For your mental calisthenics – Using the 2 images above, I will introduce you to 2 entirely different guides to see Agriculture in the next decades – Quantitative and Qualitative. Not obvious? That’s why I need to explain.
Upper image: Shared on Facebook today, Saturday, 15 May 2021, is “5 Ways Farming Will Change In The Next 30 Years[1]” written by Portia Stewart and which appears in the magazine Fast Company (Agweb.com). In sharing, Earwin Belen says “Farming of the future is data-driven.”
On 12 May, the ladies & gentlemen shown in the image discuss in a webinar the topic “Transforming The Next Era Of Agriculture Through Innovation.” Part of the Fast Company Innovation Festival, the webinar sponsor was Bayer Crop Science. They were looking at an additional world population of 2 billion people by 2050 for whom to produce food, fuel, and fiber.
They are looking at numbers, not people. Unnaturally, they are talking of the necessity for growing genetically changed crops & livestock, and applying inorganic fertilizers and chemical pesticides. No: Those methods are not sustainable. Yes: Technically feasible & economically viable. No: Environmentally not sound & not socially acceptable. Yes, that is your data-drivenagriculture.
Lower image: “Text-A-Taxi” – That is a photograph I took with my Casio Exilim camera on a street in Legaspi City in 2010 as one of the members of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists who were invited by then-Albay Governor (now Congressman) Joey Salceda after he was declared by the United Nations as a Climate Change Champion. There was the 1st League of Provinces of the Philippines meeting being held in Legazpi City on the broad subject of how local governments could respond to climate change.
“Text-A-Taxi” is the use of modern technology – the cellphone – to deliver a not-so-modern service, a taxi ride, anywhere in the city any time. It’s an example of the Qualitative use (“Call at your convenience”) of a Quantitative service (vehicle ride). Why did not any of the cities in Metro Manila think of Text-A-Taxi first? None of them was/had been thinking qualitatively.
There must be a climate change in the way we think about climate change and agriculture!
Look at my title again: “2 Ways Farming Will Change The World In The Next 20 Years, I Hope!” Those 2 ways are Organic Agriculture and Cooperativism.” Organic agriculture is climate-smart; cooperativism is client-smart: How can society and farmers lose?!
More specifically, organic agriculture (OA) is sustainable: technically feasible, economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable.
With OA, I am both a climate change champion as well as climate-smart!
Organic agriculture operates for the good of all agriculture and all citizens. Like democracy, it works for all the people all of the time.
Cooperatives operate for the good of all the members and notat the expense of the majority. The coops assist the poor members in their farming with material inputs, loans, machineries, warehousing and marketing – all services with member affordable rates. What can be better than cooperatives for poor farmers?!@517
[1]https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/5-ways-farming-will-change-next-30-years?fbclid=IwAR10Q2GqdxJTFx3m-hfmA3ph0uMhnpqx7_HaCKsy5pOr4Dpgq1PTYKxXlq8
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