Feeding 9 billion: A question of Technology Justice? View from Practical Action

A food crisis in the making
Despite one of the wettest years on record in the UK, droughts rather than floods were the prevalent feature of 2012 for some of the world’s major grain producing nations such as Russia and America, raising fears that there may be another global food crisis in 2013. The Telegraph reports that wheat and maize prices are close to or above the peaks of 2011, while corn and soya bean prices have recently hit new record highs#. In response the UK government's Chief Scientist Sir John Beddington has warned us once more that we face a long term global threat of food insecurity with 9 billion people to feed by 2050 and climate change likely to put a severe strain on food production systems#.

Although it is debatable how much current world prices are influenced by real shortages and how much by commodity speculation, there does seem to be general agreement that our food production system will have to change in the future if it’s to meet the twin challenges of population growth and climate change. Where there is less agreement however is what that change should be with, in broad terms, one camp arguing for a second green revolution based on the latest science can offer, whilst the other argues for a shift to a system of farming that works more with nature rather than trying to fight against it. A lot of this is, in essence, a debate about the efficacy of different production technologies (industrial intensification vs. agro-ecological approaches) as if this was the only variable that mattered. In reality the technological choices we make as a society have fundamental and far-reaching consequences.  As such, the debate needs to be reframed, I believe, in terms of justice, or rather technology justice.  A principle of Technology Justice would assert that:

Everyone should have the right to access the technologies they need to live the lives they value, provided this does not prevent others from doing the same now, or in the future.

Technology Justice and food production
Applying the principle of technology justice to the current debate around technology and food production systems would be a way of better understanding the wider consequences of the choices in front of us. It certainly prompts a different set of questions, one of which being: ‘how universal has the access to the benefits of 'modern' technology in agriculture been in the last 50 years?’ Since 1961, in the time it has taken for the world’s population to double, cereal production volumes have tripled and consumers in the developed world have seen the proportion of their household budget spent on food decline dramatically. Yet the Green Revolution has passed the majority of the world’s farmers by and we now face record numbers of hungry people. It’s no coincidence that three quarters of the one billion malnourished people in the world today live in rural communities# where agriculture provides a livelihood for nearly ninety per cent of the population.#

The mixed impacts of the Green Revolution reflect differing abilities to access and apply its new technologies. Income disparities have grown between those farming the best soils and able to invest in and benefit from the entire package of (often subsidised) irrigation, hybrid seed and agro chemical technologies, and those in rain fed (rather than irrigable) regions, or those working the most marginal soils, or those without access to credit to buy inputs (frequently women).

The number of farmers that fall on the wrong side of this divide is actually is very large. Globally, food provision is dominated by small-scale providers. An estimated seventy per cent of the world’s population, or nearly 4.7 billion people, are fed with food provided locally, mostly by small-scale farming, fishing or herding#. Eighty five per cent of the world’s farms are holdings of less than 2 hectares, worked by families. Frequently quoted figures place the number of small-scale farmers at 1.5 billion people. The importance of small-scale agriculture in securing the world’s food is therefore clear and has been frequently acknowledged. But it is often these small scale farmers who have not been able to invest in the new technologies and who are left attempting to produce enough food for themselves and for local markets in conditions that are harsh, with little or no external support.

Another technology justice inspired question therefore would be: what is research and innovation in agriculture doing today for these farmers, who feed nearly three quarters of the world's population? The answer to that question has to be "not enough". The FAO# reported in 2009 that just five countries (US, Japan, China, India and Brazil) accounted for 48% of $23 billion global annual public investment in agricultural R&D, whilst 80 of the lowest income countries consumed only 6% between them. In the case of the $16 billion global annual private sector investment in agriculture R&D, the FAO reports even less spent on research likely to impact on the poor, with just 2% of spend being in the developing world.
An alternative approach
So what would the application of the principle of Technology Justice to the debate around future technology choice for food production tell us?

Well, the first part of the principle is that ‘everyone should have access to the technologies they need to live the life they value’. By this measure the green revolution and the industrialisation of agriculture have fallen far short of the mark of achieving justice, with the benefits of technological innovation disproportionately accruing to larger scale commercial farming. We need to learn from this. In particular we need to re-examine a system which relies primarily on commercial incentives to drive the innovation and dissemination of technology. For low income marginal farmers many of the potential future improvements to productivity may come from better soil fertility and water management techniques and from the diversification and local production of seed and livestock for example, technical knowledge which may be difficult or undesirable to commodify and which will require different incentives to drive innovation and dissemination in.
The principle of Technology Justice however is not just that everyone should have access to the technologies they need to live the life they value, but that they should have that access in a way that does not prevent others now or in the future from doing the same.  But there are real concerns that current industrial agricultural practices are unsustainable and thus undermine the food security of future generations.  As the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) puts it: with 1.9 billion hectares of land suffering significant degradation, 1.6 billion people living in water scare basins, widespread salinization of soils from poor irrigation practices and with pesticides and fertilisers polluting groundwater and impacting on the biodiversity of rivers and coastal zones, the often unforeseen consequences of an exclusive focus on yields and productivity have undermined the very resources on which food production depends#:
The application of the principle of technology justice reveals a picture is of a global food system is that is not just unequal but also unsustainable, incapable of feeding the world today and undermining our ability to feed 9 billion people in 2050. Any discussion on the relative merits of different technological approaches to agriculture in the future has to address both issues.