Growing food price volatility during the first decade of the twenty-first century has certainly elicited attention from mainstream science and policy analysis (FAO 2009, Royal Society 2009, Science 2010, UK Government Office for Science 2011, Economist 2011). While some documents remain “cautiously optimistic”, that commodity prices will fall from their 2010-11 levels and stabilise as market signals incentivise farmers to produce more food (OECD-FAO 2011), most are less sanguine about the prospects for feeding the world, especially a global population of 9b by 2050 (Evans 2009). Indeed, of these recent mainstream reports, there are varying degrees of acknowledgement of the other challenges that intersect with food production - such as projected rates of global warming, freshwater depletion, biodiversity losses, and tightening energy markets - let alone matters of livelihood security and improved access to food for the rural poor. For most, the central solution is to develop and apply new agricultural technologies in order to increase food production. Only one recent report of international significance comes to a different conclusion: the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD 2009), was clear in its advocacy for a new direction in public policy for food and livelihood security under increasingly constrained environmental conditions. As the IAASTD Synthesis Report states: “the current agricultural knowledge, science and technology model requires revision. Business as usual is no longer an option” (IAASTD 2009: 3).
Yet, developing more sustainable forms of agricultural production that build on the agro-ecological knowledge of small-holder farmers has so far received only limited support from national and international institutions and policies (Pretty et al. 2010, Lang et al 2009). Not least there remains a hugely powerful status quo that regards the current crisis as requiring the rejuvenation of the existing agri-industrial model.