A/42/427
English
Page 127
13. The environmental consequences of a heavily subsidized production system are becoming evident within industrialized nations [1]:
- lower productivity as soil quality declines due to intensive soil cultivation and overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides[2];
- the destruction of the countryside, through clearing of hedgerows, park belts. and other protective cover and the levelling, occupation, and cultivation of marginal land and watershed protection areas; and
- nitrate pollution of ground-water aquifers due to the often subsidized overuse of nitrate fertilizers.
14. The financial, economic, and environmental effects of the current incentive systems are beginning to be questioned by many governments and groups, including farm organizations. A particular area of concern is the impact of these policies on developing countries. They depress international prices of products, such as rice and sugar, that are important exports for many developing countries and so reduce exchange earnings of developing countries. They increase the instability of world prices. And they discourage the processing of agricultural commodities in the producing countries.[3]
15. It is in the interests of all, including the farmers, that the policies be changed. Indeed, in recent years some conservation-oriented changes have taken place and some subsidy systems have increasingly stressed the need to retire land from production. The financial and economic burden of subsidies must be reduced. The harm that these policies do to the agriculture of developing countries by disrupting world markets must be eliminated.
2. Neglect of the Small Producer
16. The new technology behind increases in agricultural productivity requires scientific and technological skills, a system for technology extension and other services for farmers, and commercial orientation in farm management. In many parts of Asia, in particular, small farmers have shown a remarkable capacity to use new technology once they are given incentives and adequate financial and infrastructural support. Small cash-crop farmers in Africa have demonstrated the potential of the smallholder on that continent, and in the last few years successes have been recorded in food crops also. But ecologically disadvantaged areas and land-poor rural masses have hot benefited from advances in technology and will not until governments are willing and able to redistribute land and resources, and give them the necessary support and incentives.
17. Agricultural support systems seldom take into account the special circumstances of subsistence farmers and herders. Subsistence farmers cannot afford the high cash outlay of modern inputs. Many are shifting cultivators who do not have a clear
title to the land they use. They may plant a variety of crops on one plot to meet their own needs, and are thus unable to use
- ↑ WCED Advisory Panel on Food Security, Agriculture, Forestry and Environment, Food Security (London: Zed Books, 1987).
- ↑ The term pesticides is used in a generic sense in this report and covers insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and similar agricultural inputs.
- ↑ World Bank, World Development Report 1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
