@農자료창고

잔디밭에서 지렁이똥을 찾았다.

네덜란드의 튤립 밭, 그리고 스페인 코르도바의 올리브나무 밭.

▲ ‘옥수수 박사’ 김순권 한동대 석좌교수가 지난달 12일 경북 포항의 학교 소유 농장에서 요즘 연구 중인 개량 품종 옥수수를 소개하고 있다. 그는 자신의 손길을 거쳐 간 옥수수가 지난 46년 동안 수십억 자루는 족히 될 것이라고 했다.

폭염이 한창이던 지난달 12일 포항역에 내렸다. 흙먼지를 뒤집어쓴 차 한 대가 내 앞에 멈춰 섰다. “아이구, 이 더운 날에 멀리까지 오느라 고생했습니다.” 검게 그을린 얼굴에 땀에 젖은 헐렁한 셔츠, 흙투성이 등산바지가 눈에 들어왔다. ‘박사’의 차림새는 아니었다. 그는 금방 딴 것이라며 껍질을 벗겨 소매에 쓱쓱 닦더니 내 앞에 내밀었다. 날옥수수는 처음이었다. 망설이다 한입 베어 무니 웬걸, 달콤한 과즙이 입안 가득 퍼졌다. “맛있죠? 이게 과일보다 단 꿀옥수수라는 겁니다. 미국서 공부할 때 내 점심은 이 옥수수였어요. 날것 두세 자루로 배 채우고 밭에서 18시간씩 일했죠.” 옥수수에 미친 사내, 김순권(71)의 이야기는 그렇게 시작됐다. 

-“학교는 뭐 할라 가노? 내 따라 댕기면서 농사랑 괴기잡이나 배아라. 어차피 장남이 집을 책임져야 안 되겠나.” 아버지는 고등학교 입학시험에 떨어져 낙심한 나를 혹독하게 부리셨다. 새벽 5시에 일어나 소똥을 퍼서 퇴비를 만들고 밭을 갈았다. 밤에는 배를 타고 나가 멸치를 잡았다. 일이 없으면 산에 올라 나무를 했다. 하루 세 짐은 채워야 끝났다. 똥통을 지고 보리밭을 가다가 돌에 걸려 넘어져 생똥을 온몸에 뒤집어쓰기도 했다. 아버지와 함께 반듯하게 밭을 갈던 소는 내가 쟁기질을 이어받자마자 구불구불 갈지자로 걸었다. 아버지는 소 한 마리도 못 다루는 놈이 뭐가 되겠느냐며 지게 작대기로 사정없이 내리치셨다.

-나는 해방을 몇 달 앞둔 1945년 4월 5일 경남 울주군 강동면 신명리에서 막내로 태어났다. 딸 여섯을 낳고서 얻은 아들이었다. 읍내에 가려면 서너 시간은 걸어야 했던 오지였다. 아버지는 여덟 마지기 땅에 논농사를 지으셨다. 멸치잡이 배 한 척도 있었다. 못 사는 편은 아니었지만 식구가 많아 늘 배를 곯았다. 

-인생의 고비에서 나는 세 번의 시험에 낙방했다. 머리가 좋지 않았지만 노력형이어서 반에서 3~4등은 했다. 은행원을 최고의 직업이라 여기고 명문인 부산상고에 도전했지만 입학시험에서 보기 좋게 미끄러졌다. 1년 동안 아버지 밑에서 농사를 배웠다. 돌이켜보면 일종의 ‘선행학습’이었다. 이듬해 울산농고에 들어갔다. 삽질, 김매기는 내가 일등이었다. 졸업할 때 실습상을 받았는데 부상이 삽이었다. 평생 옥수수밭에서 일할 운명은 그때 결정된 게 아니었을까. 

-고등학교 2학년 때 태풍이 고향 집을 덮쳤다. 아버지가 피해 복구 과정에서 교통사고를 당하셨다. 병원비를 대려고 논을 팔았다. 셋째 누나가 암으로 세상을 떠나면서 가세가 더 기울기 시작했다. 대학 진학은 무리였다. 아버지를 대신해 돈을 벌어야 했다. 농협 입사 시험을 쳤지만 떨어지고 말았다. 내 인생의 두 번째 낙방이었다. 실의에 빠져 있는데, 경북대 농과대학에 가면 장학금을 주고 졸업 후 독일 유학도 보내준다는 말을 듣게 됐다.

-10대1의 경쟁을 뚫고 경북대 농대에 합격한 나는 공부벌레로 살았다. 강의를 듣거나 아르바이트하는 시간 외에 도서관 의자에서 엉덩이를 떼지 않았다. 가장 늦게 도서관 불을 끄고 나왔다. 한번은 도서관에서 한 여학생이 차를 마시자고 해 따라나갔다. “네? 법대생이 아니고 농대생이라고요?” 내가 공부를 너무 열심히 해 사법고시를 준비하는 걸로 알았던 그녀의 표정이 확 굳었다. 예비 판검사와 연애 한 번 해보려 했는데 번지수를 한참 잘못 짚었던 것이다. 

-대학 졸업을 앞두고 고민에 빠졌다. 씨 없는 수박을 만든 우장춘 박사처럼 육종학자가 될 것인가. 서울대 대학원에 진학해 농업경제학 교수가 될 것인가. 흙에서 뒹굴며 평생을 보내야 하는 육종학자와 세련된 매무새로 학생을 가르치는 교수 중에서 후자가 더 매력적으로 느껴졌다. 서울에서 두 달 하숙하며 대학원 시험을 준비했다. 시험을 잘 본 것 같았는데 최종 합격자 명단에 내 이름이 없었다. 화가 나서 담당 교수에게 따지러 갔다. 교수의 대답이 걸작이었다. “자네는 생김새가 촌사람이어서 경제학은 안 맞는 것 같아. 충고하는데 그대로 육종학을 하시게나.” 세 번째 낙방이었다. 

-공무원 시험을 치르고 농촌진흥청에 들어갔다. 매일 오전 5시 30분에 출근해 통행금지 예비 사이렌이 울리는 밤 11시 30분에 연구실을 나섰다. ‘제2의 우장춘’이 되겠다는 각오로 하루 18시간을 일하고 공부했다. 하지만, 배움의 허기는 가시지 않았다. 미국 유학이 가고 싶었다. 가난한 공무원에겐 자비 유학은 상상도 못할 일이었다. 국비 장학생이 되어야 했다. 서울대 문턱보다 높다는 하와이 동서문화센터(EWC)의 미국 유학 장학생 17명 중 한 명으로 선발됐다. 

-하와이대에서 옥수수 육종학을 시작했다. 미국산 옥수수는 탐날 정도로 크고 질이 좋았다. 지속적인 품종 개량의 결과다. 옥수수 연구가 한국보다 50년은 족히 앞서 있었다. 감탄과 한숨이 동시에 나왔다. ‘옥수수를 잘만 개량하면 막대한 수확량을 올려 인류의 식량 문제를 해결할 수 있다.’ 일본인 유학생들과 연구실에서 공부하다 밤이 되면 함께 기숙사로 돌아왔는데 그들이 잠들면 나는 혼자 연구실에 돌아가 2시간을 더 공부했다. 다른 학생들이 밥 먹고 하와이 날씨를 즐길 때 나는 뙤약볕 아래 실습장에서 생옥수수로 끼니를 때우며 연구를 거듭했다. 다들 ‘옥수수에 미친 남자’(crazy corn man)라고 수군거렸다.

-미국 교수들은 “옥수수 교배 올림픽이 있다면 김순권이 단연 금메달감”이라고 나를 치켜세웠다. 옥수수 교잡종을 만들려면 암수를 접붙여야 한다. 옥수숫대 위에 달린 수술에선 100만~200만개의 미세한 꽃가루가 떨어진다. 눈병이 생기기 쉬우니 자주 씻어내야 한다. 눈이 큰 미국인들은 이걸 불편해했는데, 나는 눈이 작아서 고통을 느끼지 못했다.

-3년 3개월 만에 석·박사 학위를 손에 쥐었다. 박사 과정 동안 20차례 옥수수를 재배하며 쓴 논문들을 세계농업학회지 등에 7차례 실었다. 단숨에 전 세계 옥수수 학계의 스타가 됐다. 미국의 파이어니어라는 종자회사가 농촌진흥청 월급의 20배였던 3000달러를 제의해 왔다. 하지만 나는 솔깃한 제의를 귓등으로도 듣지 않았다. 내 손으로 만들어낸 옥수수를 우리 땅에 하루라도 빨리 심고 싶었기 때문이었다. 

-1979년 강원 홍천, 평창, 영월의 시험 재배장에 ‘수원 19호’, ‘수원 20호’, ‘수원 21호’의 종자가 뿌려졌다. 얼마 후 미국에서나 볼 수 있었던 씨알 굵은 옥수수가 주렁주렁 달렸다. 대성공이었다. 그런데 암초가 등장했다. “미국과 국제기구가 자네가 개발한 ‘수원’ 시리즈는 한국 땅에서 성공할 수 없다고 했다네. 수고했지만 종자는 창고에 쌓아 두고 연구나 좀더 해 보게.” 농진청 선배의 말이었다. 옥수수 종자를 팔기 위한 미국의 로비가 뻔했다. “이 종자가 실패하면 10년 동안 감옥에 가 있겠습니다.” 나는 단호하게 말했다. 우여곡절 끝에 강원도 농가에 당초 계획의 절반인 8만t을 나눠 주기로 했다. 그런데 이번에는 농민들이 옥수수를 땅에 심으려 하지 않았다. “농사 망하면 당신이 책임질 거요?” 격한 삿대질이 돌아왔다. 농가를 일일이 찾아다니며 설득했다. 

-그해 강원도에는 바람이 심해 곳곳에서 흉작이 났는데 이게 좋은 기회가 됐다. 수원 19호는 전혀 넘어지지 않았고 전체 포기의 95%에 잘생긴 옥수수가 달렸다. 수원 품종을 심은 농민들은 수입이 전년보다 3배 이상 올랐다. 누가 이 종자를 못 심게 했느냐며 관련자가 처벌까지 받았다. ‘미국이 55년에 걸쳐 만든 옥수수 교잡종을 5년 만에 이뤄냈다.’, ‘한국 옥수수 농사의 새로운 시대가 열렸다.’ 찬사가 이어졌다. 그때부터였다. 내 이름 앞에 ‘옥수수 박사’가 붙은 것은. 

-그즈음부터 국제열대농업연구소(IITA)에서 줄기차게 나에게 팩스를 보내왔다. 비영리 농업연구센터인 IITA는 나이지리아 이바단에 1000㏊ 규모의 농장을 운영하며 아프리카 기아 해결을 연구하고 있었다. 한국형 교잡형 옥수수를 개발한 나더러 5억명 아프리카 인구의 식량문제를 해결해 달라는 게 그들의 요청이었다. 1979년 8월 이바단에 도착했다. 2년 만에 옥수수 암이라고 부르는 위축 바이러스에 강한 신품종을 개발하자 나이지리아 정부가 후원자로 나섰다. “5년간 250만 달러를 줄 테니 나이지리아에 맞는 옥수수를 개발해 달라”고 요청했다. 500개의 종자를 만들어 7개 지역 옥수수밭에서 시험 재배했다. 최종 배양된 종자는 기존 옥수수보다 수확량이 배가 많았다. 해마다 100t에 가까운 옥수수를 미국에서 수입했던 나이지리아는 생산량이 300만t 이상 늘어 옥수수 완전 자급을 이뤘다. 대통령이 내 손을 잡고 고마워했다. 

-아프리카에서 보낸 17년 동안 나는 아홉 번이나 말라리아에 걸렸다. 위험한 고열에 시달린 게 여섯 번, 죽기 직전 위급한 상황이 세 번이었다. 고열에 혼수상태를 지속하다 3일 만에 정신을 차린 적도 있었다. 그런 모습들이 현지 사람들에게 감동을 주었는지 나는 큰 업적을 남긴 사람에게 주는 명예추장에 두 번이나 추대됐다. 외국인 중에 명예추장이 된 사람은 통틀어 50명 정도밖에 없는데, 외국인으로 두 번이나 명예추장이 된 사람은 내가 처음이었다. 나는 가난한 사람들을 배불리 먹이는 사람이란 뜻의 ‘마이에군’, 아내는 황금의 어머니라는 뜻의 ‘예예니우라’로 불렸다. 나이지리아 정부는 50코보(약 50원)짜리 동전에 오동통한 옥수수 이삭을 새겨 넣었다. 내가 개발한 ‘오바슈퍼 1호’였다.

-IITA의 책임연구원으로 귀한 인재 대접을 받았다. 높은 연봉과 안정된 생활이 보장된 자리였다. 우리 연구팀이 1986년 농업부문 노벨상으로 불리는 벨기에 국제농업연구대상을 받은 뒤 몸값이 더 올라갔다. 그런데 마음 한쪽이 편치 않았다. 1994년 북한에 엄청난 수해가 닥쳤다. 어릴 적 배고픔을 겪어 본 나는 마음의 동요가 심했다. 북에 언니와 오빠를 둔 아내는 더욱 가슴 아파했다. 

-1995년 경북대에서 ‘외국 박사 모셔오기’ 프로젝트를 하면서 나에게 교수직을 제안했다. 귀국과 동시에 북한 식량 문제를 도울 방법을 연구하기 시작했다. 경북대 농대 소유의 1.7㏊(약 5000평) 규모 옥수수 농장에서 북한 토양에 적합한 슈퍼 옥수수 종자를 시험 재배하며 때를 기다렸다. 북한 당국은 공식 초청장을 5차례나 보내 나에게 방북을 요청했다. 우리 정부는 허락하지 않았다. 결국 1998년 1월 방북 승인이 떨어졌다.

-북한 현지 사정은 심각했다. 비료가 부족하고 과학 영농이 안 돼 농작물이 병충해에 약했다. 북한 농업위원회 간부들은 슈퍼 강냉이를 개발해 달라고 애원했다. 나는 ‘과학적 주체농업’을 제안했다. 협동농장 간 경쟁을 붙여 평균보다 많이 수확한 농민에게 식량 배급을 더 주자고 했다. 농사 잘 지은 협동농장에는 트랙터를 상으로 줬다. 망가진 옥수수밭을 살리기 위해 콩과 돌려짓기를 하고 대홍단(옛 개마고원) 등 고산지에는 저온작물인 감자를 심도록 했다. 이렇게 하니 평균 30% 이상 식량 증산이 이뤄졌다. 내가 개발한 수원 19호를 북한 농민은 ‘강냉이 19호’ 또는 ‘강 19호’로 불렀다. 첫 방북 이후 지금까지 59회를 북에 다녀왔다. 옥수수사업은 북의 기아 해결과 남북 화해에 중요한 역할을 했다고 생각한다. 북한은 2003년 이후에는 나의 방북을 받아들이지 않고 있다. 그 사이 중국, 몽골, 베트남, 라오스, 동티모르에 슈퍼 옥수수를 보급했다. 

-옥수수가 신기한 것은 종자 1개가 세상을 바꾸기 때문이다. 옥수수 한 알을 심으면 1200개 알갱이가 붙은 옥수수가 나온다. 내가 직접 만진 옥수수는 하루 수천개, 46년이 지났으니 줄잡아 수십억개다. 앞으로 얼마나 많은 옥수수가 내 손을 거치게 될까. 앞으로도 계속 옥수수밭에서 땀 흘려 일할 수 있기를 바랄 뿐이다.

포항 오달란 기자 dallan@seoul.co.kr

[출처: 서울신문에서 제공하는 기사입니다.] http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20160908027005#csidxe9d744837345ee9aee4aca449bd4c2a 

- 다양하고 풍부하게 지원 받는 '유럽 농촌공동체'에 답 있다

▲ 오스트리아 슈바츠 농업회의소.

임성희 녹색연합 전문위원의 조사에 따르면, 세계적인 초우량 국가 독일에서도 농민이 농사만 지어서는 먹고살기 어려운 듯하다. 일단 독일의 농림수산업 생산총액은 독일 국내총생산(GDP)의 0.8%에 불과하다. 농민은 전체 경제활동인구의 2%도 안 된다. 28만여 전체 농가의 90%인 가족농이 70%의 농지를 점유하고 농산업이 아닌 생계형 농사를 짓고 있다. 나머지 10%가 협동조합(Gemeinschaft) 또는 주식회사 형태인 일종의 기업농이다.

농가당 평균 농지경작 면적은 평균 58㏊ 정도이지만 전체 농가의 절반은 육가공, 농박 등 부업을 겸해야 가계경영이 가능한 겸업농가다. 농가 평균 농업소득은 2000만원 정도로 그나마 절반은 세금으로 빠져나가니 겸업을 하지 않을 도리가 없다. 겉으로는 연간 농업소득 1000만원 수준인 한국의 영세한 평균 농민의 처지와 크게 다를 게 없어 보인다.

그런데 불가사의하다. 독일 농민들은 한국 농민보다 안정되고 행복한 농촌생활을 누리고 산다. 자식에게 농사를 가업으로 당당히 물려주고 묘비에 농부로 살았다는 사실을 새겨넣을 만큼 농부로서 자부심과 자존감이 대단하다. 그래서 독일은 식량자급률이 85%에 이르고 농촌이 마치 생태공원처럼 보전된 농업선진국의 위상을 굳건히 지키고 있다.

△독일 농부 행복의 비결은 ‘직불금’

▲ 독일 슈베비쉬 할 생산자조합(Gemeinscahft).

비결은 직불금이다. 독일에서 농가소득의 주요 수입 원천은 농업이 아니다. 유럽연합, 정부, 주정부가 농가에 직접 지급하는 직불금 등 각종 농업지원금이다. 임성희 전문위원에 따르면, 연간 지급되는 금액은 농가당 평균 3만1000유로(약 4000만 원)나 된다. 농가소득 가운데 농업지원금 소득이 60%가 넘는 셈이다. 2010년 기준으로 EU의 총예산 1229억 유로 가운데 농가에 571억 유로가 지원, 전체 예산의 절반에 가까운 46.5%를 차지하고 있다.

이 가운데 437억 유로는 농가에 직접지불금 형태로 지원했다. 지원금에서 가장 큰 항목이 ‘직접지불금’인 것이다. 유럽연합 공동농업정책(Common Agricultural Policy, CAP)에 따라 EU 회원국가의 모든 농민에게 지불된다. 경작조건이 불리한 스위스 산악지역은 농가 소득의 90%까지 직불금으로 보전해주고 있다.

직불금은 경작 농지 규모에 따라 직접지불형태의 보조금으로 1㏊당 318유로를 받는다. 이밖에 농업환경프로그램에 따라 약 30%, 조건 불리 농경지는 보상지불, 친환경농업 녹색(Greening) 지불, 소농 지불 등이 가산된다. 특히 개정된 유럽연합 공동농업정책 프로그램에 따라 2014년부터 2020년 까지 ‘젊은 농업인 지원’항목도 신설됐다. 40세 이하 신규 농업종사자에게 기존 직불금의 25%를 추가 지불하는 것이다. 젊은 농업인에게는 직불금 외에도 공유지 임대, 농업 시설물 설비 보조금 10% 추가 지원도 주어진다.

△ ‘사람 사는 농촌’을 지키는 사회안전망

▲ 독일 라인스바일러 포도공동체마을.

무엇보다 독일 농민들은 유럽연합과 독일 정부의 농업지원금 이전에 농촌에서 ‘먹고 사는 걱정을 하지 않고’ 생활할 수 있도록 사회안전망이 잘 갖춰져 있다. 무상교육, 무상의료를 비롯 재해보험, 의료보험, 간병인보험, 노령보험 등 사회보장시스템이 농민들을 농촌에서 떠나지 않도록 돌보고 보살펴준다.

이렇게 독일 등 선진 유럽의 농정 예산은 ‘돈 버는 농업’보다는 ‘사람 사는 농촌’을 위해 주로 쓰여진다. 농정의 철학과 패러다임의 차원이 근본적으로 다르다. 농업전문학교를 졸업하고 농부 국가자격증 까지 취득해야 농사를 지을 수 있는 정예화된 2%의 독일 농민들조차 농사만 지어서는 먹고 살지 못하기 때문이다. 그럼에도 국민의 식량기지이자 자연의 보고인 농촌은 지켜야하기 때문이다. 그래서 농촌을 지켜야 하는 독일 농민들이 농촌을 떠나지 않도록, 헌법에 명시된대로 농촌에 최소한의 인구밀도가 유지되도록 국가에서 직불금으로 먹여살려주는 것이다.

독일을 비롯한 EU 회원국가의 농정 당국이 이토록 농업과 농촌과 농민을 보호하는 이유는 농업이 발휘하는 10가지 소중한 기능 때문이다.

하나, 농업은 우리의 식량을 보장한다. 둘, 농업은 우리 국민 바로산업의 기반이 된다. 셋, 농업은 국민의 가계비 부담을 줄여준다. 넷, 농업은 우리의 문화경관을 보존한다. 다섯, 농업은 마을과 농촌공간을 유지한다. 여섯, 농업은 환경을 책임감 있게 다룬다. 일곱, 농업은 국민의 휴양공간을 만들어준다. 여덟, 농업은 값 비싼 공업원료 작물을 생산한다. 아홉, 농업은 에너지 문제 해결에 이바지 한다. 열, 농업은 흥미로운 직종을 제공한다.

△농부의 욕심을 조절하는 ‘녹색계획’

무엇보다 독일에는 농부들 스스로 욕심을 조절하고 규제할 수 있도록 법과 정책이 마련돼 있다. 1954년에 만들어져 60년 넘게 철저히 지켜지고 있는 녹색계획(Green Plan)이 그것이다. 도시보다 농촌이, 돈보다 사람이 먼저인 독일의 농업정책은 바로 이 4가지 원칙에 깊은 뿌리를 두고 있다.

첫째, 농민도 일반국민과 동등한 소득과 풍요로운 삶의 질을 향유하며 국가 발전에 동참한다. 경쟁력 향상, 소득 증대만 추구하면 대다수 소농들의 토대는 무너지고 이농을 할 수밖에 없다.

둘째, 국민에게 질 좋고 건강한 농산물을 적정한 가격에 안정적으로 공급한다. 농산물을 과대포장해 비싸게 파는 것은 세금을 내는 국민을 배반하는 일이다.

셋째, 국제 농업과 식량문제 해결에 기여한다. 자국의 먹을거리 문제 해결은 물론, 먹는 것으로 다른 나라의 목을 조이지 않는다.

넷째, 자연과 농촌의 문화경관을 보존하며 다양한 동식물을 보호한다. 농촌의 자연, 문화 경관은 모든 국민이 즐길 권리다. 국도변, 아름다운 호숫가에는 상점도, 간판도 들어설 수 없다.

그리고 평균적인 농민들은 이기적으로, 경쟁적으로, 독과점적으로 ‘저 혼자만 잘 먹고 잘 살 수 없게’, ‘생활에 필요한 돈 이상은 못 벌게’, 유기농업이나 지역농업에 충실하게 법이나 조합의 정관으로 스스로, 그리고 서로를 다스리고 절제하고 있다.

그리고 농촌공동체, 농업 협업경영체(Gemeinshcaft, Genossenshaf) 동지들 사이의 약속으로 서로가 서로를 엄중하게 단속하고 규제하고 있다.

■ 유럽농부는 아무나 할 수 없다

교육과정·위생검사 엄격 / '농부자격증' 있어야 가능

오스트리아 잘츠부르크의 파이스테나우(Faistenau) 지방의 홀러농장은 요셉 클라우스호퍼(Joseph Klaushofer) 농장주 부부가 꾸려가는 가족농장이다. 부부가 공동경영하는 농축산물 직판농가로 약 7㏊의 농지에 낙농, 양계, 양봉 등을 영위하는 오스트리아 최고의 6차 산업형 농가로 손꼽힌다.

농사 규모는 닭 50마리, 젖소 7마리, 그리고 벌을 키우는 게 전부다. 그런데 젖소 70마리를 기르는 다른 농가보다 소득이 높다. 비결은 농식품가공 등 6차 산업으로 부가가치를 높였기 때문이다. 소농으로 살아남기 위해 다양한 농식품 가공품을 개발해 100% 직판으로 판매한 전략이 주효했다.

1차 농산물을 생산하는 농업 소득만으로는 한계가 있어 제빵, 치즈 유가공, 햄류 육가공, 양봉 등 2차 농식품가공업을 병행하는 생존전략을 구사하고 있다. 심지어 남편인 요셉 씨는 겨울철 농한기에도 쉬지 않는다. 스스로 설계, 제작하는 양봉틀, 가구 등 목공제품을 제작해 판매하기도 한다.

농장주 요셉 씨는 “농촌에서 살아남기 위해서는 여러 가지 버틸 수 있는 다리를 찾아야 한다”고 거듭 강조한다. 부인 브리기타 씨도 부지런하기는 남편 요셉 씨를 능가한다. 새로운 가공식품 연구와 개발을 위해 쉬지 않고 교육을 받고 인증을 받으러 다닌다. 그동안 50여 가지의 가공품을 개발했다. 오스트리아에서는 일단 농가에서 가공품을 만들려고 하면 농업회의소에서 교육부터 받아야 한다. 가공시설도 식품검사국의 교육과정과 위생검사를 통과해야 한다. 가공품에 생산이력을 정확하게 표기해야 하는 건 물론이다. 보통 교육시간은 400시간, 교육비는 500만원이나 된다. 이때 교육비는 전적으로 자부담이다.

그동안 부부가 노력한 보상은 소득과 상으로 돌아왔다. 오스트리아 치즈가공 경연대회에서 최고의 지역농특산물에게 주어지는 ‘맛의 왕관(Gueness Krone)’ 최고상도 여러 차례 받았을 정도다.

아무나 농부가 될 수 없는 오스트리아, 독일 등 유럽은 정부와 국민들이 농업에 임하는 철학과 자세부터 차원이 다르다. 농업과 농촌의 가치를 지켜낼 각오가 서 있는 자만이 농사를 지어야 한다는 것이다. 농부자격증이 있는 농사의 장인(농업 Meister)들만이 국민의 먹을거리를 제대로 책임질 수 있다는 것이다.

▲ 정기석 마을연구소(Commune Lab) 대표/소장

기고 desk@jjan.kr

http://m.jjan.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=1105773

Unbroken Ground from Patagonia Provisions on Vimeo.

http://webbook.me.go.kr/DLi-File/NIER/06/022/5614564.pdf

왼쪽부터 보리, 귀리, 엠머밀, 스펠트밀, 호밀. 주로 유럽 등지에서 주식으로 이용하던 식량작물.

역시 그쪽이 원산지라 그런지 엄청나게 다양하다.

The Regional Meeting on Agroecology in Asia in November of 2015 marked the culmination of four FAO meetings on Agroecology. These vibrant meetings confirmed a rising tide that we have written about previously: agroecology’s prominence is growing worldwide. The importance of its concepts, tools, knowledge and its emphasis on respect for and collaboration with producers have been borne out by the reception it has seen across FAO meetings on four continents.

More broadly, agroecology has been growing on national and international agendas, ranging from the 2012 decree on agroecology of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, to the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology, to the 2014 International Symposium on Agroecology for Food Security and Nutrition held by the FAO and subsequent regional meetings. This growing prominence reflects the important roles of both science and civil society in addressing the challenges facing us and that extend across borders—including climate change, environmental degradation, and continued hunger and poverty. Agroecology is unique in its increasing incorporation of science, practices and movements, bringing together three vital parts of social and environmental change for the better.

As a science, agroecology draws together the disciplines of agronomy, horticulture and ecology, along with social sciences such as economics and sociology. The term dates back to at least 1928, around 50 years after the term “ecology” itself was coined. It can be thought of as the application of ecological science to inform agricultural practice, along with the use of social sciences to understand the dynamics the have led to current sets of agricultural practice, the evolution and context of functional traditional knowledge and practices, and the socioeconomic and political dynamics of producers’ efforts, livelihoods and contributions. The practice element of agroecology translates ecological knowledge into agricultural practice, as well as observing and learning the costs and benefits of current practices. Finally, agroecology as a movement is important because a system of agriculture which takes into account larger environmental costs and threats like climate change will require the re-organization of a number of social institutions. Social movements and civil society are undeniably an important element of such a re-organization, and hence can be said to be part of agroecology. Further, social movements offer a logical point of articulation for agroecology’s focus on acknowledging and supporting farmers’ leadership, knowledge and local contexts. Lastly, as a practical note, movements can be thought of as a vital part of agroecology, given that effective articulations between farmers and scientists will require a politics of inclusion and community empowerment. In these ways, agroecology’s three elements may also be described more accessibly as studying, doing and changing socioecological relations towards sustainable and socially just agricultural systems.

Discussion Points

As we wrote in our discussion document for the Africa Regional Meeting, there is strong support in the relevant literature for the most important factors in supporting food security, good farmer livelihoods, productivity and effective environmental management (e.g. for climate change mitigation and adaptation). Although no factor can guarantee success, the factors at the center of each of our key points are associated with higher probabilities of success. Further, these factors are either part of existing agroecology discourse, or are compatible with it, especially if agroecology is paired with the concept of food sovereignty: the rights and resources for each community to determine its own food system. In several places, we have adjusted and added some factors of particular note for the Asian context.

Key point 1: Securing rights and supporting equity across race, gender, class and ethnic affiliation are vital to reduce hunger, fight climate change and increase sustainability, according to established empirical and theoretical research.

Agroecology supports, and in turn is supported by, community well-being and the public goods inherent in these factors.

Extensive research and experience to date show that securing communities’ and individuals’ rights ranks the highest in terms of interventions in Asia that will reduce hunger and increase resilience and sustainability.1 As the IAASTD (2009) reported, “People are the wealth of ESAP [East & South Asia & the Pacific]. Since this region is home to three of the world’s most populous countries, investing in people will yield development dividends.”2

A significant part of the current conversations around food security and climate change has focused on production and productivity to meet present and future needs. While this can make important contributions to solving these problems, more and more scholars and community members are observing that it is not sufficient. As one recent peer-reviewed paper states, “there are a series of filters that determine the extent to which intensification is sustainable and contributes to greater food security… unless it meets the demands of both distributive and procedural justice, increased food production cannot be described as sustainable”.3

To this point, an important observation is the sizeable impact public goods make on improving food security and health measures (and these in turn support social capacity for mitigation and adaptation).4 To quote a broad-based and thorough expert analysis:

“For South Asia, while continued improvements in women’s education and food availabilities are needed, three of the determinants should be of particular focus: access to sanitation, dietary diversity of the food available in countries, and gender equality.… [N]ational food availability does not feature near the top of the priorities for accelerating undernutrition reductions in either South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. This does not reduce the importance of maintaining adequate food supplies, including food production, but simply acknowledges that the scope for it to reduce stunting prevalences is lower than that of the priority underlying determinants we have identified.” [emphasis added].5

Securing rights, Particularly Women’s Equality and Education6

Gender has been repeatedly and strongly tied to food security and productive, nourishing agriculture. Around the world, women play a major role in accessing food for their family members and in preparing food for household-level consumption. Women’s access to safe water for domestic use is a necessary condition for ensuring household-level food security. However, this direct link between the right to water and the right to food is often overlooked in deliberations on defining the right to water and in defining obligations related to the right to water. For poor women, food preparation entails collecting firewood and water, an increasingly difficult task in degraded environments. Thus, realization of the right to water becomes a prerequisite for rural food security, especially in degraded environments.

Despite women’s role in ensuring food security at the household level, when it comes to consumption, they usually have the least access to food. Sociocultural-, gender- and age-based inequalities play a big role in each individual’s ability to meet their food security needs, even when there is household-level food security. Women-headed households tend to be more food insecure compared to male-headed households. This has given rise to the phrase, “the feminization of food insecurity.”7 In South Asia, the low nutritional, educational and social status of women was cited as one of the major factors that contribute to a Hunger Index in the region that characterizes the problems there as “serious.”8 Though, too, it is important to note that in Southern and Southeastern Asia, both of which have a lower proportion of hungry populations than much of Sub-Saharan Africa, the absolute size of the malnourished population is nearly 50 percent greater than the malnourished population on the entire African continent.9 Which is simply to say, the scope of the problems in Asia should not be underestimated.

In this light, agroecology’s strong and growing focus on women’s rights and gender equality10 takes on particular importance and potential. The focus on gender in agroecology is still being examined and expanded and is strengthened by the concept and commitments of food sovereignty11 and the related agroecology and food sovereignty movement.12 Issues of gender are, naturally, complex and locally-specific and may need different approaches even within the same small community. Therefore addressing gender is not well-suited to the use of automatic processes and is likely best served by adaptive, specific, locally-suited and participatory approaches.13 Also, although there are many probable benefits to women, men, children and agriculture when gender inequality is dealt with in an effective manner,14 careful consideration and deliberation is important so that an emphasis on fulfilling women’s potential does not lose sight of their rights or place additional disproportionate burdens on them to support and improve community development:

“While recognizing the power of women to lift their families and communities out of poverty, women are not simply instruments for hunger reduction. Women must be empowered and recognized as equal partners—valued for their contributions and knowledge—not because they deliver results but because they are equal with men.”15

Nevertheless, the needs—and benefits—are clear. Smith and Haddad (2015) note that gender equality in South Asia “is far below its desired level… it has such a uniquely strong impact on child stunting in the region. Continued improvement in this area would likely greatly accelerate reductions in stunting. According to our estimates, if this determinant alone were to reach its desired level, the stunting prevalence in South Asia would decline by 10 percentage points.”

Numerous accounts16 illustrate the inequalities and even violence still facing a large number of women in the region. Thus concerted action is clearly necessary to support and empower women using approaches that work with whole communities— women, men, boys, girls—to re-consider and restructure gender relationships, responsibilities and resource distribution, in order to secure both the basic elements of safety for all and also the full suite of rights to which all people are entitled. Equity in access to resources (e.g. water, secure land ownership, credit, education) and equity in representation and participation in governance at all levels are vital tasks in their own right but also have the potential to improve food security, resilience and sustainability for all.17

Overlap with agroecology

The methods of agroecology require a combination of farmer leadership and knowledge with modern ecological science, meaning that support for education and two-way communication between farming communities and supporting governments and NGOs has repeatedly been seen as a key element of successful agroecological projects. In turn, certain agroecological approaches can provide numerous benefits to communities through conservation and maintenance of ecosystem functions, many of which are under-valued and/or non-market functions.18 According to one recent review, examples of functions provided by more diverse agricultural systems include “greater carbon sequestration, greater retention of nutrients, and greater ability to resist and recover from various forms of stress, including herbivorous pests, diseases, droughts, and floods.” 19 Agroecological methods are thus particularly important and valuable in areas of water and weather stress—from droughts to monsoons—and women in numerous regions have embraced these methods for these reasons, among others.20 And although agroecological systems can be competitive in productivity and profit with conventional systems,21 especially over the long-term,22 it is also true that they produce significant non-market benefits that, until internalized socially or economically into production systems, essentially require sustainable, agroecological producers to be sacrificial volunteers to the tune of trillions of dollars in total.23

It will be important to closely consider and discuss how and which agroecological approaches may best provide different benefits, such as the potential to mitigate climate change24 and increase resilience.25 This should be considered alongside participatory evaluation of which practices are the most accessible or locally suitable according to community desires, preferences, and near-term capacity. Towards this end, we would note that (a) particularly in agroecological systems, best practices raise productivity significantly26 (which reinforces the potential and importance of participatory research and education); and that (b) rural education, particularly when it increases access and achievement by women, usually both reduces malnutrition27 and increases productivity.28 In fact, quoting economist Jayati Ghosh, “government expenditure on education had the largest impact on reducing both rural poverty and regional inequality, and a significant impact on boosting production.”

In sum, improvements in the priority areas aligned with securing and supporting basic rights—from secure rights to land, gender equity and equality, education and water access to representation in governance—would also be likely to increase community-level autonomy, capacity and sovereignty, as well as improve agricultural productivity. Pertinent to FAO’s regional meeting in Asia, each of these priority areas can also gain from, and contribute to, successful agroecological initiatives. one key challenge will be the possibility, mentioned above, that addressing some priority areas—for example, increasing productivity—will not be effective unless other priority areas are addressed simultaneously.29 This may add additional challenges and complexity to creating successful interventions.

Key point 2: Evidence implies that improving and maintaining food sovereignty, autonomy and political agency are important levers to support improvements in food security, resilience and sustainability.

True, collaborative political empowerment and mutual accountability between communities and regional and national governments are necessary to achieve the potential of agroecology.

A common but often under-emphasized observation is that food insecurity, low socioecological resilience and agrifood system unsustainability represent market failures. The presence of food security is a public good that will not be provided in sufficient amounts by markets without government intervention; long-term agrifood system resilience is not easily or customarily included in calculations of value; and contemporary agrifood systems generate numerous negative externalities such that “business efficiency is not the same as social efficiency.”30 In other words, it is likely that food security will be under-provided by free markets, as will socioecological resilience; and negative externalities will exact costs on society that are not reflected in prices and therefore will not be efficiently or effectively managed without public intervention designed by and with local communities and governments. (It practically goes without saying, but decades of research in environmental justice and political ecology have shown as well that unsustainability, vulnerability and food insecurity are likely to be exacerbated by inequality—marginalized and poorer communities will receive even less public goods and suffer from more negative externalities than is proportionate or just.)

There are many proposals on how to best deal with the problems embodied by these externalities and inequalities. one very strong vein of research and practice towards this end has focused on empowerment and collaboration with local communities—decentralization along with a significant degree of devolution of resources and decision-making authority. Economics Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom used both theory and field research to validate the proposition that greater autonomy for local communities improves the likelihood that they will create and maintain governance institutions that can sustainably govern scarce resources over prolonged periods.31 Numerous scientists have similarly written on the importance, track record and potential of strong, well-supported and empowering local governance32 and polycentricity and subsidiarity (strong local governance backed by governance structures at other scales).33 Beyond the cases presented by these researchers, others have made similar observations specifically in regards to decentralization and local empowerment in successful agricultural extension,34 nutrition,35 and conservation of protected areas.36

In fact, a common roadblock seen in successful implementation of agroecology projects is very much in line with one of the observed challenges to better conservation outcomes in community forestry: insufficient support and empowerment of local communities and too much privilege and control afforded to “expert” voices.37 And of course, focused empowerment and involvement of women and girls has been shown to improve multiple outcomes in terms of improving individual and community well-being, both ecologically38 and socially.39

A common element of successful projects is effective effort towards truly open and transparent participation by local populations40—which, when the local population is a historically marginalized one, is likely to require substantial public investment and collaboratively-tailored support, particularly from regional and national governments, in order to create and maintain the capacity to participate in the first place.41 Although support from other actors (such as donors and international NGOs) can lend additional help, accountability has been empirically observed to be important as a feedback mechanism and way to increase the likelihood of success, underlining the importance of responsive and adaptive governmental support. In particular, an important observation for consideration is that of Karnani (2010),42 who argues that “Corporate Social Responsibility” is conceptually and empirically ill-suited for providing public goods and cannot replace government action. This should be a careful part of the evaluation of the possible impact and viability, for example, of Private-Public Partnerships (PPP), which may have limited potential to improve food security, production and sustainability for marginalized communities.

It is worth noting that in addition to the empirical research cited previously, and theory-building by Ostrom and others, Farrell and Shalizi43 have recently synthesized research across economics, psychology, political science and network theory to propose that problem-solving is greatly aided by a significant degree of substantive equality among actors, the ability of dissenting minority voices to be heard and for their points to be given serious consideration. While providing the space for this in the context of the significant levels of inequality experienced by marginalized communities is a difficult challenge, deeply participatory models have shown promise and a number of successes.44

Food sovereignty

Given the above points, food sovereignty is an important framework to consider in the design and implementation of interventions to improve food security, resilience and sustainability. The concept of food sovereignty can be thought of, on the one hand, as an ｅxpression of the human right to self-determination and additionally, on a more functional level, to be an empirically-backed concept that may improve the realization of the right to food alongside sustainability objectives. That is, the elements of participation, autonomy and empowerment at the level of local communities are strong enabling factors and align with the normative principles and movement elements of agroecology, which has often been closely identified with food sovereignty.45 Food sovereignty in fact includes priorities of local-scale empowerment and collaboration and originated 20 years ago in part to address the need for rights-, equity-, and policy-based approaches to food production and consumption. Akram-Lodhi has described its basic pillars as: (1) a focus on food for people; (2) the valuing of food providers; (3) localization of food systems; (4) the [broad-based] building of skills; and (5) working with nature [ecosystems and ecological knowledge].46 Civil society groups recently reaffirmed these points, and added others, building on the 2007 Nyeleni Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty with the 2015 Nyeleni Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology. Thus, although many challenges and questions remain, it can be said that the theoretical and empirical evidence and support “from the bottom up” for the importance and potential of food sovereignty, paired with agroecology, is large, growing and strong.

Key point 3: From healthy, empowered people to healthy, sustainable, resilient environments.

Though connections between sociocultural factors and empowerment on the one hand and environmental health and climate change mitigation on the other can be difficult to understand, they are increasingly well-documented.

In an example from Africa, the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities (SFHC) project in Malawi has worked with over 4000 farmers in a participatory project where farmers use agroecological methods in a deeply collaborative process, which has seen improvements in soil fertility, food security and nutrition.47

Looking at Asia, in The Philippines, a philosophically parallel approach has led to very impressive initial results. The approach of MASIPAG (the Farmer-Scientist Partnership for Agricultural Development) is based on the following elements:

• “Bottom-up approach. Decision-making, planning and implementation within the organization come from the membership. This is coordinated through farmer groups and a decentralised organizational structure.
• Farmer-scientist-NGO partnership. The organization is run as a process of mutual, ongoing learning between farmers, scientists and NGOs.
• Farmer-led research. Research, including breeding of new rice varieties, is designed and conducted by farmer-members for farmer-members.
• Farmer-to-farmer mode of diffusion. Training in the network is largely conducted by farmer-trainers, using a wide range of techniques including trial farms, exchange days and cultural activities.
• Opposition to technological fixes. Change needs to be understood in a holistic way, including attention to farmer empowerment and farmer knowledge.
• Advancing farmers’ rights. MASIPAG works within a broader commitment to farmers’ rights. These include rights relating to land, seeds and genetic resources, production, biodiversity, politics and decision-making, culture and knowledge, information and research, and socio-political factors.”48

The results reported thus far include:

• Better food security: 88 percent of organic farmers found their food security better than in 2000, compared to only 44 percent of conventional farmers.
• More diverse and nutritious diet: Organic farmers ate 68% more vegetables, 56 percent more fruit, 55 percent more protein-rich staples and 40 percent more meat than in 2000. The increase in consumption for organic farmers were double those for conventional farmers for vegetables, 2.7 times higher for fruit, 3.7 times higher for protein rich staples and 2.5 times higher for meat.
• Higher diversity of crops: Organic farmers were growing 50 percent more crop types.
• [Reductions in] Chemical fertilizer and pesticide use: Organic farmers had eliminated these chemical inputs altogether but they were still being used by 85 percent of conventional farmers. 97 percent of the organic farmers used alternative pest management techniques such as redesigning the agroecosystem…
• Better health outcomes: 85 percent of the organic farmers rated their health better than in 2000. In the reference group, only 32 percent rated it positively…
• Lower costs: Production costs for organic farmers were half those of conventional farmers.
• Higher net incomes: Net incomes were higher for the organic farmers than the conventional ones, and had increased since 2000 in contrast to stagnant or falling incomes for the reference group…
• Greater overall farm productivity: Rice yields for organic farmers were on a par with those of conventional farmers. But the organic yields were increasing over time in contrast to declining yields of the conventional farms…
• Improved soil fertility: 84 percent of organic farmers, but just three percent of conventional farmers, reported increases in soil fertility.
• Less erosion: 59 percent of organic farmers, but just six percent of conventional farmers, reported a reduction in 
  soil erosion.
• Increased tolerance of crops to pests and diseases: 81 percent of organic farmers reported increased tolerance to pests and diseases; but 41 percent of conventional farmers saw tolerance to pests worsening.
• Greater climate change adaption: Crop diversification, agroforestry, windbreaks, salt-tolerant MASIPAG-bred rice varieties, more root crops… community cooperation [and other techniques] all help farmers adapt to climate change.49

These results are impressive, and re-emphasize the vast potential of agroecological methods—particularly with regards to the substantial diversity of diets seen in the experiences above.As noted by Smith and Haddad (2015), dietary diversity is one of the strongest potential contributors to decreasing food insecurity in South Asia.

While this is just one case (albeit a large-scale one), 50 similar results have been reported for the indigenous Karen communities of Thailand and Myanmar, where a very high degree of carbon storage appears to occur alongside a very high degree of dietary diversity (including 100 kinds of vegetables and 28 kinds of meat)51, as well as from reports and work from the Asian Farmers’ Association52, the Korean Peasant Women’s Association53, and projects in China and India54. Many of these cases showcase the importance and potential of Farmer Field Schools55 and the System of Rice Intensification—the latter of which has been estimated to provide reductions in external costs in terms of soil, air and water pollutants of up to 97 percent, 78 percent and 16 percent respectively, as well as increased yield and margins. 56

In sum, agroecological practices paired with empowering communities with the rights and resources to govern their local environment are likely to lead to improvements in well-being, sustainability, climate mitigation, and climate resilience57, and participatory analyses and approaches appear to practically be a prerequisite to successful agroecological interventions for small-scale farmers.58 Further, in terms of protected area use and human well-being, recent research shows that “positive conservation and socioeconomic outcomes were more likely to occur when PAs adopted co-management regimes, empowered local people, reduced economic inequalities, and maintained cultural and livelihood benefits. Whereas the strictest regimes of PA management attempted to exclude anthropogenic influences to achieve biological conservation objectives, PAs that explicitly integrated local people as stakeholders tended to be more effective at achieving joint biological conservation and socioeconomic development outcomes,” (emphasis added).59 This further supports the proposition that multiple healthy ecosystem functions are improved in well-managed diversified agroecosystems60, which go hand-in hand with well-supported, empowered communities able to exercise autonomy and engage in deliberative decision-making and knowledge co-creation.

Key Point 4: The Right to Not Have to Migrate

At a recent agroecology meeting in Mexico City61, a powerful statement was made about the vision of peasant farmers and their supporters: one of the most under-recognized and under-appreciated rights of farmers is the right to not have to migrate. There have been many statements about the worldwide trend of urbanization, and (former) farmers and laborers’ continuing exit of rural areas. Yet the vision of many farmers is clearly neither to leave their farms, nor to continue to in conditions of marginality. Rather, the vision is one of maintaining, remaking, and supporting countrysides such that farmers, farm laborers, and all rural residents can have decent, secure livelihoods. This is the clear implication of food sovereignty62, and clear in the demands of the International Peasants’ Movement La Via Campesina (which has 35 member organizations in 15 countries in Asia), as well as the many other signatories of the 2007 and 2015 Nyéléni Declarations.

Further, when we consider the concomitant benefits that can be seen from improved economic margins for farmers and—the evidence increasingly indicates—higher food prices, the possibilities and importance of rural livelihoods become both more apparent and more socio-politically possible. That is: recent studies show that higher food prices, when they contribute to increased farmer incomes, likely contribute to reducing both rural and urban poverty, although “safety nets” to maintain the food security of food-insecure populations are necessary in the (typically one to five years) adjustment period.63

The reality, necessity, and possibility of supporting improved, dignified, and food sovereign livelihoods for all food and agricultural producers is further fortified when we consider the immense, but currently un- or under-compensated externalities in the agricultural system. Estimates of these externalities range into the trillions of U.S. dollars in agriculture alone, and a recent report by the FAO concluded that natural capital costs of crop and livestock systems may reach 130 to 170 percent of their total production value64. The nature of externalities is that they are real costs borne by society, and without addressing them through internalization or other regulation, the costs are not reflected in prices and markets do not produce proper or efficient results. The fact that we are indirectly, but assuredly, paying costs that may reach nearly twice the production value of our agriculture and food products means that there ought to be ample potential to boost income and support sustainable livelihoods for farmers, farm laborers, pastoralists, and fisherfolk by properly compensating agroecological practices (and eventually penalizing less-sustainable practices). It is important to note that this aligns with the research: the 2015 FAO report on natural capital found improvements in climate change mitigation, reduced land-use change and water consumption, air and water pollution from holistic grazing, SRI and organic farming, which is additionally in line with recent results by Sandhu et al. (2015).

Key Point 5: Recognizing and reinforcing existing voices

Many of the observations and recommendations we present here have also been supported and demanded by civil society around the world. In particular, the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, and the 2015 Nyéléni Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology united hundreds of delegates of groups of small-scale food producers and consumers, including peasants, indigenous peoples, communities, hunters and gatherers, family farmers, rural workers, herders and pastoralists, fisherfolk and urban people, from countries around the world, to support the autonomy, rights, sovereignty, gender equality, and sustainable livelihoods of all food and agricultural producers, as well as eaters. Along with rights-based principles of responsible agricultural investment and the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent, the Nyéléni Declarations’ documentation of the needs, struggles, and demands of these broad constituencies are invaluable and should be at the heart of continued conversations about agroecology, climate change, sustainability, food security and resilience.

Concluding Point

In sum, food and agricultural producers are demanding the ability to make a living using sustainable agroecological practices, and all the evidence indicates that supporting them in doing so through autonomy, sovereignty, appropriate prices, research and peer-to-peer dissemination of new and traditional ecological practices, will benefit all of society.

Based on the above key points, we have the following recommendations.

Recommendation 1. Interventions to improve food security, productivity and sustainability should recognize the importance of communities’ basic rights, including food sovereignty, and thus must truly and directly involve them in participatory decision-making on the types of and approaches to appropriate interventions.

Recommendation 2. Correspondingly, interventions to improve food security, productivity, and sustainability will often require the improving and maintaining basic public goods (especially clean water, sanitation, and education) in the context of participatory processes with local communities.

• Specific case: Recognize that knowledge and innovation are public goods, and thus intellectual property must be handled in careful, locally-tailored ways that recognize and support the existence and sharing of traditional knowledge; contemporary and mainstream “one size fits all” approaches may in fact do more harm than good.65

Recommendation 3. Fostering social equality—particularly, but not exclusively, along the lines of gender—is a vital element to properly implementing agroecological approaches, and will powerfully support the effectiveness of any effort. But, as with all other elements, this must be done with collaboration and methods appropriate to the local context.

Recommendation 4. Experts specifically (e.g., policymakers, administrators, and researchers) will need to use approaches that increase the effective voice of communities, and support increased equality between and among actors, in order to achieve the best results. These approaches should be based on established and innovative participatory methodologies (such as Farmer Field Schools) that can be found throughout peer-reviewed literature and “gray literature” reports.

Recommendation 5. Private-Public Partnerships (and related approaches) should be evaluated very carefully, given that provision of public goods is by definition an area where government action cannot be replaced and will not be sufficiently provided by private interests. This type of approach may not be well-suited to appropriate interventions for food security and sustainability, where significant (positive and negative) externalities are likely to be present and of significant size.

• Specific case 1: Land tenure is a complicated, but vital, issue requiring careful coordination between governments, civil society, and private interests. Multiple forms of land tenure should be supported towards providing land, water, and food security, and must be appropriately suited to the community, culture, and ecosystem at hand. Where land redistribution/reform takes place, to be effective it must be truly pro-poor and substantively redistributive: “compensation to landlords at below market price and payment by peasants and workers at below actual acquisition cost... linked to the principle that land is not a simple economic factor of production [but] multidimensional”, with political, economic, social and cultural dimensions not reducible to strictly monetary terms.66
• Specific case 2: Carbon markets are often not well-suited to addressing the climate challenges we are facing, and are particularly unsuitable for agriculture. IATP has previously recommended research into how loss and damage can inform corporate climate risk exposure and the design of both private and public sector projects within the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions.67

Recommendation 6. A socio-ecological approach must be taken, involving local community members as well as social and natural scientists (keeping the Point 4 in mind), in order to best implement agroecological practices to improve food security, sustainability, and resilience.

Recommendation 7. Use direct deliberation between experts/government officials and community members in order to generate mutual accountability. That is, those giving resource support for the intervention need to respect the deliberation of the community and support modes based on procedural justice. In turn, effective and empowering community participation is more likely to generate mutual accountability between supporters and community members.

Recommendation 8. Successfully implementing agroecology and food sovereignty-focused approaches are highly likely to require removing existing policy barriers and implementing appropriate policy supports—for example, improving the accounting and internalization of negative externalities, and improving the knowledge of and support for positive externalities. Further, multiple avenues to improved social well-being should be considered, including consideration of the variety of markets agricultural producers may produce for, including local and regional markets, as well as effective increases in income through increased self-provisioning. The diversity of production and markets that can support improvements in food security, resilience, and sustainability is not necessarily well-served by a prioritization of international markets or commodity crops.

Recommendation 9. Finally, we reiterate our recommendation that future conversations draw from and embrace the conclusions, recommendations, and demands of existing civil society documents and declarations, including but not limited to the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, and the 2015 Nyéléni Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology; and building on and substantively supporting spaces such as the Civil Society Mechanism of the Committee on World Food Security.

Endnotes

1. Loos, J., Abson, D. J., Chappell, M. J., et al. (2014). Putting meaning back into “sustainable intensification”. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 12(6), 356-361; Smith, L. C., & Haddad, L. (2015). Reducing Child Undernutrition: Past Drivers and Priorities for the Post-MDG Era. World Development, 68(0), 180-204; Ribot, J. (2014). Cause and response: vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(5), 667-705; Duryog Nivaran. (2014). Towards Post-2015 Agenda for DRR (HFA2): Women as a force in resilience building, gender equality in DRR: Report of the consultations in Asia Pacific.

2. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). (2009). Agriculture at a crossroads: International assessment of agricultural knowledge, science and technology for development, Volume 3: East & South Asia & the Pacific. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Although we agree with the claim, we note here that the financializing and potentially dehumanizing rhetoric of “investing” and “yielding dividends” is problematic and not adequate to the nuances of empowering people towards food sovereignty, food security, resilience and sustainability.

3. Loos et al. 2014.

4. Ribot (2014).

5. Smith and Haddad (2015).

6. This section contains excerpts from the IATP report, Varghese, S. (2011). Women at the Center of Climate-friendly Approaches to Agriculture and Water Use. Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Retrieved from: http://www.iatp.org/files/451_2_107914.pdf.

7. IAASTD (2009).

8. von Grebmer, K., Bernstein, J., de Waal, A., Prasai, N., Yin, S., & Yohannes, Y. (2015). Global hunger index: Armed conflict and the challenge of hunger. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2499/9780896299641.

9. According to the FAO’s State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015, Africa has a total of 232 million malnourished people (220 of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa); Southern Asia has 281 million and South-eastern Asia has 60 million, for a total of approximately 341 million malnourished people.

10. Fitzpatrick, I. (2015). From the roots up: How agroecology can feed Africa. London: Global Justice Now.

11. Chappell, M. J. (2013). Global Movements for Food Justice. In R. J. Herring (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

12. Desmarais, A. A. (2007). La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the power of peasants. London: Pluto Press; La Via Campesina. (2015a). Annual Report 2014 of La Via Campesina, The International Peasants’ Movement. Harare: La Via Campesina.

13. E.g., Bezner-Kerr, R. (2008). Gender and agrarian inequality at the local scale. In S. S. Snapp & B. Pound (Eds.), Agricultural systems: Agroecology and rural innovation for development (pp. 281-308). Burlington: Elsevier.

14. Rawe, T., Deering, K., Echols, W. et al. (2015). Cultivating equality: Delivering just and sustainable food systems in a changing climate. Atlanta: CARE.

15. Ibid.

16. E.g. Varghese (2011), especially the section “The Tamilnadu Women’s Collective’s Focus on violence against women”; La Via Campesina (2015b); Aboud, G., Ballara, M., Brody, A., & Dand, S. (2015). Gender and Food Security In Brief. Brighton: IDS.

17. Numerous case studies and examples can be found in the peer-reviewed and gray literature, including FAO (2011). The State of Food and Agriculture: Women in agriculture: Closing the gender gap for development. Rome: FAO; Behrman, J., Meinzen-Dick, R., & Quisumbing, A. (2012). The gender implications of large-scale land deals. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39(1), 49-79; Meinzen-Dick, R., Johnson, N., Quisumbing, A. et al. (2011). Gender, Assets, and Agricultural Development Programs: A Conceptual Framework (CAPRi Working Paper No. 99). Washington, D.C.: CAPRi; Agarwal, B. (1997). Gender, environment, and poverty interlinks: Regional variations and temporal shifts in rural India, 1971-91. World Development, 25(1), 23; Agarwal, B. (2009). Gender and forest conservation: The impact of women’s participation in community forest governance. Ecological Economics, 68(11), 2785-2799; Agarwal, B. (2015). Food Security, Productivity, and Gender Inequality. In R. J. Herring (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Food, Politics, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.; Rawe et al. 2015; Varghese 2011; Global Donor Platform for Rural Development. (2015). Gender equity and youth. Retrieved from https://www.donorplatform.org/gender-equity-and-youth/key-publications; Skinner, E., Brody, A., & Aboud, G. (2011). Gender and Development In Brief: Gender and Climate Change. Retrieved from Brighton: IDS; Aboud et al. 2015.

18. Sandhu, H., Wratten, S., Costanza et al. (2015). Significance and value of non-traded ecosystem services on farmland. PeerJ, e762.

19. Increased diversity is one of the key elements of many agroecological approaches—examples can be seen in Liebman, M., & Schulte, L. A. (2015). Enhancing agroecosystem performance and resilience through increased diversification of landscapes and cropping systems. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 3, 000041; Snapp, S. S., Blackie, M. J., Gilbert et al. (2010). Biodiversity can support a greener revolution in Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(48), 20840-20845; and Kremen, C., & Miles, A. F. (2012). Ecosystem Services in Biologically Diversified versus Conventional Farming Systems: Benefits, Externalities, and Trade-Offs. Ecology and Society, 17(4), 40.

20. Varghese 2011; Skinner et al. 2011; Aboud et al. 2015.

21. E.g., Pacini, C., Wossink, A., Giesen, G., Vazzana, C., & Huirne, R. (2003). Evaluation of sustainability of organic, integrated and conventional farming systems: a farm and field-scale analysis. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment, 95(1), 273-288.; Liebman and Schulte-Moore 2015.

22. E.g. Pimentel, D., Hepperly, P., Hanson, J., Douds, D., & Seidel, R. (2005). Environmental, energetic, and economic comparisons of organic and conventional farming systems. BioScience, 55(7), 573-582; Forster, D., Andres, C., Verma, R., Zundel, C., Messmer, M. M., & Mäder, P. (2013). Yield and Economic Performance of Organic and Conventional Cotton-Based Farming Systems – Results from a Field Trial in India. PLoS onE, 8(12), e81039; Di Falco, S., & Chavas, J.-P. (2006). Crop genetic diversity, farm productivity and the management of environmental risk in rainfed agriculture. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 33(3), 289-314.

23. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2015). Natural Capital Impacts in Agriculture: Supporting Better Business Decision-Making. Retrieved from Rome: FAO; see also Sandhu et al. 2015.

24. Skinner, C., Gattinger, A., Muller et al. (2014). Greenhouse gas fluxes from agricultural soils under organic and non-organic management — A global meta-analysis. Science of the Total Environment, 468–469, 553-563; Kremen and Miles (2012).

25. Snapp et al. (2010); Altieri, M. A., & Nicholls, C. I. (2013). The adaptation and mitigation potential of traditional agriculture in a changing climate. Climatic Change, 1-13.

26. Ponisio, L. C., Gonigle, L. K., Mace, K. C. et al. (2014). Diversification practices reduce organic to conventional yield gap. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 282(1799).

27. Smith and Haddad (2015).

28. Ghosh, J. (2010 ). Poverty reduction in China and India: Policy implications of recent trends? DESA Working Paper No. 92. New York: United Nations; Agarwal (2015).

29. Loos et al. (2014).

30. Rocha (2007). Food insecurity as market failure: a contribution from economics. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 1(4), 5-22.

31. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press; Poteete, A. R., Janssen, M. A., & Ostrom, E. (2010). Working together: collective action, the commons, and multiple methods in practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

32. Fung, A., & Wright, E. O. (Eds.). (2003). Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London: Verso; Herbick, M., & Isham, J. (2010). The promise of deliberative democracy. Solutions, 1(5), 25-27; Prugh, T., Costanza, R., & Daly, H. E. (2000). The local politics of global sustainability. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

33. Ostrom, E. (2010). Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems. American Economic Review, 100(3), 641

34. Harwood, J. (2013). Has the Green Revolution been a Cumulative Learning Process? Third World Quarterly, 34(3), 397-404.

35. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2013). Key recommendations for improving nutrition through agriculture and food systems. Rome: FAO.

36. Porter-Bolland, L., Ellis, E. A., Guariguata, M. R. et al. (2012). Community managed forests and forest protected areas: An assessment of their conservation effectiveness across the tropics. Forest Ecology And Management, 268, 6-17; Lund, J. F., Burgess, N. D., Chamshama, S. A. O. et al. (2015). Mixed method approaches to evaluate conservation impact: evidence from decentralized forest management in Tanzania. Environmental Conservation, 42(02), 162-170; Oldekop, J. A., Holmes, G., Harris, W. E., & Evans, K. L. (in press). A global assessment of the social and conservation outcomes of protected areas. Conservation Biology.

37. Scheba, A., & Mustalahti, I. (In press). Rethinking ‘expert’ knowledge in community forest management in Tanzania. Forest Policy and Economics.

38. Agarwal (2009).

39. Smith and Haddad (2015).

40. Ostrom (1990); Poteete et al. (2010); Borras, S. M. (2007). Pro-poor land reform: a critique. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.

41. Ribot (2014).

42. Karnani, A. (2010). The case against corporate social responsibility. Wall Street Journal, 23, 1-5; see also Karnani, A. (2011). “Doing Well by Doing Good”: The Grand Illusion. California Management Review, 53(2), 69-86.

43. Farrell, H., & Shalizi, C. R. (2015). Pursuing Cognitive Democracy. In D. Allen & J. Light (Eds.), From Voice to Influence: Understanding citizenship in a digital age. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

44. Carlson, J., & Chappell, M. J. (2015). Deepening food democracy. Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and trade Policy; Fung and Wright (2003); Herbick and Isham 2010.

45. Chappell (2013); Chappell, M. J., Wittman, H. K., Bacon, C. M. et al. (2013). Food sovereignty for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation in Latin America [v1; ref status: indexed, http://f1000r.es/23s]. F1000Research, 2(235).

46. Akram-Lodhi, A. H. (2015). Accelerating towards food sovereignty. Third World Quarterly, 36(3), 563-583.

47. http://soilandfood.org/approach-organization/. See also the excellent TedMed talk by Raj Patel: http://tedmed.com/talks/show?id=529961.

48. Quoted from Watts, M., & Williamson, S. (2015). Replacing Chemicals with Biology: Phasing out highly hazardous pesticides with agroecology. Penang: Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific.

49. Ibid.

50. MASIPAG’s network extends to 35,000 farmers, with MASIPAG conducting work in 62 of the country’s 79 provinces; 40 regular staff; cooperation with 60 NGOs and 15 scientists from various universities (Watts and Williamson 2015).

51. Nakashima, D., & Roue, M. (2002). Indigenous Knowledge, Peoples and Sustainable Practice. In P. Timmerman (Ed.),Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change, Volume 5: Social and economic dimensions of global environmental change (pp. 314–324). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons; Northern Development Foundation (NDF) and the Huay Hin Lad community. (n.d.). Climate Change, Trees and Livelihood: A Case Study on the Carbon Footprint of a Karen Community in Northern Thailand. Retrieved from Chiang Mai: AIPP. http://ccmin.aippnet.org/attachments/article/350/English.pdf; Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research. (2009). Coping with Climate Change: The Use of Agrobiodiversity by Indigenous and Rural Communities. Retrieved from Rome: PAR. http://www.agrobiodiversityplatform.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/PAR_briefing_final.pdf.

52. http://asianfarmers.org/afaresearches0876dlsj/2011-10-14-agroecology.pdf

53. Yoon, B.-S., Song, W.-K., & Lee, H.-j. (2013). The Struggle for food sovereignty in South Korea. Monthly Review, 65(1), 56.

54. Watts and Williamson (2015); see also note 17.

55. See also overviews in IAASTD (2009), and National Academy of Science [USA]. (2010). Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.

56. In addition to previously mentioned sources, see the broad review and specific case study of India in FAO (2015).

57. A further example of these principles can be seen in the case of Australian farmers: Marshall, G. R. (2009). Polycentricity, reciprocity, and farmer adoption of conservation practices under community-based governance. Ecological Economics, 68(5), 1507-1520.

58. Pretty, J. N., Toulmin, C., & Williams, S. (2011). Sustainable intensification in African agriculture. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, 9, 5-24.

59. Oldekop et al. 2015.

60. Lefcheck, J. S., Byrnes, J. E. K., Isbell, F. et al. (2015). Biodiversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality across trophic levels and habitats. Nature Communications, 6(6936); Lundgren, J. G., & Fausti, S. W. (2015). Trading biodiversity for pest problems. Science Advances, 1(6).

61. Peasant Economies and Agroecology: Social Movements, Knowledge Exchange, and Public Policies: Conference and Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the Mexican National Association of Producers’ Enterprises—information and final statements available at http://www.iatp.org/blog/201509/globalizing-resistance-resilience-and-hope-through-agroecology.

62. Chappell 2013.

63. Ivanic, M., & Martin, W. (2014). Short-and long-run impacts of food price changes on poverty. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper(7011); Headey, D. (2014). Food prices and poverty reduction in the long run (1331). Retrieved from Washington, D.C.: http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/128056.

64. FAO 2015.

65. Forsyth, M., & Farran, S. (2013). Intellectual Property and Food Security in Least Developed Countries. Third World Quarterly, 34(3), 516-533; Stiglitz, J. E. (2014). Intellectual property rights, the pool of knowledge, and innovation. Cambridge, MA: NBER.

66. Quoted from Borras (2009).

67. Suppan, S. (2012). Submission in response to the request for comments by the Chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC/AWLCA/2011/L.4). Retrieved from Minneapolis: The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2012/smsn/ngo/167.pdf

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