Source: Bray, Francesca. 1994. Agriculture for developing nations. Sci. Am. 271(1):30-37.

This article argues that the capital-intensive, mechanized model of Western agriculture does not fulfill the economic and social needs of the developing world. Bray describes the historical experience from which the West's image of normal agriculture is derived, and through the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, how those Western models had negative effects on the stable traditional polycultures of Eastern Asia. Bray defines sustainability as more than the ecological stability of farming methods, stating that it must also create employment, be flexible and diversified, yield subsistence and market surpluses, and sustain a rural exchange of goods and services. She first argues that the West's view of proper agricultural processes is not inevitable but a result of conditions predicated in the historical development of dry-grain farming systems. These systems, developed in Medieval Europe and expanded in the grainbelt of the New World, favored large, centrally managed units of production, mechanized power, and chemicals, in order to compensate for labor shortages. With these ideas, the Green Revolution created technological packages centered on high-yielding hybrid monocultures requiring expensive inputs often unavailable in the Third World. Bray contends that instead of generating rural prosperity through the production of surpluses, the Green Revolution resulted in the vulnerability of crops to pests, rise in unemployment, reduction in variability of local diets, environmental degradation, and economic polarization. Bray goes on to describe the social structure and sustainable advantages of Eastern Asia's traditional farming systems. In China, where few economies of scale existed, small holdings predominated, and intensified cropping patterns sustained a diversified rural economy that could support a large population. Wet rice cultivation possesses an enormous capacity for expanding land use. The benefits of the dynamics of this system include: (1) naturally occurring nitrogen fixing organisms in water that can serve as fertilizer, (2) fish and ducks that provide protein supplement in local diets, (3) narrow bunds (dikes) that can serve as vegetable gardens, (4) broader bunds that grow mulberries to feed silkworms, and finally, (5) rice paddies that can be drained and also grow barley, vegetables, sugarcane, or tobacco. Rice paddies gain fertility over the years because the top few inches of the soil gradually turn to a fine, gray, low acid mud, which improves soil quality. With the mechanical takeover of rice cultivation, fuel energy inputs amount to three times the food energy outputs of rice. The author concludes that intensive polyculture, precisely because it does not depend on expensive inputs, can yield a livelihood for poorer farmers, offer widespread access to land, and generate employment opportunities. Bray's studies in rural China can be further explored in her book, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies.

Abstract author: Vanessa P. Gray, 30 October 1996.

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