Haider, L.J. and Boonstra, W.J. (2017). Finding the Middle Ground: Social-Ecological Farming as a Solution to a Polarized Debate. Solutions 8(1): 36-38. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/finding-middle-ground-social-ecological-farming-solution-polarized-debate/
Perspectives Finding the Middle Ground: Social–Ecological Farming as a Solution to a Polarized Debate by L. Jamila Haider and Wiebren J. Boonstra
Stockpaard Producties/Natasja Bekkers
Arjan Wijnstra cuts grass with his Fjord horses.
O
ur global food system has two opposing faces. It has almost one billion people suffering from hunger, while nearly the same number suffers from obesity. This is also a world where people struggle daily to obtain enough food, and where people waste more than that same amount every day. Global warming and extreme weather events are expected to increase the volatility of ecosystems and thereby stunt the productivity of agriculture. One recent study estimates that even a 1°C increase in global temperature will reduce wheat yields worldwide by six percent.1 The question of how to secure global food production is thus as pertinent as ever. Yet, the proposed solutions are often contradictory, creating a polarized debate represented by stark trade-offs. Maintaining global food security is for some primarily a technical question of doubling or tripling food
production.2 Solutions such as precision agriculture that use satellite technology for maximum efficiency and sustainable intensification that aims to increase food production on existing farmland are not really solutions – they don’t address the issue of the vast levels of fossil fuels needed to produce a limited number of crops and animal varieties.3,4 The loss of agricultural diversity in turn contributes to global food insecurity as harvests become increasingly vulnerable to price fluctuations and extreme weather events. And often, it is the poorer members of the global population that suffer from spikes in food prices.5 Faced with these ecological and social issues, some agronomists urge a return to small-scale and diversified food production.6,7 These opposing visions in the debate over the future of food production are mirrored in a bipolar structure of agriculture worldwide, which
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includes a small number of very large modernized farms with high levels of specialized output and a larger group of small scale, family-owned, mixedoutput farms. In the general debate, these groups and associated visions for agrarian development are often pitted against each other: small-scale versus large-scale agriculture,8 sharing versus sparing land for ‘nature,9 industrial versus family farming, agroecology versus biotechnology. But these stark contrasts blur when we move down to consider how individual farmers are creating working solutions by patching together traditional and modern knowledge and tools to create a social– ecological balance between land, plants and animals, farm households, and rural and urban communities.10,11 Farming is an inherently contextdependent and hybrid coproduction between humans and ecological resources and services. One example of this is the use of horse power, a seemingly out-of-date technology that’s being rediscovered in the Netherlands as a way to help farmers find a balance between economic, social, and environmental needs. Take the farm of Arjan and Natasja between Vorden and Ruurlo in Eastern Netherlands. Arjan and Natasja rely on horses to power farming on their small eight-hectare plot where they produce milk, cheese, butter, meat, and fruit for the local community (they also have careers as professional photographers and journalists.) The Fjord ponies make hay (including moving, turning and tedding, windrowing, and carting), spread manure, seed and plant, haul loads, and do other odd transportation jobs. By going back to horses, Arjan and Natasja are not going back in time, because horse-drawn equipment has kept up with time. Thanks to the work of Amish farmers in the United States, tools and machines for horses have continuously been innovated and