the centres and their various partners in research should be developing new and improved technologies that respond to site conditions found in MAs, e.g., varieties resistant to a variety of abiotic stresses.
This should not be interpreted to mean the centres should engage in research on genetic improvement or management systems for hundreds of speciality crops and animals which may offer niche potentials in an equal or greater number of site-specific (or site-type) situations. As mentioned above, the CGIAR is already doing research on a wide range of products which are relevant to the poor in MAs. The new dimension may imply a few additional products, but the main thrust is on research (biophysical and social science) aimed at increasing the income options available to the poor. A prerequisite is research to clarify the capabilities, constraints and range of options (agriculture and non-agriculture) available in a set of MA situations, into which it is expected to apply the System's research results - species, management, value added, etc.
The ingredients introduced through the CGIAR will be research in the mandated biophysical area, responsive to constraints and opportunities in MAs, plus interrelated social science research aimed at new institutional arrangements which will enable the poor to mobilize their indigenous knowledge on niches and value added. The role of the CGIAR in the latter area is in the development of approaches to constraint analysis and assessment of options.
