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AGRO-ECOLOGICAL BLOGSCIENCE NOT GADGETRYIt is interesting to note the areas or themes that attempt to include agriculture within their ‘space’. Cleantech is one of those examples. I am not quite sure how agriculture falls within cleantech or even exactly what ‘cleantech’ means in practice. Renewable energy seems a clear fit, agriculture does not. The positive aspect however is that agriculture as an investment topic achieves wider visibility and its importance in addressing some of the issues that ‘cleantech’ seeks to address is more widely recognised. The not so positive is that ‘cleantech’ generally seems to involve gadgetry (fair enough in itself) but this ‘model’ then seems to be blindly applied to agriculture and generally by people whose agricultural understanding is minimal. There is no ‘gadget’ available which suddenly makes unsustainable, ecologically damaging industrial agriculture sustainable, at least not in a genuine, demonstrable, measurable sense of the word. This makes for practical difficulties as capital seeks to find pathways to investing in enhancing the climate, environmental and financial performance of agriculture. The simple idea being to make money by assisting agriculture to become a superior climate, environment and ecological (actually covers the first two) industry. Too often it seems that capital seeks gadgets and not knowledge and understanding; seeks gadgets and not the means to put in place the approaches that are so well described by the likes of De Schutters report, the IAASTD, the UNEP and others (I could go on…) but that are not well understood and/or familiar to investors or investment managers. The ‘thing’ that transforms agriculture; that is already transforming agriculture and achieving results which demonstrate out-performance by a collection of measures (financial, social and environmental), is ecological agriculture, including organic, which is agriculture that fundamentally relies on and utilises the science of agro-ecology. The type of agriculture outlined in the reports referred to above. The science is very clear, there is no ambiguity or confusion, ecologically literate agriculture out-performs and that out-performance is achieved through understanding, knowledge and management practice not an ‘app’ on your smart phone. There perpetually seems to be new ‘technological’ responses to food production that do this, that and the other thing, which is apparently eco friendly, environmental, low carbon and liked a lot by your mum. It also, almost inevitably, is completely and utterly dependent on synthetic fertiliser, particularly nitrogenous fertiliser which is a by product of the fossil fuel industry, has an enormous carbon, ecological, climate change and various other footprints and is decidedly not ecologically, environmentally or carbon friendly - and actually my mum doesn’t like it either. The herd of out-sized, steroid fuelled elephants in the room that is nitrogenous fertiliser and the Haber Bosch process that creates it seems to be forgotten by those who have gadgets to flog. Perhaps I am being too cruel, perhaps there are ‘gadgets’ that have a legitimate place within an ecologically intelligent, scientifically robust, sustainable (and non-fossil fuel dependent) system. The reality of the answer to that question is largely immaterial because it is the pursuit of the ‘gadgetry answer’ or the ‘magic bullet’ while ignoring the practical reality and scientifically proven facts around an ecological approach to agriculture that is part of the problem, not the solution. Ecological agriculture is achieving precisely the outcomes desired in key agricultural jurisdictions around the globe, by financial, ecological and sustainability measures (including resilience – which is critical to farmland performance). The investment decision is clear and the consequences will be even clearer. What is needed is an effective pathway for channelling investment funds to knowledge.
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