@農자료창고

It is commonly heard today that small farmers produce most of the world's food. But how many of us realise that they are doing this with less than a quarter of the world's farmland, and that even this meagre share is shrinking fast? If small farmers continue to lose the very basis of their existence, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself.

GRAIN took an in depth look at the data to see what is going on and the message is crystal clear. We need to urgently put land back in the hands of small farmers and make the struggle for agrarian reform central to the fight for better food systems.

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Alcides Raméon Ramírez, a member of one of 200 peasant families fighting to defend their land in Curuguaty, Paraguay. Eighty percent of the country's land is in the hands of just two percent of landowners. (Photo: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam Intermon)

Governments and international agencies frequently boast that small farmers control the largest share of the world's agricultural land. Inaugurating 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming, José Graziano da Silva, Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), sang the praises of family farmers but didn't once mention the need for land reform. Instead he stated that family farms already manage most of the world's farmland1 – a whopping 70%, according to his team.2 Another report published by various UN agencies in 2008 concluded that small farms occupy 60% of all arable land worldwide.3 Other studies have come to similar conclusions.4

But if most of the world's farmland is in small farmers' hands, then why are so many of their organisations clamouring for land redistribution and agrarian reform? Because rural peoples' access to land is under attack everywhere. From Honduras to Kenya and from Palestine to the Philippines, people are being dislodged from their farms and villages. Those who resist are being jailed or killed. Widespread agrarian strikes in Colombia, protests by community leaders in Madagascar, nationwide marches by landless folk in India, occupations in Andalusia – the list of actions and struggles goes on and on. The bottom line is that land is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the rich and powerful, not that small farmers are doing well.

Rural people don't simply make a living off the land, after all. Their land and territories are the backbone of their identities, their cultural landscape and their source of well-being. Yet land is being taken away from them and concentrated in fewer and fewer hands at an alarming pace.

Then there is the other part of the picture: that concerning food. While it is now increasingly common to hear that small farmers produce the majority of the world's food, even if that is outside of market systems, we are also constantly being fed the message that the "more efficient" industrial food system is needed to feed the world. At the same time, we are told that 80% of the world's hungry people live in rural areas, many of them farmers or landless farmworkers.

How do we make sense of all this? What is true and what is not? What action do we take to deal with these imbalances? To help answer some of these questions, GRAIN decided to take a closer look at the facts.5 We tried to find out how much land is really in the hands of small farmers, and how much food they produce on that land.6

The figures and what they tell us

When we looked at the data, we came across quite a number of difficulties. Countries define "small farmer" differently. There are no centralised statistics on who has what land. There are no databases recording how much food comes from where. And different sources give widely varying figures for the amount of agricultural land available in each country.

In compiling the figures, we used official statistics from national agricultural census bureaus in each country wherever possible, complemented by FAOSTAT (FAO's statistical database) and other FAO sources where necessary. For statistical guidance on what a "small farm" is, we generally used the definition provided by each national authority, since the conditions of small farms in different countries and regions can vary widely. Where national definitions were not available, we used the World Bank's criteria.

In light of this, there are important limitations to the data – and our compilation and assessment of them. (See Annex 1 for a fuller discussion of the data.) The dataset that we produced is fully referenced and publicly available online and forms an integral part of this report.7

Despite the inherent shortcomings of the data, we feel confident in drawing six major conclusions:

1. The vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getting smaller
2. Small farms are currently squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world's farmland
3. We are fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger
4. Small farms continue to be the major food producers in the world
5. Small farms are overall more productive than big farms
6. Most small farmers are women

Many of these conclusions might seem obvious, but two things shocked us.

One was to see the extent of land concentration today, a problem that agrarian reform programmes of the 20th century were supposed to have solved. What we see happening in many countries right now is a kind of reverse agrarian reform, whether it's through corporate land grabbing in Africa, the recent agribusiness-driven coup d'état in Paraguay, the massive expansion of soybean plantations in Latin America, the opening up of Burma to foreign investors, or the extension of the European Union and its agricultural model eastward. In all of these processes, control over land is being usurped from small producers and their families, with elites and corporate powers pushing people onto smaller and smaller land holdings, or off the land entirely into camps or cities.

The other shock was to learn that, today, small farms have less than a quarter of the world's agricultural land – or less than a fifth if one excludes China and India from the calculation. Such farms are getting smaller all the time, and if this trend persists they might not be able to continue to feed the world.

Let's go through these findings point by point.

1. The vast majority of farms in the world today are small and getting smaller

By our calculations, over 90% of all farms worldwide are "small", holding on average 2.2 hectares (Table 1). Even if we exclude China and India – where about half of the world's small farms are located – from the calculations, small farms still account for over 85% of all farms on the planet today. In over two-thirds of all countries, small farms – as defined in each country – represent more than 80% of all farms. In only nine countries, all of them in Western Europe, are small farms a minority.8

How many small farms are there – and how much land do they have?

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Due to a myriad of forces and factors (such as land concentration, population pressure or lack of access to land) most small farms have been getting smaller over time. Average farm sizes have shrunk in Asia and Africa. In India, the average farm size roughly halved from 1971 to 2006, doubling the number of farms measuring less than two hectares. In China, the average area of land cultivated per household fell by 25% between 1985 and 2000, after which it slowly started to increase due to land concentration and industrialisation. In Africa, average farm size is also falling.9 In industrialised countries, where the industrialisation of agriculture is rampant, average farm size is increasing, but not the size of small farms.

Table 1: Global distribution of agricultural land

2. Small farms are being squeezed onto less than a quarter of global agricultural land

Table 1 reveals another stark fact: globally, small farms have less than 25% of the world's farmland today. If we exclude India and China again, then the reality is that small farms control less than a fifth of the world's farmland: 17.2% to be precise.

India and China merit special attention because of the huge number of farms and farmers they are home to. In these two countries, small farms still occupy a relatively large percentage of farmland. If we put the figures into a graph, we can see more clearly the disparity between the number of small farms and how much land they have .

We find the most extreme disparities in some 30 of the countries for which we have sufficient data. Here, more than 70% of farms are small, but they are relegated to less than 10% of the country's farmland. These worst cases are listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Worst off

Source: Land distribution dataset compiled by GRAIN.

3. We're fast losing farms and farmers in many places, while big farms are getting bigger

Almost everywhere, big farms have been accumulating more land over the last decades, with many small and medium-sized farmers going out of business. The statistics are dramatic. The official data that we were able to access are summarised in Table 3.

The situation seems most dramatic in Europe, where decades of EU agricultural policies have led to the loss of millions of farms. In Eastern Europe, the process of land concentration started earnestly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the enlargement of the European Union. Millions of farmers were forced out of business by the opening up of East European markets to subsidised farm produce from the West. In Western Europe, meanwhile, biased agricultural policies coupled with large scale infrastructure, transportation and urbanisation projects have been taking a vicious toll. Large farms now represent less than 1% of all farms in the European Union as a whole, but control 20% of EU farmland.13, 14 A recent report by the European Coordination of La Via Campesina and the Hands off the Land Alliance found that in the EU, farms of 100 hectares or more, which represent only 3% of the total number of farms, now control 50% of all farmed land.15

Table 3: Losing farms, concentrating land

Official data on farm losses and land concentration in Africa and Asia are harder to get, and the situation there is less clear, since contradictory factors and forces are often at play. In many countries with high levels of population growth, the number of small farms actually increases as small farms are divided up between children. But at the same time, land concentration is growing.

The rapid expansion of huge industrial commodity farms is a relatively recent phenomenon in Africa, while it has been going on for decades in many countries of Latin America (e.g. soybeans in Argentina and Brazil) and in several parts of Asia (e.g. oil palm in Indonesia and Malaysia). Box 2 and Graph 2 give the background and figures for a few major industrial crops. The conclusion is inescapable: across the world more and more fertile agricultural land is occupied by huge farms to produce industrial commodities for export, pushing small producers into an ever decreasing share of the world's farmland.

This trend is compounded by yet another recent phenomenon: the new wave of land grabbing. The World Bank has estimated that between 2008-2010 at least 60 million hectares of fertile farmland were leased out or sold to foreign investors for the purpose of large scale agricultural projects, with more than half of this in Africa.34 These massive new agribusiness projects are throwing an incalculable number of small farmers, herders and indigenous people off their territories.35 Yet no one seems to have a real grasp of how much land has changed hands through these deals over the last few years. The scores, possibly hundreds, of millions of hectares of agricultural land being taken away from rural communities are not yet captured in the official statistics that were available for this report.

Another way of looking at land distribution is through the Gini index, a statistical tool that ranges from 0 (indicating perfect equity) to 1 (total inequity). For example, when calculated for income distribution, countries with a Gini index above 0.5 are considered "highly unequal". GRAIN gathered Gini indices for agricultural land distribution in more than 100 countries.36Most have indices exceeding 0.5, with many reaching 0.8 and some even surpassing 0.9. In the Americas, all countries for which we found information have indices over 0.5, and most of them reach to 0.8-0.9. In Europe, of the 25 countries for which this information is available, only three have an index under 0.5. Where more than a single year's data was available, the most common tendency was for the index to go up, indicating that land inequality is increasing.

4. Despite their scarce and dwindling resources, small farmers continue to be the world's major food producers

At a time when agriculture is almost exclusively judged in terms of its capacity to produce commodities, one tends to forget that the main role of farming is feeding people. This bias has infiltrated national census data, too, as many nations do not include questions about who produces what and with what means. However, when that information is available, a clear picture emerges: small farmers still produce most of the food. They are feeding the world. The UN Environment Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, FAO and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food all estimate that small farmers produce up to 80% of the food in the non-industrialised countries.37

Table 4 shows the percentage of food produced by small farms in those countries where GRAIN was able to obtain good data. Across a diverse range of countries, the data shows that small farmers produce a much larger proportion of their nations' food than might be expected from their limited landholdings.

Table 4: Lots of food from little land

If small farmers have so little land, how can they provide most of the food in so many countries? one reason is that small farms tend to be more productive than big ones, as we explain in the next section. But another factor is this historical constant: small or peasant farms prioritise food production. They tend to focus on local and national markets and their own families. Much of what they produce doesn't enter into national trade statistics, but it does reach those who need it most: the rural and urban poor.

Big corporate farms, on the other hand, tend to produce commodities and concentrate on export crops, many of which people can't eat as such. These include plants grown for animal feed or biofuels, wood products and other non-food crops. The primary concern for corporate farms is their return on investment, which is maximised at low levels of spending and thus often implies less intensive use of the land. The expansion of giant monoculture plantations, as discussed earlier, is part of this picture. Large corporate farms also often have considerable reserves of land that lie unused until land that is currently being cropped or grazed is exhausted.

Small farmers are not only our main source of food at present, but also for the future. International development agencies are constantly warning that we need to double food production in the coming decades. To achieve that, they usually recommend a combination of trade and investment liberalisation plus new technologies. But this will only create more inequality. The real solution is to turn control and resources over to small producers themselves and enact agricultural policies to support them.

In a recent paper on small farmers and agroecology, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food concludes that global food production could be doubled within a decade if the right policies towards small farmers and traditional farming were implemented. Reviewing the currently available scientific research, he shows that agroecological initiatives by small farmers themselves have already produced an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% among all African initiatives assessed. Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries provided a doubling of crop yields in a short period of just three to ten years.53

The real question, then, is how much more food could be produced if small farmers had access to more land and could work in a supportive policy environment rather than under the siege conditions they are facing today?

5. Small farms not only produce most of the food, they are also the most productive

For some, the idea that small farms are more productive than big farms might seem counterintuitive. After all, we have been told for decades that industrial farming is more efficient and more productive. It's actually the other way around. The inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has been long established and is dubbed “the productivity paradox”.54

In the European Union, 20 countries register a higher rate of production per hectare on small farms than on large farms. In nine EU countries, productivity of small farms is at least twice that of big farms.55 In the seven countries where large farms have higher productivity, it is only slightly higher than that of small farms.56 This tendency is confirmed by numerous studies in other countries and regions, all of them showing higher productivity on small farms.

Our data indicate, for example, that if all farms in Kenya had the current productivity of the country's small farms, Kenya's agricultural production would double. In Central America and Ukraine, it would almost triple. In Hungary and Tajikistan it would increase by 30%. In Russia, it would be increased by a factor of six.57

Although big farms generally consume more resources, control the best lands, receive most of the irrigation water and infrastructure, get most of the financial credit and technical assistance, and are the ones for whom most modern inputs are designed, they have lower technical efficiency and therefore lower overall productivity. Much of this has to do with low levels of employment used on big farms in order to maximise return on investment.58

Beyond strict productivity measurements, small farms also are much better at producing and utilising biodiversity, maintaining landscapes, contributing to local economies, providing work opportunities and promoting social cohesion, not to mention their real and potential contribution to reversing the climate crisis.59

6. Most small farmers are women, but their contributions are ignored and marginalised

The role of women in feeding the world is not adequately captured by official data and statistical tools. FAO, for example, define only as people who get a monetary income from farming as “economically active in agriculture”. Using this concept, FAOSTAT indicates that 28% of the rural population in Central America are “economically active” and that women form just 12% of that group!60

This distorted view does not change significantly from country to country. However, when data is more specific, a totally different picture emerges. The last published agricultural census figures from El Salvador indicate that women are just 13% of “producers”, meaning farm holders, much in line with the number provided by FAO.61 However, the same census indicates that women provide 62% of the labour force used on family farms. The situation in Europe is better for women, but still highly unequal. There, the data show that women comprise less than a quarter of farm holders and on average have smaller farms than men, but provide almost 50% of the family labour force.62

Statistics about the role of women in Asia and Africa are difficult to obtain. According to FAOSTAT, only 30% of the rural population in Africa is economically active in agriculture and 40% in Asia – around 45% being women and 55% men.63 Yet studies carried out or cited by FAO show totally different numbers, indicating that in non-industrialised countries 60 to 80% of the food is produced by women.64 In Ghana and Madagascar, women make up about 15% of farm holders, but provide 52% of the family labour force and constitute around 48% of paid workers.65 In Cambodia, just 20% of agricultural land holders are women, but they provide 47% of the paid agricultural force and almost 70% of the labour force on family farms.66 In the Republic of the Congo, women provide 64% of all agricultural labour and are responsible for around 70% of food production.67 In Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, they are 53% of the active population in agriculture.68 There is very little data on the evolution of the contribution of women to agriculture, but their share would likely be growing, since migration is resulting in mostly women and girls picking up the workload of those who leave.69

According to FAO, fewer than 2% of landholders worldwide are women, but figures vary widely.70 There is broad consensus, however, that even where land is registered as family or joint property between men and women, men still enjoy much wider powers over it than do women. For example, a common situation is that men can make decisions about the land on behalf of themselves and their spouses, but women cannot. Another impediment is that in giving credit, governments and banks require women to present some form of authorisation from their husbands or fathers, while men encounter no such barrier. It is no surprise, then, that available data show that only 10% of agricultural loans go to women.71

Additionally, inheritance laws and customs often work against women. Males tend to have priority or outright exclusivity in the inheritance of land. In many countries, women can never gain legal control over land, with authority passing to their sons if they are widowed for example.

The data above support the contention that women are the main food producers on the planet, although their contribution remains ignored, marginalised, and discriminated against.

Reversing the trend: give small farmers the means to feed the world

As the data show, land concentration in agriculture is reaching extreme levels. Today, the vast majority of farming families have less than two hectares to feed themselves and humankind. And the amount of land they have access to is shrinking. How are small farmers supposed to sustain themselves in these conditions?

Most families that depend on a small farm need to have family members working outside the farm in order to be able to stay on the land. This situation is often described euphemistically as "diversification", but in reality it means accepting low wages, and bad working conditions. For the rural families of many countries, it means mass migration leading to permanent insecurity both for those who leave and for those who stay. Also, living and working on a small farm often consists of long and difficult working hours, no holidays, no pensions, no retirement for the elderly and irregular school attendance for children.

If this land concentration process continues, then no matter how hard-working, efficient and productive they are, small farmers will not be able to carry on. The concentration of fertile agricultural land in fewer and fewer hands is directly related to the increasing number of people going hungry every day. Genuine land reform is not only necessary, it is urgent. And it must carried out in line with the needs of peasant families and small producer communities. one of these needs is that land be redistributed to small farmers as an inalienable good, not as a commercial asset that can be lost if rural families are not able to cope with the highly discriminatory situations that they face. Farming communities should also be able to decide by and for themselves, and without pressure, the type of land tenure they want to practice.

The situation facing women farmers also requires urgent action. Many international agencies and governments are currently discussing these issues. Land access for women is specifically part of the Millennium Development Goals. The FAO has written numerous documents advocating for women's rights over land and agricultural resources. The issue is being considered by the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, the G8 and the G20, among others. However, what these institutions are advocating is often not what women farmers and women's organisations have been struggling for. Such institutions often advocate a system of land rights based on individual property titles that can be bought and sold or used as collateral. This is likely to lead to further concentration of land, just as the allocation of individual land property rights to men has done historically around the world.72

Doing nothing to turn this situation around will be disastrous for all of us. Small farmers – the vast majority of farmers, who tend to be the most productive and who produce most of the world's food – are losing the very basis of their livelihoods and existence: their land. If we do nothing, the world will lose its capacity to feed itself. The message, then, is clear. We urgently need to launch, on a scale never seen before, genuine agrarian reform programmes that get land back in the hands of small and peasant farmers.

Annex 1: The data

What sources of data were used?

Gathering and analysing data on land distribution and food production raises major questions and problems. First, data on farms, farmers, rural people and food are often patchy, slanted, or influenced by the politics of those who collect them. Second, classification criteria and definitions are highly variable.

Although government statistics are no exception to such problems, we have used government sources, most often provided by national agricultural censuses, as much as possible because they provide the most comprehensive data. We also used data provided by FAOSTAT and other FAO sources, and we incorporated data from research papers when other data was not available at national level. This means that we have used data from various years, in some cases from 10 or more years ago. If this had any impact on our results, it is most likely that the amount of land in the hands of small farmers has been overestimated, since with few exceptions the worldwide trend is towards less land in the hands of small farmers. The sources for each case are indicated in the dataset accompanying this report.73

Outside Europe and the Americas, data for around one-quarter of the world's countries – representing around 12% of all agricultural land and about the same fraction of global rural population – was either partial or not available. We estimated the number of farms and small farms and the amount of land in the hands of small farmers in these countries based on total agricultural land (provided by FAOSTAT), rural population (provided by UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and average household size per country (provided by UN Habitat).

What definition of small farms was used?

What is a small farm? The area of land it occupies is not the only significant parameter. Twenty hectares may be very big in India but very small in Argentina. Access to irrigation, the fertility of the soil, the type of production being undertaken, climate and topography are all factors in determining what is considered a small farm and what is not. There is clearly no universal definition of a small farm, and GRAIN had no possibility of adopting one. Building or proposing an all-encompassing definition was impossible because in many cases it would have rendered the available data inapplicable or impossible to interpret.

We also avoided the concept of "family farm" that FAO and others are now promoting in the context of the International Year of Family Farming. Although it can be a meaningful concept in many countries, the definitions used are so broad and ambiguous that they can hide serious contradictions, sometimes with unintended consequences. In addition, few official statistics provide data on family farming.

Hence, we decided to use the definition of “small farms” provided by the national authorities of each country. When such criteria were not available, we adopted the definition of the World Bank (farming households with less than 2 hectares). An exception was made in the case of the US, where according to official criteria any farm with an annual turnover of less than US$250,000 is considered small. Given that this would seriously contradict other criteria on what a small farm is (such as the destination of production or the source of labour), we opted for the criterion put forward by Lincoln University in Nebraska, which defines a small farm in the US as one with a turnover of US$50,000 or less per year.

We have, therefore, used several definitions of small farms in this report. These definitions are based on data and measurements as disparate as gross income, gross sales, amount of land, source of farm labour and type of resources – or combinations of these. Still, we believe that this approach gives the best approximation of reality, since the criteria used by each country do represent certain aspects of small farms.

What kind of land are we talking about?

Farmers, and more so small farmers, carry out a wide range of agricultural activities under quite diverse arrangements. These include intensive management of horticultural crops, crop rotations with annual forages, agroforestry, shifting cultivation, livestock rearing, fish farming and pastoralism, or any combination of these.

Governments and FAO classify land under different categories according to how the land is used, and they collect data accordingly. The EU accounts for all the land within a farm, no matter how it is being cropped or utilised. The same holds for the US, Brazil, Argentina and India. But in Africa, many governments exclude communal land and grazing areas from the statistics, thus greatly underestimating the land area used by farmers. once again, different criteria are being employed, and we had no means of selecting or disaggregating data (for example, cropped land versus total agricultural land) governments or other agencies had collected under a single heading.

The FAO provides figures on total agricultural land for almost every country in the world, even for those where no census data are available, and defines total agricultural land as the sum of the following areas:

• arable land - land under temporary agricultural crops, temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily (for less than five years) fallow.
• permanent crops - land cultivated with long-term crops which do not have to be replanted for several years (such as cocoa and coffee); land under trees and shrubs producing flowers, such as roses and jasmine; and nurseries (except those for forest trees, which should be classified under "forest").
• permanent meadows and pastures - land used permanently (for five years or more) to grow herbaceous forage crops, either cultivated or growing wild (wild prairie or grazing land).74

We used the FAO's more inclusive definition and the associated statistics to calculate the total agricultural land in each country.

Missing: the landless, the urban food producers, extractive industries and land grabbing

Our research left out numerous realities, either because they were outside the scope of this study or because we did not find enough data. one important missing element is the situation of landless food producers and workers. Landlessness is a major and increasing reality in many countries, as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (MST), the largest social movement in Brazil, so clearly testifies. Nor did we examine urban food producers, an increasingly important factor in global food production. Very few countries provide data on them, and we could not compile significant figures on their situation worldwide.

Through our work and that of our partners, GRAIN is keenly aware that urbanisation, the extractive industries, hydroelectric dams and many other industrial mega projects are increasingly advancing over farmland, forest lands, water sources, farming communities and indigenous peoples' territories. They are massively affecting the availability of agricultural land in the world, but since much of their rapid expansion is relatively recent, they are often not adequately addressed in agricultural land statistics.

And finally, also missing in our calculations is the recent wave of land grabbing that is now handing millions of hectares of fertile farmland to large corporations and depriving tens of thousands of farming communities of their livelihoods. Today's massive land grab took off only in the last decade and has yet to be captured in the official statistics.

http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4929

Article first published online: 7 FEB 2014

DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12219

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12219/abstract

미국에서는 최근 다시 농업이 주목을 받고 있다. 

식량이나 에너지 문제가 불궈질수록 그러한 경향이 강해진다고 하는데, 이를 뒷받침하는 것이 바로 부동산이다.

아래 지도를 보면 어디가 요즘 땅값이 비싼지 확인할 수 있다. 

이를 보면 특히 농업지대의 땅값이 오르고 있는 걸 볼 수 있다. 미국은 요즘 한마디로 농업 붐이다.

이는 농업 인구, 즉 농민이 늘어나고 있다는 것에서 그 증거를 살펴볼 수 있다. 

아래와 같이 농업지대에 인구가 증가하고 있는 것을 보라. 

우리 식으로 표현하자면 일종의 귀농이다. 

그런데 요즘 미국의 귀농자들은 농업 관련 고등교육을 받은 것이 특징이라고 한다.

한국의 농수산대학과 각 대학의 농학과를 나온 인재들이 농촌 현장으로 들어가는 추세라고나 할까.

농지 가격이 오르고, 귀농 인구가 증가하는 건 역시나 먹고살 길이 있기 때문이다. 

요즘 미국의 에너지정책, 특히 옥수수로 만드는 에탄올이란 생물연료 덕에 농업이 특히 더 주목을 받고 있다.

이와 관련한 시설들이 마구 증가하고 있다는 사실.

기사의 제목과 달리 석회 같은 중화제를 사용하여 토양의 산성도만 낮추었을 뿐, 정작 중요한 토양의 유기물 함량은 2%대로 좋은 토양이라고 부르는 5%대에 절반 수준밖에 안 된다. 이래서야 계속해서 화학비료에 의존할 수밖에 없지 않을까. 그런데도 토양 비옥도가 양호하다는 건 기자가 내용을 잘 모르고 불러주는 대로만 받아 적은 결과가 아닐까 한다.

---------

홍성·예산=뉴시스】유효상 기자 = 충남도 농업기술원(원장 김영수)은 도내 150곳의 밭토양을 채취해 토양분석 변화를 조사한 결과, 주요 토양성분이 대부분 적정수준을 보이는 등 토양비옥도가 양호해진 것으로 나타났다고 21일 밝혔다.

토지 소유자가 적어도 5년 동안 농사를 짓는다면 지방자치단체에서 3600평 미만의 토지에 대한 재산세를 낮춰주어서 지역사회 텃밭과 소농을 촉진하는 새로운 법안.

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-urban-agriculture-law-20131003,0,3253879.story

잊혀진 존재, 농민-(상)

경기화성 충북청원 전남광양 경남의창 감소 폭 커
중간규모 농가 몰락하고 소규모 농가 늘어 양극화

아래 그림은 1980년과 2010년 전국 시군구별 농가 비중 변화도다. 도시화가 특히 빨랐던 경기도나 경상남도 동부는 말할 것도 없고, 전통적인 곡창 지역에서도 농가 비중이 크게 줄었다.

도 지역만 좀더 자세히 보기 위해 확대해봤다. 각 도별로 농가 비중이 가장 많이 줄어든 시군구는 따로 표시했다. 1980년 기준으로 경기 화성군(현 화성시, 안산시, 오산시), 충북 청원군, 전남 광양군(현 광양시), 경남 의창군(대부분의 지역이 현재 창원시 의창구)처럼 산업화, 도시화가 빠르게 진행된 지역들이 감소폭에서 으뜸을 차지했다.

농민이 빠르게 줄면서, 농민들에게 가장 중요한 땅, 곧 경지면적에도 복잡한 변화가 나타난다. 1980년 농가당 경지면적은 평균 0.932헥타르였고, 2010년엔 1.231헥타르로 늘었다. 하지만 속을 들여다보면 사정은 복잡하다. 아래 그림은 경지 면적별 농가 비중이 지역에 따라 어떻게 변했는지를 지도로 표시한 것이다. 1헥타르 이상 농가의 비중은 변화가 적은 반면, 0.5헥타르 미만 농가의 비중은 크게 늘어난 것을 알 수 있다. 중간 규모 농가의 몰락, 소규모 농가의 증가로 요약되는 변화다.

아래 그림은 경지면적 0.3헥타르 미만의 특히 소규모 농가 변화와, 2헥타르 이상 대규모 농가의 변화만 따로 떼어본 것이다. 충청도, 전라도의 대규모 농가 증가세가 특히 두드러진 것을 알 수 있다. 강원 산간 지역도 대규모 농가의 증가가 눈에 띈다.

바로 위의 대규모 농가와 소규모 농가의 시군구별 비중 지도를 조금 다른 각도에서 그래프로 그려봤다.

같은 도 지역내 시군구별 편차를 보여주는 '중간값 중심 그래프'(상자 수염 그림)다. 그래프, 특히 상자 크기가 위아래로 길수록 편차가 크다는 얘기다. 경기도와 경상남도에서 소규모 농가의 비중이 크게 늘었고, 도내 편차도 크다는 것을 알 수 있다. 대도시가 적은 충청도 지역은 지역간 편차가 상대적으로 적다.

2헥타르 이상의 대규모 농가는 조금 다른 양상이다. 1980년에는 시군구별 격차가 크지 않았는데, 2010년엔 경기도를 제외한 전 지역에서 지역별 격차가 많이 늘었다. 전라도와 강원도에서 대규모 농가의 비중이 확연히 늘어난 것도 잘 나타난다.

값싼 수입 농산물이 쏟아져 들어오는 요즘 대규모 농가의 증가는 바람직한 현상이라고 볼 수 있다. 하지만 이와 함께 소규모 농가의 비중이 커졌다는 점도 고려해야 한다. 농민의 분화 현상은, 농업 정책도 규모나 사정에 따라 세분화해야 한다는 걸 시사한다. 다음회에는 농민의 세분화를 좀더 자세히 들여다볼 예정이다.

신기섭 기자 marishin@hani.co.kr

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전통농업의 방법에 대한 글인 줄 알고 덤볐다가 뒤로 갈수록 경제적인 측면에 대한 이야기로 흘러버린다.

그만큼 이해하기 어려웠던 내용이라 번역도 엉망이다.

정확한 내용이 궁금한 분은 원문을 참고하시길 바란다.

나는 그저 '히마'라는 전통적인 농법이 있다는 사실에 만족하련다.

요르단 자르카 강 주변의 바싹 마른 초원에서, 양과 염소의 목동들이 고대의 히마(himá)가 지닌 가치를 잊지 않고 있다. 아랍어로 히마 방목과 벌목을 하다가 때때로 땅에 휴식을 주는 걸 가리킨다. 

히마는 농업 생산을 증대하기 위한 노력의 일환으로 자유로이 방목하도록 토지를 개방한 정부의 정책에 의해 잊혀졌다. 그 방법은 작동하지 않았다. 과도한 방목이 땅이 감당할 수 있는 가축의 수를 감소시켰고, 값비싼 사료를 수입해야 했다. 그러나 국제자연보호연맹International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN)이 수립한 시범 프로젝트를 통해, 목축민들은 몇 년 동안 땅의 일부분을 쉬게 하여 그 식생을 2배로 늘릴 수 있다는 것을 다시 배우고 있다. 이는 그곳에서 방목할 수 있는 가축의 숫자를 잠재적으로 2배로 늘릴 수 있다는 뜻이다. 농민들은 히마와 같은 지속가능한 방법으로 한 가지 혜택만 보는 것이 아니다. 그 방법은 지하수를 다시 채워주고, 홍수를 막으며, 생물다양성을 풍부하게 만든다. 

나미비아 사막회담에서 Economics of Land Degradation Initiative에 의해 발표된 보고서는 기업과 정부의 관료들이 관심을 기울여야 할 수치가 포함되어 있다. 이 보고서에서는 세계적으로 지속가능한 토지관리가 연간 세계의 작물 공급량을 25억 톤, 경제적으로는 1조4천억 달러의 가치까지 높일 수 있다고 결론을 내렸다. 

보고서는 토지의 경제적 가치가 "즉각적인 농업 또는 임업 시장가치"에 기반을 하며 “만성적으로 저평가되어 있다”고 경고한다. 물을 정화하고 저장하며, 대기의 온실가스를 흡수하거나 가치 있는 생태계와 생물다양성을 지원하는 보호되는 토지의 능력에는 거의 주의를 기울이지 않는다. 

자르카 강 유역의 방목지를 묵히자, 빗물을 더 잘 붙들어 지하수를 다시 채우게 되었다. 멸종위기종인 조류의 둥지와 함께 생물다양성이 회복되었다. “이러한 생태계 서비스가 목동만이 아니라 나라의 모든이들을 기쁘게 한다”고 국제자연보호연맹 건조지역 코디네이터 Jonathan Davies 씨는 말한다. “아마 지구도 토양의 탄소 함량의 변화로부터 혜택을 볼 것이다.”

Davies 씨는 전통적 방목법으로 얻는 경제적 혜택이 비용을 능가한다는 것은 이미 명백하다고 말한다. 그리고 그는 요르단이 누릴 간접적 혜택은 농민들의 직접적 혜택의 2배에 이를 것이라 한다. 총 가치는 어떻게 되는가? 아직 측정된 바 없다. 그 작업은 지속가능성을 목표로 하는 야심찬 국제적 노력인 Economics of Land Degradation Initiative의 도움으로 자금 지원을 받고 있다. 지속가능한 토지관리의 간접적 혜택을 정량화함으로써, 이니셔티브는 지속가능한 방법을 증대하는 것이 이득이 된다며 정부 관료와 기업을 설득하려고 시도하고 있다. 

얼마 전 발표된 연구는 지속가능한 토지관리의 혜택이 단지 작물과 섬유, 목재와 같은 가치 이상이라고 장기적 전망을 제시한다. 보고서에 관련된 사람들은 자신들의 추산이 확대되는 사막과 악화되는 토지에 맞서는 데 도움이 되기를 바란다. 

토지 악화는 1980년대 이후 지속되며 식량위기의 원인이 되고 있으며, 유엔이 주도하는 노력으로 경각심이 높아졌다. 어느 이론적 추산에서는 지구의 이용가능한 토지의 24%가 현재 악화되어 있으며, 이는 10억 명 이상의 사람들에게 직접적으로 영향을 미친다고 한다. 그 문제는 점점 심각해질 것이다. 과학자들은 세계가 2050년까지 인구성장에 따라 70~100% 정도 식량 생산을 증대해야 할 것이라고 경고했다. 

그러나 이런 엄중한 경고도 정책 결정자들의 주의를 끌지 못한 것 같다. 또 다른 전술이 필요하다. 

“우린 사막화의 발생이란 부정적 수사에서 멀리 떨어지고 싶다”고 보고서의 주요 저자이자 2009년 이니셔티브의 설립자 가운데 하나인 유엔 대학의 부국장 Richard Thomas 씨는 말한다. “단지 관심을 얻고 있는 것만이 아니다. 우리가 그것으로 전환하고 ‘보아라, 이것이 지속가능한 토지관리로 얻는 경제적 혜택이다’라고 말한다면, 그 숫자는 정말로 매우 인상적이다.”

“우리는 토양의 탄소 격리와 재순환 능력 같은 것을 정량화하고자 한다. 토지와 관련된 정신적, 문화적 가치를 경제적 가치로 환산하는 건 정말 어렵지만, 우린 양적 가치와 함께 질적 가치를 조화시키고자 한다.”

세계의 지도자와 기업들이 지속가능성의 혜택을 거둬들이기 위해 지원할 수 있는 특정한 단계가 보고서에 설명되어 있다. 나무를 심는 프로젝트에 자금을 지원하는 일, 농촌 거주자들이 관광 같은 새로운 대안산업을 설립하도록 돕는 일, 농민이 자신의 땅의 일부를 보호하고 보존하는 데 비용을 지불하는 일 등이다.

이론을 현실화하기 위하여, Thomas 씨는 기업이 사회적 책임에 흥미를 갖게 해야 한다고 한다. 홍보활동의 우선순위를  boosting “공유 가치”를 증대할 수 있는 의미있는 방법에 유리하도록 해야 한다. 그러한 방법이 토지 소유자와 정부, 그리고 그 땅에서 일하는 농촌의 빈곤층을 향상시키는 데 도움이 될 수 있다. 

기업의 사회적 책임 프로그램의 예로 근래에 나타난 공정무역을 들 수 있다. “공정무역은 단지 다른 방식으로 파이를 나누자는 뜻이 아니다”라고 Thomas 씨는 말한다. “그러나 공유 가치는 파이를 확장하는 것을 뜻한다. 그건 좀 다른 개념으로, 지역사회에 더 많은 평등한 혜택을 제공하는 동시에 경제성장을 이끌 수 있는 것이다.”

경작지의 상실을 반전시킬 희망이 없다고 일축하기 쉽다. 그러나 변화를 위한 추동력은 독일과 한국, 유럽연합이 2011년 제공한 240만 달라를 사용하여 이니셔티브가 수행할 바를 결정할 일이다. 그 돈은 보츠와나와 요르단, 말리, 케냐와 같은 국가에서 과학적 연구와 시범 프로젝트를 수행하는 데 사용되었다. 또 다른 자금 지원이 간접적으로 제공되었다. 

“우린 다른 네트워크롤 통해 새로운 지원을 받고 있다”고 이니셔티브의 코디네이터 Mark Schauer 씨는 말한다. “우리의 협력자들은 경제학은 인식 제고와 더 나은 정보에 기반한 의사결정을 만들기 위한 좋은 도구로서 간주한다.”

http://modernfarmer.com/2013/09/want-raise-crop-yields-2-5-billion-tons-give-land-break/

작년 우크라이나에서는 외국인의 토지취득 금지법이 해제되었다. 그러고 난 뒤 며칠 전, 중국이 50년 동안 최대 300만 헥타르에 달하는 우쿠라이나의 농지를 구입했다고 발표했다.

이는 2008년 식량 위기를 겪은 뒤 한국에서도 더 적극적으로 추진하고 있는 해외농업개발사업의 일환으로 볼 수 있다. (해외농업개발의 실태와 과제라는 보고서를 보시길... http://blog.daum.net/stonehinge/8729295 )

일본은 이미 세계 곳곳에 자국의 해외농장 및 식량 구입선을 상당히 개척해 놓은 상태이고, 이제 중국이 경제성장과 함께 활기차게 세계의 곳곳을 헤집고 다니는 중이다. 중국의 발걸음은 아프리카는 말할 것도 없고, 남미에도 꽤 많은 농지를 획득한 상태라고 한다. 그와 함께 국제사회에서는 한국과 중동의 국가들도 계속 언급되고 있다.

아래는 해외에 농지를 구입한 국가들 목록에 당당하게 이름을 올리고 있는 대한민국... 이런 것이 국격일런지... ㅡㅡ 

식량자급률에 한계가 있다 보니 불가피한 선택일 텐데 참 머리가 아픈 문제이다.

또 이야기하기에는 입이 아플 정도지만, 2000년대 후반 대우 로지스틱스가 마다가스카르에 99년 동안 땅을 임대했던 사건은 지금도 국제사회에서 계속 회자되고 있는 사건이다. 식민지를 건설했던 선진국의 본을 받았을 뿐입니다! ... 쿨럭.... 아무튼 이러한 모습 때문에 해외의 토지취득, 즉 토지수탈이 신식민주의로 비난받고 있다.

바야흐로 세계는, 특히 식량자급률에 문제가 있는 돈 많은 국가들을 중심으로 식량 획득을 위한 새로운 땅따먹기의 시대가 활짝 열리고 있는 것 같다. 이를 '토지수탈'이라면서 신식민주의의 양태라고 적극 비난하며 저항하고 있지만, 마치 재개발사업에서 거주민들이 당하는 일을 확대 적용한 듯 일이 착착 진행되어 가는 것이 안타까울 뿐이다.

다시 중국 이야기로 돌아와서, 이번에 중국이 획득한 우크라이나의 농지는 대략 이 정도 규모라고 한다.

우크라이나는 농지를 내주는 대신, 중국 수출입은행에서 농업개발을 위한 30억 달러의 차관을 얻었고, 또한 종자와 농기계, 비료와 농약 생산시설을 제공받기로 했다고 한다. 우크라이나는 현재 1년에 10억 달러어치의 비료를 수입하고 있다고 하니 남아도는 땅을 내주고 필요한 것을 취한 좋은 거래라고 생각할지 모르겠다. 그리고 고속도로 같은 사회기반시설에 대한 투자도 약속받은 상태이니 더 말할 것도 없다.

중국의 팽창이 현실화되고 있는 요즘... <농지와 수자원: 중국의 해외투자>라는 보고서를 못하는 영어로 대충 훑어보는데, 정말 후덜덜하구만.

farmland_water_china_invests.pdf

과연 누가 중국을 먹여살릴 것인가? 

아니 이 질문은 잘못되었다. 먹여살리긴 누가 먹여살리단 말인가. 중국이 알아서 먹고 살려고 열심히 움직이는 것이지.

그로 인해 튈 불똥이 한국에는 어떠한 영향을 미칠까?

그것이 궁금하고 우려스럽다.

이 아름답고도 슬픈 영상을 보셔요. 

1900년대 초반, 미국의 농민들은 값싼 땅을 찾아서 남부의 평원으로 몰려들었다. 이 지역은 사실 강한 바람에 뜨거운 여름, 빈번한 가뭄으로 농사에 적합한 곳은 아니었다. 특히 1차대전 기간에 밀 가격이 폭등을 하면서 농민들의 이주를 부추겼다. 밀 가격의 폭등과 함께 토지 개발업자들은 "쟁기질하면 비가 온다"고 꼬드겼고, 농민들은 재빨리 수억 평의 초지를 밀밭으로 바꾸어 놓았다. 이로써 역사상 가장 참혹한 인간이 만든 재앙이 시작되었다. 

당시의 상황에 대한 이러한 기록도 있다(http://bit.ly/11Qh66q). 

"1930년대 초반, 가뭄과 대공황이 밀어닥치면서 밀 시장이 붕괴되었다. 예전에는 밀이 바다를 이루었던 곳이 평원을 훑고 지나는 바람에 무방비 상태로 노출된 건조한 겉흙에 뿌리를 내린 풀의 바다로 바뀌었다." 

그때 일어난 황진 때문에 가축들이 죽고, 그 지역에 사는 사람들은 폐렴과 기관지염, 기침, 천식 등과 같은 호흡기 질환으로 고통을 받거나 죽어갔다. 결국 사람들은 견디지 못하고 집과 땅을 포기한채 서둘러 짐을 싸서 자신이 살던 곳을 떠났다. 1935년 4월 14일, 최악의 황진폭풍이 발생하며 그날을 "검은 일요일(Black Sunday)"이라 부른다.

아래의 영상에는 당시 그곳에서 살아남은 26명의 인터뷰가 나온다. 당시의 상황은 정말 끔찍하다고밖에 표현할 수 없다.

이 영상을 통하여 흙이 얼마나 소중한지, 그를 지키는 농법이 왜 중요한지 절실히 깨달을 수 있다.