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Rice harvest at Santo Antonio, Pará, Brazil |
Brazil provides a good example of the
impact of the Green Revolution. Since the 1970s, it has been promoted in every
policy measure of Brazilian agriculture. Cheap and subsidised credit was offered
to farmers so that they could start implementing the 'miraculous package'
composed of high yield varieties, chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which
promised large harvests. At the same time a strong system of agricultural rural
extension was created in order to guarantee the research and development
potential of the modern technologies. In an economical and political context,
the aim was for a positive balance of trade, where resources as a whole were
directed towards a few export crops which, in turn, promoted the expansion
of monocultures.
Nearly three decades later, Brazil runs the risk of ending
the millennium with appalling social deprivation, where hunger is one of the
main problems. A 'Hunger Map', based on the 1990 census data, shows that 32
million Brazilians live in extreme poverty, deprived of the minimum daily
calorie intake. Paradoxically, while only 26% of the Brazilian population live
in rural areas, 50.7% of these face starvation, in spite of living so close to
the land that could be producing their food. In light of these facts, two
important questions arise:
How can a country that is rich in natural resources with large agricultural areas not have the facility to feed its own people?
Where does the modern agricultural
process fail in a country that is supposed to be so fertile?
The challenge of food security goes way
beyond the specific technologies used in agriculture, and are related more to
distribution rather than food production problems. These technologies form a
substantial part of the accepted development model, and require a more detailed
analysis of their impact and trends.
Brazil, the Green Revolution and hunger
The essence of the Green Revolution is its dependence
on the agrochemical industry, which imposes standard solutions to distinctive
environmental, economical, cultural and social situations. Thus, its first big
impact is on diversity, with which it is incompatible. High input agriculture
has significantly contributed to diminishing biodiversity and has had a negative
impact on social and economic factors.
In the Brazilian case, modern agriculture has extremely
simplified production systems. Some areas that once had very diversified
cultivation systems, have been completely transformed-large areas are covered
with only one type of crop. Examples of this are the extensive areas of soybean
in the south and central-western regions of the country and sugarcane in the
south-eastern region.
Agrochemical inputs
Chemical pesticides and fertilisers have affected the
diversity of micro-organisms and mesofauna of the soils where they were applied,
weakening and diminishing their productivity. This has also caused a strong
imbalance among the natural vegetation in the agricultural regions, favouring
the predomination of only a few species, which have become weeds and competitors
of the main crops. This is one reason for the massive use of herbicides in
Brazil. During the 1995 season, sales of US$860 million accounted for 54% of
pesticides used. At the same time, there are frequent anecdotal stories from
farmers that weeds are no longer being killed by herbicides to the same extent.
Some weeds have developed resistance, as has happened to insects, and require an
increase in the number of applications to be effective.
Lack of genetic diversity in commercial
crops
Finally, there is the genetic uniformity in the
commercial crop hybrids which have been spawned by the Green Revolution. The
lack of inherent diversity in these varieties means they are, for example, not
stress-tolerant in conditions that are very common in tropical countries such as
Brazil. In order to achieve high productivity, they require high doses of
chemical fertilisation which provides nutritional imbalance in the plant, making
it more vulnerable to attacks of pests and diseases. Because they are cultivated
in a much less diverse system where there are no predator insects, the use of
fertilisers and pesticides is inevitable, making the diversity of the system
even poorer. And so the circle of modern agriculture is complete, totally
dependent on external inputs.
Bean production down
One of Brazil's staples, beans, illustrates the
situation. They are produced mainly by small-scale farmers, accounting for 70%
of the country's bean output. In 1970 the average productivity was 635kg/ha,
by 1990 it had dropped to 426kg/ha, with the average over the period being
500kg. The technological change did not increase production and the costs that
followed rise at every harvest. The commercial varieties used do not have
persistent hardiness against the large number of diseases that attack the crop,
which again requires large doses of pesticides to be used. The process of
genetic erosion diminishes local varieties which forces farmers, including
subsistence farmers, to rely on commercial varieties.
Impacts on small-scale farming
This biological failure of modern agriculture
inevitably brings serious social consequences. Small-scale farmers are most
affected since they depend exclusively on agricultural activity in order to
guarantee their families' survival. The dimension of the problem is clear as
83.5% of the existing rural properties in Brazil, which are responsible for the
majority of the agricultural production, are based on family farms.
The uniformity of systems generated by the Green Revolution
did not increase production significantly and it did not increase the farmers'
income. It has disrupted the family economy, exposing small-scale farmers to
market changes and to harvest frustrations. The invasion of cash crops in
subsistence areas has diminished and in many cases it has nearly eliminated
subsistence production. As women have a special role in the subsistence
production, this disruption strongly affects them.
With the increase in the cost of credit in the 1980's, the
small-scale farmers who had adopted the modern package could no longer sustain
the artificial nature of this production system, especially with the
environmental damage caused. Having difficulty maintaining established
productivity levels, thousands of families had to hand over their land to banks
in order to pay their agricultural credit debts, becoming landless or migrating
to urban centres.
In the twenty years from 1970 to 1990, the rural population
in Brazil decreased from 44% to only 26%, reinforcing the concentration of the
country's agrarian structure.
The Green Revolution has not solved the problem it was
intended to address. On the contrary, it has played a significant part in a
development model which has helped to generate hunger, poverty and social and
environmental disruption.
This process was not uniform throughout the country, nor did
it affect all small-scale farmers with the same intensity. Farmers who were not
'modernised' also had their share of suffering. Not being integrated into the
model, they were totally excluded from agricultural policies and had no access
to the benefits that could help their activities. Therefore, all small scale
Brazilian farmers were affected by the process of agricultural modernisation, by
adoption or by exclusion.
Biodiversity-essential to sustainable
agriculture
The emergence in the 1990s of the concept of
sustainability, widely incorporated by most sectors is intended to remedy the
environmental impact caused by the Green Revolution and its inability to solve
the problems of hunger. UNCED encourages countries to search for sustainable
developing models, paying particular attention to the use and conservation of
biodiversity. FAO's IV Technical Conference held in Leipzig in June 1996
called attention to the problems of genetic resources and their importance in
order to guarantee present and future food security.
If, on one hand, at the global level, there is greater
emphasis on the environmental question, on the other hand this decade is also
characterised by the increase in market disputes. The best example of this
includes the questions of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in distinct forums
such as the GATT and UNCED. Biotechnology research is expensive, but offers high
potential rewards and companies have argued successfully for IPRs to protect
their interests. IPRs are longer in the exclusive domain of the industrial
sector, but are now applied to agriculture and other activities involving the
economic exploitation of life forms.
The premise of Intellectual Property is to favour monopolies
and to restrict the free use of protected products and processes. Therefore when
it is applied to life forms, be it through patents or Plant Breeders' Rights,
it acts as a strong legal instrument for restricting diversity.
Legislation aids uniformity
These global contradictions are expressed
domestically. Since 1990 pressure has grown on Brazil to establish intellectual
property systems that extend to life forms. Between 1991 and 1996, a bill went
through the Brazilian Congress to modify the Patents Law. In spite of objections
from many sectors of society, the President signed the law in May 1996, in very
unfavourable conditions for Brazil. These go far beyond those demanded by GATT.
The law made many concessions to the US. In terms of life forms, the new
Brazilian law envisages the possibility of patenting micro-organisms.
In addition to this legislation, in January 1996 the
government sent to Congress a bill for Plant Breeders' Rights in the same
terms as UPOV 91 [the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants,
UPOV, comprises 19 countries, all from the North], even though Brazil is not a
member of this group. In terms of the protected varieties, the law states that
traditional practices of farmers such as communal production of seeds and
exchange among neighbours is illegal. Farmers are prevented from producing
their own seeds for species that reproduce asexually (potatoes, mandioca,
sugarcane), when they are destined for commercial farms. In order to be
registered, a variety has to comply with uniformity criteria, stability and
little genetic variability.
With such a law, how can the impact of the Green
Revolution on biodiversity be reversed? Can Brazil review its agricultural
model? These questions worry all social sectors, and many are trying to
establish their own guidelines, in spite of government indifference.
All over the country, even before 'sustainable agriculture'
became a fashionable phrase, several small farmers organisations and
non-governmental organisations, with individual support from some technicians in
government offices, had been developing a series of projects that aimed to show
it is possible to establish other forms of economically sound agriculture. These
forms were adjusted to meet the country's cultural and environmental diversity
and agricultural efficiency.
Legislation such as the Plant Breeders' Rights that the
Brazilian government intends to endorse, goes against attempts to establish a
sustainable development model in the country aimed to address the problem of
hunger. They reinforce all the grim points of the Green Revolution that
decimated agricultural diversity and excluded thousands of family farms from the
development process.
Conclusion
On the eve of the World Food Summit, where governments
are going to meet once more to discuss ways of overcoming the shameful causes of
hunger throughout the world, it is necessary to face the contradictions where by
the local development processes is subordinate to the logic of the international
market, based on intellectual property laws that are disrupting local food
security capacities in developing countries.
Guidelines and goals are needed in order to reverse the
developments of the last thirty years. Sustainability has to be effectively
incorporated as a criterion for developing plans, and there has to be respect
for diversity as a basic principle.
Angela Cordeiro is an agronomist and co-ordinator
of the Genetic Resources Program for AS-PTA (Consultants and Services to
Alternative Agriculture Projects), a Brazilian non-governmental organisation
that develops projects for rural development within the small farmers community.
AS-PTA, Rua da Candelaria, 9-6o. andar, Rio de Janeiro, RJ BRAZIL, Tel.
+5521 2538317, fax +5521 2338363, e-mail aspta@ax.apc.org
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 33 as part of
the Focus on Food supplement, September 1996,
page 18-19]