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Introduction to the Special Issue: Towards A More Sustainable AgricultureMaurizio G. Paolettia; Tiziano Gomieroa; David Pimentelba Laboratory of Agroecology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University, Padova,Italy b College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA

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Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 30:25, 2011Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0735-2689 print / 1549-7836 onlineDOI: 10.1080/07352689.2011.553148

Introduction to the Special Issue: Towards A MoreSustainable Agriculture

Maurizio G. Paoletti,1 Tiziano Gomiero,1 and David Pimentel21Laboratory of Agroecology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University,Padova 35121, Italy2College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

Agriculture provides food, fiber, construction materi-als, biomass, and green energy. It also contributes to anenvironmentally-friendly environment. Our societies are totallydependent upon agriculture and the photosynthetic pathwaycontributed by sunlight.

When humans began to rely on agriculture for their sub-sistence, civilizations flourished while humans spread allover the globe, transforming ecosystems to provide fortheir ever-increasing needs (Diamond, 1998; Bellwood, 2005;Montgomery, 2007a; Murphy, 2007; Ponting, 2007). Accordingto Ruddiman (2005a, 2005b), early human activity, such as for-est conversion to agricultural land, extensive use of fire, and wetrice cultivation, resulted in high Green House Gasses emission(GHGs), able to alter the earth climate long before industrialrevolution took place.

Agricultural societies had to deal with the need to feed angrowing population and to cope with the increasing complexitiesof their societies (Tainter, 1988; Johnson and Earle, 2000). Aspopulations increased, pressure on the agricultural system led toreduced soil fertility and threatened its sustainability. Soil ero-sion led to soil exhaustion (loss of organic matter and its fertility)that impaired agro-ecosystem resilience, making it difficult tocope with the effects of climate extremes. Among the practicesthat led to the mismanagement of the soil were deforestation,fires, tillage, short rotation, irrigation (leading to the saliniza-tion of the soil), and a tendency to adopt monoculture ratherthan crop diversity (King, 1911; Carter and Dale, 1974; Tain-ter, 1988; Hillel, 1991; Diamond, 2005; Montgomery, 2007a;Ponting, 2007). Carter and Dale (1974) suggested that civiliza-tions tend to collapsed in about 20 generations, apart from thoserelying, for soil fertilization, on river.

In the twentieth century, with the advent of fossil fuels, agri-culture experienced an incredible boost. Thanks to chemicalfertilizers and pesticides and the availability of other sources

Address correspondence to M. G. Paoletti, Laboratory of Agroe-cology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University,Padova, 35121, Italy. E-mail: paoletti@bio.unipd.it

of energy, this helped to increase crop yields. In addition, thenew high yielding varieties (HYVs) (or high-response varieties)developed in the 1960s by Norman Borlaug (19142009, NobelPeace Price in 1970) and colleagues, helped to increase cropyields (Borlaug, 1970; Conway, 1998). With the Green Revo-lution the productivity of the main agriculture crops increasedup to 45 times, helping to cope with the severe food scarcityand famine hitting many highly populated developing countries(Conway, 1998; Smil, 2000; Tilman et al., 2001; Pimentel andPimentel, 2008). The main characteristics of the HYVs can besummarized as: having shorter stems than traditional cultivars,being genetically homogeneous and much more productive un-der high rates of fertilizers (e.g., synthetic nitrogen). However,HYVs were also weaker than their traditional relatives and moreprone to pests and diseases (Conway, 1998).

In the last half century, the great abundance of cheap food(along with medical advances) led to increasing populationgrowth, and contrary to the hopes of the green revolution, whosegoal was to put an end to hunger, the FAO at present estimatesthat 1.02 billion people are hungry and undernourished world-wide in 2009. This represents more hungry people than at anytime since 1970 (FAO, 2009; UNEP, 2009). When consider-ing malnutrition in all its facets, it has been estimated that, atpresent, about 60% of the world population can be consideredmalnourished (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). It was Borlaughimself that warned, in his Nobel lecture, that unless the rateof human reproduction was curbed, the success of the GreenRevolution would only be ephemeral (Borlaug, 1970). Somescholars argue, however, that remaining malnutrition is more amatter of access to food rather than one of insufficient availabil-ity and that there are additional social-political issues that playan important role in this problem (Sen, 1982; Conway, 1998;Smil, 2000; FAO, 2009).

Over the next decades the worlds population is expectedto grow from 6.8 billion in 2008 (medium estimates) to 8.3billion by the 2030, and to 9.2 billion by the 2050 (Cohen,2003; UN, 2007; FAO, 2008; UNEP, 2009). Scenario analysisindicates a possible stop to population growth by the end ofthe century (Lutz et al., 2001, 2004). Other scholars, however,

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remain skeptical (e.g., Hopfenberg and Pimentel, 2001) arguingthat, contrary to the widely held belief that food productionmust be increased to feed the growing population, experimentaland correlational data indicate that human population growthvaries as a function of food availability, so that by increasingfood production the effect will be an increase in the humanpopulation.

Recent studies suggest that the world will need 70 to 100%more food by 2050 (FAO, 2008; World Bank, 2008). So a newchallenge lies ahead: to find a means to feed 9 billion with lessland, water, and energy in the coming decades (Conway, 1998;Smil, 2000; Tilman at al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010).

Increasingly, intensive agricultural practices are affecting thevery sustainability of our support system, the soil (Pimentelet al., 1995; Montgomery, 2007b). Croplands and pastures al-ready occupy about 50% of the land surface (Foley et al., 2005),with large effects on biodiversity conservation (Paoletti et al.,1992; Krebs et al., 1999; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,2005). Agriculture accounts for 70% of water used by humanactivities (Molden, 2007). The use of agrochemicals is costlyin terms of energy use (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008), repre-sents a threat to biodiversity and human life (Lipsitch et al.,2002; Lyons, 2009; Vitousek et al., 2009; Pimentel, 2010), andcan cause a high level of water pollution (Molden, 2007; Moss,2008). It is therefore urgent to find more ecological ways oflimiting pests (Altieri and Nicholls, 2004; Gurr et al., 2004; Pi-mentel and Cilveti, 2007). At the same time, agricultural prac-tices should reduce both their environmental impact and theiruse of non-renewable resources (e.g., fossil fuel energy) (Mil-lennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Pimentel and Pimentel,2008).

Vast industrialized agriculture also contributes greatly toimpoverished crop biodiversity, with the loss of a large num-ber of agricultural species and varieties (Fowler and Hodgkin,2005). A cultural aspect that may be worth mentioning, isthat when Western agriculture package is transferred to othercontinents, it tends to dismiss, or overlook, many sorts oftraditional local resourcessuch as insects and other arthro-pods, earthworms, small vertebrates and wild plants (insectsand earthworms, for instance, may total more than 3,000kg/ha; Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). These local resourcescan play an important role in guaranteeing food security inpoor rural areas, but are often neglected because of the West-ern perception that these are not proper food for people(Paoletti and Bukkens, 1997; Paoletti, 2005; Ochatt and Jain,2007).

We are aware that a topic such as agriculture sustainabilityis broad and highly complex (Smil, 2000; Giampietro, 2004;Francis et al., 2006; Bohlen and House, 2009; UNEP, 2009;NRC, 2010). It includes aspects ranging from ecology to ge-netics, from agronomy to soil management, from economics topolitics. The point we wish to make with this special issue is tooffer some additional ideas and comments on some issues in thefield of sustainable agriculture.

The first two papers address directly the sustainabilityissue.

The first paper, Is there a need for a more sustainable agricul-ture? (Gomiero and colleagues), reviews a number of problemsconcerning the impact of conventional agriculture on the envi-ronment and soil, and discusses some theoretical approachesand techniques that may offer useful strategies for a more sus-tainable agriculture. The second paper, Resources and culturalcomplexity: Implications for sustainability (Tainter), addressesthe relations between agriculture, society complexification andthe pattern of collapse associated with complex societies. Tain-ter defines sustainability as a matter of problem solving and aprocess of continuous adaptation. He points out that, paradox-ically, as problems arise, addressing these problems requirescomplexification of the society and in turn more resourcesconsumption. Some ideas concerning the possibility to deal withthe sustainability issue are presented.

The second pair of papers deals with the use of energy inagriculture, and the sectors dependence on fossil fuels. Thepaper by Pimentel, Food for thought: A review of the role ofenergy in current and evolving agriculture, analyzes the ener-getic costs of food production, while the paper by Arizpe andcolleagues, Food security and fossil energy dependence: An in-ternational comparison of the use of fossil energy in agriculture(19912003), reviews global trends in energy consumption inagriculture.

A third group of papers deals with management issues andfocuses on possible practices for achieving more sustainableagriculture.

The paper by Francis and Porter, Ecology in sustainableagriculture practices and systems, reviews a number of prac-tices that can be employed to improve agricultural efficiencyand sustainability.

Pest control is a key issue in agriculture management, andpesticide use a major environmental impact. Eckstrom andEkbom, Pest control in agro-ecosystems: An ecological ap-proach, review the recent achievements in the field of naturalpest control and how this can contribute to reducing the envi-ronmental impact of agriculture.

During recent decades organic farming has achieved wideattention both from consumers and policy makers because of itscall for promoting an agriculture free from agrochemicals andbased on ecological practices, and for its concern for the preser-vation of biodiversity. The paper by Gomiero and colleagues,Environmental impact of different agricultural managementpractices: Conventional vs. organic agriculture, summarizesthis story and the foundation of the organic movements andreviews research works assessing the achievement of organicfarming vs. conventional farming for a number of environmen-tal issues.

Over time, the number of crops and local varieties have dras-tically reduced in most regions, with the result that fewer plantsand animals now compose the actual base of our food. Thepaper A heuristic framework for identifying multiple ways of

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4 M. G. PAOLETTI ET AL.

supporting the conservation and use of traditional crop vari-eties within the agricultural production system by Jarvis andcolleagues, addresses this problem and discusses the differentways of supporting farmers and farming communities in themaintenance of traditional varieties and crop genetic diversitywithin their production systems.

A fourth selection of papers deals with food quality and theknowledge about the use of semi-domesticated and wild plants.Whether organically grown crops have more nutritional prop-ertied then conventional crops is matter of debate. The paperby Brandt and colleagues, Agroecosystem management andnutritional quality of plant foods: The case of organic fruitsand vegetables, reviews the present knowledge about the nu-tritional characteristics of organic products. Turner and col-leagues in Edible and tended wild plants, traditional ecologicalknowledge and agroecology, explore local knowledge of semi-domesticated or tended and wild plants and their nutritional aswell as their possible economic role.

The closure of the special issue is provided by Francis andcolleagues with a paper titled Innovative education in agroecol-ogy: Experiential learning for a sustainable agriculture, whichreviews recent experiences in the field of agriculture education.It is vital that we develop sound agricultural practices, if wewant to have a new generation of scientists able to deal with thecomplex field of sustainable agriculture.

We wish to thank all the authors who participated in thisproject, as well as the editors of CRPS for their interest andsensitivity on this vital issue.

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