A New Practice: Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture 309Is it Immoral to be Concerned About the Health of
Natural Resources?
The term ‘sustainable agriculture’ implies regenerative practices which optimally use
locally available resources and natural processes, such as nutrient recycling; build on
biodiversity; regenerate and develop natural resources; and limit the use of external
inputs of agrochemicals, minerals and non-renewable energy. Regenerative agricul-
ture requires that, where used, such external inputs are used efficiently so that emis-
sions can be recycled and absorbed (Pretty, 1995), renewable resources are regeared
and non-renewable resource use generates optimal productivity.
Defined in this way, regenerative agriculture, in terms of yield, at present tends
to be slightly less productive than high-input agriculture in industrial countries,
and approximately as productive as such agriculture in ‘Green Revolution’ areas.
On presently available evidence, state-of-the-art regenerative practices would
increase significantly productivity in the rainfed, complex and resource poor areas
in developing countries which have so far not benefitted from high external input
technologies and are usually heavily degraded (Pretty, 1995).
The question then arises whether, from a global point of view, regenerative
agriculture can deliver the output required to meet aggregate demands. The trend
line extrapolation of growth in the world’s population to more than 8 billion in
2025, an increase of over 2.5 billion in the next 30 years, has led many authors to
emphasize the need to double productivity per hectare of available farm land
(McCalla, 1994; CGIAR, 1995; Tansey and Worsely, 1995).
The productivity deemed possible under regenerative agriculture and the
doubling of productivity per hectare of available land required by 2025 seem con-
tradictory. Indeed, one expert claims that promoting a form of agriculture which
uses no artificial fertilizers or chemical pesticides is immoral because it undermines
global food security (quoted from Rabbinge in WUB 17, 11 May 1995).
It suffices in this introductory chapter to highlight the irreducible uncertainty
about what lies ahead over the next two or three decades. On the one hand, while
there is at present ample grain available in global food markets to feed the world’s
present population, many millions continue to go to bed hungry. This has to do
with the fact that surplus production is not directly related to the relief of chronic
hunger. Many of those who are hungry have neither the means to produce suffi-
cient to feed themselves, nor the money to buy it. The issues of inequity and dis-
tribution are likely to remain present into the foreseeable future, at any level of
grain production, or population growth or environmental change.
On the other hand, although present estimates of production potential indicate
adequate capacity to meet the food needs in aggregate of up to twice as many people
as are alive today, such estimates are by their very nature conditional, and hedged
around by assumptions about what might happen in other sectors. For example,
estimates of the future adequacy of water supplies to agriculture are dependent on
considerations such as demands for water from industrial, recreational and domestic