Systemic governance of sustainable agriculture: Implementing sustainable development goals and climate-friendly farming

Significant recent global developments

As ‘sustainable agriculture’ cross cuts numerous of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015, the FAO has been given the responsibility for the important SDG indicator 2.4.1 defined as the ‘percentage of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture’ (FAO, 2015). ‘Sustainable agriculture’ is crucial in the delivery of outcomes within at least 6 of the 17 SDGs including no poverty, zero hunger, responsible consumption and production, climate action, life below water and life on land. The FAO is developing a methodology inclusive of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable production, with the measurement instrument to be farm surveys (to be pilot tested in selected countries in selected regions) with the intention that countries will have the flexibility to identify priorities and challenges within the three dimensions of sustainability. Sustainable farms would be identified as those that satisfy the indicators selected across all three dimensions (FAO, 2018a, 2018b). Australia and the United States, having agreed to adopt the SDGs, are required to voluntarily report on their progress in achieving the SDGs, including the area of productive and sustainable agriculture, which would include the design, recognition and implementation of an agreed farm survey instrument for their respective countries.

‘Sustainable use’ is one of the three main objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2018a) (effective since December 1993) and underpins the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (Convention on Biological Diversity, 2018b) in particular target 7: That by 2020, areas under agriculture, aquaculture and forestry are managed sustainably, ensuring conservation of biodiversity. Recognizing the broad nature of target 7, progress towards its fulfilment will contribute to several other targets, in particular targets 4, 5, 6, 8, 13 and 15. The Nagoya Protocol (in force from October 2014) is a supplementary agreement to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which provides greater legal certainty and transparency for the effective implementation of the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources to ensure sustainable use and further enhance biodiversity, further contributing to the broad guidelines for ‘sustainable agriculture’. The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (effective from June 2004) also relies on ‘sustainable agriculture’ to demonstrate outcomes in particular compliance with Article 6 of this Treaty, which proposes a series of measures to promote the sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and calls upon Contracting Parties (which include Australia and the United States) to develop and maintain appropriate policy and legal measures to that end (FAO, 2009a). The role of ‘sustainable agriculture’ as a more climate-friendly system (OECD, 2016) is also referred to in the context of achieving outcomes of the Paris Climate Agreement (United Nations, 2018a) where agriculture is included in the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions of ratified countries (United Nations, 2018b), which include Australia and the United States. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification also relies on ‘sustainable agriculture’ to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality and Sustainable Land Management objectives and outcomes (United Nations, 2018c) and again Australia and the United States are signatories to this Convention.

Confusion and diversity of current recognition systems

There are an increasing number of ‘sustainable agriculture’ recognition systems available for use in Australia and the United States including sustainable agriculture standards. These systems have associated certification and labelling systems and self-assessment tools with labels, for example, the Unilever ‘Sustainable Agriculture Code’, the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI) ‘Farm Sustainability Assessment’, the Food Alliance ‘Sustainability Standards’, the Scientific Certification Systems Inc. (SCS) Global Services ‘Sustainably Grown’, the Protected Harvest ‘Certified Sustainable’, the Leonardo Academy ‘American National Sustainable Agriculture Standard’, the Sustainable Agriculture Network ‘2017 Sustainable Agriculture SAN standard’ and Agricultural Services Certified Organic ‘sustainable agriculture certification’. However, these are highly fragmented and only persist in specific parts of the sustainability value chain, in particular where the retailers/processors are requiring certified products from the farmers for market entry. A good example of this is the LODI RULES (Lodi Winegrape Commission, 2018) in California’s Lodi viticulture region where growers communicate their commitment to sustainable agriculture to wineries and the general public via certified grapes with approximately 45,000 hectares certified to date and wineries paying premiums for sustainability certification.

Among these diverse sustainable agriculture standards, there is also confusion and debate regarding whether ‘organic agriculture’ actually represents ‘sustainable agriculture’, which is representative within the numerous organic and ‘sustainable agriculture’ value chains existing from grower to the processor, retailer and eventually the customer. Konefal et al. (2017) recently found two contrasting visions of ‘sustainable agriculture’ for the United States emerging from their analysis of three multi-stakeholder ‘sustainable agriculture’ initiatives. One vision focuses on eco-efficiencies and the other a functional integrity approach emphasizing the maintenance of resilient agricultural and ecological systems. They also examined the governance of these initiatives to highlight the source of these different visions and found that the internal dynamics of the initiatives often reflect and reproduce existing power relationships among the stakeholders, which is evident by the variety, diversity and difference within the many ‘sustainable agriculture’ standards available both domestically and globally. The authors conclude that only incremental improvements can be achieved using such ‘sustainable agriculture’ standards approaches, with more transformative systemic changes requiring different forms of governance. Lawson (2017) highlights similar governance issues in Australia with the need to explore more relevant transformative collaborative governance systems for farmers who engage with voluntary stewardship programmes.

Despite the dominant European policy agendas of the bioeconomy and sustainable intensification both of which reinforce neoliberalism through market requirements (Levidow, 2015), significant insights are available from the ‘sustainable agriculture’ context. There are numerous sustainability frameworks for agriculture in Europe such as Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles, Response Inducing Sustainability Evaluation and Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems coupled with the work of the SAI that could hold valuable lessons for progressing ‘sustainable agriculture’ governance systems in Australia and the United States. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has decoupled from production over time towards cross compliance including farmers maintaining land in good agricultural and environmental condition, hence environmental stewardship is included in CAP payments to farmers. While the current reform focuses on how to modernize and simplify the CAP, NGO advocacy (Birdlife International, 2018) is raising issues of what constitutes ‘sustainable agriculture’ and offers a way forward for the CAP in Europe. Brexit will disrupt the CAP payments at the United Kingdom farm gate and proposes reforms for those farmers in particular in relation to environmental stewardship. Whitfield and Marshall (2017) provide interdisciplinary insights into defining and delivering ‘sustainable agriculture’ in the United Kingdom after Brexit. There is much to learn globally from these approaches to ‘sustainable agriculture’.

Our collective research challenge

World migration trends indicate that around 60% of the world is now urban, heading quickly towards 70% within the next few decades (FAO, 2009b). This is a significant increase in the ongoing human shift from being predominantly rural-based for most of our human history. Couple this shift with increasing human population, shrinking natural resources, food and water insecurity, climate change and collapsing ecosystems, and the consequences are likely dire on both local and global scales. If Rockström and the United Nations are correct on the urgent need to operationalize ‘sustainable agriculture’, the world’s future is in the hands of around 30% of the global population being rural and remote communities, which constitutes agrarian and Indigenous farmers and land managers who are often the most politically and oft-times marginalized peoples of the world. While our research concern includes standards for ‘sustainable agriculture’ in rural areas, we note that peri-urban and urban agriculture will play a significant part in ‘sustainable agriculture’ globally. We also note that there is significant opportunity for research related to governance systems in these areas as well.

Given the FAO’s responsibility for developing and testing a farm survey scale ‘sustainable agriculture’ system, we see a global imperative and opportunity for research collaboration on issues of ‘sustainable agriculture’ recognition systems with integrity and legitimacy to respond to our civil and sovereign responsibilities for implementation of the SDGs and other international obligations. We are taking early-stage steps to nurture such collaborations among interested colleagues in Australia, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

To this end, ‘sustainable agriculture’ governance systems would need to include integrative frameworks, standards, certification, cultural foundations, laws, policies, indicators, programmes, practices and other required facets yet to be determined. While the key broad research questions focus on ‘sustainable agriculture’ standards within a ‘sustainable agriculture’ value chain, other important research questions engage issues of what else a ‘sustainable agricultural governance’ system with integrity and legitimacy actually requires. Among others, the following questions seem pertinent:

What are the relative roles and responsibilities of governments, civil society and the market in such a governance system?

These and other questions, the list of which needs to be discussed, debated and co-created by scholars, practitioners, policymakers and others, in collaboration with and in service to, agrarian and Indigenous rural communities, are essential for developing systemic approaches for governance of ‘sustainable agriculture’ that will deliver the desired outcomes of the SDGs. Given the recent United Nations resolution Towards a Global Pact for the Environment and the ongoing work of the United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards through the facilitation of national multi-stakeholder platforms of voluntary sustainability standards in India, China and Brazil, what might policy frameworks for sustainable agriculture look like for the United States, Australia, European Union and the United Kingdom? We extend an invitation for scholarly discussion and collaboration in progressing planetary stewardship from the farm to the nation through the development, testing and implementation of sustainable agriculture governance systems.