ABSTRACT
In his report Agro-ecology and the Right to Food (De Schutter 2010), the Special UN Reporter makes the case for ecological farming practices to boost food production, paying special attention to sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): ‘Today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agro-ecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live – especially in unfavourable environments.’ While sharing his worries about the lack of sustainability of today’s agriculture, and in spite of many worthwhile suggestions, I am rejecting the report in its present form. The key reason is that the strongest tool for reaching food security, for reducing poverty and for more sustainable agriculture is neglected: agricultural intensification based on integrated soil fertility management (ISFM). Considering the present and estimated world population, there is no sustainability without external inputs, whereas their optimum use serves better the ecological and economic goals than De Schutter’s minimum use (Breman 1990). His report is affected by key weaknesses, as shown in the next section. The potential of the alternative, using fertilizer in an ISFM context, is presented in the following section, using (among others) results of the Dutch-funded International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) project in Central Africa’s Great Lakes region: Catalyze Accelerated Agricultural Intensification for Social and Environmental Stability (CATALIST).
