Expand the agricultural frontier or improve productivity?

Eulogio Nuñez Aramayo (*)

Lately the national government and the agroindustrial sector in Santa Cruz have been talking about expanding the agricultural frontier in Bolivia with the goal of garunteeing food security for the population. Right now in Bolivia, there are 2.9 million hectares (7.17 million acres for those of you still stuck on the US measurement system) of cultivated agricultural land, and for the year 2020, they want that number to reach 10 million, according to a statement by the Rural and Agricultural Development Viceminister, Victor Hugo Vasquez. This week, at the opening of the annual Santa Cruz Expo Fair, the Vicepresident spoke of similar ambitions for the expansion of agroindustry in the area.

If the expansion of the agricultural frontier implies: continuing deforestation of tropical forests (250 to 300 thousand hectares per year according to government authorities); continuing to utilize slash-and-burn techniques as part of agricultural practice, ruining the soil long-term and causing harm to human health and biodiversity (4.88 million hectares burned in 2010); the continuing cultivation of soils that are not adept for intensive agriculture (according to the National Soil Platform, 41% of Bolivian soil is in a process of degredation). If this is what expanding the agricultural frontier means-- the characteristic model of expansive, agroindustrial monocultivation, with high mechanization and dependency on synthetic fertalizers and insecticides (read: poison)-- then we are seeking a solution to Bolivia's food dependency that will prove more costly than the problem itself.

To shoot for more than tripling the amount of cultivated land in Santa Cruz necesarily means deforestation of tropical forests, in many cases illegally. In our context here, I think it would be much better if this discussion was turned more towards the improvement of our productivity, which comparing Bolivia to even our neighbors we are way behind. For example, Bolivia produces about 5.49 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, while in Peru it is 9.4 TM/Ha. In rice production in Santa Cruz, on average an hectare will produce 2.73 metric tons, while in Argentina it is 6.54 and in Brasil it is 4.78 TM/Ha.

In order to improve our productivity we need to push for smart public policy to encourage the recuperation of the soil that is being degraded; eliminate slash-and-burn agriculture; and offer incentives to farmers who use agroecological practices and techniques that are friendly to the environment; and invest in more irrigation systems. Diversified production that respects and uses the local soil adequately and takes advantage of traditional practices will last much longer than importing the green revolution from the USA.

There are many things that local and national governments could and should do to help small farmers, and big ones too, to become more productive while investing in the soil rather than only taking from it, thus assuring long-term productivity and therefore real food independence, as the government claims is its aim. When 38% of your population is still rural, almost of all of which working small farms, this need become imparative. Buying into agroindustry's discourse will ultimate ruin many lives and livelihoods in Bolivia. One only has to look as far as global agroindustry has reached to see that. Some of the first victims here have been the indigenous groups, many of whose communities are now literally islands in a sea of soy, cut off from everything they depended on the land to give them. I pray that Bolivians will stand up to these powers that are only in it for their own profit, and that we can create a Bolivia that is not only truly food independent, but food sovereign as well.