Globalization of Agriculture PDF

RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 Annual Review of Resource Economics...

RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 Annual Review of Resource Economics Globalization of Agriculture Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 Guy M. Robinson Department of Geography, Environment and Population, School of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Resour. Econ. 2018. 10:133–60 Keywords First published as a Review in Advance on globalization, agriculture, agrifood systems, food security, productivism, May 31, 2018 sustainability The Annual Review of Resource Economics is online at resource.annualreviews.org Abstract https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource- The world’s agrifood systems have been transformed by a process of global- 100517-023303 ization in which ever-closer functional integration of the world’s economies Copyright  c 2018 by Annual Reviews. has occurred, supported by the Internet, the rise of transnational corpo- All rights reserved rations, and the removal of many barriers to trade and investment. This JEL codes: F60, N50, O13, Q00, Q10, R14 review outlines the key characteristics of globalization and then details the changes occurring to agriculture and the broader agrifood system. It ad- dresses the worldwide spread of productivist, specialized, industrial-style farming methods and their consequences, both positive and negative. The review focuses on three key issues: the world’s capability to produce enough food to feed humankind; the important roles played in shaping globaliza- tion by transnational corporations, global finance, and government policies; and the emerging challenges to globalization. The first of these addresses the current debate regarding whether it is possible to maintain ecological diversity while producing sufficient food to feed the world. The other issue acknowledges that outcomes of global processes are spatially uneven and strongly contested by forms of agriculture antithetical to the homogenized, capitalist, neoliberal model associated with globalization. 133  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 1. INTRODUCTION Globalization is a term applied to interaction and integration among people, businesses, and gov- ernments across the world. It is a process driven by international trade and investment but closely associated with transformations in economies, societies, and politics linked with new information technologies that have enabled greater worldwide interconnectedness. However, it is also a highly contested and debated term subject to different interpretations and discourses, partly arising from different overarching interpretations and debates. This review outlines key characterizations of globalization before focusing on how its various Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 processes have had an impact on the agrifood sector, both positively and negatively. It highlights how globalization is shaping not only the nature of agricultural production but also farm supply and food processing. Thus, the review discusses issues relating to the broad agrifood sector, including supply, production, processing, retailing, and consumption. It focuses on three key issues that have generated substantial academic research:  Global capability to produce enough food to feed humankind;  The pivotal roles of transnational corporations (TNCs), global finance, and the policy regimes sustaining globalized agriculture;  Future challenges and responses to globalized agriculture. 2. GLOBALIZATION DISCOURSES Globalization is a contested concept, with both major supporters and trenchant critics, the latter often from the perspective of developing countries (Canterbury 2007, Scholte 2005). There are at least three different strands of thought or discourses on the topic: 1. The hyperglobalist thesis. This recognizes globalization as a new epoch in human history, based on the growth of global markets and the subordination of the nation state to supra- national organizations and the power wielded by TNCs. Old hierarchies are destroyed, and there is a new global division of labor (Münch 2016). Regional inequities grow through the operation of comparative advantage, but global competition also creates more wealth. 2. The skeptical thesis. Contemporary global capitalism is essentially a mirror of many nineteenth-century features of internationalization. Some empirical evidence regarding flows of trade, investment, and labor can be brought to bear on this argument (Hirst et al. 2015), but it underemphasizes the impacts of modern information flows and the diminishing role of individual states compared with the growing importance of supranational bodies. It also emphasizes the distinction between creation of greater wealth for the world’s core (es- pecially North America, Western Europe, and China/Japan/Southeast Asia) and retardation of growth in the periphery, especially Africa, but it points to a myriad of causes, not just globalization (Held & McGrew 2007). 3. The transformationalist thesis. This recognizes the huge changes associated with globaliza- tion, but views it as a partial, incomplete, and unpredictable process in which there is no longer a clear distinction between international and domestic or external and internal affairs. It sees globalization as recasting the differences between developed and developing, forging new hierarchies that cut across all societies and regions (McGrew 2007). 3. THE NATURE OF GLOBALIZATION Globalization reflects the worldwide spread of modern technologies of production, including farming, the agricultural supply sector, and food processing. A vital component is the so-called 134 Robinson  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 borderless world (Ohmae 1999) of the Internet and networking of virtually all of the world’s economies so that new forms of trade and cultural exchange can thrive. Time and space are compressed as part of rapidly changing technological developments, including the expansion of urban-industrial complexes and farming practices that continue to substitute capital for labor (Warf 2008). This has fostered not only ever-closer functional economic integration between different countries but also linkages and interrelationships between cultural forms and practices. In turn, this has contributed to a homogenization of capitalist economic forms, markets, and relations across markets as part of a process of flexible accumulation (Harvey 1987). Globalization Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 has also been associated with new forms of intellectual property (Halbert 2014) and post-World War Two international structures such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) (founded in 1995), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the agrifood sector, supply chain management and certification of suppliers are now commonplace among input suppliers and supermarket chains (Busch 2010). Analysts of globalization generally refer to it as a multifaceted set of processes that frequently involve TNCs who benefit from freer movement of capital, goods, and services (Sklair 2001). The TNCs often operate via establishing subsidiaries in many countries, enabled by improved transport and communications systems, greater freedom of trade, and greater availability of cheap labor (located especially in the developing world) and skills. These corporations contribute to increasing external investment in many countries as well as the creation of global brands, such as McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Levi’s jeans, Starbucks, and Huawei, which are associated with a global cultural convergence ( Jeon et al. 2016). Globalization has produced significant changes worldwide with respect to knowledge, trade, finance, and movement of labor. Knowledge networks have been expanded, but with decreased transaction costs, and the emergence of new forms of the economy, e.g., the growth of so-called dot-com industries in the late 1990s (Zook 2008). The agrifood sector was perhaps the least- digitized global industry at this time. Subsequently, this has changed dramatically, with global food and agriculture rapidly adopting digitalization, including artificial intelligence, data mining techniques, precision agriculture, and machine learning (Katiyar et al. 2017, Mulla 2013). Global trade has been promoted via abolition of various forms of customs and duties, allied to the role of the WTO, and the move to a more open world economy, encouraged by integration of financial mar- kets and liberalization of capital markets (Knox et al. 2014). Large-scale migrations of workers, both legal and illegal, have brought about an increasing asymmetry between labor and capital, but with a relatively low mobilization capacity of the labor force (Waite et al. 2015). However, agriculture has often provided low-paid casual employment for recent migrants (Frattini 2017, Pena 2014). Most commentators have recognized that globalization occurs within three principal sectors: (a) the economic, where countries that trade with many others and have few trade barriers are more economically globalized; (b) the social, where globalization is a measure of how easily in- formation and ideas pass between people around the world (emphasizing access to the Internet and social media networks); and (c) the political, involving the amount of political cooperation between countries (Kaplinsky 2013). Across the three sectors there are both positive and negative outcomes. For example, a wider range of consumer goods has been generated in most parts of the world, though often through the growing dominance of global brands as opposed to those from small, private traders selling locally produced goods. This reflects a trend toward cultural homogenization but with significant generation of wealth for certain regions and sectors of society through wholesale transfers of capital and jobs to favored locations (Pieterse 2015). Despite rising incomes in some quarters, there are growing discrepancies between rich and poor and in the developed world versus developing world, as well as increased competition for small businesses who are unable to take advantage of economies of scale and negative impacts on cultural www.annualreviews.org Globalization of Agriculture 135  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 diversity and the environment. Within the spatial fragmentation associated with globalization, there has been greater differentiation within the developing world as parts of Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean become progressively more marginal to the world economy (Gwynne & Kay 2014). These areas often act as providers of cheap labor and sites for capital investment in alternative ventures, including tax write-offs and low-yield farming. However, the balance sheet for globalization is complex (see Table 1). Positive aspects in developing countries, such as promoting shifts toward more democratic governments and concerns for human rights, can be contrasted with the destabilization associated with substantial flows of migrants to wealthy Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 countries seeking to participate in the benefits offered by globalization and with the growing differentiation between rich and poor as part of asymmetries in the world economy. Hence, globalization should be regarded as partial, not overarching and inexorable. It is complex, uneven, and fragmented. Table 1 A preliminary balance sheet for globalization Positive attributes Negative attributes Results in greater harmonization of cultures worldwide, Promotes cultural imperialism that can contribute to destroying promoting more common experiences in terms of local languages, traditions, and religions consumption, lifestyle, behavior, and aspirations Reduced control by national institutions over sets of practices, Access to globalizing influences is uneven, so the effects are also bodies of knowledge, conventions, and lifestyles lead to a uneven greater scope for individuals to flourish Resistance to inequalities occurs and can take violent forms Some forms of resistance to globalization may involve positive The increased power acquired by transnational corporations is local cultural regeneration difficult to regulate and control Global regulation reduces power of nation states The generation of wealth and economic integration is Large-scale migration to seek benefits of life in the globalized increased West has brought huge population dislocations and costs There is growth in trade and a more open world economy Inequality is growing between rich and poor and between world regions Consumers are offered greater quality assurance: standardized Small producers struggle to compete as they lack scale economies, products available worldwide but they may be able to develop niche markets Industrialized agriculture has contributed to major growth of Monocultures associated with industrialized agriculture may food production, reducing hunger and starvation threaten food security and cause environmental and other problems New biotechnologies applied to agriculture offer prospects for New biotechnologies applied to agriculture have proved increased output controversial, and their adoption has been restricted by environmental and health-related concerns Globalization has encouraged increased investment in the Large-scale purchases of land in parts of the developing world have agrifood sector, including large-scale purchase of land in been termed land grabs, which may displace small farmers and Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia by transnational rural laborers, swelling the ranks of rural-urban migrants corporations and financial institutions, which may increase output. The agrifood sector is increasingly being viewed as an engine Multifunctionality may require expensive government support for rural development with multifunctional agriculture at its measures to deliver rural jobs base, helping to secure farm incomes One reaction to globalization has been greater interest in Attempts to promote more sustainable agriculture may reduce reducing environmental impacts associated with farming to output and thereby contribute to reduced food security and create more sustainable outcomes increased hunger/starvation 136 Robinson  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 4. KEY CONSEQUENCES OF A GLOBAL ECONOMY The complex balance sheet for globalization can be illustrated by considering a number of associ- ated consequences on local and global levels. Following Amin & Thrift (1994) and Daniels (2008), the key consequences of a global economy include:  There has been a significant increase in the power of finance over production. Finance capital can move seamlessly and rapidly around the world, producing huge impacts on national and regional economies and the fortunes of individual companies.  The pivotal role of knowledge as a vital factor of production has been established. There Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 are significant benefits from producing an educated and skilled workforce.  The impacts of technology extend beyond national borders, especially in economic activities that are knowledge intensive, e.g., financial services and telecommunications. This advan- tages producers and institutions with the resources to manage technology.  Globalization of technological change, the mobility of finance capital, and transportation and communications have been accompanied by the emergence of global oligopolies so that production in certain sectors and industries is dominated by a small number of firms.  The ability of individual nations to regulate their own economic development has been reduced by the emergence of transnational institutions coordinating and regulating aspects of the world economy, e.g., the IMF and WTO.  The electronic flow of information has stimulated more extensive cultural flows, reconsti- tuting the meaning of cultural symbols and identities.  The outcomes of globalization appear as new global economic geographies, characterized in different ways, e.g., the borderless world or global division of labor. The uneven nature of globalization means it is associated with considerable geographical vari- ation, but generally reinforces a global triad of North America, Western Europe, and China/ Southeast Asia. It is in these areas that trade and capital investment are increasingly concentrated (Piketty 2017), despite protests from developing countries regarding the agricultural subsidies maintained by the European Union and the United States that have helped maintain their domes- tic farm sectors. These protests are one component of various forms of resistance to globalization. For example, a series of issues have been raised by middle-income countries, including concern about globalized agriculture’s reliance on oil-based production systems; its association with en- vironmental damage from pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers; and the inhumane treatment of animals under industrialized farming systems (Hirst et al. 2015). Moreover, it has been argued that monocultures associated with the latter may threaten food security (Lawrence & McMichael 2014) while the growth of fast foods under globalization has produced a rapid growth in obesity across the developed world (Lang & Heasman 2015), an emphasis on low-nutrition processed foods, and weaker local food cultures and traditions (McIntosh 2013). These concerns about industrial agriculture, emanating from various perspectives, have been characterized as the naturalization food and agricultural (NFA) paradigm (Rausser et al. 2015), which centers on diverse arguments relating to obesity, food safety, the role of agriculture in cli- mate change, the demise of family farming, and the concentration of agribusiness. The paradigm, especially elements championing organic and environmentally friendly farming, has become in- creasingly popular in the West and exerts growing political influence, notably when dealing with the externalities emanating from industrialized agriculture. However, champions of alternatives to the industrial system often struggle to formulate economically rational policy proscriptions and tend to neglect “the heterogeneity of socioeconomic and biophysical conditions and the diversity of solutions that such conditions imply” (Rausser et al. 2015, p. 326). For example, wholesale moves from an industrial model to farming systems favored by NFA could seriously compromise www.annualreviews.org Globalization of Agriculture 137  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 food security (Leifield 2016). The reality is that both globalized and local systems of production increasingly coexist, serving different markets. Thus, there is a need for more analysis of alterna- tive environmental and resource policies in agriculture, as well as on the effects of agri-industrial concentration, food safety, and food security, especially to present welfare and political-economic arguments when offering reforms of existing agricultural policies (Anderson et al. 2014). Globalization has been encouraged by the widespread adoption of policies in the developed world, and to a large extent also in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), that have been termed neoliberal, referring to a resurgence of nineteenth-century ideas associated with Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 laissez-faire economic liberalism (Harvey 2007). It is generally regarded as the dominant ideology shaping the world in the early twenty-first century, dictating the policies of governments and shaping the actions of major institutions such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and the principal regional development banks (the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Inter-American Development Bank) (Saad-Filho & Johnston 2005). Given the key role of these organizations in fashioning world trade, it is not surprising that neoliberalism has helped determine the broad character of globalization and hence it has significantly affected all aspects of the agrifood sector (McMichael 1994). Indeed Busch (2010, p. 331) argues that “the current agrifood sector may be best understood as the product of continually evolving, and often conflict-ridden, negotiations between neoliberals, their supporters (who love it selectively) and their detractors.” 5. GLOBALIZED AGRICULTURE Globalization has been closely associated with the rise of so-called productivist agriculture. This refers to an increasing predominance of larger, well-capitalized, proto-corporate farms, often located in fertile, well-drained lowlands and increasingly differentiated from smaller family-run farms. The latter are concentrated both in areas that present physical restrictions to agricultural activity, primarily via poorer soils and difficult topography, and in peri-urban fringes where they are run intensively to supply the local urban market or are hobby farms operated primarily for amenity purposes (Zasada 2011). The duality between large, well-capitalized enterprises and small, family-run farms is characterized by much local variation, which affects the direction and nature of capital penetration (Ouma 2016, Ye 2015) (see Supplemental Table 1). Productivism, as both a product and shaper of globalization, has been characterized by some researchers as combining aspects of intensification, concentration, and specialization (Robinson 2004, pp. 62–64). The former refers to capital replacing labor, with greater reliance on mech- anization, automation of production processes, and application of advances in biotechnology. Concentration has meant fewer but larger farming units and more sales of farm produce to food processing industries. This has been accompanied by growing dependence on contract farming whereby agricultural production is carried out via an agreement between the buyer (wholesaler, processor, retailer) and farmers (Otsuka et al. 2016). Specialization on individual farms has in- tensified, essentially by rewarding the large-scale production of standardized outputs that can be easily processed and shipped to market, both locally and worldwide (de Roest et al. 2017). It has also promoted the transformation of farm produce into inputs for the wider food and manufac- turing system. So farmers have become part of a system in which farm-based activities are often far removed from the end-consumer. However, the characteristics of globalized agriculture vary between agricultural products. For some, it is processing corporations that are global; for others, it is the retailers while production remains local or regional or focused at national level. Some exemplification of the variety and complexities of globalization is illustrated in Supplemental Tables 2–4. 138 Robinson  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 In the late twentieth century, the larger well-capitalized producers increasingly became asso- ciated with environmental problems through degradation of traditional agricultural landscapes as a by-product of farm-based industrial processes and specialization (Foley et al. 2005). Prob- lems such as eutrophication of watercourses, soil erosion, and farmers’ destruction of attractive landscape features such as riparian woodland, hedgerows, and stone walls were accompanied by rising concerns about animal welfare under industrialized production systems and the quality of food associated with these systems (Baudron & Giller 2014, Thompson 2017). In some quarters, a strong reaction to these negative aspects of productivism produced a counter-current, termed Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 postproductivism, in which environmental values have been strongly emphasized, including new agri-environment policy initiatives, as well as the championing of small-scale, ecologically friendly, sustainable farming that caters primarily to the demands of local and regional consumers (Tilzey & Potter 2008). The initiatives generally took the form of payments to farmers for environmental services. These were widely implemented in the European Union and North America, though with different objectives on either side of the Atlantic (Raymond et al. 2016, Robinson 2006). In the European Union there was often “the additional objective of using agriculture as a driver for rural development... compensating farmers for the private delivery of positive public goods, such as attractive landscapes, produced by agriculture” (Baylis et al. 2008, p. 753). Payments in the United States have been more closely targeted, usually on reducing agriculture’s negative externalities, such as soil erosion. The European schemes have partly been used as a mechanism for transferring income to producers. Postproductivism has been viewed in some quarters as the antithesis of productivism, and there- fore embodies extensification, deconcentration of farm production, and diversification (Ilbery & Bowler 1998). More nuanced views stress the growing role of policies explicitly encouraging farm- ers to ameliorate negative environmental consequences from farming activities (e.g., Batáry et al. 2015, Uthes & Matzdorf 2013) or more complex changes across the agrifood sector. These are associated with the reduced political power of farmers and landowners, the public’s negative per- ceptions of industrial farming methods, new forms of governance of rural areas, the growth of suprastate policies affecting trade in agricultural produce, new forms of production, and commod- ification of former agricultural resources such as land, wildlife habitats, and farmsteads by urban migrants to rural areas (Wilson 2001). Among these various changes affecting agrifood systems, those prompting the greatest shifts away from productivism have been concerns to make agricul- ture itself more ecologically sustainable (Gliessman 2015) and the impacts of changing patterns of consumption, with some sectors in an increasingly highly differentiated food market emphasizing food quality and concern for how and where food has been produced (Gabriel & Lang 2015). It should be stressed that, around the world, different choices have been made about how to balance economic output and environmental protection, that is, addressing trade-offs between competing demands, such as maintaining biodiversity and food security, protecting prime farm- land from urban sprawl, providing access to attractive countryside, and maintaining viable rural communities. It is possible to make formal assessments of trade-offs using simple techniques such as constructing a production possibility frontier (showing the opportunity cost of choosing either more environmental protection or more economic output). A good example is its use in inves- tigating how to minimize nitrogen application while achieving crop production targets (Mueller et al. 2014). In practice, though, countries with relatively low per capita gross domestic product (GDP) have placed higher emphasis on economic output, as this in turn helps to produce nu- trition, shelter, health, education, and production of desirable consumer goods. Countries with higher income levels have been more willing to give relatively greater emphasis to environmen- tal goals, though it was not until the mid-1980s that the European Union started to ameliorate policies delivering increased agricultural production in favor of introducing proenvironmental www.annualreviews.org Globalization of Agriculture 139  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 measures. In China, policies to reduce agriculture’s negative ecological impacts on fragile land, such as the Grain for Green program, have removed over 15 million ha of marginal agriculture from production (Delang & Yuan 2014), but without reductions in production, partly through a government-subsidized purchasing scheme and large-scale land consolidation programs to pro- mote more efficient production. Despite the recognition of some postproductivist tendencies in the developed world, most farming activity is still dominated by the need to produce food for mass consumption (Walford 2003). This is true for virtually all agricultural commodities, the production of which is inherently Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 linked to globalizing processes, which themselves impact differentially in space and time. In some cases, changes are promoting greater development of industrial practices and more mass con- sumption, not less, and hence, recent references to neo-productivism (Wilson & Burton 2015). A good example is the growth of the annualization of production, meaning year-round availability of temperate fruit and vegetables in markets worldwide, with imports enabling strawberries from California, Spain, and Israel to supply Europe throughout the winter period (Friedland 1997). This ongoing objective of most farmers worldwide to produce food and fiber for the growing market, as the world’s population continues to increase, has given rise to one of the ongoing major concerns for humankind, namely the ability to produce sufficient food to feed this rising population without destroying the world’s major biomes in the process. 5.1. Food to Feed Humankind Globalization has been cited as enabling positive responses to be made to a major question facing humanity: Can we maintain ecological diversity while producing sufficient food to feed the world? The question is often reinterpreted as the need to choose between globalized, productivist, in- dustrial agriculture and so-called environmentally friendly farming. In dissecting this dichotomy, the starting point for analysis is usually consideration of the extent to which a smaller proportion of the world’s population is regularly living under conditions of hunger, malnutrition, and star- vation. Thus, while the population has risen from 3 billion in 1960 to 7.5 billion in 2017 (and is expected to reach 9.2 billion by 2050), the proportion living near starvation conditions fell from between 25% and 30% in 1960 to just over 10% today and to an estimated 8% in 2030 (ADED 2015). This substantial decrease is often attributed to the positive impacts of globalization. It has occurred despite growing amounts of agricultural land lost to urbanization and to energy produc- tion (biofuels), rising food prices worldwide, and the increased prevalence of physical problems facing arable production. The latter include 40% of global croplands experiencing soil erosion, reduced fertility, or reliance on intensive use of oil-based agrichemicals to maintain crop yields. For example, 1.5 million ha of arable land are lost each year to salinization (FAO 2017). This raises the issue of whether we can rely on inherently unsustainable industrial agriculture to produce more food to feed the world’s increasing population. Even if it is accepted that there is sufficient food currently produced to adequately feed the world’s population if the food were distributed more evenly, it can be argued that additional food will be required to meet the needs of growing population numbers. This is certainly the case if changing diets by the growing middle classes of many developing countries are considered. However, it is debatable whether additional food production could be achieved simply by bringing more land under production. More than three-quarters of new cropland added between 2008 and 2012 came from grasslands (Lark et al. 2015), but the potential for further such conversions is limited without destruction of many grassland ecosystems. Moreover, converting forests to croplands, as has occurred in the Brazilian Amazon, can drastically reduce biodiversity and harm sustainability (Hoelle 2017, Laurance et al. 2014, Lovejoy 2016). Another possibility is to increase 140 Robinson  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 yields of major crops (Phalan et al. 2016), but such increases alone may be insufficient to double calorific output by 2050 (Ray et al. 2013). Hence, there has been a championing of the need to adopt measures referred to as sustainable intensification (Garnett et al. 2013, p. 33): “increased intensity of input use without compromising sustainable food production.” Its proponents argue that it is possible to develop farming systems that increase productivity of land without impairing ecological integrity of farming (and that can include increases in yield derived from new crop varieties) (see Section 5.2). The notion of sustainable intensification challenges some of the thinking that has underpinned Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 so-called Green Revolution technology, which involved a package of high-yield crop varieties (HYVs), fertilizers, pesticides, machinery, and irrigation for certain developing countries, pro- moted largely by funding from the United States and other wealthy countries. The Green Rev- olution was disseminated from Mexico (maize) and the Philippines (rice) and comprised various phases from the 1940s to the 1980s, during which time it contributed substantially to raising food outputs in the developing world, so that more people have been fed worldwide (Evenson & Gollin 2003). However, it often displaced rural labor and worked best in the most favored areas and with the most efficient farmers: the so-called talents effect (Frankel 2015). Some parts of the world, notably sub-Saharan Africa, were not greatly affected, as the revolution largely bypassed certain staple crops, such as cassava and millet. Hence, there were trade-offs involved in the Green Revolution, or essentially a balance sheet that compares increased output versus the negative ex- ternalities that were associated with this greater productivity. The increased production was often massive: World grain production rose threefold from 1950 to 2010; for India the increase was fivefold, and for Mexico it was approximately three and a half. Green Revolution technology has also underpinned a doubling in Chinese grain production from 1981 to 2011, accompanying a de- cline in sown area of approximately 100 million ha and massive rural-urban migration (exceeding 15 million per annum throughout the 2000s), which has supplied a pool of cheap labor to help fuel the country’s industrial boom. Wheat, maize, and rice account for 43% of all food calories produced worldwide, and hence, great emphasis is placed on their production and trade by governments. Anything affecting their production can cause hunger, starvation, and food shortages (Rosin et al. 2013). In 2007–2008, the latter produced major increases in food prices and global food riots in response to a rise in the cost of basic foods, in some countries as much as threefold. However, in response to a quest for another Green Revolution to prevent future shortages, one of the principal responses—the development of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods—has brought controversy. This is discussed below in Section 5.3. 5.2. Sustainable Intensification As its name suggests, this concept represents a marriage between two ideas that at first glance may seem incompatible. Sustainability in agriculture is usually taken as implying production sys- tems that meet society’s current needs for food and fiber without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable agriculture seeks to integrate a healthy environment, economic profitability, social and economic equity, and a capacity to adapt to cli- mate change. Intensification is associated with increased yield or outputs per unit area/input (e.g., through breeding and forage economy), diversification (e.g., widening the choice of feeds and for- age), integration of crops and livestock, and improved resilience to market shocks and risks from climate change (and hence the term climate-smart agriculture) (Campbell et al. 2014). Increased intensity can possibly involve using previously uncultivated land; more labor, machinery, and other inputs; and new varieties and innovations. However, some of these aspects may be damaging to ecosystems. www.annualreviews.org Globalization of Agriculture 141  RE10CH07_Robinson ARI 20 August 2018 13:0 The marriage is intended to improve food security and livelihoods. It may be developed via policy responses such as promoting investment, supporting technological changes that increase productivity, and reducing ecological impacts of consumption. The greater emphasis on the need to minimize negative environmental outcomes from intensification of agriculture has been referred to as ecological intensification (Tittonell 2014). 5.3. Genetically Modified Foods Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org. Guest (guest) IP: 14.139.209.37 On: Mon, 30 Sept 2024 08:24:03 GM crops were developed in the 1990s and subsequently have been grown on a commercial scale in North America as a component of the deployment of biotechnology, in part to increase crop yields. Worldwide, the top ten GM foods by value are maize, soy, cottonseed, papaya, rice, rapeseed (canola), potatoes, tomatoes, dairy products, and peas. The United States is the largest producer by area (72.9 million ha in 2015) followed by Brazil (49.1 million ha), Argentina (23.8 million ha), Canada (11.6 million ha), and India (10.8 million ha). The total area is close to 180 million ha, compared with 1.7 million ha 20 years ago (ISAAA 2016). Hence, these biotech crops represent the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture, and some argue they can be a major contributor to increasing food security (Dibden et al. 2013). Yet, as with the Green Revolution, most biotech research and development have not addressed the needs of African farmers, the need to develop crops adapted to local environmental conditions (McIn- tyre et al. 2009), and the complexity and diversity of agrifood systems (Thompson & Scoones 2008). There are few economic incentives for the research and development industries to pursue GM food production in Africa, where it may be nonprofit institutions, rather than commercially motivated enterprises, that introduce new technology. An example is Africa Harvest, which has collaborated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop vitamin A–enriched sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) (Thompson 2016). Genetic modification involves the insertion of genes with known characteristics and/or prod- ucts into a strain of plant previously lacking a desired trait. This can give more rapid and precise outcomes compared with traditional methods of plant breeding, increasing the efficiency of plant genetic improvement. Specific desired traits that have been developed include tolerance for her- bicides, removal of characteristics deemed undesirable, and creation of more palatable, nutritious, or disease-combative plants. Other traits include generation of longer shelf life (e.g., Flavr Savr tomatoes) and saline-tolerant crops. Yet despite the apparent potential to increase crop yields, there continues to be a range of challenges posed to further adoption of GM crops. Little attention has been paid to developing GM subsistence crops in the tropics. Instead, the focus has been on production of GM crops by farmers who can afford its inputs, notably purchases of seeds each year. Companies producing their own brand of herbicide have been the main devel- opers of the technology, creating GM crops capable of resistance to that particular brand. Indeed, campaigns against GM crops have focused on the role of major US-based corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Hoechst, and Calgene. Monsanto has developed glyphosphate herbi- cides like Roundup. Its herbicide-tolerant GM plant varieties can be sprayed with Roundup, as in the case of so-called Roundup Ready soybeans. Similarly, most of the other biotech developers are similarly promoting their own brands. This particular marriage between farming and technological advances has been controversial. The power conferred on the major industrial companies has been one concern, especially as some appear to have appropriated genetic material from smallholder farmers and then forced the