10 Agriculture and the Environment
biodiversity. At simple levels, structures in monocultures may be changed with
new management practices to benefit natural enemies. At the other extreme,
annual and perennial non-crop vegetation may be introduced to affect biodiversity
on the farm or even landscape scale. There may be benefits for crop yield and qual-
ity, improved sustainability of farms, and broad societal benefits such as for recrea-
tion and aesthetics. The potential for ecological restoration of farmland to improve
the sustainability of agricultural production whilst conserving biodiversity in farm-
scapes is high but there is still much to learn, particularly for the most efficient use
of agri-environmental schemes to change land use practice.
In the third article, Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan Flora, both of Iowa State
University, succinctly set out how social capital can be created in post-industrial
rural communities. Two processes are occurring: the inside decay, and the incur-
sion from outside as the suburban and disconnected sprawl brings people with
different worldviews and values. Those with affluent incomes can ignore investing
in social capital, as they can substitute financial capital – yet this simply results in
more goods and services being imported from outside and leaves communities
struggling. This article indicates that social capital can be horizontal, hierarchical
or non-existent – and different patterns define different outcomes for rural com-
munities. Diverse networks that enhance lateral learning can lead to dynamic com-
munities able to develop new and more sustainable models of agriculture.
In the mid-1990s, one of the authors of the article by Norman Uphoff et al,
speaking to the 15th World Congress of Soil Science, proposed that it was time to
move soil science toward a ‘second paradigm’ in order to meet agricultural produc-
tion needs in the tropics, and indeed in the world more generally. The prevailing
paradigm, he noted, focuses primarily on production goals, and little on ecological
functions. The new paradigm articulated by Sanchez addressed the particular
problems of farmers who are managing marginal lands under a prevailing combi-
nation of biophysical and socioeconomic constraints: aluminium toxicity, low
nutrient reserves, low water-holding capacity, high phosphorus fixation, steep
slopes. For such farmers, the prescriptions of the green revolution, with its reliance
on external inputs, were not working. The economic costs and logistical problems
involved in procuring fertilizers and agrochemicals were prohibitive, and few of
these farmers had access to irrigation, so they were dependent on rainfall with its
uncertainties and insufficiencies. External inputs gave little benefit unless the water
requirements of the plants and the soil (i.e. the organisms living within it) were
met. The emergent ‘second paradigm’ is described in this final chapter of the book
Biological Approaches to Sustainable Soil Systems. Its key themes are articulated by
Sanchez in this way: ‘Rely more on biological processes by adapting germplasm to
adverse soil conditions, enhancing soil biological activity, and optimizing nutrient
cycling to minimize external inputs and maximize the efficiency of their use.’
In the final article of this volume, North Dakota farmer Fred Kirshenmann
begins by setting out the challenge of farming with the wild. As he says, his rela-
tionship with the wild has been fraught with ambiguity. He grew up believing that
wildernesses would only exist in enclaves apart from agriculture. Yet this dualistic