Strategies for scaling up the adoption of organic farming towards building climate change resilient communities

Abstract

Adjustments and adaptive responses to diminishing resources (land, water, and energy) in agriculture due to population increase and climate change in the recent decades are varied. Proactive adaptive coping mechanisms must be instituted to avoid the onslaught of massive starvation. Organic and agroecological innovations are the logical options. But organic farming is not one-size-fits-all solution. While organic farming is considered as one of the solutions to farming in crisis, there are many barriers to its adoption. Among these constraints are (1) the nature of organic farming being difficult, laborious, and knowledge and skills intensive, the required environment (air, soil, and water), and the certification requirement and (2) the support systems from government and consumers not in place. Scaling up the adoption of organic farming has a number of prerequisites, specifically: 1. innovation from farmers-the farmers as innovators and scientist/technologists from the academics and science and technology (S/T) institutions; 2. reengineering agri-food systems into agroecotourism as a way of attracting farm visitors and tourist-enthusiasts and attracting human interests and investment flows to the rural areas, generating rural employment, slowing down or stopping out-migration to urban areas and overseas work (OFW); 3. innovative governance-led promotion by expediting the shift from capital and resource intensive (land, water, energy, inputs) to restorative, regenerative, and vibrant agriculture and food systems and expediting this system shift by an innovative ecological carbon emission-soil erosion-water consumption tax to finance the transition and conversion process to agroecology-based organic agriculture; 4. an innovative paradigm shift from food security to health security-from financesurance to healthsurance, from financial banking to health banking, from measuring yield per acre to health per acre as the world transitions agriculture and food system from agrochemical-intensive monoculture to organic polyculture cropping systems; 5. innovative paradigm from supply chain to value chain approach in agriculture and food systems, but implementing these innovations requires 4Ps and 2 Ms (preproduction, production, processing, postproduction linkages + marketing and management); 6. a demand-led (consumer) instead of supply-led (the farmers) approach to promotion; 7. and, finally, a consumption-led greening of agroecosystems by minimizing food wastes and consuming only what we can and reducing the thermodynamic loss in food by consuming less and less meat.