Ethics of Sustainable Agricultural Intensification - FAO.org

9Intensification isassociated withperiods of humanpopulation growthWhen isintensificationethically good?A utilitarianmodelAgricultural intensification is a processthat occurs when individual humanbeings, communities or organizationstake actions of one sort or another. The ethicsframework previously discussed can be appliedto the actions of individuals, associations andorganized corporate bodies. The frameworkillustrates three ways in which questions aboutthe justifiability and ethical acceptability of anyparticular course of conduct might be posed andanalysed. Applied to agricultural intensification,these become questions that might be pertinentto the acts of farmers, input suppliers, technologydevelopers, or to any number of public andprivate agencies whose activities affect the productivity of agricultural inputs. Suchquestions might be asked by a person or group evaluating their own options and mightalso be posed as part of a general discussion and debate about what actions shouldbe taken by governments, international agencies or, indeed, any actor in the foodsystem. Since policies are, in fact, actions taken by governments or other organizations,it is possible to evaluate the institution of any policy that would affect intensificationin much the same way as one evaluates any ordinary act. The first ethical questionis to determine what it is about intensification that makes it a good thing, somethingto be encouraged or brought about in a particular set of circumstances and, correlatively,what circumstances might make intensification an ethically bad thing.Consequentialist ethical approaches provide the most straightforward and obviousway to evaluate an entire system of food and fibre production. The consequentialistunderstands what is right, good and proper to be determined by the impact of theaction or policy on health, wealth andwell-being. Intensification is, in theprototypical case, intended to increase thetotal amount of food available withoutincreasing the use of inputs. Since food ismaterial to human life and health, theproduction of more food can be considereda beneficial impact, especially under theFAO/19698/G. BIZZARRIcircumstances of food scarcity that havebeen too typical of human history. Asnoted, intensification is associated withperiods of human population growth.Without a correlative growth in food