VIEWPOINT
Peter Baker
Reforming the economics of food production and supply would be beneficial for a number of environmental and social problems, argues Peter Baker. A key issue, he says, is understanding the energy involved in putting food on your plate.
Global development, global debt, global warming, food miles, food security, food riots, peak oil, peak water…
What's this got to do with small farmers and global food chains?
The answer is that all the issues mentioned above intersect over small farmers.
If we can't quite get a grip on what is happening to the world, we won't be able to do a good job for them, and we'll waste a lot of resources in the process.
It's perfectly reasonable to want to assist farmers to build a better life by adding value.
It's also perfectly reasonable to expect their produce to be fresh and non-toxic. And it's only natural to want to facilitate this process through aid, technical assistance, capacity building and the like.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maintaining order
I had originally planned to call this article Supermarkets, Smallholders and the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law is about order; the Universe is inexorably heading to increased randomness and disorder.
For practical purposes, this does not have to be a problem because we can increase order locally by hard work, by expending energy. But in the process we create greater disorder (heat and waste) elsewhere.
If there is plenty of energy and plenty of "elsewhere", then we don't have to worry.
Indeed, for our whole existence, we largely haven't worried; in fact the whole world order, built on trade and economics, hasn't worried.
Biological systems know all about thermodynamics. All living things are highly ordered assemblies of molecules continuously battling against disorder.
Commodity chains must also obey the Second Law; in a sense, they are living things, creating highly ordered products and emitting significant waste and heat in the process.
For example, a recent study looking at Nicaraguan coffee production and processing showed that the total energy embodied in coffee exported to several countries - though not all - was not compensated by the dollar price paid for that energy.
Essentially, the conclusion was that the country is exporting subsidised energy.
It could well be that coffee is still the best way for farmers to earn a living and that the available energy could not readily be put to a better purpose. But it should at least make a country's decision-makers wonder about the long term policy, the true value of exported products and how sustainable a country's commodity chains will be in an energetically expensive future.
Look too at a modern high value vegetable chain. The orderliness required to plant, grow, harvest, process, pack, store, monitor, administer, transport, display and sell the produce in a supermarket is simply staggering, and the expended energy intense.
As an example, tomato production in the US consumes four times as many calories as the calorific value of the tomatoes created.
The point of this article may now be apparent. We are intervening, politically and normatively, in very complex systems that we only partially understand.
Waste of energy
This is not a tirade about supermarkets; no one is forcing farmers into these chains. Indeed, the retail sector has only done its job: ordering and quantifying according to its own criteria, to a state of near optimal efficiency.
It's just that the rest of us have not been able to match its brilliance.
And it's not about food miles. The argument about the cost to the environment versus the gains to poor rural farmers has its pros and cons.
Instead, it's about different sorts of sustainability and the clash of very different interests.
The economic argument, revealed through agribusiness plans, may well be very strong. But these are inevitably rather short-term positions, and the funds invested may be hedged for exchange rate changes, freight costs and other risks.
When these are just stand-alone business operations then we could leave it at that - they invest their money and take their chances.
But it's no longer a matter of a few agribusiness operations in a few developing countries. With the EU's Economic Partnership Agreements now being signed, for instance, countries in the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group are on course to completely open their borders to food trade, and will be encouraged to export whatever products they can to the EU.
Foreign investment will descend on certain countries and will look for good deals on infrastructure. Politicians there may feel obliged to provide subsidised water, road and other infrastructure to secure new export initiatives, and they in turn will look for donor support to carry them through.
Trade departments of development banks and other donors will examine the short-to-medium-term economic argument, but may not adequately determine whether this is sustainable into the long term.
Hence, before significant public funds are assigned to this end, we must do our utmost to ensure they are well spent.
Thinking locally
Getting back to the Second Law; agribusiness operations in under-developed countries are highly ordered physical and information entities producing products with high embodied energy.
They exist in a landscape of increasing disorder caused by growing populations and a degrading environment.
Trucks carrying away the produce along bumpy rural roads sometimes pass food aid trucks coming in the opposite direction. For example, some $45m (£22.5m) of food aid came from the US to Kenya last year.
Even before its sea voyage, the calorific value of US wheat is only twice the amount of calories expended to produce it. Compare this with cassava production in Tanzania where 23 times the calorific value is gained for each calorie of human energy input.
Is it energetically sound, socially advisable and economically sensible in the long term to encourage and sustain such long two-way supply chains that evolved in a low-cost energy era?
CARE International has recently declined the food aid it gets for Kenya, suggesting that it is distorting local agriculture. Are they right? How can they and donors make the right decisions?
Could it be more sustainable and cost effective for donors to pay farmers a "fair" price to develop food production for local markets - based on costs of fuel, importing food, the risk of the supply chain collapsing or moving to another country, and so on?
There are many possibilities and a large number of variables, but the most important is to find out how close to the margins of impossibility any business plan might approach.
Surely at some point, let's say between $50 and $500 per barrel of oil, it no longer makes any sense to simultaneously export and import food high in embodied energy.
But we simply lack the user-friendly models and metrics that decision-makers need to calculate such figures and project them into the future.
So private standards are fine; but there should be public standards too, or at least a set of criteria based on the most fundamental laws of physics and biology, before significant public funds are spent.
Dr Peter Baker is a commodities development specialist at CABI, a not-for-profit agricultural research organisation.
lunes, 11 de agosto de 2008
martes, 5 de agosto de 2008
Primates 'face extinction crisis' / Primates 'ante crisis de extinción'
Primates 'face extinction crisis'
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News
A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests.
More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered, it adds.
The findings form part of the most detailed survey of the Earth's mammals, which will be published in October.
Other threats include hunting of primates for food and the illegal wildlife trade, explained Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and president of Conservation International.
"In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction," he warned.
"Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact."
The survey, involving hundreds of experts, showed that out of 634 recognised species and subspecies, 11% were Critically Endangered, 22% were Endangered, while a further 15% were listed as Vulnerable.
Asia had the greatest proportion of threatened primates, with 71% considered at risk of extinction. The five nations with the highest percentage of endangered species were all within Asia.
'Depressing' picture
"It is quite spectacular; we are just wiping out primates," said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme.
He added that the data was probably the worst assessment for any group of species on record.
"The problem with these species is that they have long lives, so it takes time to reverse the decline. It is quite depressing."
Although habitat loss and deforestation were deemed to be the main threats globally, Dr Vie explained how human encroachment into forests was also creating favourable conditions for hunters.
"This creates access, allowing people to go to places that they could not go in the past," he told BBC News.
"Primates are relatively easy to hunt because they are diurnal, live in groups and are noisy - they are really easy targets.
"Many of the Asian primates, like langurs, are 5-10kg, so they are a good target. Generally, you find that what is big and easy to get disappears very quickly."
In Africa, 11 of the 13 kinds of red colobus monkeys assessed were listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered.
Conservationists fear that two may already be extinct. The Bouvier's red colobus has not been seen for 25 years, and no living Miss Waldron red colobus has been recorded since 1978.
The authors of the primate Red List did consider downlisting mountain gorillas to Endangered from Critically Endangered because the great apes had recorded a population increase.
But they decided to delay reclassification as a result of five of the gorillas being killed in July 2007 by gunmen in the DR Congo's Virunga National Park, which is still at the centre of a conflict between rebel forces and government troops.
During 2007, wildlife rangers in the park recorded a total of 10 gorilla killings. The rangers have been documenting their struggles in a regular diary on the BBC News website over the past year.
"If you kill seven, 10 or 20 mountain gorillas, it has a devastating impact on the entire population," Dr Vie explained.
"Within the Red List criteria, you are allowed to anticipate what will happen in the future as well as look at what has happened in the past.
"So it was decided not to change the mountain gorillas' listing because of the sudden deaths, and we do not know when it is going to stop."
Golden glimmer of hope
Despite the gloomy outlook, the Red List did record a number of conservation successes.
Brazil's populations of golden lion tamarins and black lion tamarins were downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered.
"It is the result of decades of effort," said Dr Vie. "The lion tamarins were almost extinct in the wild, but they were very popular in zoos so there was a large captive population.
"So zoos around the world decided to join forces to introduce a captive breeding programme to reintroduce the tamarins in Brazil."
However the first attempts were not successful and the released population quickly crashed because the animals were ill-prepared for life in the wild, he recalled.
"They were not exposed to eagles or snakes and they did not know how to find food, so a lot of them died. But some did survive and, slowly, the numbers began to increase."
Ultimately, the success was a combination of ex-situ conservation in zoos and in-situ conservation by protecting and reforesting small areas around Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
"It took time, money and effort at all levels, from the politicians to scientists and volunteers on the ground, for just two species."
The findings, issued at the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, will be included in a survey described as an "unprecedented examination of the state of the world's mammals", which will be presented at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in October.
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News
A global review of the world's primates says 48% of species face extinction, an outlook described as "depressing" by conservationists.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species says the main threat is habitat loss, primarily through the burning and clearing of tropical forests.
More than 70% of primates in Asia are now listed as Endangered, it adds.
The findings form part of the most detailed survey of the Earth's mammals, which will be published in October.
Other threats include hunting of primates for food and the illegal wildlife trade, explained Russell Mittermeier, chairman of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group and president of Conservation International.
"In many places, primates are quite literally being eaten to extinction," he warned.
"Tropical forest destruction has always been the main cause, but now it appears that hunting is just as serious a threat in some areas, even where the habitat is still quite intact."
The survey, involving hundreds of experts, showed that out of 634 recognised species and subspecies, 11% were Critically Endangered, 22% were Endangered, while a further 15% were listed as Vulnerable.
Asia had the greatest proportion of threatened primates, with 71% considered at risk of extinction. The five nations with the highest percentage of endangered species were all within Asia.
'Depressing' picture
"It is quite spectacular; we are just wiping out primates," said Jean-Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN Species Programme.
He added that the data was probably the worst assessment for any group of species on record.
"The problem with these species is that they have long lives, so it takes time to reverse the decline. It is quite depressing."
Although habitat loss and deforestation were deemed to be the main threats globally, Dr Vie explained how human encroachment into forests was also creating favourable conditions for hunters.
"This creates access, allowing people to go to places that they could not go in the past," he told BBC News.
"Primates are relatively easy to hunt because they are diurnal, live in groups and are noisy - they are really easy targets.
"Many of the Asian primates, like langurs, are 5-10kg, so they are a good target. Generally, you find that what is big and easy to get disappears very quickly."
In Africa, 11 of the 13 kinds of red colobus monkeys assessed were listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered.
Conservationists fear that two may already be extinct. The Bouvier's red colobus has not been seen for 25 years, and no living Miss Waldron red colobus has been recorded since 1978.
The authors of the primate Red List did consider downlisting mountain gorillas to Endangered from Critically Endangered because the great apes had recorded a population increase.
But they decided to delay reclassification as a result of five of the gorillas being killed in July 2007 by gunmen in the DR Congo's Virunga National Park, which is still at the centre of a conflict between rebel forces and government troops.
During 2007, wildlife rangers in the park recorded a total of 10 gorilla killings. The rangers have been documenting their struggles in a regular diary on the BBC News website over the past year.
"If you kill seven, 10 or 20 mountain gorillas, it has a devastating impact on the entire population," Dr Vie explained.
"Within the Red List criteria, you are allowed to anticipate what will happen in the future as well as look at what has happened in the past.
"So it was decided not to change the mountain gorillas' listing because of the sudden deaths, and we do not know when it is going to stop."
Golden glimmer of hope
Despite the gloomy outlook, the Red List did record a number of conservation successes.
Brazil's populations of golden lion tamarins and black lion tamarins were downlisted from Critically Endangered to Endangered.
"It is the result of decades of effort," said Dr Vie. "The lion tamarins were almost extinct in the wild, but they were very popular in zoos so there was a large captive population.
"So zoos around the world decided to join forces to introduce a captive breeding programme to reintroduce the tamarins in Brazil."
However the first attempts were not successful and the released population quickly crashed because the animals were ill-prepared for life in the wild, he recalled.
"They were not exposed to eagles or snakes and they did not know how to find food, so a lot of them died. But some did survive and, slowly, the numbers began to increase."
Ultimately, the success was a combination of ex-situ conservation in zoos and in-situ conservation by protecting and reforesting small areas around Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
"It took time, money and effort at all levels, from the politicians to scientists and volunteers on the ground, for just two species."
The findings, issued at the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland, will be included in a survey described as an "unprecedented examination of the state of the world's mammals", which will be presented at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in October.
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