Where proper local support exists trade offers promising opportunities for farmers to use land and grow products in ways that are resource enhancing. For example, the global diversification of human diets and processing techniques for new food and feed products are expanding markets for tree crops that can be grown in an environmentally sustainable fashion in many tropical and subtropical agricultural regions now considered “marginal.” This offers opportunities for employment, economic development, poverty reduction, and improved food security in many poor parts of the world. More proactive efforts are needed to support such diversification, through new technology development for production, processing, storage and use, and promotion of well-functioning market institutions for these new products.
The revolution in communications and information technology should also be harnessed to promote sustainable agriculture. Such applications include:
- accelerating the flow of information regarding successful technological or institutional innovations, e.g., international science, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and local university use of Internet technologies;
- improving the resolution, reliability, and availability of satellite data, the growing use of geographical information systems (GIS), and more cost-effective means of handling such geographically referenced data; and
- integrating advanced technologies in production systems in ways that both enhance productivity and reduce environmental impacts, such as precision agriculture and drip irrigation.
It is remarkable how much controversy still prevails about the nature, extent, and significance of such key issues as soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and pesticide risks because data are scarce, partial, or too closely linked to advocacy, rather than independent, scientific enquiry. Persistent data gaps limit our ability to monitor the scale and location of environmental problems and successes in the context of agriculture. And significant knowledge gaps, such as in soil biology, limit our ability to design agroecosystem management strategies that enhance positive production system synergies, both biotic and abiotic. More and better-targeted research and development can overcome these weaknesses but would require greater political commitment. Tasks that merit continued public investment include improved satellite monitoring of land cover, soil and water degradation and carbon storage, and the collection of data on land use and resource management practices. There is also a strong case for looking beyond individual ecosystems at cross-ecosystem synergies; for example, the production of biofuels or innovative marine products that have food, feed, or fiber value could reduce food production pressures on agroecosystems, allowing them to contribute more to environmental goods and services. These and many other options are worth further examination by stakeholders in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA).
Recommendations for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)
- The science and practice of environmental measurement and valuation in the context of agricultural ecosystems are in their infancy. Development of better methods for spatial, intertemporal, and integrated systems analysis is essential for improved ecosystem assessment and for promoting cost-effective monitoring of the impacts of technological, institutional, and policy change.
- Fostering the development of agroecosystems that exhibit high levels of agricultural productivity as well as contribute more (or consume less) environmental goods and services will require appropriate policy support. Promising approaches include transfer payments to farmers for environmental services, taxation of agricultural wastes, and transformation of waste products to recycled commodities. Further work is needed to conceptualize alternative policies and document the performance of pilot implementation.
- The MEA should support international initiatives that seek to advance agricultural and environmental monitoring efforts on a global basis and in spatially referenced formats. The goal should be to help harmonize remote sensing and cross-country survey programs and products, linking them to more detailed local and national monitoring initiatives. Such information networks should support the capacity to keep abreast of changing natural resource and productivity conditions of the world’s major agricultural lands.
- The collection of remotely sensed and related spatial data is insufficient to interpret changing agroecosystem conditions. Agroecosystems are highly managed, and it is the specific detail of how they are managed that determines their long-term capacity to produce agricultural goods and environmental services. Initiatives are needed to support the standardization and regular compilation of land use and land management data. The most feasible long-term options to collect this type of data probably involve networks operated by and for local communities.
- The databases, indicators, and collaborator networks developed through the PAGE studies provide a significant resource and should be fully integrated into the MEA activities. One application, for example, might be to link more precise local agroecological and production system characterization into the global-scale schema developed by the PAGE. The PAGE data sets might also provide a sampling framework for stratifying agroecosystem types that are regionally or globally representative and that may serve as foci for organizing MEA activities.
- This first attempt at evaluating the state of the world’s ecosystems was structured according to major biomes: agroecosystems, coastal ecosystems, forest ecosystems, grassland ecosystems and freshwater systems. Many important and often more controversial ecosystem changes occur in the transition areas between ecosystems, such as agricultural productivity in forest margins, and water allocation between agriculture and natural wetlands. We recommend that MEA activities be structured around regional activities that provide incentives to undertake more integrated ecosystem assessments and that seek to better understand, for example, how to meet local goods and service needs by the integrated, or at least harmonized, management of different ecosystems.
