Rewarding Sustainable Farming LeAnn Wylie December 3, 1999 Abstract: The World Trade Organization seeks to improve the economies of developing nations by freeing trade regulations. Liberal trade of products that deplete environmental resources will have a negative long-term impact on developing nations. Exporting beef raised on deforested tropical pasture is an example of exploitative trade policies. Beef is an inefficient food source, with a feed to protein conversion of 6% (Pimentel 1989). Thin topsoil in deforested areas is rapidly degraded when used as pasture, becoming barren within 2-5 years.  Considering world population is expected to reach ten billion by the year 2050, food production must become more efficient.  Practices that deplete land resources and produce a minimum amount of food per farmable acre will not meet the food needs of the expanding population of the world.  Imminent food and water shortages can be reduced, or prevented by changing these practices.  While trade is important, it should enhance not deplete a nations ability to sustain its population.      On the day after the Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year, a McDonalds in downtown Seattle was packed with hungry shoppers. On November 30th 1999, during protests of the World Trade Organization, the windows of the McDonalds were broken out. The windows might have been broken randomly because of riot mentality, but consider how McDonalds fits into the clash between the WTO and it’s protesters. The Big Mac, burning rain forests, liberal trade and all contribute to an inequitable distribution of resources essential to human life.  The WTO protesters contend that liberal trade encourages corporations like McDonalds to import products that can be produced in the United States. To produce cheap beef, developing countries like Brazil have burned their rain forests to make room for cattle pasture. Brazilian cattle destined to become Big Macs are fed better than billions of the worlds hungry.   The patrons of McDonalds are in stark contrast to the hungry who lack adequate food and water.  There is enough wheat, rice and other grains produced to provide every human being with 3,600 calories a day (Lappe`). In contrast, consider what the World Food Council reported in 1987.: “In Africa, nearly one in three people are undernourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 22 percent of the people live at the edge of starvation. In the Near East, one in nine is underfed.” If there is enough food, why do people go hungry? In the economy of food, cattle are like middlemen, taking a large portion of the value of food produced. In his 1984 book, Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moor Lappe` explains, "Our food system takes abundant grain, which hungry people can't afford, and shrinks it into meat, which better-off people will pay for." Beef cattle are resource intensive, requiring immense amounts of feed and water that would be more efficiently used directly by humans.  The tropical rain forests of the world are being destroyed to accommodate the worlds increasing dependence on beef. Deforested tropical land dedicated to beef production rapidly loses its ability to sustain plant life. The net result of the process of converting rain forest to cattle pasture is a reduced global capacity to produce food. To prevent future famine in tropical regions, the United States must carefully craft its foreign aid and lending policies to encourage sustainable farming.What is sustainable farming? It is a system of farming that is sustainable economically, ecologically and socially over a long period. The Sustainable Agriculture Network defines sustainable agriculture in the following way: Sustainable farming is a management-intensive method of growing crops at a profit while concurrently minimizing negative impact on the environment, improving soil health, increasing biological diversity, and controlling pests.  Sustainable agriculture is dependent on a whole-system approach having as its focus the long-term health of the land. (SAN)Economically sustainable agriculture provides enough food and profit to support farming families and stimulate the local economy. To be socially sustainable, the system should support the physical and cultural health of the community. Small farms often provide a model for sustainable agriculture. When large and small farms are compared on productivity per acre, small farms are superior. Small, manually worked farms are used to produce diverse synergistic products.  Nitrogen fixing crops can be rotated to improve soil quality, livestock can be fed the byproducts of food crops and organic waste can be used as fertilizer.  Conversely, large farms consist of monocultures of plants, and do not use the synergistic advantages of intercropping and crop rotation. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil uses idle land belonging to wealthy landlords to develop small farms. Produce is sold in local towns and supplies are bought from local merchants. The economies of towns near MST farms improve. (Rossett)Because burning rain forest to raise beef cattle is not a sustainable form of agriculture, the practice should be ended. Cattle exhaust ex-rain forestland rapidly. Cattle are by nature inefficient food producers and consume grain that could be consumed by undernourished humans. The United States should proactively alleviate future famine by establishing programs of debt relief for foreign countries actively developing sustainable farming practices to reduce deforestation and increase food available for human consumption. The money that developing nations would have had to spend on debt service can then be spent to further sustainable farming practices. This will slow the destruction of the rain forest because it addresses the economic need of the indigenous population and influence government economic policy.  Landowners are motivated to burn rain forest because they are able to sell their land if it is cleared. The main causes of deforestation are economic conditions, therefore deforestation cannot be stopped until the economic causes are addressed.  Providing economic incentive to preserve rain forests is more effective than banning products that come from the rain forest.  Banning import of forest products devalues the forest and results in alternative land use methods.  American corporations that purchase beef grown on ex-rain forest will object to actions that increase the cost of beef.  Influential beef and dairy lobbies have successfully deterred actions that might have had a negative impact on the beef industry.    Tariffs and boycotts of tropical hardwoods have not stopped the destruction of the rain forest; it just changed how the land was used to support the indigenous people.  Instead of being harvested for export, hardwood wood is burned and the resulting clear land used for pasture.  If the United States were to ban foreign beef imports, corporations in other developed countries would still purchase beef produced on ex-rain forest pasture.   The metabolic rate of the natural rain forest causes nutrients to rapidly cycle from the forest floor back up to the canopy.  Up to 80% of the nutrients of a rain forest ecosystem are in the forest’s canopy, making topsoil very shallow. When rain forest land is cleared for cattle pasture, it is often exhausted in 2-5 years, making it necessary to clear more land for cattle.  The rain forests of the world are rapidly being cleared for cattle pasture.  Six square yards of jungle is cleared for every quarter pound hamburger produced in the tropical rain forest regions.  Between 1966 and 1983, 40,000 square miles of Amazon rain forest were cleared and for cattle pasture (Rifkin 1992).  Feed to protein efficiency of beef is approximately 6%.  It takes 750 pounds of plant protein to produce only 50 pounds of animal protein.  By consuming beef, milk, eggs and poultry, Americans indirectly and directly consume 2000 pounds of grain, in comparison to the absolute poor who, with little beef and poultry in their diets, consume 400 pounds annually. Destructive agriculture practices increase the rate of erosion, desertification and deplete ground water, further reducing the ability of earth to feed its population. If becomes more profitable for indigenous populations, and their governments to raise efficient sustainable crops, the rain forests will not be consumed. Momentum can be gained by convincing rain forests and animal activists that their efforts will be fruitless until something is done to give poor, rural families a stake in preserving forests and animals.  Persuading groups who have failed in their attempts to preserve the rain forests by employing tariffs and boycotts will add momentum to an economic incentive based approach. The premise of the European prohibition on imported tropical hardwoods is that logging is the principal source of deforestation in the tropics. This attempt failed, because it did not address the need of the people for economic sustenance.  Poverty is by far the principal cause of tropical deforestation.  Log import bans do not affect felling of trees for firewood.  Such bans do nothing to reduce slash and burn agriculture.   The World Trade Organization favors liberal international flow of goods and services.  To become a member of the WTO, a country may have to remove trade restrictions, lift tariff barriers and subsidies.  Unregulated trade may lead to further depletion of rain forest resources.  The WTO promotes trade for profit, often at the cost of workers rights, environment and ultimately the economies they claim to promote. The beef lobbies in the United States may attempt to discredit information that negatively depicts beef production.  Health care professionals, nutritionists and vegetarians, claim the beef and dairy lobbies influence can be seen in the USDA’s food pyramid.  Despite the health risk of consuming a diet of foods high in fat, the USDA food pyramid recommends 2-3 servings from the meat and dairy group, emphasizing cattle and poultry as sources for protein. To avoid promoting beef consumption the food group could be more generically named the protein group.  Like the USDA, the World Trade Organization influences food production and consumption.Cuban agriculture is successfully evolving from chemical dependence to organic, sustainable agriculture.  Following the Cuban model of small sustainable farms, the populations of South and Central America can develop sustainable food sources.  However, sustainable farming for export has disadvantages.   It can be very labor intensive, often resulting in child labor. Unlike the Cuban model, where food is grown and consumed locally, some agricultural products are grown primarily for export. The banana industry is an example of this practice. In the Philippines, thousands of workers went on strike against the Dole Corporation to protest low wages and working conditions.  Dole retains the majority of the profit, while exploited workers make so little, their children must work to help provide for the family.  To have a positive effect, US legislation must define sustainable agriculture as positive for both the environment and its indigenous peoples. Legislation that will slow or decrease the destruction of the rain forests while improving conditions for indigenous people must be passed in the United States.  Pristine rain forest can be protected and land that is already deforested can be improved by planting crops that contribute to rather than degrade the topsoil.  This can be achieved by rewarding governments who successfully promote sustainable agriculture while preserving existing rain forest by offering debt relief to developing countries.