6 Agriculture and the Environment
and why continued pesticide applications have not resulted in cheap and effective
pest control. Pesticides may kill pests in the short term, but they also eliminate
natural enemies that exert good ecological control over pests. The idea behind
IPM is to put technologies into the hands of farmers and communities, so that
they learn to farm with low to zero use of pesticides, yet also do not suffer pest
losses. Many tens of thousands of farmer field schools have been held throughout
Asia, and these have been highly effective at increasing farmers’ own capabilities
and knowledge for ecological management of rice fields. Many countries are now
reporting large reductions in pesticide use. In Vietnam, two million farmers have
cut pesticide usage from more than three sprays to one per season; in Sri Lanka,
55,000 farmers have reduced usage from three to a half per season; and in Indone-
sia, one million farmers have cut usage from three sprays to one per season. In no
case has reduced pesticide use led to lower rice yields. Amongst these are reports
that many farmers are now able to grow rice entirely without pesticides: a quarter
of field school trained farmers in Indonesia, a fifth to a third in the Mekong Delta
of Vietnam, and three-quarters in parts of the Philippines.
In the final article, Dana Jackson of the Land Stewardship Project describes the
way that farms can be developed as part of natural habitats. As she says, ‘it’s hard
to imagine what it must have looked like when Europeans first settled the mid-
west, when it was a wilderness with prairie, forest, clean streams and herds of buf-
falo. Too quickly it became dominated by agriculture.’ The remaining wildlands
are preserved and protected in parks and reserves, but that leaves the great majority
of land directly shaped by the business of food production. Jackson introduces an
alternative vision for this agriculture that is inspired by Aldo Leopold, and which
indicates that farming and natural areas should be interspersed, not separated.
There are many benefits of thinking differently – the benefits of biodiversity for
farming itself, and the effects of more sustainable farming on biodiversity. We
must teach, as Jackson says, that ‘the land is one organism’.
Part 3: Communities and Social Capital
In the first article, Mary Mellor sets out the case for a deep materialist perspective
on feminism and environmental ethics. Unlike some other writers, she does not
claim that women have a superior vision, or higher moral authority, but indicates
that an ethics that does not take account of the gendered nature of society is
doomed to failure, as it will not confront the structure of society and how that
structure impacts on the material relationship between humanity and nature. Mel-
lor helpfully summarizes a number of traditions, from feminism and environmen-
tal ethics, to eco-feminism, materialist feminism, mediation in human–nature
relations, deep materialism, ecological holism, and immanent realism. She argues
‘that the politics of human–nature relations is critical. There is no natural balance
in nature, and so any form of sustainable connectedness would need to be created