Which narrative of sustainable agriculture will be adopted in future – or what combination of the two – will not be determined by their scientific evidence bases. Instead, it will depend on a political and ideological process.
How should policy shape agriculture to make unsustainable food systems more sustainable? Where should investors place their investment in order to drive outcomes that minimize environmental risks? What should civil society support as ‘sustainable’ choices? How should research funders invest in driving innovation towards sustainability? These are key and contested topics, and not new. By way of illustration, in a debate in the UK House of Lords in 2001, Lord Taverne claimed that: ‘there is no sound evidence for saying that organic farming is more environmentally friendly than conventional farming, given its inefficient and wasteful use of land[…]’. Yet, many would claim that organic farming is a more sustainable form of agriculture compared to intensive farming. Should the market support or disincentivize organic farming – or other agroecological approaches – in favour of more productive, but more locally damaging farming systems? These are major questions, with significant ramifications for humans’ use of land and for its impacts on the environment and human health.
The aim of this paper was to analyse two narratives for how sustainable agriculture fits within a notion of a sustainable food system. Each narrative is founded to a greater extent on a set of implicit, or more rarely explicit, assumptions, often with a strong ideological basis, than on a scientific evidence base – which has, meanwhile, been extensively reviewed in many reports. The predominant current narrative is Version 1, which is firmly entrenched in political and academic discourse – perhaps so firmly entrenched that proponents take it as inevitable, and either do not question the assumptions, or find it difficult to question them. For example, one recent paper has highlighted the need to recognize and analyse the narrative explanations for the functioning of a food system that is based on intensive agriculture:
Thus, this paper has contrasted two different models for how agriculture relates to sustainability at the system level. These are somewhat exaggerated in nature, and on balance the future is more likely to see a combination of both Version 1 and Version 2, or a system which occupies the middle ground between the two, rather than an exact interpretation of either. The potential for a mix (with, for example, a certain proportion of farms or regions – or, indeed, of each version – tending more towards one or other end of the spectrum) will probably not be decided with reference to a scientific evidence base. Rather, it will depend on the primacy of the role given to the market and its drivers, and, as such, will be the outcome of a political and ideological process, enabled or disabled by incumbent power relationships and the political economy.
For Version 2 to have a significant role in the future, the market needs to change significantly – including through regulation – to incentivize or otherwise deliver less demand for food overall, but at the same time delivering greater demand for food with the attributes of social and public health goods (i.e. healthier diets and more sustainable production). While this is possible, it runs counter to prevailing ideology: in that it will be perceived to be limiting personal freedom, constraining choice, and creating a ‘nanny state’. This transition is thus politically difficult, but not impossible over a timescale of decades (as shown by the range of enabling changes being made to support the energy transition). It is also made more complex in a globally embedded world, as promoting the consumption of ‘better diets’ has implications for trading relationships – i.e. the issues of standards vs protectionism – overseen by the WTO legal framework of non-discrimination.
Without significant structural change, the inherently market-expanding nature of capitalism is likely to continue to drive up demand through finding new ways to increase the consumption of agricultural products. If this happens, land sparing itself is threatened, as incentives will continue to drive economic spillover effects that would incentivize further deforestation (see the second critique to Version 1, Assumption 1). ‘Sustainability’ will then be restricted to profit-enhancing efficiency gains and increasingly intensive production framed as ‘more for less’. Agroecological approaches will, of course, continue, but will be the preserve of the richest consumers and the poorest farmers, who have less access to capital. In high-income countries, such approaches will thus remain niche.
Beyond market ideology, other factors that may affect version realization inevitably come into play. For example, global geopolitics and climate change impacts, including emergent pests and diseases, might drive increasing volatility, in weather and in the ability to trade, including sourcing fertilizers and other inputs, and accessing markets abroad. These trends may create a focus on the need to enhance resilience within food and trading systems. Further, they could provide incentives for a greater regionalization of supply chains and a greater uptake of agroecological farming, with its enhanced potential for resilience.
To enable more sustainable agriculture and food systems does require changes in governance. These might come from changing citizen attitudes and consumption behaviour, which can politicize the need for change and create the political space for decision-makers to engage. They might also originate in disruptive events that undermine the resilience of the system to such an extent that large-scale change quickly becomes possible.
However they might arise, many changes are urgently needed for food systems to become more healthy and sustainable, to tackle the global health crisis, reduce climate change and combat pollution and biodiversity loss. Such changes are plausible, given the right circumstances and events; whether they are likely is an ongoing debate.
