There are major problems with how we produce and consume food today – the process is excessively extractive, without the intention to replenish what it takes from the environment. Food is not enough for everyone all the time; certain areas produce more food than others and there are challenges in moving it across space and time. The food value chain can also be incredibly wasteful – of energy, water and other resources during production, transportation, retail and the consumer level.
The source of these problems: food production and consumption are far removed from the environmental and social systems and structures that support it; food minus its system.
Traditional Food Systems
Traditionally, food systems were tied to environmental systems and social structures, at least in African traditional societies. Cultivation was only one, and a minor way of obtaining food. Hunting and livestock keeping provided blood, milk and meat, gathering supplemented vegetables, wild fruits and nuts. When the immediate environment was exhausted, people would move to new areas leaving the area to regenerate.
This diversity in food sources and a close relationship with space and environment bolstered food security. Where these strategies would fail like in times of war, drought or locust invasions, social systems would step in – for example, trade with neighbouring communities and extended families who would offer support or temporary refuge. These complex relationships between food, environment and society did not survive the colonial era period.
The Green Revolution
As recent as the 1950s, much of the world, including the high-income world, experienced famine regularly. The Green Revolution in the 1950s-60s exponentially increased food production by the use of hybrid seeds and several World War 2 inventions such as pesticides and fertilizers.
Pesticides such as DDT cleared large swaths of land by killing insects and wildlife enmass while herbicides such as 2, 4-D defoliated entire regions converting them into farmlands. Fertilizers boosted nitrogen in the soil allowing for crops to grow bigger and faster, a salve for depleted soils in amounts that Peruvian bird guano could not match. Hybrid seeds were designed to produce high-yielding crops, with larger and uniform fruits or grains than what traditional seeds could ever achieve.
But the Green Revolution techniques were only a quick fix – resolving visible problems without addressing the root causes. Artificially supplementing macro-nutrients using fertilizers is a quick fix. It is preferable when you have no room or time for the nutrient recycling cycles that replenish these nutrients into the soil naturally, but not as a permanent long-term solution.
Pesticides, to a large extent, helped with many of the pests and diseases affecting crops, helping increase yields exponentially but at a great cost to both human and environmental health. Rather than a cautious, phased approach to their use, we went all in; introducing even more toxic pest management products without concern for how they would interact with us or the environment according to a recent Route to Food report. What should be a last resort measure became a first-line treatment course for all pest problems. That is the problem with quick fixes that become permanent long-term solutions.
There is much debate about how useful the Green Revolution was, which is misguided. In my opinion, it was a useful quick fix, appropriate for its era. The Green Revolution did what it was supposed to do at the time it was required, but the techniques it introduced should never have been our long-term solutions to the food problems we face. Production at whatever human or environmental cost, and disintegrating the systems that produce/consume it only cause disaster.
Africa needs an agricultural revolution all right, but it would be a mistake to replicate Asia’s Green Revolution. Our geography, social, political and economic structures are quite different, even from those of 1960s Asia.
A starting point for the way forward is re-integrating the environment and the social systems and structures back into the food production and consumption chain. Food cannot be removed from the social, environmental, economic, political and cultural contexts in which it is produced and consumed.
Agroecology – a principle, not a set of rules
Our modern-day food value chains reduce food production to the acts of planting, harvesting and transporting to the consumer, excluding important ecosystem actors and players. These include soil health and nutrients profile, pollinators, and other insects and birds, the farmers who own the farms, the labourers, the neighbouring residents who interact with the farm and its outputs, the dealers, wholesalers and retailers, the consumers who buy the produce, up to the waste collectors.
Re-integrating environmental systems and structures looks like cultivating diversity through measures such as intercropping, agroforestry and mixed farm systems. It is sensitive to the needs of an ecological zone through the types of agriculture practiced in the area.
Re-integrating social systems and structures looks like constructing better linkages between farmers and consumers and championing diversity in consumption. Consumers who have a wider food selection translate to farms that cultivate and produce diverse. Consumers drive the demand, and if they are asking for particular products, the farms adapt to produce them.
Understanding the Kenyan Context
Agroecology is context–specific, part of the reason it is widely misunderstood. It is not a one-fit-all formula but is customized to an area or group of people, depending on various political, economic, social, environmental and cultural factors. Agroecology and its principles will look different in different areas, and this is why we must research and understand each area and how the various context factors interlink.
Generally speaking, Kenyan small-scale holders practice Agroecology to different degrees. Many rural farms implement practices such as agroforestry and mixed farm systems. However, there is an opportunity to expand, boost efficiency and production, and reduce wastage and aggregate better while ensuring profitability and better livelihoods for the farmers.
Risk is a contributing factor to unsustainable farming practices – you have leased land or taken a loan to cultivate a crop and there is pressure to turn a profit. Drought and rainfall failures and extreme weather also worsen the risks. Mitigating some of these risks can be part of the economic and social factors that shape Agroecology principles in our context.
As part of our political context, there is an opportunity for governance mechanisms including policies and legislation on issues such as land tenure, cheap loans for farmers and consumer advocacy to strengthen their role in the food system.
Although the above is an overview of what the Kenyan context would look like, the practice of Agroecology would still look different across different regions in the country depending on their ecological and social characteristics. And this is the entire point. Do you see how naïve it would be to assume that every region in the world can produce food the same exact way?
By examining farming as an ecosystem with different actors and parties spanning various political, social, economic and environmental niches, there is a chance to re-integrate food production and consumption within its relevant systems.
A Spectrum of Solutions
A common criticism of Agroecology is whether it can produce enough food, in the quantities needed to feed an ever-expanding population. There are valid questions of producing at scale, on smaller land, with fewer farmers and at a cheaper cost and what the changing geopolitical order will mean for food production and trade. Thus, solutions might look different across time and space, and we might need to adapt as we go.
What is clear is there will not be one golden solution, a silver bullet, to all the problems we have. We will need to pick up a set of solutions, each appropriate for its space and time and make trade-offs here and there. If we are to look at these solutions as a spectrum or a number line, Agroecology is at the lower end of the line, the foundation, before we attempt more extreme measures, as time and space demand.
Agroecology is a principle, not a rule; a guide or threshold to strive for as we redesign our food systems. And if there is a rule, it is: do not take food out of the system that produces and consumes it.