Is sustainable intensification the answer?

The goal of sustainable intensification is to increase food production from existing farmland, says the article in the journal Science’s Policy Forum by lead authors Dr Tara Garnett and Professor Charles Godfray from the University of Oxford.

They say that this would minimise the pressure on the environment in a world in which land, water, and energy are in short supply, highlighting that the environment is often overexploited and used unsustainably.

The authors, university researchers and policy-makers from NGOs and the UN, outline a new, more sophisticated account of how ‘sustainable intensification’ should work.

The article stresses that while farmers in many regions of the world need to produce more food, it is equally urgent that policy makers act on diets, waste and how the food system is governed.

The authors emphasise that there is a need to produce more food on existing rather than new farmland because converting uncultivated land would lead to major emissions of greenhouse gases and cause significant losses of biodiversity.

“It is necessary, but not sufficient,” said Professor Charles Godfray of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. “Achieving a sustainable food system will require changes in agricultural production, changes in diet so people eat less meat and waste less food, and regulatory changes to improve the efficiency and resilience of the food system.

“Producing more food is important but it is only one of a number of policies that we must pursue together.”

Increasing productivity does not always mean using more fertilisers and agrochemicals as these technologies frequently carry unacceptable environmental costs, argue the authors.

They say that a range of techniques, both old and new, should be employed to develop ways of farming that keep environmental damage to a minimum.