To:
Kate Raworth,
Senior Researcher,
kraworth@oxfam.org.uk
Hi Kate!
There is a lot of hysteria going around that planet's ecosystems are in terrible shape
which in turn is widely believed to have negative consequences for humanity. We
are being repeatedly warned of an ever expanding list of tipping points, whereby
things seem to be always crumbling slowly until suddenly, rapid and potentially
irreversible shifts take hold.
And yet, at the same time, human well-being has
never been better. People by and large are living longer, healthier, and richer
lives. If you could rev up a time machine and choose to be plopped at any point
in history, 2012 would probably be a sound choice. Of course, there's still widespread inequality,
poverty, starvation and disease, but on the whole, the trend's up and up.
At no point in the history of humankind however were the scourges of inequality,
poverty, starvation and disease completely eliminated. Utopia is generally
defined as a place of ideal perfection in all aspects of existence. It was the
prospect of injecting a tinge of utopia to the real world that perhaps spurred many
of us to join the NGO sector. This is my thirty-second year in the NGO sector
and I believe I too had contributed my mite towards advancing social justice
and environment causes during this period.
But in recent years, I find these causes had been hijacked by eco-fascists
and eco-imperialists. Worse still, the label “green” has been associated to causes that have nothing remotely to do with
environment, with a lot of pseudo-science bandied around.
Yet, Climate
Dumb Agriculture (CDA) remains Climate Dumb Agriculture (CDA) no matter if it
is cleverly packaged as Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA). Similarly, what is called “sustainability” is not even sustainable, not by
a long shot. How could it be when formulations are
based on a set of flawed axioms and assumptions, primarily designed to spew out
imaginary doomsday predictions? And if formulations are
based on a set of flawed axioms and assumptions then the solutions espoused, if translated
into policies, will needlessly make life more difficult
for everyone.
In your report (download) you requested feedback to be send to you, and accordingly
here is mine in the form of an open letter to both you and Oxfam. This is from
the perspective of a NGO activist; a livelihood and PM&E consultant.
Due to
lack of time, a full critique could not be attempted here but rather a few
major issues are identified for detailed critique as discussed below.
Yours sincerely.
Rajan Alexander
Development Consultancy Group
43, Da Costa Layout, II Cross
St Mary’s Tow, Bangalore 560084
Biggest Source of
Planetary-Boundary Stress
“In
fact, the biggest source of planetary-boundary stress today is excessive
resource consumption by roughly the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world’s
population, and the production patterns of the companies producing the goods
and services that they buy:
· Carbon: Around 50 per cent of global
carbon emissions are generated by just 11 per cent of people;
· Income: 57 per cent of global income is
in the hands of just 10 per cent of people;
·
Nitrogen:
33 per cent of the world’s sustainable nitrogen budget is used to produce meat
for people in the EU – just 7 per cent of the world’s population”
The
central question is who are responsible most for over-consumption and pollution?
Your paper identifies the primary culprits as the more developed nations with a
relatively smaller population, but who uses at least 50-100 times the resources
the poorest of the poor economies consumes. If the biggest source of
planetary-boundary stress today is excessive resource consumption in Western
countries, then why focus at all on developing and emerging economies for
reduction of their consumption levels? This makes absolutely no commonsense. Logically
the biggest impact would be for INGOs like Oxfam to concentrate exclusively on Western
countries if result based management (RBM) systems are to be followed.
There
can’t be genuine equity without equalization. Accordingly, for ensuring an equitable
world then there should be parity among all countries in the world in terms of common
development indicators and living standards. For this, developing and emerging
economies who presently are under-consuming should be enabled to increase their
consumption levels while those in western countries facilitated to brought down
til a level of equalization is brought about. But what we find is the
exact opposite - INGOs like Oxfam primarily target the South to reduce further their
abysmally low consumption levels while they do practically nothing of
significance in countries in the North to reduce their over-consumption notwithstanding offering some lip service to this objective. The net impact widens social disparities even further.
Hypocrisy
according to dictionaries is defined as the act of persistently professing
beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that are
inconsistent with one's actions. The question is whether NGOs and environmentalists
can be accused of hypocrisy? Today, the NGO world has been swamped with “professionals” armed with development and
environment degrees from the world’s most elite institutes, who expect to work
in a more corporate-like environment, complete with vending machines,
air-conditioned conference rooms and plush offices. Glossy yearbooks,
conferences, business-class air travel and fancy accommodation have all added
to the rising budgets of NGOs.
Their
compensation packages however reflect their height of hypocrisy. Why do they
need such high packages if they are walking their talk of creating a world where
consumption is based on need and not greed? For example, the Richard Telofski blog did
an investigation study of the salaries of Greenpeace, US and focused their attention on those
of their former Chief Operating Officer (COO), Daniel Mc
Gregor. The latter’s salary as declared to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was
as follows:
- Fiscal 2007 Total Compensation – $104,462
- Fiscal 2008 Total Compensation – $123,303
- Fiscal 2009 Total Compensation – $128,117
- Fiscal 2010 Total Compensation – $155,675
Now, here’s the 2010 percentage scale of
American income earners. This information comes from the U.S. IRS via FinancialSamarai.com.
Top 1%: $380,354
Top 5%: $159,619
Top 10%: $113,799
Top 25%: $67,280
Top 50%: >$33,048
As observed in the the above table,
$155,675 compensation falls somewhere between the Top 5% and 10%! Gregor’s annual salary increase as compared to
Consumer Price Index (CPI) makes even more interesting reading:
- Compensation Increase for 2008
+18% Change in US CPI for
2008 +3.8%
- Compensation Increase for 2009 +
3.9% Change in US CPI for 2009
-0.4%
- Compensation Increase for 2010
+21.5% Change in US CPI for 2010 +1.6%
Richard Telofski
comments on this data:
“2007 wasn’t a great
fiscal year for many organizations, but yet Greenpeace boosted their COO’s
compensation by 18% for the next year. 2008 was the worst financial year of
those studied in this series of numbers, but yet even when that bear of a year
is considered; the following year Greenpeace increased their COO’s compensation
by almost four percent.
And certainly in 2010 the economy was far from normal,
but yet this NGO sees fit to increase the compensation of this Greenpeace
executive by 21.5% while the US CPI, inflation, increased by an average of only
1.6%.
In short, it is
evident from this case study that advocating that the poor reduce their already
abysmally low consumption levels appears an extremely lucrative career for NGOs
and environmentalists. It exposes them as having absolutely no empathy for the
poor in contrast to the public image they portray as the champions of the poor. It is
bad enough that NGOs and environmentalists live lavishly off poverty aid like
social parasites. It is much worse when they arrogate themselves the right to
prescribe what lives, livelihoods and lifestyles the poor should lead!
Stable state Climate: Holocene
“Crossing such thresholds
could lead to irreversible and, in some cases, abrupt environmental change,
effectively moving Earth out of the stable state of the past 10,000 years –
known as the Holocene – which has been so beneficial to humankind”
Holocene??
This should surely go down as a Freudian slip for an organization like Oxfam
who plays as a major pivot in the global warming scam. Why? It at once draws
attention to the geological climate timeline of Planet Earth. Once anyone
understands the wide temperature fluctuations that Earth had undergone over
time and how frequent and violent it was, then they are bound to ask why all the fuzz today about
any temperature rise less than a fraction of 1 deg C?.
Earth
is currently in the Holocene Epoch. In geologic time, the Holocene Epoch
represents the second epoch in the current Quaternary Period (also termed the
Anthropogene Period) of the current Cenozoic Era of the ongoing Phanerozoic
Eon. See graph, courtesy, NASA
The
Oxfam paper estimates the Holocene Epoch being around 10,000 years in Earth’s
history. Actually, Holocene Epoch started more than 11,500 years ago. In fact, most
estimates suggesting a start between 13,000 - 10,000 years BP (before present).
What’s
more important is Earth’s age? The answer eludes a consensus. According to the
Bible, it is less than 3,000 years. Other creationists say it is 10,000 years,
roughly the age of the Holocene Epoch. The evolutionist consensus is however
that the Earth is a whopping 4.6 billion years! So if the evolutionists are
right, then global temperatures have waxed and waned during these 4.6 billion
years. Our planet have warmed or cooled within the range of 10 deg C as seen in
the graph. And 10 deg C accordingly is the range of Earth’s natural variability of
temperature fluctuations!
Sea
levels were initially about 350 to 400 feet (100 to 150 meters) lower than it
is today. It rose rapidly until about 8,000 years ago and more slowly since.
For example, during the last glacial maximum, about 20,000 years ago, sea level
is estimated to have been 120 meters lower that it is today. During the peak of
the last interglacial epoch, about 125,000 years ago, sea level was about 6
meters higher than it is today (and even then not nearly all of the ice was
melted). During an even warmer interval 3 million years ago, sea level was
approximately 25 to 50 meters higher than it is today.
When
most of us think about Ice Ages, we imagine a slow transition into a colder
climate on long time scales. Indeed, studies of the past million years indicate
a repeatable cycle of Earth’s climate going from warm periods (interglacial) to glacial conditions.
The
period of these shifts are related to changes in the tilt of Earth’s rotational
axis (41,000 years), changes in the orientation of Earth’s elliptical orbit
around the sun, called the “precession of
the equinoxes” (23,000 years), and to changes in the shape (more round or
less round) of the elliptical orbit (100,000 years). The theory that orbital
shifts caused the waxing and waning of ice ages was first pointed out by James
Croll in the 19th Century and developed more fully by Milutin Milankovitch in 1938.
The
history of the Earth accordingly tells us that the climate is always changing;
from warm periods when the dinosaurs flourished, to the many ice ages when
glaciers covered much of the land. For much of
Earth's history, the world has been ice-free (even at the poles) but these
iceless periods have been interrupted by several major glaciation periods
(called glacial epochs) and we are in one now. Each glacial epoch
consists of multiple advances and retreats of ice fields. Each advance of
ice is popularly known in the press as an "ice
age" but it is important to note that these multiple events are just
variations of the same glacial epoch. The retreat of ice during a glacial
epoch is called an inter-glacial period and this is our present day climate
system. It is important to note that the
inter-glacial climate is the exception, not the rule during a glacial epoch.
The
Holocene Epoch is accordingly an inter-glacial period within the present Ice
Age. The typical inter-glacial period lasts around 12,000 years though there is
a one or two that lasted around 28,000 years. Since the Holocene Epoch is estimated as over 11,500 years, it’s anyone’s guess whether it is nearing
its end or there is much more miles to go for its end. So is the speculation
that if the recent global warming, whether man-made or not, would it end
up delaying our return to the ice age as it is a good thing for humankind.
Your
paper chose to describe the Holocene as a “stable
state” within Earth’s geological timeline. But this description needs to be
qualified why it is considered as so. Since Oxfam often tend to quote the
Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), let us then see why
they consider the Holocene Epoch as a “stable
state”. Here are some extracts from their report (Read here):
“Interestingly, the Holocene
appears by far the longest warm "stable" period (as far as seen from
the Antarctic climate record) over the last 400 ky, with profound implications
for the development of civilization (Petit et al., 1999).”
So
Holocene period is considered “stable”
by the IPCC in a very limited context viz. it is the longest warm period
within Planet Earth’s geological timeline. This Epoch also coincided with the optimal blossoming
of life and bio-diversity in Earth’s entire geological timeline. Though the
Holocene Epoch had been a remarkably stable period this is only relative to the Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods where extremes and
fluctuations rising or falling temperatures were much more frequent.
Nevertheless, the Holocene has been, and still is, a time of wide fluctuating
climate as could be observed from the graph below:
Following the sudden ending
of the last Ice Age - Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, forests quickly
regained the ground that they had lost to cold and aridity. Ice sheets again
began melting, though because of their size, they took about two thousand more
years to disappear completely. The Earth entered several thousand years of
conditions that were much warmer and moister than today; the Saharan and
Arabian deserts almost completely disappeared under a vegetation cover, and in
the northern latitudes forests grew slightly closer to the poles than they do
at present.
The 'Holocene Optimum’ that occurred sometime between 9,000 and 5,000
years ago was also a period much more warmer than the present. The Earth came out the freezer quite rapidly
and temperatures reached its peak about 8000 years ago. Northern Europe went
from mile-deep glaciers to sub-tropical conditions. Sea levels rose very
rapidly, by approximately 300 feet. This may account for the destruction of
many species, mammoths probably being the most prominent loss to the ecosystem.
Masses of mammoth bones and tusks have been dredged from the middle of the
North Sea, which suggests that they were wiped out in a rapid and catastrophic
flood during the Holocene Maximum. Claussen et al writes in the Greening of Africa:
“Palaeoclimatic reconstructions indicate that during the so-called
Holocene climatic optimum, the summer in the Northern Hemisphere was warmer
than today. North African monsoon was stronger than today .... Moreover,
palaeobotanic data (Jolly et al., 1998) reveal that the Sahel reached at least
as far north as 23oN. (The present boundary extends up to 18oN.) Hence, there
is an overall consensus that during the Holocene optimum, the Sahara was much
greener than today (e.g., Prentice et al., 2000)”
The 'optimum' was however punctuated
by a severe cold and dry phase that affected climates across north Africa,
South Asia, Europe, the Americas and Antarctica about 8,200 years ago, perhaps
lasting for a century or two before a return to warmer and wetter conditions
(Stager & Mayewski 1997). In Africa at least, the climate does not seem to
have returned to the moist warm 'optimum' state that prevailed before
this sudden drought, but it was significantly moister than at present.
After about 5,000 years ago, there was a
further cooling and drying in many areas and conditions became more similar to
the present-day. A particularly widespread cool event associated with relatively
wet conditions seems to have occurred in many parts of the world around 2600
years ago (van Geel et al. 1996).
It seems that at least in the North Atlantic
region, and possibly globally, there was a warm-cold cycle with a periodicity
of around 1500 years (Bond et al. 1997). In the north Atlantic region, and
probably adjacent oceanic areas of Europe, the change from peak to trough of
each period was about 2 deg.C , a very substantial change in mean annual. The
cold phases seem to have been relatively abrupt, and each lasted several
centuries before an apparently rapid switch back to warmer conditions at some
sort of regular periodicity.
Even the IPCC admits “The early Holocene was generally
warmer than the 20th century”. In fact during the last 1,000 years, the
Roman and Medieval Warm periods are similarly acknowledged by the IPCC as being
warmer than the present period. During the Medieval Warm Period, the Vikings
colonized Greenland, gave up warring and started farming and dairying. Further,
as observed from the graph, the Holocene Epoch has been interspersed by a few
mini-ice ages, the last being the Little Ice Ages, where it was so cold that
Viking kingdoms virtually collapsed.
As
Earth continues to emerge from the Younger
Dryas (Last Ice age) and Little Ice Age (LIA) it is only expected that
global temperatures continue to rise. If the temperature increase during the
past 130 years reflects recovery from the LIA, it is not unreasonable to expect
the temperature to rise another 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius to a level comparable
to that of the Medieval Warm Period about 800 years ago or rise even higher to
match those seen during the Holocene Optimal. The maximum temperature positive
anomaly seen during the last 160 years had been less than 0.8 deg C, well
within Earth’s natural variability of temperature. In January this year, global
temperature anomaly even slipped into negative terrority. Despite this, the
climate hysteria and talk of tipping points continues.
Not
knowing of the Holocene or Earth’s geological timeline and creating global
warming hysteria may not make Oxfam complicit in any scam on the grounds of
ignorance. But being fully knowledgeable of the Holocene Epoch and yet creating
global warming hysteria is another matter!
Nitrogen Pollution
“Researchers in
China, for example, found farmers using up to three times the required amount
of nitrogen fertilizer, bringing no increase in their harvests, but resulting
in 20 to 50 per cent of the nitrogen applied leaking into the air and polluting
the groundwater”
From these extracts, the
contribution of nitrogen to the so called planetary stress is confined by Oxfam
to the mainly overuse of nitrogen fertilizers that could increase acidity
levels of soils and thereby reduce crop yields besides create pollution of
waterways; coastal zones and terrestrial bio-sphere. It is a matter of relief to
notice that Oxfam has not embraced the claim of some sections of eco-fascists
that atmospheric nitrogen levels are getting
depleted - yet another tipping point for the planet.
Till the Holocene Epoch, our species were hunter-gathers
of food. The era brought global warming that enabled man to supplement their
food supply by actually growing crops from which they had so far only
collected. And as they did, by trial and error they realized that not all plots
were equally fertile.
But even on the most fertile soils, yield tended to
decline after years of continuous cultivation, the reason being that constant
removal of plant nutrients from the soil with the harvest. In the fertile basin
of Mesopotamia for instance history tells us that wheat yield dropped from
2t/ha to 0.8 t/ha over a period of 300 years of cultivation. So they instinctly
developed two coping mechanisms. The first was shifting cultivation, in which
fields were abandoned after some years of cultivation and virgin land occupied
instead. The second was farming in the valleys of rivers where major annual
floods deposited nutrient-rich sediments to replace the nutrients removed with
the harvest.
And as civilization evolved further and population
increased, these two coping mechanisms started losing their utilities. This
situation led to the introduction of the fallow system where land is left idle in-between
cropping seasons. This system not
only halved the stress put on the reserves of plant-available nutrients in the
soil, but supplied additional nutrients by the break-down of organic and
mineral soil particles.
But this practice too lost much
of its practicality. As population grew; it did not make sense to leave half
the arable land fallow. Here entered the introduction of the rotation system
where lesser nutrient depleting crops and/or nitrogen-fixing leguminous crops
were grown. While the legumes left some residual nitrogen for succeeding crops,
their small share could not really improve the nutrient status of the soil. But
total harvest was higher from a rotation system. Due to intensification of
agriculture, the nutrient depletion of soils was accelerated by the system. The
net supply of nitrogen was improved by growing leguminous fodder crops or
clover grass mixtures on the fallowed land. This not only increased the
residual nitrogen left in the soil by the root system of the legumes but also
resulted in more farm-yard manure which was also richer in nitrogen. As the
nitrogen supply was partly improved, other nutrients, particularly phosphorus
and potassium, became limiting. So the growth of the nitrogen-fixing clover and
leguminous fodder crops was hampered by the availability of other non-nitrogen
minerals.
Together with these
developments were the demands of population growth whose combined impact was to
spur expansion of arable lands at the cost of forests; wetlands etc. However
productivity remained more or less constant even as arable land expanded. Till
pre-industrial times accordingly farmers
developed three main ways to channel plant nutrients to the arable land to help
to maintain its fertility:
• Recycling
as much as possible of the nutrients originally taken up by the crops from the
arable soils as farm-yard manure and crushed animal bones
• Adding
nutrients to the manure by using roughage and litter collected from meadows and
forests, but thus impoverishing other natural ecosystems,
• Fixing
additional nitrogen from the air by growing leguminous crops as part of the
rotation.
While together it might have been enough to stabilise
yields, it would never have been sufficient to increase yields to the extent
that the continuing growth the population demanded. Even the most intensive use of
these practices in areas whose climate allowed year-round cropping could not
supply more than 120–150 kg N ha yr.
The vast majority of the suitable land had already been
cleared so the prospect of further growth of the arable area was limited. An
increase in yields could only be achieved when the nutrient concentration in
the soil was raised; enabling the plants to take up more in the limited time of
their growing season. Synthetic nitrogen filled this need. Nitrogen was the most commonly
yield-limiting nutrient in all pre-industrial agricultures. Only the
Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia broke this barrier. Norman Borlaug summed up the importance of synthetic nitrogen in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1970:
“If the high-yielding
dwarf wheat and rice varieties are the catalysts that have ignited The Green
Revolution, then chemical fertilizer is the fuel that has powered its forward
thrust…"
The rest was history, agriculture
made quantum leaps in productivity gains in a space of a few decades which
centuries of agricultural practice could not accomplish.
In affluent nations synthetic nitrogen
helps to produce excess of food in general and of animal foods in particular,
and it boosts agricultural exports. But for at least a third of humanity in the
world’s most populous countries the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers makes
the difference between malnutrition and adequate diet.
And yet, NGOs like Oxfam
through their GROW programmes claim that agricultural productivity can increase
from present by going back to pre-industrial
practices. Of course it can but organic
methods require about twice the acreage to produce the same crop, thus directly
resulting in the destruction of forests. So one hand, NGOs and environmental
organizations claim they want to feed a growing population and eliminate
hunger. On the other hand they want to preserve the rain forests and other
biospheres. The result is creation of more hunger and destruction of biospheres
as they unable to resolve this basic contradiction. Prof.
Vaclav Smil, University of Manitoba, Canada puts this in perspective:
“In 1900 the
virtually fertiliser-free agriculture was able to sustain 1.625 billion people
by a combination of extensive cultivation and organic farming on the total of
about 850 mio ha. The same combination of agronomic practices extended to
today’s 1.5 billion ha of cropland would feed about 2.9 billion people or about
3.2 billion when adding the food derived from grazing and fisheries.
This means that without nitrogen fertilisers no more than 53% of today’s
population could be fed at a generally inadequate per capita level of 1900
diets. If we were to provide today’s average per capita food supply with the
1900 level of agricultural productivity, we could feed only about 2.4 billion
people or just 40% of today’s total.”
Let me state unequivocally
that I’m not saying organic farming is bad – far from it. There are many
upsides and benefits that come from many organic farming methods. All
pre-industrial practices are perhaps much better for the soil and environment
viz. better grounded in agro-ecological production principles. My goal in this post isn’t to bash organic
farming per se, instead, it’s to bust the worst of the myths of them and to
establish that within a changed paradigm (population size) it finds a poor fit
to present day problems we aim to solve.
From the sketch of the evolution
of agriculture given earlier it is evident that whenever mankind hit a road
block or tipping point, the old adage came into play: necessity was the mother of all inventions, as Albert
Einstein once said. When people really needed to do something,
they will always figured out a way to do it. The human capacity to invent and
create is universal. Ours is a living world of continuous creation and infinite
variation. Scientists keep discovering more species; there may be more than millions
of them on earth, each the embodiment of an innovation that worked. Yet when we
look at our own species, we frequently say we're "resistant to change."
The organic farming movement is one such expression, as it is
fixated on the past even when we need to move on and face the challenges of the
future. A whole ideology evolved based on an obsession how food should be
produced rather than the optimal way agriculture could feed the world with
minimal damage to the environment.
Now let’s get back to Oxfam’s problem statement. If we
examine the problems caused by Nitrogen pollution, only two are come across in
your paper - soil acidity and leaching.
SOIL ACIDITY:
It’s erroneous to conclude
that only synthetic nitrogen tends to contribute to increasing acidity in
soils. Both chemical and organic fertilizers may
eventually make the soil more acid. Hydrogen is added in the form of
ammonia-based fertilizers, urea-based fertilizers, and as proteins (amino acids) in organic
fertilizers. Transformations of these sources of N into nitrate releases H to create soil acidity. Therefore, fertilization with
fertilizers containing ammonium or even adding large quantities of organic
matter to a soil will ultimately increase the soil acidity and lower the pH.
The FAO/ECE (1991) reports:
“Acidification as
a result of ammonia emission (volatilization) from livestock accommodation,
manure storage facilities, and manure being spread on the land. Ammonia
constitutes a major contribution to the acidification of the environment,
especially in areas with considerable intensive livestock farming.”
So
to support organic farming, we need to boost manure availability which in turns
can be only achieved by boosting livestock farming which FAO/ECE say
contributes significantly to acidification! By this logic can using manure be
considered truly “Green” , organic as
it maybe?
LEACHING
Leaching is the downward movement of nitrogen with water
percolation through the soil profile. How much nitrogen is lost from the
rootzone is dependent on the nitrogen form present, soil type, the amount of
rainfall in relation to evapo-transpiration, and the depth of the rootzone.
Nitrogen applied through
fertilizers, organic or synthetic, is converted to plant-available-nitrate by
the same chemical process by the same bacteria living in the soil. As
a crop grows it starts off with a limited need for nitrogen because the plants
are small and they are getting some which was stored in the seed itself.
Then they go into a period of very rapid growth where they need quite a
bit of nitrogen (and other nutrients). During the period of “grain fill” there is very high demand
for nutrients. After that, the plant does not really need or take up
nutrients over weeks prior to harvest. So the key to nitrogen management lies
in matching nutrient supply cycle with the nutrient demand cycle. This is
easier done in synthetic fertilizers as application can be staggered in splits,
placed more precisely for root absorption and through use of nitrogen
stabilization products.
Generally, nitrogen contained
in livestock manures must be transformed by bio-chemical processes
(mineralisation and nitrification) before becoming available for plant
nutrition. However, any organic nitrogen which is mineralised later in the year
after the period of active uptake by the crop may be leached from the soil
during winter and can contribute to pollution of ground water.
Why is so?
Some of the nitrogen molecules
in an “organic” fertilizer are exactly the same chemicals as in “synthetic”
fertilizers – urea and ammonia. Some of
it is in more complex biologically formed molecules like amino acids, nucleic
acids and a variety of intermediate metabolites and structural molecules. That is why organic fertilizers are “slow release” forms of nitrogen. Over time, soil microbes convert those more
complex forms into exactly the same nitrate ion that comes from a synthetic
fertilizer – the nitrate that plants can use (and which can become a pollutant
of the water or atmosphere). The problem
is that the conversion process does not match the crop demand. To achieve good yields, organic growers need
to apply very high amounts of total nitrogen so that enough is available when
the crop needs it. Much of this nitrogen
continues to be turned into nitrate well after the crop is using it and so it
is well documented that this form of fertilization leads to water pollution
issues.
(Slow
nitrogen releaser) Organic fertilizers are accordingly are suitable for crops
with longer nutrient demand cycles whereas synthetic fertilisers, slow release
exceptions aside, are more suited for crops having shorter nutrient demand
cycles.
Organic fertilizers also have the problem that they
contain more phosphorus than is needed if they are used at the rates that make
sense from a nitrogen point of view. Growers using manure or compost pick
rates based on nitrogen, but that means that phosphorus is
over-supplied. This too leads to water pollution.
That’s not all. There is hardly any difference of using
green manures and synthetic nitrogen. Leguminous crops produce nitrogen by
extracting it from the atmosphere. So does synthetic nitrogen fertilizer
production. Plants uptake the nitrogen produced by legumes and nitrogen
fertilizers through the same chemical process - they are subject to the same
microbial processes in the soil. So they give off
the same by-products - NO2 and NH4 which environmentalists consider dangerous
to the environment. A field fertilized by legumes and synthetic fertilizers are
equally prone to soil depletion as all they do is to increase nitrogen levels
in the soil and not other macro nutrients such as phosphorus (P), potassium
(K), calcium (Ca) and sulphur (S) which are also required by plants in large
amounts. Depending on the
soil condition, sometimes it is necessary to supply chemical plant foods, such as lime, phosphorus
and potassium and to inoculate the seed, in order to produce successfully these
nitrogen-fixing crops. In addition, they
need smaller quantities of trace elements like manganese, copper, zinc, sulphur, iron and boron. These assume criticality in soil fertility to the extent they are easily or rarely found in the soil.
Farmyard manure needs to be stocked for a period of
time till its use. The IPCC estimates that even
with good storage practices, 1-2% of the carbon in that manure is emitted as
methane. When you combine that with the amount of manure needed to
fertilize a crop, you end up with a “carbon
footprint” that is 3-8 times as large as if you delivered the same amount
nitrogen with synthetic fertilizers like urea. Similarly, in the
composting process it has been documented that 2.7% of the carbon is released as methane. Combining
that with how much compost it takes to fertilize a crop (on the order of ~4-6
tons/acre), and the “carbon footprint”
of this organic fertilizer is on the order of 14 times as high as for a
conventional alternative.
The indictment that mineral
fertilizers destroy earthworms and beneficial soil bacteria is without
foundation. At the Rothamsted Experimental Station, it has been found that
earthworms are just as numerous in the soil of the fertilized plots as in the
unfertilized - but those in the fertilized area are larger and fatter. Many
experiments show that application of superphosphate to soils at rates commonly
recommended will increase the population of beneficial soil bacteria. The use
of mineral fertilizer will, in general, result in an increase of the organic
matter of the soil and thus promote bacteria and earthworms. Organic matter is,
of course, a by-product of plant growth and one of the quickest ways to
increase it in a soil is to use chemical fertilizer to grow luxuriant green
manure crops that will be turned back in the soil, or heavy crops that will
leave a large residue of organic material.
Organic pollution occurs when an excess of organic
matter, such as manure or sewage, enters the water. When organic matter
increases in a pond, the number of decomposers will increase. These decomposers
grow rapidly and use a great deal of oxygen during their growth. This leads to
a depletion of oxygen as the decomposition process occurs. A lack of oxygen can
kill aquatic organisms. As the aquatic organisms die, they are broken down by
decomposers which lead to further depletion of the oxygen levels.
So whether organic fertilizers are greener than synthetic
fertilizers is matter of personal opinion. Since they are more expensive than
synthetic fertilizers, a more important issue is their appropriateness in a
country like India. B.G. Shivakumar & I.P.S. Ahlawat in their paper “Organic Farming in India: Myths and
Realities” observed:
“Before jumping into
organic farming bandwagon, we need to have answers to the following: What level
of crop yield/ productivity is acceptable? Is it suitable for country like
India with a large population to feed? Whether available organic sources of
plant nutrients sufficient for pure organic farming? And, are organic farming
technologies sustainable in long run?
... At present, there
is a gap of nearly 10 million tonnes between annual addition and removal of
nutrients by crops which are met by mining nutrients from soil. A negative
balance of about 8 million tonnes of NPK is foreseen in 2020, even if we
continue to use chemical fertilizers, maintaining present growth rates of
production and consumption. The most optimistic estimates at present, show that
only about 25-30 per cent nutrient needs of Indian agriculture can be met by utilizing
various organic sources.: These organic sources are agriculture wastes, animal
manure etc.
... In general, it is
observed that the crop productivity declines under organic farming. The extent
of decline depends on the crop type, farming systems practices followed at
present etc. The decline is more in high yielding and high nutrient drawing
cereals as compared to legumes and vegetables and in irrigated systems as
compared to rainfed and dryland farming systems. Without using fertilisers, the
requirement of area to merely sustain the present level of food grain
production will be more than the geographical area of India! This is simply
neither possible nor sustainable.
... Organic foods are a
matter of choice of the individuals or enterprises. If somebody wants to go in
for organic farming, primarily on commercial consideration / profits motive, to
take advantage of the unusually higher prices of organic food, they are free to
do so. Organic farming is essentially a marking tool, and cannot replace conventional
farming for food security, quality and quantity of crop outputs. With a growing
population and precarious food situation, India cannot afford to take risk with
organic farming alone.
- The authors are scientists at Division of Agronomy, Indian Agricultural
Research Institute”
“The primary concern of all organised communities and civilised societies
is to meet the food requirements of its people. The cultivated area, required
to maintain the present level of food grain production in India without using
the fertilisers, reaches more than the total geographical area of the country.
At present, there is a gap of nearly 10 million tonnes between annual addition
and removal of nutrients by crops which are met by mining nutrients from soil.
A negative balance of about 8 mt of NPK is foreseen in 2020, even if we
continue to use chemical fertilisers, maintaining present growth rates of
production and consumption.
... The most optimistic estimates at present, show that only about 25-30
per cent nutrient needs of Indian agriculture can be met by utilising various
organic sources. It is proved beyond doubt that on long-term basis, conjoint
application of inorganic fertilisers along with various organic sources is
capable of sustaining higher crop productivity, improving soil quality and soil
productivity. The organic sources should be used in integration with chemical
fertilisers to narrow down the gap between addition and removal of nutrients by
crops as well as to sustain soil quality and to achieve higher crop
productivity. The food security demand of the country requires that inorganic
fertilisers be used in balanced doses.”
So there we have it. Whether organic is green or less
green than conventional farming, countries like India have no choice. Even if organic farming is most desirable, India just cannot afford complete dependence on this system. At best
India can opt for more integrated farming systems that combine the best of both
organic and inorganic farming systems.
Organic farming, being more expensively
priced cannot increase the food security of the poor. Their products are
consumed by the affluent in urban pockets within the country, with the majority
being exported to West who endowed with huge agricultural surpluses. Within this context,
it reduces food security as it reduces total arable land availability within
the country that could theoretically feed the poor.
If organic is the panacea for India’s agriculture then
farmers surely has not bought this claim. The story of cotton in India serves
as a classical case-study. Eco-fascists opposed both hybrids and GM seeds in
the name of organic farming with the result today more than 95% of cotton cultivation is
today accounted by GM. If they had on the other hand confined their fire only
on GM then they would have been more likely to have kept GM at bay in our
country. In the next couple of years GM cotton may account for near 100% of all
production. This would be total humiliation for the organic lobby within the country but this has not stopped
eco-fascists in claiming organic cotton yields and quality are higher than GM.
It has never occurred to them to ask if organic cotton had been such a
phenomenal success as they make it out to be, why is it not reflected in their adoption
rates. And if they continue to live in
delusion, GM will soon enter the country’s food chain in the most pervasive
way.
Everyone would like to prevent the planet from slipping
past its tipping points, if these are real. But no one in the developing world
would like to save the planet at their cost of their own lives and decline in their standard of
living so that the White Man can live satisfied their different fetishes. The
West has agricultural surpluses and yet their organic farms are less than 5% of
total farming. In the European
Union (EU 27) more than 7.5 million hectares are managed organically by almost
200’000 producers (2008). This constitutes just 4.3 percent of the agricultural
area. In the UK cultivation area for organic farming
dropped below 50,000 hectares level. With economic recession, demand for more
expensive organic food is also sharply dropping in Europe.
Even India, with very little agriculture surplus, has organic
farms, a majority of them being uncertified, possessing a much higher share in
overall agriculture than the West. So if the West is interested in promoting a
totally organic agriculture economy, let them do it in their own countries
rather exporting this fetish to developing and emerging economies! The key difference is
that the huge surpluses give Europe a buffer against any production decline
while we have no such buffer. Imagine the plight of countries like Somalia and Ethiopia
where the West is training their focus to promote the so called Climate Smart Agriculture
Oxfam’s GROW Campaign
“Oxfam’s GROW campaign is committed to growing a better
future – and as a priority that means ensuring food security for all. But it
also means cultivating a broader notion of prosperity in a resource-constrained
world. Oxfam believes that, over the next decade, we need a rapid transition to
a new model of prosperity, one which delivers economic development, respects
planetary boundaries, and has equity at its heart.”
The GROW Campaign is obviously the current flag ship of
Oxfam’s development programmes. This campaign is however nothing but Climate
Smart Agriculture (CSA) given a catchy name by Oxfam. We have already undertaken a detailed
critique of GROW (read here). The justifications
for adoption of CSA techniques rests on 3 pillars viz. accelerated global warming;
food price inflation and agriculture going bust. All three have been falsified:
a. ACCELERATED GLOBAL
WARMING
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that
the mean world temperature will increase by between 1.8 degrees C and 4 degrees
C by the end of this century and also qualified this prediction by stating that as global
temperatures increase, this will be accompanied by a substantial increase in
global food production. The assumption
was that CO2 in the atmospheric levels would continue to grow exponentially
until the so called “tipping point” is
crossed.
Oxfam apparently grabbed the first part of the IPCC prediction but rejected the second part. Instead, they speciously interpreted the projected rise in
global temperature to result in decline of agricultural productivity which in
turn increases global hunger to ostensibly justify their GROW
programme whose conceptual logic of the problem and solution are summarized
below:
Problem: Increased CO2 = High
Temperature = Reduced Agriculture Productivity = Increased Hunger
Solution: Decreased CO2 = Lower
Temperature = Increased Agriculture Productivity = Decreased Hunger
The UK Met Office and University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit
(UEA-CRU) last month made the significant announcement that the rising trend in
world temperatures ended in 1997. See fig to the right. Latest data from NASA / GISS too confirms the
robust deceleration of global warming, revealing the non-significant impact on
global temperatures by CO2. Download data file used in
NASA-GISS Excel chart and check it out yourself!
Besides the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change in its recent
review observed:
"Uncertainty in the
sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three
decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be
relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.
In simple IPCC speak; global warming (climate
change) would be taking a vacation for next 3 decades and to be replaced by
global cooling (natural variability) during the interim.
The UAH (satellite) data for January are out. The global average lower
tropospheric temperature anomaly for January, 2012 is just a tad below zero viz
-0.09 deg C. Global temperatures for
February should show a more precipitous drop as global sea surface temperatures
are rapidly plunging and with the deep freeze in Europe.
Dec-Feb temperatures in India are running at least 5-15 deg C below
average. Further the Tokyo-based Regional Institute for Global Change (RIGC) said
in its seasonal predictions for March-April-May this year almost the entire
India is likely to experience below-normal temperatures. If so, India is likely
to have the entire first 5 months of 2012 with below normal temperatures. This
would practically mean, 2012 would definitely go down as one of the coldest
years in recorded history for India and we can expect consequently, one of the
mildest summer historically too this year.
It can be argued that this year is an exception, being a La Niña year.
The converse also holds true - the reverse phenomenon El Niño causes
temperatures to go up in India. Both La
Niña and El Niño events together are known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation
(ENSO). Statistically, for every five years, 2-3 years will be accounted by
ENSO (whether La Niña or El Niño) and 2-3 years by neutral or non-ENSO
years. The ENSO and other oceanic
climatic phenomenon called Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) can account for most of
the climatic variability in South Asia. Worse still, unlike the last 3 decades,
the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has turned negative and whenever it does,
La Niñas tend to be more frequent and stronger than El Niños. All these means that the
challenge for Indian agriculture for the next 3 decades would be to adapt to a
much milder temperature than average.
Now if Oxfam’s GROW programme is versatile enough to adapt to all these
wild temperatures fluctuations, you can even justify implementing such a
programme in India. But this is not the case since Oxfam’s GROW campaign
encourages adaptation only for warming temperatures. Besides, NGOs like Oxfam
can hardly lay a claim to a core competence in weather forecasting despite whatever
your public pretensions. A few months ago, Cyclone Thane hit Tamilnadu. Despite
all the hullabaloo Oxfam creates about disaster preparedness capability, there is no
evidence of Oxfam putting this into practice. In Sri Lanka Oxfam promoted
adaptation to drought only to find a huge flood hit the country last year. In
East Africa, NGOs like Oxfam based agricultural strategies on the IPCC
prediction of increased precipitation but was caught on the wrong foot when the
La Niña induced drought struck - one of the worst in recorded history.
If you can’t predict next week’s weather, how smart can your agriculture
strategies be? Accordingly, despite all good intentions that Oxfam may have, you
can imagine what kind of havoc your GROW programme can play with Indian
agriculture under these circumstances.
B. SPIRALING FOOD
PRICES
If
there is such a tight correlation fit between spiraling food prices and the so
called climate change (increasing temperatures) as claimed, why not Oxfam
simply produce the relevant graphs?
A cursory look at FAOs Food Price Index
graph for the last 4 years should make it evident that this is a spurious
claim.
Oxfam
claims that climate change has caused food systems to go bust and as a result
supply-demand shortages are exploited by commodity speculators which are the
reasons for the runaway food inflationary trends.
As
seen from FAO’s food price index chart, after hitting an all time high early
last year, global food prices are clearly trending downwards.
A bumper global
harvest and reduced consumption in OECD countries due to their economic
slowdown this year will extend further downward pressure on global food prices.
So unless in the advent of war in the Middle East, disrupting oil supplies; food
commodity prices are poised to soften even further.
C. FARM SYSTEMS HAVE GONE BUST
Barbara Stoking, Oxfam’s CEO in one of Oxfam’s reports
had claimed that “Farms have gone bust” -
as a justification for your GROW programme. If farms have gone bust, Oxfam needs to explain
the global bumper harvests this year!
WHEAT
World inventories of wheat will be the biggest ever
before the next harvest, as expanded output in India, Kazakhstan, China to Morocco
signal ample supplies and lower food prices. According to an USDA report,
global wheat supplies for 2011/12 are projected 2.1 million tons higher. Indian
production for 2011/12 is increased 0.9 million tons reflecting the latest
government revisions, which increased yields for the crop that was harvested
last spring. Wheat futures are down 26 percent in the past year, helping to
reduce global food prices by 10 percent since reaching a record in February
2011.
RICE
Oxfam
makes the remarkable claim that increased minimum temperature (TMin) reduces
rice productivity. If so, how does Oxfam explain the bumper rice harvest for
the last two years?
The
harvest of rice around the world in 2011–2012 should hit a new record of 721
million tons and lead to lower prices, a United Nations’ Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) report informs. With the growing season nearly over in the
northern hemisphere and well underway in the southern hemisphere, the FAO
predicted in its latest quarterly report that rice production should increase
by three percent from the previous year. +3%!!!
The
FAO estimates that this should enable the price of rice to continue falling in
the coming months as stocks increase and imports decline. It estimated that
global trade in rice would decline by one million tons due to better harvests
in traditional import countries.
MAIZE (CORN)
Maize (corn)
productivity has been growing though slowly over the years. A huge chunk of
maize supply is diverted for (ethanol) bio-fuel production. Despite this,
supply is able to meet demand though corn price inflation is highest among all
grains.
Maize (corn) prices no longer
follow supply and demand trends. Olivier
de Schutter, the UN’s rapporteur on the right to food said that speculators are to blame for the jumps in food
prices. He says prices of key cereal crops like maize have, 'increased very significantly but this is
not linked to low stock levels or harvests, but rather to traders reacting to
information and speculating on the markets.'
CLIMATE SMART OR CLIMATE
DUMB AGRICULTURE?
Making food for an exploding population a function
of cropland taken from nature and yields falling with changing climate produces
a ‘dumb farmer’ scenario of doom. A
doomed, hungry humanity will not spare nature reserves. So this how the so
called Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) (which Oxfam’s GROW campaign is a
variant) positions itself.
“Food production expected to exceed 250
million tonnes, "an all time record", at the end of the Eleventh Five
Year Plan ending March 31.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh government's flagship
agricultural plans like Bharat Nirman, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA), the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and the Rainfed Areas
Development Programme and other agrarian policies have begun to pay off and the
country has "reached new plateaus in foodgrain production".
"Food production at the end of the Eleventh
Plan will exceed 250 million tonnes, an all time record. Our pulse production,
at 18 million tonnes, is well above the previous barrier of 15 million tonnes.
We are producing today more milk, more fruits, more vegetables, more sugarcane,
more oilseeds and more cotton than ever before. Last year production of
vegetables went up by 9.57 per cent and nearly two million tonnes of cold
storage capacity was created."
He said the agricultural growth was "likely to
be about 3.5 per cent per annum during the Eleventh Five Year Plan which is
much better than in the 10th".
A
3.5% growth rate per annum is more than twice India’s population growth rate. There
is no evidence of India falling into the Malthusian trap. Using this momentum,
India now wants to climb to an above 5-6% per annum growth rate during the 12tth Five Year Plan. That would be almost triple the growth rates the GAP Index
demands.
[The
Global Agricultural Productivity Index (GAP Index) was developed by GHI to
measure ongoing progress in achieving the goal of sustainably doubling
agricultural output by 2050. The GAP Index measures the difference between the
current rate of agricultural productivity growth and the pace required to meet
future needs. A twofold increase in agricultural output by 2050 will require
total factor productivity (TFP) to grow at an annual global rate of 1.75
percent.]
It
even gets better. The state of Gujarat, initially a laggard in agricultural
productivity is for the last 10 years clocking double digit grow rates per
annum!
Not
bad for a “dumb farmer” won’t you say? If this performance is what Barbara
Stoking describes as “Farm Systems gone
bust”, we Indians can’t help being pleased to considered “dumb” rather “smart”!
What
say you Kate? Can you give an explanation why CSA or Oxfam’s GROW programme
exclusively targets developing countries and not the West? After all - the OECD countries plus Russia
accounts for nearly 60% of all global agricultural production. Is it because
their agriculture is already smart? Or is it simply that it suits the West to
impose climate mitigation compliance only on developing countries agriculture
and not their own? If so, where’s the principle of justice, the equity?
This
brings us to the issue what your India country office’s complicity is in pursuing
such an eco-imperialistic agenda. So I wrote to Murray Culshaw, my former boss
who was also a former Oxfam India Director during the nineties. A few days
earlier to my letter to him was the controversy where Britain expressed regret that
despite providing £ 1 billion in aid to India, they failed to be awarded a defence
contract worth £ 13 billion. This incident comprised the backdrop to my letter
to Murray. And this is what he
replied:
I am of course fully aware of
UK being 'cheesed off' on the fighter jet issue! And the whole matter
of aid being geo-political in nature and tied. But concerning your question
right at the end about why offices in India do not take an independent view of
some of the bigger issues you outline... I think there are several reasons. One
or two of an 'institutional nature' and one or two of a 'practical nature'.
Institutional:
1. Institutions appoint leadership (in
fact everyone) to carry out policies and programmes decided at some ‘higher’
level. They do not appoint people to question or challenge positions.
2. Leadership (and again everyone in
an institution) have their lives dependent on the institution so they will
not put their hands up. If they do they quickly move out (or are pushed
out in various ways), to another institution they are happier with in terms of
policy and practice.
Practical - but added on to the above:
1. In India the organisations you
mention are all completely dependent on international aid from their head
offices... so they can't speak out against 'internationally decided' policies.
If they did, their funds would be stopped.
2. In India if the agencies were to
seriously question policies/ positions being taken by the government, they
would have their FCRA withdrawn and so would not survive.
3. By and large senior staff recruited at
national (or international) levels even in the aid/ development world have a
'career' approach to life (9-5 Monday to Fridays), rather than
a commitment to causes which they believe in and work for 24x7.
There
we have it. Oxfam India and other INGOs are staffed by lap dogs of their corporate offices. If
the corporate office tells them that Venus is going to crash into Earth because
of CO2 tripping point had been crossed, we can expect these clowns the very next minute to spread this
hysteria all over the country! Murray incidentally tried an independent
approach and never completed his full tenure as Oxfam Director. He was shown
the door by Oxfam!
