From the Introduction

AGRICULTURE AND RELIGION—A NECESSARY UNITY
Paul Hanley

THE PROBLEM OF SUCCESS

India’s Silicon Valley, the city of Bangalore in the southern state of Karnataka, has become a symbol of the global sweep of the new economy. Its laptop totting yuppies, software firms and trendy malls contrast sharply with stereotypes of poverty-stricken India. To some, Bangalore’s improbable rise to economic prominence signals the advent of a new prosperity emerging from the explosion of high tech innovation and the opening of transnational markets.
Outside Bangalore the prospect is less bright. In Karnataka, 65 percent of the 52 million citizens still depend on agriculture for a living and while the capital’s educated class plugs into the global economy, the rural poor sink into despair. Their desperation has been made tragically evident in a disturbing string of suicides. In one three month period late in 2001, for example, 100 farmers killed themselves (Madhavan).
“Farm activists say rural folk are trapped in the grip of moneylenders who demand high interest,” reported journalist Narayanan Madhavan. “Farm leaders say crop failures because of drought and pests are compounded by inadequate credit, a patchy crop insurance system, high input costs, subsidy cuts, and low support prices offered by state-run procurement agencies.”
The resulting unrest among farmers has translated into major political tension for both Karnataka and its technology rival and neighboring state, Andhra Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, there have also been hundreds of farmer suicides: in 1998-99, more than 500 farmers killed themselves, many by drinking pesticides.
In addition to high input costs, resulting from government subsidy cuts, loans were cited as the major problem for these farmers. Many rely on private lenders who charge three times the 12 percent bank rate. Interest charges grow faster than crops, said one activist, who blamed the World Trade Organization for low commodity prices which make life difficult if not impossible for farmers caught in a cost-price squeeze. 
The “new prosperity” has had little effect in rural areas around Bangalore or in Andhra Pradesh.  Like their counterparts throughout India and the “developing world,” small producers and farm labourers continue to be under-compensated for their efforts and unappreciated for their primary contribution to society. And as political power weakens in the rural areas due to urbanization, their already tenuous standing is further diminished.
Such desperate conditions among rural people are symptomatic of a wider malaise in the world’s agricultural system. This malaise is seen in the social and economic status of farmers and the rural poor, the prevalence of undernourishment in the face of adequate food supplies, and a deep-seated ecological crisis. Ironically, these problems arise in the face of the overall success of agriculture.

Great successes, tragic failures

The world’s food and agriculture system is arguably the greatest achievement of civilization.
When plants were first domesticated just 12,000 years ago, it is estimated that some 5 million people were feeding themselves by hunting, fishing and gathering. Today, agriculture provides more than 94 percent of the protein and 99 percent of the calories for 6 billion people (Wood 4). Most of the human population explosion has occurred in the past 100 years. Population has almost quadrupled since 1900, when there were 1.6 billion people. Since 1960, it has doubled, from three billion to over six billion. Yet agriculture more than kept pace. On average, food supplies are 24 percent higher per person today than in 1961, and real prices are 40 percent lower (Wood 4).
Despite this success, extreme food depravation is widespread. Some 792 million people in developing countries—18 percent of their population—are chronically undernourished (FAO “Mobilizing” Executive Summary). Even in the developed nations, 34 million are in the same condition. This incongruity was highlighted in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) documents for the 27th session of the Committee on World Food Security in November 2001:

Looking back on the century…future historians are likely to point to the anomaly that hunger should have coexisted on a vast scale with more than adequate aggregate global food supplies. The simultaneous persistence of widespread extreme food deprivation and plentiful food supplies in a world with excellent means of communications and transport, can only suggest that there are fundamental flaws in the way in which nations are functioning and the relationships between them are governed and managed. (FAO “Fostering” #12)

Farm crisis worldwide

“Fundamental flaws” are also evident in the conditions facing producers. Ironically, farmers have effectively been penalized for their ever-increasing productivity, in that higher production has lead to lower food prices. Frequently, farmers are caught in a squeeze between falling prices and rising costs.
It is important to recognize that the global forces governing farming in Karnataka and the rest of the developing world also affect farmers in the industrial world. While the consequences are radically different for an Indian farmer compared to, say, a Canadian, the dynamics that result in instability for the farm economy are remarkably similar. Consequently, the “farm crisis” is not confined to Karnataka; in my own province of Saskatchewan, in affluent Canada, the agriculture department maintains “suicide lines” which offer farmers telephone counseling to deal with farm-related stress.
Saskatchewan offers a useful illustration of the farm crisis in an industrial nation. Although situated in a country consistently ranked number one or two on the United Nations Development Index, its farm sector is far from healthy.
Saskatchewan is a little larger than France, Belgium and the Netherlands combined, but with a population of less than 1 million it is almost entirely dependent on export markets for its main agricultural products—grain, oilseed and livestock. Farming has long been its mainstay, but this is changing. Between 1935 and the late 1990s, the numbers of farms dropped from 142,000 to fewer than 50,000, as farm size increased, and in the last four years it is estimated that 26,000 farmers and farm workers have quit.
As a result of rural depopulation, the number of rural communities has diminished dramatically. Of the 600 communities in Saskatchewan in 1995, 500 had less than 175 inhabitants and only a handful have a full array of services. The provincial grain handling system is also disappearing: in 1975, there were 2,309 primary grain buying and storage facilities; by 1996, the number had fallen to 656. The decline of rural communities creates substantial problems for those remaining. In addition to the loss of family and friends, there is a considerable burden involved in maintaining a substantial infrastructure for so few people. Saskatchewan has more kilometres of roads per capita than any other jurisdiction in the world, for example, and the maintenance of these roads is further challenged as the network of railways are abandoned in favour of heavy trucks. With its rural population aging (the average age of a farmer is now 60) and significantly reduced in size, the tax base required to maintain the system of roads, power, gas and telephone grids, schools and hospitals has evaporated. (Fung)
The forces causing rural depopulation are similar to those found throughout North America and the world.
In 1997, Saskatchewan accounted for just 2 percent of world production of wheat, but about 10 percent of the world trade. The average net price of wheat in 1920 (in Canadian dollars) was $2.63 per bushel ($96.64 per tonne). Today, it averages $4.00 per bushel ($150.00 per tonne) for an average grade. However, the net price is much lower; due to the elimination of government transportation subsidies, costs rose from $16.3 per tonne to deliver grain in 1984 to $76.33 today. This puts the net price of grain lower than it was many years ago. Meanwhile, costs have risen dramatically. Capital investment on the average farm, for instance, now averages more than $500,000.
A primary factor in chronically low prices for agricultural commodities is farm subsidies paid by the US and European governments. Canada blames these subsidies for distorting world grain markets; the solution, it says, is to reduce subsidies, which would lead to lower levels of production, pushing grain prices higher—and in turn eliminate the need for subsidies.
Like their counterparts in India, many Saskatchewan’s farmers are mired in debt and see little hope of a brighter future—if they stay on the farm. Unlike India’s farmers, they have the option to pursue opportunities in the prosperous cities of a fully industrialized nation. 
The complexities of the farm economy involve a strange paradox: The problems facing farmers result from their own success. The agricultural revolution of the twentieth century has led to stunning increases in labour and land productivity which have been reflected in a progressive fall in real international grain prices, benefiting the average food consumer. As farmers produce more and more food, meeting the needs of a burgeoning urban population, prices go down, undermining their income; but there is no corresponding downward pressure on costs. In much of the world an informal “cheap food policy” serves the interests of the urban consumer, but the costs of machinery, capital, fuel and other inputs are out of control.  Subsidies moderate the effects of the cost-price squeeze, but few nations can afford them.

The rural poor

While farmers find themselves in difficult straits, their efforts are gradually improving world food security. True, more than 800 million are undernourished today, but that number has fallen from 960 million in 1970. At that point, the overall population of the developing world was 2.6 billion, compared to 4.5 billion today, meaning that 37 percent of the population was undernourished 30 years ago, compared to 18 percent today. (FAO “Mobilizing” #8)
These encouraging statistics mask critical disparities, however. Average Dietary Energy Supply (DES) in the developing countries grew from 2110 to 2650 kilocalories per caput (26 percent) between 1969 and 1998, but this improvement was concentrated in 37 countries, including seven with populations of over 100 million. Hunger actually increased in 59 countries. (FAO “Mobilizing” #10; Homer-Dixon 32).
Undernourishment typically results from poverty, not a lack of available food. The number of people living on less than one dollar a day in the developing world is about 1.3 billion, meaning that on average about 30 percent of the population of these countries live in absolute poverty (Homer-Dixon 33). For a majority of these people, this means chronic hunger.
Poverty in developing countries is overwhelmingly concentrated in rural areas, and urban poverty is often a consequence of migration from rural areas. Amongst rural populations, small farmers' families are usually among the poorest and most undernourished. The implications of this nutritional deficit for human development are considerable: poor nutrition affects the ability to work and to learn and is a primary cause of ill health, substantially undermining human potential and contributing to the vicious cycle of poverty.  Conversely, adequate nutrition is a key to economic development: this point was forcefully argued by the economist Robert Fogel, whose research shows that improved nutrition accounted for 50 percent of British economic growth between 1790 and 1980 (Homer Dixon 383).

Hunger is not necessary

Bringing the benefits of prosperity to the poorest of the poor is certainly not beyond human capacity, either technically or financially. It has been estimated that boosting the caloric intake of the 800 million most in need through direct food aid would cost just USD$13 per head per year or $10.4 billion (FA0 “Mobilizing” Executive Summary). This level of spending is within the reach of a small number of individuals, let alone nations, given that the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world is more than the combined annual income of 2.5 billion of the world’s poorest. In fact, the combined wealth of the three richest families alone is now greater than the combined GDP of the 48 poorest countries.
Disparities between rich and poor are growing: In 1960, the income of the richest 20 percent of the world’s population was thirty times that of poorest 20 percent; in 1998, it was eighty-two times greater. Nowhere are these disparities more evident than in Africa: while consumption has risen dramatically in much of the world over the last 25 years, average household consumption in Africa actually dropped by 20 percent. (Homer-Dixon 33-34)
Food aid is a necessary part of any strategy to feed the poor, but more important is a process of development that assists people to obtain resources needed to increase their incomes or, in the case of the estimated 1 billion subsistence farmers, their productivity. Evidence indicates that improvements to income and productivity are entirely feasible given the political will to support processes of development. In other words, extreme hunger and poverty are not an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. They are symptomatic of conditions that can be changed
Thailand’s successful campaign against malnutrition makes this point.
Over three decades ago, Thailand decided to address malnutrition through a community-driven rural development program. Improving the nation's nutritional status was reframed as an investment instead of an expense. A national rural development plan was created, involving rural job creation, village development projects, complete coverage of basic services for the community and an expansion of food production (with an emphasis on improving the quality of the diet). Among the reasons for Thailand's success in eradicating moderate to severe malnutrition in a single decade (1982-91) was its investment in human capital. A community-government partnership was developed and fostered through broad-based social mobilization strategies. Volunteer facilitators, selected by the community, became responsible for mobilizing the community to engage in nutrition-relevant actions that maximized the potential of local resources. (FAO “Fostering” #54)
This example shows that a combination of social, economic and technical methods can result in significant improvements in productivity and nutrition. While providing ground for optimism, such examples raise serious questions about the underlying reasons for persistent underdevelopment. How can poverty and hunger be tolerated when methods of their eradication are well established?

The problem of permanence

Economic insecurity is one side of the agricultural dilemma. Environmental insecurity is the other.
Agriculture has kept pace with population growth over the past few centuries mainly by converting forests and natural grasslands to agriculture. Between farming and forestry, managed ecosystems now constitute half of the planet’s ice-free land, while human-mobilized material and energy flows now rival those of nature (Homer-Dixon 35). Since the limits of agriculture’s geographic expansion were reached many years ago in most densely populated areas, increasing the productivity of existing farmland has become a necessity. In some regions, particularly in Asia, this has been achieved primarily by growing multiple crops each year in irrigated agroecosystems using new, short-duration crop varieties.
Land-abundant developed countries still possess the physical capacity to increase food production through various technologies that increase yields. However, those countries most in need of this food could not afford to import it. Thus the vast majority of new food supplies will have to come from domestic production in developing countries, many of which already experience high population growth and significant stress on their agricultural resources.
As agriculture intensifies to meet demand, broad concerns emerge about related environmental impacts, especially in the developing nations:

Land degradation
Soil erosion and other forms of land degradation rob the world of up to 7 million hectares of farmland every year. According to the study Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Agroecosystems, forty percent of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded. Based on the most comprehensive mapping of global agriculture to date, the study indicates that almost 75 percent of crop land in Central America is seriously degraded, 20 percent in Africa (mostly pasture), and 11 percent in Asia. Although crop production can still grow on a global scale over the next several decades, the study warns that the underlying conditions of many of the world's agroecosystems are “not good”, particularly those in developing countries. (Wood 5, 48)

Deteriorating water resources
Some 40 percent of the world's food comes from irrigated cropland, but the productivity of these lands is in jeopardy. Water tables are dropping steadily in several major food-producing regions and farmers are racking up an annual water deficit of some 160 billion cubic meters. Meanwhile, the amount of irrigated land per person has dropped 5 percent since 1978 and one in five hectares of irrigated land is damaged by salt. In all, waterlogging and salinization have sapped the productivity of nearly half the world's irrigated lands; 30 million hectares have been severely damaged and an additional 1.5 million hectares are lost each year. Meanwhile, so much water is being diverted for irrigation and other uses that the lower reaches of several major rivers sometimes run dry for portions of the year, including the Yellow in China, the Indus in Pakistan, the Ganges in South Asia, and the Colorado in the American Southwest.
The number of people living in water-stressed countries is projected to climb from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. In the swathe of countries from Morocco to Iran, virtually every nation is facing water shortages. Since it takes a thousand tons of water to grow a ton of wheat, these countries import grain to meet their food needs. Last year, the water required to produce the grain and other farm products imported into the region was equivalent to the annual flow of the Nile River. (Postel)

Agricultural chemicals
Fertilizer and pesticide use has been another means of boosting productivity. Global use of nitrogen fertilizers went from 5 million tonnes in the 1940s to 100 million tonnes in recent years, and today about 40 percent of all the protein in humanity’s diet is dependent on the application of nitrogen fertilizer. The global use of agricultural pesticides rose from about 50 million kilograms a year in 1945 to current application rates of approximately 2.5 billion kilograms per year. Excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides can pollute surface and groundwater sources, posing a health risk, especially for infants. In some countries the use of too little fertilizer results in a form of soil mining that contributes to soil degradation. (Homer-Dixon 66)

Genetic erosion
The loss of genetic diversity in both wild and domesticated plant and animal species threatens future agricultural productivity.  As monocultures replace natural ecosystems and traditional crop diversity, genetic resources useful for many purposes, including crop improvement, are disappearing. It is expected that 25 percent of the earth’s biodiversity will disappear in this century.

Climate change
Agriculture produces greenhouse gases linked to global warming. In addition to methane, some 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions result from deforestation and land use practices such as burning rangeland. Global warming is already contributing to extreme heat, storms, drought and flooding, all of which impact negatively on agriculture.

Overfishing
Close to 1 billion people depend on fishing for most of their animal protein. About two-thirds of the world’s marine fisheries are either overexploited, depleted, or at the limits of exploitation. About one half of all mangrove ecosystems, which are essential to the health of coastal fisheries, have been changed or destroyed, and coral reefs, another source of fish stock, are experiencing a massive collapse, probably as a result of climate change (Homer-Dixon 55). Consequently, it is unlikely that we can look to the seas for additional food supplies.

The impacts of these environmental factors are already being felt in the slowing of the rate of growth in productivity. The annual increase in agricultural production per person during the years 1970 to 1990 was 0.54 percent. Recent indications are that the rate of increase is expected to average just 0.25 percent in the period 1990 to 2010 (Hanley).
In addition to environmental factors, an important reasons for the slowing of growth in productivity may simply be that many major innovations, ­such as improved crop varieties, have already been widely adopted. Once in place, they can no longer increase but only maintain productivity. There may still be room for wider application of these practices, but those nations that have not already adopted them typically cannot afford to do so without significant outside assistance, and levels of foreign aid in agriculture, are declining—official
Development Assistance (ODA) decreased during the 1990s from 0.33% to 0.25% of the GNP of OECD countries (FAO “Fostering” #15).
Nevertheless, in the near term technical innovation is likely to succeed in offsetting the trends threatening food security; but the challenge of meeting human food needs is likely to grow ever more difficult over time as the agricultural environment deteriorates and population rises. The world’s population will increase by up to 50 percent by 2050 and almost all the 3 billion new mouth to feed will be found in developing countries.

Denial, cynicism and hope

Alarming data about the food, agriculture and environmental crisis tends to overwhelm people, resulting in denial. Many not directly affected by the crisis are not aware of its extent at all—so long as food continues to appear on the table there is no problem. Others with a stake in maintaining the status quo may contribute to mass denial. As Bahá'u'lláh observed, the world is in a “strange slumber.”
For those who are aware, many believe these problems can be overcome through technological fixes or market measures. Often the recommended solution is a more aggressive application of the technologies that cause environmental problems, such as more fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation or monocultures. On the other hand, some take the cynical approach that such problems result from a fundamental flaw in human nature or in civilization that is irreparable, at least without abandoning modernity.
But the fact is, neither rural poverty nor the deterioration of the means of agricultural production is unavoidable. Alternative methods of agriculture that are productive and more environmentally sensitive have been identified and are being used with impressive results. A recent, comprehensive study undertaken by Jules Pretty and  Rachel Hine at the University of Essex shows that sustainable farming methods adopted in the 1990s delivered extraordinary yield improvements. The researchers carried out the largest ever survey of worldwide sustainable agriculture, involving 9 million farmers in 52 countries using sustainable agriculture practices and technologies on 29 million hectares, which represented at least 3 percent of the land area of the countries involved.  Of the 91 projects that report data on yield changes, proportional yield increases were generally 50-100 percent for rain fed crops, though considerably greater in a few cases, and 5-10 percent for irrigated crops. 
Such research supports the idea that there are solutions to agriculture’s problems, but is also begs the question: “Why are they not being universally supported, promoted and adopted?”

A moral crisis         

In 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations assembled the world’s Heads of State in Rome for the World Food Summit. The intention was to muster sufficient political will to set the world on a course to food security. The Summit Declaration reaffirmed “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” and the leaders pledged their “political will and…common national commitment to…an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries….” With a sentiment remarkably similar to that expressed by Bahá'u'lláh 105 years earlier in the Tablet of the World, their declaration included commitments on peace, poverty reduction, equality, sustainability and fair trade. (FAO “Fostering” #5,#7)
By 2001, the FAO frankly admitted that the political will necessary to end hunger had not been mustered. The Committee on World Food Security noted the moral implications of this failure:

That some 792 million people in developing countries and 34 million in the developed world remain chronically hungry in spite of the success of farmers in generating enough food to meet everyone's needs and that there is widespread evidence of land degradation, imply that there are serious imperfections in the way in which we are handling our responsibilities to each other and exercising our stewardship over global resources. Inequity in access to food and technology, the damage to natural resources associated with some farming methods and scientific advances, erosion of biodiversity, threats to the sustainability of ocean fisheries and trade restrictions which prevent countries from exercising and benefiting from their comparative advantages all have important ethical dimensions. Looking at these issues from an ethical and human rights standpoint may contribute to the development of a consensus on how they can be better addressed in the common interest of humanity, capturing important considerations which may not be given sufficient weight when decisions are taken principally on technical or economic grounds or left to market forces alone. (FAO “New Challenges” #58)

In recognizing “serious imperfections” in collective human behaviour, toward each other and the natural world, and in expressing its obvious frustration with the lack of political will to achieve food security, the committee was drawn to a moral argument. Significantly, linking food security to human rights and ethical values, and placing it in the context of “the common interest of humanity,” is precisely the standpoint advocated by Bahá'u'lláh. The human cost of ignoring His message over the course of the past century has been immense.
Recognizing that the world’s “prevailing order” was “lamentably defective,” Baha’u’llah said that the solution to the world’s problems would only be found in an ethical approach as expressed in the spiritual principles of the world’s religions and reiterated in His writings. In a statement addressed to the world’s leaders, Baha’u’llah described religion as “the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the world and of tranquility amongst its peoples” (Tablets 63-64). Food security would be a consequence and a sign of achieving an ordered and tranquil world, and Bahá'u'lláh stated that realizing these conditions would depend of the recognition of the fundamental principle of human unity: “The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established” (Gleanings 286). Until we accept that all people, regardless of ethnicity, gender, class or national status, are equal members of one human family, each with unalienable rights—and act out of that belief—we are likely to overlook the obscene disparities that now divide humankind into rich and poor.
In The Prosperity of Humankind, the Bahá'í International Community pointed out that “Justice is the one power that can translate the dawning consciousness of humanity’s oneness into a collective will…” (5-6), and in a remarkable statement in the Words of Paradise, Bahá'u'lláh, quoting the Qur’án, espouses justice as the underlying solution to poverty and hunger. “The light of men is Justice,” He said. “Were mankind to be adorned with this raiment, they would behold the day-star of the utterance, ‘On that day God will satisfy everyone out of His abundance,’ shining resplendent above the horizon of the world” (Tablets 66-67). This idea is implied in the “The Right to Food” endorsed by the World Food Summit; the Committee of World Food Security notes that:

The right to food is recognized in legally binding international instruments, including, most fully, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights…. Under the Covenant, State parties are obliged to take all appropriate steps, to the maximum of available resources, to progressively achieve the right to food for all…. Under international law, the State is accountable for the enjoyment of human rights within its territory…. it remains incumbent on the State to ensure that those who are unable to do so for themselves are adequately provided for, so that as a minimum, no one suffers from hunger. (FAO “Fostering” #30)

Economist and Nobelist Amartya Sen has observed there has never been a famine in a democratic nation. His observation underlines the idea that food security is primarily about justice. Extreme poverty and hunger result from the willingness, deliberately or through neglect, to permit inequalities within or between nations to be perpetuated. The Bahá'í teachings assert that hunger will be eliminated when people and governments embrace justice as an operating principle; when permitting poverty and inequality to degrade any human life is understood to be an assault on the dignity of the entire human race; when the oneness of humanity is the pivotal value around which human relationships are organized.
Justice is also key to solving environmental problems associated with agriculture, according to the Bahá'í teachings. Bahá'u'lláh calls on human beings to be "the embodiments of justice and fairness amidst all creation" (Kitáb-i-Aqdas 87), implying that the circle of unity must be expanded to encompass the myriad species with which we cohabit this planet—and the planet itself. Though revealed before the term ecology had been coined, the Bahá'í teachings offer a distinctly ecological perspective which requires our species to treat the natural world with respect and to act as its trustee, answerable to its Creator for its sustainable development.
From the Bahá'í perspective, these and other spiritual principles offer means by which we can address the root causes of a very complex and entrenched agricultural crisis. This perspective underlies the articles presented in this book.