How does appropriate agriculture differ from high-yield agriculture?
Most farmers around the world are small-scale farmers. They apply traditional methods, many of which are neither sustainable nor very productive. For example, Africans still tend to plough their fields by hand, without a single ox. Appropriate agriculture depends on cultivation methods that suit the environmental conditions of a certain location as well as the people who live there. These methods may include high-yielding varieties. Pure high-yield agriculture, on the other hand, tends to focus on monocultures based only a very small variety of crops. High-yielding varieties are always based on the so-called landraces which have evolved over the centuries through natural mutation and cultivation. Is it possible to maximise yields according to efficiency criteria, without eroding the genetical base of agriculture? The first Green Revolution showed that damage is caused by cultivating high-yield varieties in monocultures, using vast amounts of fertilisers and pesticides. Soils become so
