PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by: [Gomiero, T.]

On: 30 April 2011
Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 937060866]
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-
41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713400911
Introduction to the Special Issue: Towards A More Sustainable Agriculture
Maurizio G. Paoletti
a
; Tiziano Gomiero
a
; David Pimentel
b
a
Laboratory of Agroecology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University, Padova,
Italy
b
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Online publication date: 29 April 2011
To cite this Article Paoletti, Maurizio G. , Gomiero, Tiziano and Pimentel, David(2011) 'Introduction to the Special Issue:
Towards A More Sustainable Agriculture', Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 30: 1, 2 5
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/07352689.2011.553148
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07352689.2011.553148
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, 30:25, 2011
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0735-2689 print / 1549-7836 online
DOI: 10.1080/07352689.2011.553148
Introduction to the Special Issue: Towards A More
Sustainable Agriculture
Maurizio G. Paoletti,
1
Tiziano Gomiero,
1
and David Pimentel
2
1
Laboratory of Agroecology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University,
Padova 35121, Italy
2
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
Agriculture provides food, ber, construction materi-
als, biomass, and green energy. It also contributes to an
environmentally-friendly environment. Our societies are totally
dependent upon agriculture and the photosynthetic pathway
contributed by sunlight.
When humans began to rely on agriculture for their sub-
sistence, civilizations ourished while humans spread all
over the globe, transforming ecosystems to provide for
their ever-increasing needs (Diamond, 1998; Bellwood, 2005;
Montgomery, 2007a; Murphy, 2007; Ponting, 2007). According
to Ruddiman (2005a, 2005b), early human activity, such as for-
est conversion to agricultural land, extensive use of re, and wet
rice cultivation, resulted in high Green House Gasses emission
(GHGs), able to alter the earth climate long before industrial
revolution took place.
Agricultural societies had to deal with the need to feed an
growing population and to cope with the increasing complexities
of their societies (Tainter, 1988; Johnson and Earle, 2000). As
populations increased, pressure on the agricultural systemled to
reduced soil fertility and threatened its sustainability. Soil ero-
sion led to soil exhaustion (loss of organic matter and its fertility)
that impaired agro-ecosystem resilience, making it difcult to
cope with the effects of climate extremes. Among the practices
that led to the mismanagement of the soil were deforestation,
res, tillage, short rotation, irrigation (leading to the saliniza-
tion of the soil), and a tendency to adopt monoculture rather
than crop diversity (King, 1911; Carter and Dale, 1974; Tain-
ter, 1988; Hillel, 1991; Diamond, 2005; Montgomery, 2007a;
Ponting, 2007). Carter and Dale (1974) suggested that civiliza-
tions tend to collapsed in about 20 generations, apart from those
relying, for soil fertilization, on river.
In the twentieth century, with the advent of fossil fuels, agri-
culture experienced an incredible boost. Thanks to chemical
fertilizers and pesticides and the availability of other sources
Address correspondence to M. G. Paoletti, Laboratory of Agroe-
cology and Ethnobiology, Department of Biology, Padova University,
Padova, 35121, Italy. E-mail: paoletti@bio.unipd.it
of energy, this helped to increase crop yields. In addition, the
new high yielding varieties (HYVs) (or high-response varieties)
developed in the 1960s by Norman Borlaug (19142009, Nobel
Peace Price in 1970) and colleagues, helped to increase crop
yields (Borlaug, 1970; Conway, 1998). With the Green Revo-
lution the productivity of the main agriculture crops increased
up to 45 times, helping to cope with the severe food scarcity
and famine hitting many highly populated developing countries
(Conway, 1998; Smil, 2000; Tilman et al., 2001; Pimentel and
Pimentel, 2008). The main characteristics of the HYVs can be
summarized as: having shorter stems than traditional cultivars,
being genetically homogeneous and much more productive un-
der high rates of fertilizers (e.g., synthetic nitrogen). However,
HYVs were also weaker than their traditional relatives and more
prone to pests and diseases (Conway, 1998).
In the last half century, the great abundance of cheap food
(along with medical advances) led to increasing population
growth, and contrary to the hopes of the green revolution, whose
goal was to put an end to hunger, the FAO at present estimates
that 1.02 billion people are hungry and undernourished world-
wide in 2009. This represents more hungry people than at any
time since 1970 (FAO, 2009; UNEP, 2009). When consider-
ing malnutrition in all its facets, it has been estimated that, at
present, about 60% of the world population can be considered
malnourished (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). It was Borlaug
himself that warned, in his Nobel lecture, that unless the rate
of human reproduction was curbed, the success of the Green
Revolution would only be ephemeral (Borlaug, 1970). Some
scholars argue, however, that remaining malnutrition is more a
matter of access to food rather than one of insufcient availabil-
ity and that there are additional social-political issues that play
an important role in this problem (Sen, 1982; Conway, 1998;
Smil, 2000; FAO, 2009).
Over the next decades the worlds population is expected
to grow from 6.8 billion in 2008 (medium estimates) to 8.3
billion by the 2030, and to 9.2 billion by the 2050 (Cohen,
2003; UN, 2007; FAO, 2008; UNEP, 2009). Scenario analysis
indicates a possible stop to population growth by the end of
the century (Lutz et al., 2001, 2004). Other scholars, however,
2
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
G
o
m
i
e
r
o
,

T
.
]

A
t
:

1
4
:
2
8

3
0

A
p
r
i
l

2
0
1
1
TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: INTRODUCTION 3
remain skeptical (e.g., Hopfenberg and Pimentel, 2001) arguing
that, contrary to the widely held belief that food production
must be increased to feed the growing population, experimental
and correlational data indicate that human population growth
varies as a function of food availability, so that by increasing
food production the effect will be an increase in the human
population.
Recent studies suggest that the world will need 70 to 100%
more food by 2050 (FAO, 2008; World Bank, 2008). So a new
challenge lies ahead: to nd a means to feed 9 billion with less
land, water, and energy in the coming decades (Conway, 1998;
Smil, 2000; Tilman at al., 2002; Godfray et al., 2010).
Increasingly, intensive agricultural practices are affecting the
very sustainability of our support system, the soil (Pimentel
et al., 1995; Montgomery, 2007b). Croplands and pastures al-
ready occupy about 50% of the land surface (Foley et al., 2005),
with large effects on biodiversity conservation (Paoletti et al.,
1992; Krebs et al., 1999; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
2005). Agriculture accounts for 70% of water used by human
activities (Molden, 2007). The use of agrochemicals is costly
in terms of energy use (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008), repre-
sents a threat to biodiversity and human life (Lipsitch et al.,
2002; Lyons, 2009; Vitousek et al., 2009; Pimentel, 2010), and
can cause a high level of water pollution (Molden, 2007; Moss,
2008). It is therefore urgent to nd more ecological ways of
limiting pests (Altieri and Nicholls, 2004; Gurr et al., 2004; Pi-
mentel and Cilveti, 2007). At the same time, agricultural prac-
tices should reduce both their environmental impact and their
use of non-renewable resources (e.g., fossil fuel energy) (Mil-
lennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Pimentel and Pimentel,
2008).
Vast industrialized agriculture also contributes greatly to
impoverished crop biodiversity, with the loss of a large num-
ber of agricultural species and varieties (Fowler and Hodgkin,
2005). A cultural aspect that may be worth mentioning, is
that when Western agriculture package is transferred to other
continents, it tends to dismiss, or overlook, many sorts of
traditional local resourcessuch as insects and other arthro-
pods, earthworms, small vertebrates and wild plants (insects
and earthworms, for instance, may total more than 3,000
kg/ha; Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). These local resources
can play an important role in guaranteeing food security in
poor rural areas, but are often neglected because of the West-
ern perception that these are not proper food for people
(Paoletti and Bukkens, 1997; Paoletti, 2005; Ochatt and Jain,
2007).
We are aware that a topic such as agriculture sustainability
is broad and highly complex (Smil, 2000; Giampietro, 2004;
Francis et al., 2006; Bohlen and House, 2009; UNEP, 2009;
NRC, 2010). It includes aspects ranging from ecology to ge-
netics, from agronomy to soil management, from economics to
politics. The point we wish to make with this special issue is to
offer some additional ideas and comments on some issues in the
eld of sustainable agriculture.
The rst two papers address directly the sustainability
issue.
The rst paper, Is there a need for a more sustainable agricul-
ture? (Gomiero and colleagues), reviews a number of problems
concerning the impact of conventional agriculture on the envi-
ronment and soil, and discusses some theoretical approaches
and techniques that may offer useful strategies for a more sus-
tainable agriculture. The second paper, Resources and cultural
complexity: Implications for sustainability (Tainter), addresses
the relations between agriculture, society complexication and
the pattern of collapse associated with complex societies. Tain-
ter denes sustainability as a matter of problem solving and a
process of continuous adaptation. He points out that, paradox-
ically, as problems arise, addressing these problems requires
complexication of the society and in turn more resources
consumption. Some ideas concerning the possibility to deal with
the sustainability issue are presented.
The second pair of papers deals with the use of energy in
agriculture, and the sectors dependence on fossil fuels. The
paper by Pimentel, Food for thought: A review of the role of
energy in current and evolving agriculture, analyzes the ener-
getic costs of food production, while the paper by Arizpe and
colleagues, Food security and fossil energy dependence: An in-
ternational comparison of the use of fossil energy in agriculture
(19912003), reviews global trends in energy consumption in
agriculture.
A third group of papers deals with management issues and
focuses on possible practices for achieving more sustainable
agriculture.
The paper by Francis and Porter, Ecology in sustainable
agriculture practices and systems, reviews a number of prac-
tices that can be employed to improve agricultural efciency
and sustainability.
Pest control is a key issue in agriculture management, and
pesticide use a major environmental impact. Eckstr om and
Ekbom, Pest control in agro-ecosystems: An ecological ap-
proach, review the recent achievements in the eld of natural
pest control and how this can contribute to reducing the envi-
ronmental impact of agriculture.
During recent decades organic farming has achieved wide
attention both from consumers and policy makers because of its
call for promoting an agriculture free from agrochemicals and
based on ecological practices, and for its concern for the preser-
vation of biodiversity. The paper by Gomiero and colleagues,
Environmental impact of different agricultural management
practices: Conventional vs. organic agriculture, summarizes
this story and the foundation of the organic movements and
reviews research works assessing the achievement of organic
farming vs. conventional farming for a number of environmen-
tal issues.
Over time, the number of crops and local varieties have dras-
tically reduced in most regions, with the result that fewer plants
and animals now compose the actual base of our food. The
paper A heuristic framework for identifying multiple ways of
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
G
o
m
i
e
r
o
,

T
.
]

A
t
:

1
4
:
2
8

3
0

A
p
r
i
l

2
0
1
1
4 M. G. PAOLETTI ET AL.
supporting the conservation and use of traditional crop vari-
eties within the agricultural production system by Jarvis and
colleagues, addresses this problem and discusses the different
ways of supporting farmers and farming communities in the
maintenance of traditional varieties and crop genetic diversity
within their production systems.
A fourth selection of papers deals with food quality and the
knowledge about the use of semi-domesticated and wild plants.
Whether organically grown crops have more nutritional prop-
ertied then conventional crops is matter of debate. The paper
by Brandt and colleagues, Agroecosystem management and
nutritional quality of plant foods: The case of organic fruits
and vegetables, reviews the present knowledge about the nu-
tritional characteristics of organic products. Turner and col-
leagues in Edible and tended wild plants, traditional ecological
knowledge and agroecology, explore local knowledge of semi-
domesticated or tended and wild plants and their nutritional as
well as their possible economic role.
The closure of the special issue is provided by Francis and
colleagues with a paper titled Innovative education in agroecol-
ogy: Experiential learning for a sustainable agriculture, which
reviews recent experiences in the eld of agriculture education.
It is vital that we develop sound agricultural practices, if we
want to have a new generation of scientists able to deal with the
complex eld of sustainable agriculture.
We wish to thank all the authors who participated in this
project, as well as the editors of CRPS for their interest and
sensitivity on this vital issue.
REFERENCES
Altieri, M., and Nicholls, C. I. 2004. Biodiversity and Pest Management in
Agroecosystems. (2nd ed.) CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Bellwood, P. 2005. First Farmers: The Origin of Agricultural Societies. Black-
well, MA.
Bohlen, P. J., and House, G. (Eds.) 2009. Sustainable Agroecosystem Manage-
ment. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Borlaug, N. 1970. The Green Revolution, Peace, and HumanityNobel
Lecture. http://nobelprize.org/nobel prizes/peace/laureates/1970/borlaug-
lecture.html Accessed on 23 November 2009.
Carter, V. G. and Dale, T. 1974. Topsoil and Civilization. University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, OK.
Cohen, J. E. 2003. Human population: The next half century. Science 302:
11721175.
Conway, G. 1997. The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-
First Century. Penguin, London.
Diamond, J. 1998. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for
the Last 13,000 Years. Vintage, London.
Diamond, J. 2005. Collapse: HowSocieties Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin,
London.
FAO. 2009. The State of Food Insecurity in the World. FAO, Rome.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0876e/i0876e00.HTM Accessed on January
20, 2010.
Ferry, N., and Gatehouse, A. M. R. (Eds). 2009. Environmental Impact of
Genetically Modied Crops. CABI, Wallingford, UK.
Foley, J. A., DeFries, R., Asner, G. P., Barford. C., and fteen
other. 2005. Global consequences of land use. Science 309: 570
574.
Fowler, C., and Hodgkin, T. 2005. Plant genetic resources for food and agri-
culture: Assessing global availability. Annu. Rev. Env. Resour. 29: 143
179.
Francis, C. A., Poincelot, R. P., and Bird, G. W. (Eds). 2006. Developing and
Extending Sustainable Agriculture. A New Social Contract. Haworth Flood
& Agricultural Products Press, New York.
Giampietro, M. 2004. Multi-scale Integrated Analysis of Agroecosystems. CRC
Press, Boca Raton, London.
Godfray, H. C. J., Beddington, J. R., Crute, I. R., Haddad, L., Lawrence, D.,
Muir, J. F., Pretty, J., Robinson, S., Thomas, S. M., and Toulmin, C. 2010.
Food security: The challenge of feeding 9 billion people. Science 237: 812
818.
Gurr, G. M., Wratten, S. D., and Altieri, M. A. (Eds) 2004. Ecological Engi-
neering for Pest Management: Habitat Manipulation for Arthropods. CSIRO
Publishing, Collingwood, Australia.
Hillel, D. 1991. Out of the Earth. Civilization and the Life of the Soil. California
Univ. Press, Berkeley, CA.
Hopfenberg, R., and Pimentel, D. 2001. Human population numbers as a
function of food supply. Environment, Development and Sustainability 3:
115.
Johnson, A.W., and Earle, T., 2000. The Evolution of Human Societies. From
Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
King, F. H. 1911. Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or Permanent Agriculture in
China, Korea and Japan. Mrs. King, Madison. The book is available at URL
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5350 (and reprinted in 1990 by Rosale Press)
Krebs, J. R., Wilson, J. D., Bradbury, R. B., and Siriwardena, G. M. 1999. The
second Silent Spring? Nature 400: 611612.
Lipsitch, M., Singer, R.S., and Levin, B. R. 2002. Antibiotics in agriculture:
When is it time to close the barn door? PNAS 99: 57525754.
Lutz, W., Sanderson, W., and Scherbov, S. 2001.The end of world population
growth. Nature 412: 543545.
Lutz, W., Sanderson, W., and Scherbov, S. (Eds) 2004. The End of World
Population Growth in the 21
t h
Century. Earthscan, London.
Lyons, G., 2009. Effects of pollutants on the reproductive health of
male vertebrate wildlife - Males under threat. CHEM Trust (Chemi-
cals, Health and Environment Monitoring) http://www.chemtrust.org.
uk/documents/Male%20Wildlife%20Under%20Threat%202008%20full%
20report.pdf Accessed on 10 May 2010.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human
Well-Being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC. http://www.
millenniumassessment.org/en/Synthesis.aspx Accessed 25 November 2009.
Molden, D. (Ed.). 2007. Water for Food, Water for Life. A Compre-
hensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture. Earthscan,
London. The publication is available on internet at URL: http://www.
iwmi.cgiar.org/assessment/Publications/books.htm
Montgomery, D. R. 2007a. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization. University of
California Press, Berkeley.
Montgomery, D. R. 2007b. Soil erosion and agricultural sustainability. PNAS
104:1326813272.
Moss, B. 2008. Water pollution by agriculture. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363:
659666.
Murphy, J. D. 2007. People, Plant & Genes. Oxford Univ. Press, New York.
NRC (National Research Council). 2010. Toward Sustainable Agri-
cultural Systems in the 21st Century. National Academies Press
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12832.html Accessed on 20 March 2010.
Ochatt, S., and Jain, S. M. 2007. Breeding of Neglected and Under-Utilized
Crops Spices and Herbs. Science Publishers, Eneld, New Hampshire.
Paoletti M.G. (Ed.) 2005. Ecological Implications of Minilivestock. Insects,
Rodents, Frogs and Snails. Science Publishers, Eneld, New Hampshire.
Paoletti, M. G., and Bukkens, S.G.F. 1997. Minilivestock. Ecology of Food and
Nutrition. 36: Special Issue.
Paoletti, M. G., Pimentel, D., Stinner, B. R., and Stinner, D. 1992. Agroe-
cosystembiodiversity: Matching production and conservation biology. Agric.
Ecosys. & Environ. 40: 326.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
G
o
m
i
e
r
o
,

T
.
]

A
t
:

1
4
:
2
8

3
0

A
p
r
i
l

2
0
1
1
TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: INTRODUCTION 5
Pimentel, D. 2010. The Effects of the Resistance of Antibiotics and Pesticides
on U.S. Public Health. Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences,
Washington, D.C. (In Press)
Pimentel, D., and Cilveti, M. V. 2007. Reducing pesticide use: successes. In:
Encyclopedia of Pest Management, Volume 2: 551552. CRC Press, Taylor
and Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL.
Pimentel, D., and Pimentel, M. 2008. Food, Energy, and Society. 3rd ed. CRC
Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Ponting, C. 2007. A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the
Collapse of Great Civilizations. Vintage Books, London.
Ruddiman, W. 2005a. Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum. Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ.
Ruddiman, W. 2005b. How did humans rst alter global climate? Scientic
American March: 4653.
Sen, A. 1982. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation.
Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Smil, V. 2000. Feeding the World: A Challenge for the Twenty-First Century.
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MC.
Tainter, J. A. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Tilman, D., Cassman, K. G., Matson, P. A., Naylor, R., and Polasky, S. 2002.
Agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices. Nature 418:
671677.
Tilman, D., Fargione, J., Wolff, B., DAntonio, C., Dobson, A., Howarth, R.,
Schindler, D., Schlesinger, W. H., Simberloff, D. and Swackhamer, D. 2001.
Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science 292:
281284.
UN (United Nations). 2007. Population Newsletter. Number 83. http://www.
un.org/esa/population/publications/popnews/Newsltr 83.pdf Accessed on 2
July 2009.
UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme). 2009. The environ-
mental food crisis the environments role in averting future food crises
a UNEP rapid response assessment. UNEP, GRID-Arendal, http://www.
grida.no/publications/rr/food-crisis/ Accessed on 12 May 2010.
Vitousek, P. M., Naylor, R., and 15 others. 2009. Nutrient imbalances in agri-
cultural development. Science 324: 15191520.
World Bank. 2008. World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for De-
velopment. World Bank, Washington, DC. http://siteresources.worldbank.
org/INTWDR2008/Resources/WDR 00 book.pdf Accessed 27 October
2009.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

B
y
:

[
G
o
m
i
e
r
o
,

T
.
]

A
t
:

1
4
:
2
8

3
0

A
p
r
i
l

2
0
1
1