ISSN 1609-0098

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Rome, 2004

Produced by the
Editorial Production and Design Group
Publishing Management Service
FAO

The designations employed and the presentation of material in this

information product do not imply the expression of any opinion
whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations concerning the legal or development status of any
country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the
delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

ISBN 92-5-105067-8

All rights reserved. Reproduction and dissemination of material in this

information product for educational or other non-commercial purposes are
authorized without any prior written permission from the copyright holders
provided the source is fully acknowledged. Reproduction of material in this
information product for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited
without written permission of the copyright holders. Applications for such
permission should be addressed to the Chief, Publishing Management Service,
Information Division, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy
or by e-mail to copyright@fao.org

FAO 2004

Contents
iv

Foreword
1

Introduction
3

Agricultural intensification
6

An ethics framework
9

When is intensification ethically good? A utilitarian model

12

When is intensification ethically good? A rights-based model

14

Utilitarianism and rights-based ethics: further issues

17

When is intensification ethically good? A virtue-based model

22

How should burdens and benefits be distributed?

25

Who is responsible for ensuring that intensification occurs?

28

Conclusion

iv

Foreword

ince the Neolithic Revolution, growing human populations have developed

a variety of strategies to intensify agriculture. During 10 000 years of
intensification, humans have introduced different technological adaptations
of basic natural resources in order to sustain growth in agricultural production.
Societies have in fact defined themselves by the way and degree in which they
have succeeded in increasing agricultural production. While intensification has
made it possible to support a world of 6 000 million people, it can result in
degradation of the earths natural resource base. This paper provides a definition
of intensification that allows for more open and informed dialogue on the ethical
dimensions of sustainable agricultural intensification.
At the World Food Summit in 1996, countries committed themselves to halve
the number of hungry in the world by no later than 2015. This goal was reaffirmed
in the United Nations Millennium Declaration in 2000 and, in 2002, it was reiterated
by the World Food Summit: five years later.
The commitment made is profoundly ethical, and a related moral imperative
is to seek sustainable agricultural intensification in ways that do not degrade the
natural resource base, while also taking into account the need to improve the
livelihoods of the millions of people who work the land, particularly in developing
countries.
We have the skills to make the policy and technological choices to achieve the
sustainable intensification that will be required over the next century, as the worlds
population size stabilizes. Nevertheless, these choices are difficult. Governments
and their policy planners, as well as producers and consumers, must grapple with
the ethical dimensions of intensification. How are we to identify and choose among
the alternative paths forward to avoid many of the negative effects associated with
intensification?
In addition to the risk of degrading natural resources, intensification has
important socio-economic consequences, particularly in relation to rural
livelihoods. In making the relevant policy decisions, planners must identify and
evaluate alternative strategies, in terms both of their immediate and longer-term
impacts and of their implications for the societies and communities involved.
Actors at the grassroots level deserve a framework enabling them to take decisions
and action that contribute to the common good. We must honour our commitment
to provide viable production alternatives before we accuse poor households of

damaging the environment in pursuit of mere subsistence. As Mahatma Gandhi

said, To the millions who have to go without two meals in a dayGod can only
appear as bread.
The ethics of sustainable agricultural intensification is the third study in the FAO
Ethics Series. It explores a systematic approach to practical ethical analysis applied
to intensification, and aims at integrating ethical principles into the basket of policy
tools adopted by planners working to achieve the World Food Summit goal.
Human food needs provide the basis for a utilitarian argument for intensification,
while the moral concept of virtue addresses peoples duty to work for the good of
society. A rights-based analysis then reveals how individuals pursuit of such good
can be constrained by the rights of others. These three approaches can help us
articulate, debate and ultimately assume ethical responsibilities concerning the
intensification of agriculture.
FAO intends to continue advancing the dialogue on the ethics of food and
agriculture, as it forms an ineluctable part of humanitys core commitment to
feeding the world.

Jacques Diouf
FAO Director-General

FAO /20216/L. DEMATTEIS

FAO /19632/G.BIZZARRI

FAO/21028/R. FAIDUTTI

ver the 10 000 years since the Neolithic

Age, human population growth has been
correlated with intensification in food
production systems, primarily agriculture, which
has also greatly modified the worlds ecosystems,
for better or for worse. Given the present and
anticipated increases in world population, not to mention current and projected
environmental problems and ecological stress from agriculture, further agricultural
intensification will be needed. What ethical issues have been (or might have been)
raised in connection with past episodes of agricultural intensification? Who can make
a difference in directing the course of future intensification, and what ethical
responsibilities do these potential actors bear?
Any answer to these questions will be complex. It will involve sophisticated
analyses of the historical and natural processes that have influenced and continue to
influence episodes of agricultural intensification. It will also involve an account of the
social, economic and psychological underpinnings of both individual and collective
action, and this account will need to be woven into detailed factual analyses of the
land, climatic and genetic endowments in specific places. The focus in this ethics paper
is just one element of the problem: the way that ethical concepts and terms can be used
to articulate the normative dimension what ought to be the case with respect to human
purpose and conduct whenever episodes of intensification occur. Although several
examples from the history of intensification are discussed, the paper does not attempt
to provide an exhaustive or representative survey of ethical issues that have been
raised in connection with intensification. Neither does it offer a general or universally
applicable answer to any of the questions above, much less to the comprehensive
question, What ought to be done with respect to intensification?. Instead, the focus
is on building capacity for debate and analysis of these ethical questions, with the
expectation that specific answers will be the result of more focused inquiries conducted
by people with more proximate access to and knowledge of circumstances that are
relevant to specific cases.
Debate and analysis of ethical issues are difficult for several reasons. In many
cultures, ethical norms are deeply embedded in traditions and religious practices,
while in others they are thought to be highly personal. With global issues, the
multiplicity of cultural, linguistic and ethical traditions means that one cannot draw
upon a common set of terminology or working assumptions. Activities that require
coordination to specify or achieve goals or to implement ideas and concepts may be
described as social, economic or political rather than ethical, leading to a
situation in which questions about what ought to be are not recognized as ethical
ones. As social science has evolved to analyse activity in these domains, the scientific
practice of focusing on data collection and the formulation of refutable hypotheses

Introduction

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

concerning relationships among data has tended to push aside explicit attention to
underlying normative concerns or assumptions. The ethical dimension of such
questions can be obscured by implicit and unquestioned assumptions. Each of these
factors complicates the articulation, defence and critique of ethical issues.
It is therefore useful to undertake planning and analytical exercises in which ethical
questions are the primary focus. The goal here is to provide a basic conceptual
framework in ethics that will aid in the articulation and justification of norms for
intensification, although this framework will also be applicable in other areas. As
already stated, this paper does not endorse a particular set of answers to the ethical
questions that arise from intensification. Instead, conceptual tools that allow these
questions to be articulated and discussed are presented and examples are given for
illustrative purposes. A short discussion on intensification is followed by the
presentation of a general framework for organizing and considering ethical issues.
This framework is then used and developed in a series of discussions about the ethical
issues associated with agricultural intensification.

Applying fertilizer
to a maize crop

FAO/14519/ D. DEBERT

gricultural intensification can be

technically defined as an increase in
agricultural production per unit of
inputs (which may be labour, land, time, fertilizer,
seed, feed or cash). For practical purposes,
intensification occurs when there is an increase
in the total volume of agricultural production that
results from a higher productivity of inputs, or
agricultural production is maintained while certain inputs are decreased (such as by
more effective delivery of smaller amounts of fertilizer, better targeting of plant or
animal protection, and mixed or relay cropping on smaller fields). Intensification that
takes the form of increased production is most critical when there is a need to expand
the food supply, for example during periods of rapid population growth. Intensification
that makes more efficient use of inputs may be more critical when environmental
problems or social issues are involved. In either case, changes caused by intensification
are to be understood conceptually in contrast to extensive adjustments, which involve
increases or decreases in the amount of inputs used. Historically, the most common
and effective extensive adjustment in agricultural production has been to increase or
decrease the area of land planted.
For the purposes of this discussion, the contrast between intensification and
extensive adjustment is intended to indicate the contrast between two broad strategies
that human beings have had for affecting their food supply, rather than concepts
applicable to economic or technical analysis of specific cases. The technical specifications
and measurement of intensification or extensive adjustment in any given case are actually
quite complex. Changes in the productivity of one input are likely to be accompanied by
adjustments in the amount of other inputs. This complexity notwithstanding, there is
little doubt that agricultural intensification has been a prerequisite to human civilization.
The Neolithic technological revolution was
built on collecting, concentrating, selecting
and harvesting plant and animal species
in an organized fashion, with the aim of
having more products closer to hand and
easier to convert into nutrition. The
domestication of farm animals and the
development of crops, in the context of
ever more productive farming systems,
enabled the human population to grow
and towns and villages to develop, having
governments, laws, trade and economies
with specialized employment.

Agricultural
intensification

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

As agricultural production became more efficient, so populations increased.

Historians have argued whether higher populations drove technological development,
or whether technological development made higher populations possible.
Nevertheless, throughout this development, most societies were chronically
malnourished, or prey to episodic famine. Relatively high transport costs meant that
most societies relied on local production, except when water transport made imports
possible. Classical Athens was largely fed from the Crimea, and Rome from Egypt
and southern Spain. For more than 95 percent of the history of civilization, food has
been scarce for nearly all people. This has meant low life expectancy, susceptibility to
disease and little capacity to face wars, droughts, floods and other human and natural
catastrophes. Food scarcity and social disorder brought about major migrations of
people and caused wars and massive cultural disruption.
Conversely, when scarcity was relieved, major cultural advances were made. About
1 000 years ago, new varieties of rice were taken to southern China from the Champa
Kingdom (now Viet Nam). These were not sensitive to photoperiod, and produced
two crops a year instead of only one. When these varieties were grown, the intensive
techniques that had developed slowly in China to increase productivity per unit of
land, although requiring more labour, resulted in dramatic production gains. The
subsequent rice surplus triggered changes across various sectors of Chinas economy,
stimulating the construction of roads, canals, dams, ironworks, grain storage facilities
and the production of weapons. For five centuries southern China experienced
sustained economic growth and had favourable trade terms for silk, spices and
technology with late Mediaeval and early Renaissance Europe.
The agricultural revolution in the early modern United Kingdom greatly increased
agricultural productivity. It relied heavily on techniques based on horse power, soilsupporting crop rotations, land drainage and grazing systems, which were developed
on the European continent in the very densely populated and often scarcity-ridden
Low Countries (the present-day Benelux). When these innovations were applied to
larger areas at lower human population densities, a significant surplus was produced,
which made the Industrial Revolution possible. At the same time, the harnessing of
energy sources became more efficient. The late eighteenth century saw improved water
mills and windmills, the use of sea coals and the development of steam engines.
Transport costs fell, making it economically viable, for example, to ship bones long
distances for use in fertilizer. Internal combustion and hydropower later greatly
increased returns to labour and the availability of products such as nitrogen fertilizers.
However, any technology exists within a social and political system. The way that
this British agricultural surplus was generated, controlled and distributed under the
restrictive Enclosure Acts forced most of the rural population off the land to serve as
industrial labour. The result was high food insecurity and a structural form of urban
poverty, where families no longer had access to land or to traditional rights such as

AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

commons and gleaning. Yet the growing surpluses allowed greater specialization,
provided capital and cheap labour for industrialization in Europe and drove the long,
violent European nineteenth century. They also resulted in much larger markets in
food to supply a burgeoning population, which produced many more goods and
services than at any time in previous history. However, the costs paid in human
suffering by three or four generations of impoverished families were considerable.
An understanding of the ethical issues involved in intensification can take both a
prospective and a retrospective outlook, and ethical standards for evaluating
intensification can take either a broad outlook on the general trend of events or a
specific focus on the particular responsibilities of key actors. There are three general
ethical questions to be posed. First, it is possible to ask whether intensification in a
given situation is good or bad, all things considered, without pointing to specific
decisions or activities undertaken by particular people or organizations. Second,
assuming that intensification is a good thing, how should the burdens and benefits of
intensification be distributed? Third, who is responsible for seeing that intensification
occurs and that it follows an ethically acceptable path? Beyond these questions, it will
be critical to deploy the resources of the natural and social sciences to identify the
impediments to intensification, as well as to identify factors that would make an
ethically justified form of intensification become ethically problematic, but that task will
not be attempted in the present paper.

he word ethics refers to principles or

standards that define behaviour, action or
rules for action that is considered to be
right, good and proper. Aframework for organizing
the enormous variety of ethical standards that
have served in this role throughout human history
can be developed from a simple schema of human
action. Individuals, associations or the designated
agents of organizations can each be characterized as actors, represented by the shadow
person shown in Figure 1. Actors considering or initiating action do so under a set of
constraints, represented by the rings encircling the shadow person. These constraints
determine which action or behaviour is possible, and are of three kinds. First, some
constraints determine the physical universe of possibility. Characters in science fiction
novels may be able to dematerialize and transport themselves to other places, but human
beings cannot. Constraints that determine the physical limits of possible actions represent
technology. Second, law and policy limit the universe of possible behaviour and action that
an actor will consider. Third, individuals and associations constrain their behaviour
according to customary norms that often lack any legal or official sanction, yet may function
very effectively to limit the universe of possible alternatives for action. For example,
people from Western societies will spontaneously queue for service, although in most
instances this norm lacks legal reinforcement. Together, these three types of constraint

An ethics
framework

FIGURE 1

Elements of human action

Technology
Law and policy
Customs and norms

Conduct

Consequences

AN ETHICS FRAMEWORK

make up the opportunity set, the class of actions or behaviours that are effectively available
to any potential actor.
Eventually, the actor will select one possible course of action from the opportunity
set and will engage in conduct. Conduct indicates the behaviour performed, including
both physical motions and symbolic or meaningful behaviour. Conduct may be quite
complex, and it is not unusual to characterize a long series of acts or behaviours
performed over time as a single action. Because conduct is an active response to an
actors opportunity set, it is indicated by an arrow in Figure 1. Clearly, the significance
of behaviour and the interpretation of the relatedness of multiple acts depend heavily
on the broader social context. There may be room for differences of opinion about
what, exactly, constitutes conduct in a given instance. For the present purposes, conduct
is inclusive of all acts understood as components in an actors performance of an action.
One primary goal in offering this definition of conduct is to distinguish conduct from
the consequences of the agents behaviour, which can be understood to be the effects
of the action on the natural world, particularly on other people and associations,
represented by the oval in Figure 1. The term consequences here designates
especially changes in the health, wealth and well-being of affected parties (including
the person who acts) that are caused by the initial action. As with conduct, there may
be differences of opinion about what these consequences are, especially when
consequences are indirect or are remote in space and time. Notwithstanding these
possibilities for difference in interpretation, Figure 1 represents a very simple picture
of human action as conduct performed under constraints and producing consequences
or outcomes.
Three distinct ways in ethical principles can be developed to determine whether an
action is right, good and proper. First, it is possible to see the ethical validity or
correctness of an action as a function of its consequences. Increases in the health, wealth
and well-being of people are generally characterized as benefits, whereas adverse effects
on health, wealth and well-being are characterized as harms or costs. Right, good or
proper actions will tend to be seen as those that have achieved the best balance of benefit
and harm relative to other possibilities in the actors opportunity set. Second, it is
possible to see the ethical validity or correctness of an action in terms of its consistency
with an ideal set of constraints. These constraints may be articulated either as duties
that the actor must discharge, or as rights held by others, which the agent must respect.
Rights and duties are generally correlated, however, so that if one person has a right,
others have a duty to respect it, while having a duty means that others have a right to
expect that the duty will be discharged. Finally, it is possible to see the ethical validity
or correctness of an action in terms of conformity to certain types of conduct. Instances
or patterns of conduct that are ethically right, good and proper are virtues, while those
that are wrong, bad or improper are vices. This third pattern of ethical evaluation lends
itself particularly to expressions of ethical judgement that emphasize the character of

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

the actor, so that not only is the act virtuous, but also the person who reliably acts in
virtuous ways.
In summary, a simple analysis of human action indicates three patterns of argument
or discourse for articulating, stipulating or defining actions as right, good and proper.
Each pattern tends to place the focus or emphasis of ethical inquiry in a different place
and many philosophers have developed entire moral systems based entirely on one of
these three approaches. In many instances ethical disagreements arise from one partys
tendency to formulate a rationale for the evaluation of an action in language and concepts
that emphasizes one of the three patterns, while another party emphasizes one or both
of the other two. Nevertheless, it is possible for there to be significant differences in
approach even within each of the three broad patterns, and many of historys most
notable moralists have tended to develop accounts of ethical evaluation that involve
considerably detailed discussion of one framework. For simplicity, arguments that
interpret the ethics of an action as a function of benefits and harms (or costs) will be
called consequentialist. Arguments or claims that understand what is right, good and
proper as determined by rights or duties will be called rights-based and statements that
stress the conduct and character of the agent will be called virtue-based. It will prove
useful to discuss each general approach in slightly more detail while discussing the
main topic of intensification.

FIGURE 2

Types of ethical discourse

Technology
Law and policy
Rights and duties
Customs and norms
Virtues and vices

Benefits and harms

Conduct

Consequences

Intensification is
associated with
periods of human
population growth

FAO/19698/G. BIZZARRI

gricultural intensification is a process

that occurs when individual human
beings, communities or organizations
take actions of one sort or another. The ethics
framework previously discussed can be applied
to the actions of individuals, associations and
organized corporate bodies. The framework
illustrates three ways in which questions about
the justifiability and ethical acceptability of any
particular course of conduct might be posed and
analysed. Applied to agricultural intensification,
these become questions that might be pertinent
to the acts of farmers, input suppliers, technology
developers, or to any number of public and
private agencies whose activities affect the productivity of agricultural inputs. Such
questions might be asked by a person or group evaluating their own options and might
also be posed as part of a general discussion and debate about what actions should
be taken by governments, international agencies or, indeed, any actor in the food
system. 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 intensification
in much the same way as one evaluates any ordinary act. The first ethical question
is to determine what it is about intensification that makes it a good thing, something
to 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 obvious
way to evaluate an entire system of food and fibre production. The consequentialist
understands what is right, good and proper to be determined by the impact of the
action or policy on health, wealth and
well-being. Intensification is, in the
prototypical case, intended to increase the
total amount of food available without
increasing the use of inputs. Since food is
material to human life and health, the
production of more food can be considered
a beneficial impact, especially under the
circumstances of food scarcity that have
been too typical of human history. As
noted, intensification is associated with
periods of human population growth.
Without a correlative growth in food

When is
intensification
ethically good?
A utilitarian
model

10

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

supplies, food scarcity causes hunger, disease and starvation. Using the framework
previously described, many individuals and groups consider options and undertake
conduct that has the outcome (consequence) of increased food supply. The benefits
associated with increased food availability provide the elemental argument for
intensification, and this argument is consequentialist in its moral logic. In the simple
case where new technology or farming methods allow a farmer or landowner to
produce more food, consequential reasoning shows why this is ethically a good thing.
As already stated, European agricultural intensification immediately prior to the
Industrial Revolution was accomplished not only by applying a package of new
production technologies to farming, but also by the Enclosure Acts, which
disestablished a system of rights and duties that permitted commoners to live on and
farm lands as long as their crops were shared according to an ancient formula. The
framework applies not only to the conduct of individual farmers and landowners, but
also to the political activity that led to this policy change. Was enclosure ethically
justifiable? The British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) posited the following
argument to show that it was:
He that encloses land, and has a greater plenty of the conveniences of life from
ten acres, than he could have from an hundred left to nature, may truly be said to
give ninety acres to mankind; for his labour now supplies him with provisions out
of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common.1

Here the disestablishment of the old system of commoner rights and duties is
portrayed as justified in light of the increased benefits (conveniences) accruing from
enclosure. Although this style of thinking is not typical of Locke, the passage implies
that any system of rights and privileges is justified, given the efficiency with which it
supplies human beings with provisions.
Efficiency is particularly important in the most common form of consequentialism,
utilitarianism. Utilitarians assume that the values associated with consequences can be
quantified to produce a ranking system for all possible courses of action (or options)
available to an agent. They also assume that the value of benefits and harms can be
added and subtracted. Such a ranking system produces a class of optima such that no
option in the opportunity set yields greater total value (although there may be more

J. Locke. 1690. Second treatise of Government. In C.B. McPherson, ed. 1980. Indianapolis, USA, Hackett Publishing.
Lockes philosophy is not consequentialist, but contractarian. He believed that people had a natural right to appropriate
goods (including land) found in nature, and that others had a duty to respect this property right, which was grounded both
in the nature of things and in the social contract forming the basis of civil society. It is thus likely that he understood the
phrase give ninety acres to mankind in an almost literal sense, and saw the justification of enclosure in terms of a kind
of expansion of the commons, rather than in starkly utilitarian terms. Nevertheless, it is difficult to interpret this particular
passage as anything more than a consequentialist moral argument.

WHEN IS INTENSIFICATION ETHICALLY GOOD? A UTILITARIAN MODEL

than one option that is optimal). According to the utilitarian standard (e.g. the utilitarian
maxim), the right, best and proper action or policy must be a member of this class of
optima. This is popularly stated as: Act so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest
number of people. Thus, the most efficient approach to producing benefits or avoiding
harms is the course of action most thoroughly justified by ethics. Utilitarianism has been
an implicit ethical philosophy for agricultural science, which has sought to make two
blades of grass grow where one grew before.
One critical and often overlooked aspect of the utilitarian approach is the need for
a complete accounting of costs and benefits. The green revolution involved new seed
varieties that were more responsive to nitrogen fertilizers, which are, in most settings,
a purchased input. Hence, a simple utilitarian approach weighs the benefits of increased
yields against the costs of seeds and fertilizer. If benefits outweigh costs, the green
revolution is justified. Yet other shifts accompanied the new technology, and many
critiques of the green revolution can be articulated entirely within the framework of
a utilitarian/consequentialist ethic. Within the first decade of the green revolution of
the 1970s, which led to aggregate increases in rice production across Asia, large-scale
insect pest outbreaks and plant disease epidemics destabilized food production,
supplies and prices.
Only after three boom and bust cycles and pest outbreaks did governments begin
to move away from simplified, centralized pest control policies that relied on
insecticides and vertical host plant resistance towards decentralized integrated pest
management that built on local ecological processes to realize production potential.
With the concentration of farm animal processing facilities, the chances of large-scale
epizootics occurring (such as foot-and-mouth disease) increase exponentially because
of the more extensive movements of animals between pasturage, feedlots and abattoirs,
and contacts with animal offal and excrement. Feeding livestock with products derived
from their own species creates routes for infection by diseases associated with prions.2
Short-rotation forest plantations increase wood (especially pulpwood) production but
at the same time increase vulnerability to specialized pests and diseases. Fast-growing
dwarf coconut varieties increase short-term yields but are more frequently at risk from
diseases previously found in limited geographic areas. In fisheries and aquatic
production systems, exotic species are commonly introduced. These often initially
increase total production, but can unexpectedly change trophic relationships and
disrupt ecosystems, as did the Nile perch in Lake Victoria. Intensive salmon hatcheries
have been criticized for reducing the genetic adaptability of natural populations. These
problems testify to the need for completeness in thinking through the costs and benefits
of intensification.
2 Prion-associated

diseases include kuru, scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The infection route and
aetiology of BSE and the variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that has been linked to BSE are still a matter of investigation.

11

12

ohn Lockes rationale for enclosure makes

no mention of rights, but the language of
rights might be used to develop a rationale
for arguing that efficiency-seeking public
policies (such as enclosure) are ethically wrong
in certain circumstances. Simply stated, policies
are unjustified if the changes they endorse
violate or override important rights. Among the
rights that might be violated are property or
occupancy rights, if enclosure forces people who
hold such rights off the land, or subsistence
rights, if the effect of enclosure is to put some
people in a position where their rights to food
and shelter are not met. Yet the ethical principles
behind these rights are complex.
A rights-based approach to ethics (sometimes referred to as deontology) proceeds
by stipulating or deriving a set of basic rights and duties that agents must perform
without regard to the consequences that might arise in any particular case. A rightsbased approach to intensification is more concerned as to whether the actions that
result in higher food production are consistent with these rights and duties than in
their eventual effect on human welfare. Several methods have been put forward for
identifying these rights and duties. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (17241804) developed complex philosophical arguments for a master principle he called
the categorical imperative: never act in a way that treats another person solely as a means
to an end. For a Kantian, rights and duties can be traced back to this principle, which
tells us always to respect other peoples capacity for freely choosing their life plans.
The problem that a Kantian would have with Lockes argument for enclosure is that
it seems to treat the commoners (whose rights are violated) simply as a means to the
larger end of increasing food production.
Kants deontology came at the end of a longer tradition of natural law theory, which
held that the basic rights and duties forming the main content of the (ideal) moral law
are evident to any rational person, and have hence invested great effort into rational
argument for certain approaches to the configuration of rights. Kant argued that every
human being wants to be treated as a free, autonomous agent, and that consistency
requires people to treat others in the same way. For other philosophers, going back to
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), rationality was understood simply as enlightened selfinterest. The purpose of rights is to protect peoples ability to act on their own
enlightened self-interest. Hobbes believed that any rational person would agree to
live in accordance with certain rights and duties, if only they could have a reliable
expectation that everyone else would do the same. This approach is sometimes

When is
intensification
ethically good?
A rights-based
model

WHEN IS INTENSIFICATION ETHICALLY GOOD? A RIGHTS-BASED MODEL

characterized as contractualist in light of the way that rights and duties are described
as being grounded in an implicit agreement (or social contract) among all members
of society. 3
While a Kantian might argue that enclosure treated commoners as a mere means
to a larger social goal, a contractualist might say that enclosure violated the social
contract. In either case, the problem with enclosure from a rights-based perspective
was that commoners had a right to use these lands. As such, any plan to exclude them
from the land could not be justified unless it included some provision for obtaining
their agreement. This would require involvement of the commoners at some stage of
the enclosure process, and their involvement would need to be such that each rights
holder had the opportunity to give or withhold their agreement voluntarily to the
plan. Perhaps they could be convinced that they would be better off, or perhaps they
would be enticed to accede to such use of the land in exchange for compensation.
These details might vary considerably on a case-by-case basis, but what is critical from
a rights-based perspective is that respect for the individuals affected by enclosure
requires that they be accorded a role in the intensification process that is fully consistent
with their rights. Either version of rights theory provides a starting-point for
questioning whether intensification is good simply because it produces more benefits
(in the form of greater food production) than costs (in the form of losses for the
minority).
Either approach to rights implies that the exclusion of commoners from decisionmaking is unacceptable, but a Kantian might in addition note that the effect of
enclosure was radically to impoverish commoners and their descendants. For a
Kantian, such conditions of poverty make it impossible for a person to exercise rational
free will; the circumstances of need are so great that people in dire poverty are
effectively coerced into enduring humiliation and deprivation. As such, key subsistence
rights, including the right to food, become minimal conditions that must be met if all
people are to be treated with the moral respect to which they are due. Thus, any
situation in which people are so poor that they cannot freely exercise their innately
human capacity to choose a life plan involves an ethical wrong. Methods of
intensification that place people in such circumstances cannot be endorsed from a
rights-based perspective.

3 Although similar in important respects, Kantian deontology and Hobbesian contractualism provide important different
rationales for justifying rights. In both versions of rights theory, the ethical significance of a right resides in the way that it
protects human freedom. For Kantians, an individuals freedom is an expression of the ability to plan and order ones own
thoughts and actions rationally, while for contractarians freedom means simply that others do not control or limit ones
action. In Kantian philosophies, preserving the entitlements owed under the system of rights is a form of showing respect
for anothers need to plan and order his or her own life, but rights can also be seen as being based on the social contract.

13

14

FAO/17259/L. WITHERS

Utilitarianism
and rights-based
ethics: further
issues
he basic tension between
utilitarian consequentialism,
on the one hand, and rightsbased ethics, on the other, underlies
Local scientists at a
many issues associated with agricultural intensification. For
training session on the
collection of
decades, researchers from developed countries have
germplasm in vitro
harvested germplasm from farmers and local markets in the
developing world. These researchers have used the
germplasm in breeding programmes to develop higher-yielding varieties as well as
searching for other valuable genetic traits. Many of those who collected seeds were
shocked when critics suggested that their work failed to respect the rights of people
from the developing world. From a utilitarian viewpoint, the increased yields of new
varieties more than justified the collection of germplasm, and researchers saw no
ethical issue in using seeds they had collected this way. However, critics asserted that
researchers had failed to show proper respect for the rights of indigenous farmers
whose forebears had saved seed for centuries. Purchasing seed in village markets,
critics affirm, gives the buyer an implied right to use the commodity good for food,
or possibly for replanting, but farmers could not be interpreted to have given up rights
to further development of their germplasm without a careful and explicit process to
inform them of its true value and to ensure that they had given consent. Some critics
argue that because of the collective and collaborative nature of seed development in
traditional agriculture, only someone who represents the collective interests of all
growers would be in a position to undertake such a negotiation.
Today, some opponents of genetically engineered crops argue that individual
consumers should not be forced to eat these crops against their will. Advocates of
genetically engineered crops see them as a safe and effective tool for increasing the
efficiency of farm production and believe that their opponents claims are an unjustified
barrier to adopting them. While this debate often involves factual disputes about the

UTILITARIANISM AND RIGHTS-BASED ETHICS: FURTHER ISSUES

safety of these crops, the underlying ethical structure of the debate pits the rightsbased claims of the opponents against the utilitarian reasoning of the advocates. Why?
Irrespective of the safety or risks associated with genetically modified (GM) crops,
opponents are claiming that the companies promoting these technologies have placed
food consumers in a position where they have no opportunity to reject them. Rather
than rebut the claim that consumer rights are at stake on its merits, advocates have
often argued that if the crops are safe (as they claim), then consumers have no basis
for rejecting them, since rejecting GM crops is an action with real costs but no real
benefit. Thus, opponents try to meet a rights claim with a utilitarian argument, and
the ethical issues fail to be enjoined.
A similar point of tension arises in debates over the green revolution technologies.
When higher yields are associated with purchased inputs, those with access to capital
will have an advantage over those without. One can interpret losses experienced by
poorer farmers as additional costs and weigh these, too, against benefits from higher
yields. The study New seeds for poor people by Michael Lipton and Richard Longhurst
(1989) is a particularly exhaustive and theoretically sophisticated attempt to assess
the green revolution varieties from a utilitarian standpoint. The authors conclude that,
over time, these technologies have been, on balance, beneficial to poor people.
However, these arguments do not necessarily address concerns that rights may have
been violated, or that cultural traditions may have been lost as a result of green
revolution strategies. How might rights be affected? It is possible to see any transition
from a situation in which people can feed themselves and meet their needs to one in
which they cannot as a violation of their rights. Even if such transitions have benefits
that outweigh the cost, they would not be seen as justified if there are even a few
individuals whose rights to subsistence are jeopardized as a result of the changes.
This is only a cursory introduction to the way that rights arguments should figure
in an overall evaluation of the green revolution. Yet one of the problems that has arisen
in debates over the retrospective impact of green revolution varieties is that those who
draw their ethical norms from utilitarian thinking seem to be ignoring ethical claims
that draw upon the language of rights. In doing this, people create an impression of,
at best, insensitivity to the full range of ethical concerns relevant to intensification
(which should also include virtues, discussed later) and, at worst, arrogant dismissal
of arguments that are inconvenient for the case they wish to present. When people
who hold influential positions for future attempts to meet food needs dismiss
alternative arguments in this way, they engage in a use of power that is itself ethically
questionable. As such, it would be valuable to launch retrospective studies that make
an explicit attempt to acknowledge the full range of concerns that have been or might
be brought to bear on evaluating green revolution intensification, in part as preparation
for more open and informed debates on the questions that must be addressed if world
food needs are to be met in the twenty-first century.

15

16

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

These cases are complex and deserve a more careful analysis than these summary
statements can provide. The point here is simply to note that, in both cases, a
utilitarian/consequentialist rationale is met with counterclaims that assert rights.
Someone assuming that utilitarian models are appropriate will respond to these
assertions with further arguments reciting the costs and benefits of alternative
arrangements, but to the extent that these rights are thought to be moral rights, rights
protecting the dignity of involved parties, recitation of further costs and benefits will
simply miss the point. What is being claimed is that there is a need to respect affected
parties by involving them fully and non-coercively in the process of intensification.
From the perspective of rights-based ethics no recitation of costs and benefits will
justify a failure to do this; what is needed is a justification that addresses how the
process of intensification influences the freedom of all persons affected by it. If freedom
is being constrained, it must be shown that this constraint is justified, perhaps because
it is required in order to show proper respect for the rights of less fortunate people,
or perhaps because the people agree to the constraint of their own free will.

17

he utilitarian/consequentialist and rightsbased approaches are both theoretically

well-developed articulations of ideas
used every day by people who are attempting to
determine the correct or proper course of action.
However, it may be more typical for people to
associate ethics with less systematic ways of
thinking. For example, many people may address
ethical questions by asking themselves how some
exemplary person would act in a given situation.
This exemplary person might be a family
member, a revered and respected member of the
community, a religious leader or perhaps even a
person from legend or history who is not even
known as a real flesh-and-blood individual. In any case, one draws upon a mental
image of how a good person would act in the situation at hand. By doing this, one
understands the ethics of the situation in terms that refer directly to the conduct that
is being performed (see Figure 2 on p. 8), rather than either the rights-based constraints
or the consequences of the action.
The philosophical possibilities for developing this general approach to ethics are
numerous. The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC) did so by developing a
catalogue of both positive and negative exemplary types of conduct, or virtues and
vices, respectively. He theorized that all human tendencies had appropriate forms of
expression in moderation but could become vicious if not held in check. A good person
is one who strikes the mean position among these tendencies. Moderation (or
temperance) itself thus became the sovereign virtue for Aristotle and many of his
followers. Today, many types of ethical theory that emphasize conduct, rather than
rights and duties, on the one hand, or consequences, on the other, are referred to as
Aristotelean or, more accurately, virtue theories. Although some philosophers have
believed that virtues and community traditions are relatively undeveloped sources
of ethical insight, better articulated by emphasizing rights and duties on the one hand,
or consequences on the other, others have argued that this domain of ethical ideas or
source of ethical insight cannot be eliminated.
Aristotle also believed that ones tendencies (as well as ones abilities to regulate
them) are a reflection of the sociocultural environment in which one lives and is raised.
Thus an exemplary Greek might have a moral character quite different from that of
someone who had not lived in what was, in Aristotles day, a culture almost unique
in its egalitarianism, its emphasis on education and its ideals of citizenship. One
contemporary school of ethics that stresses the social roots of exemplary conduct is
called communitarianism. Here, the articulation of ethical norms and standards is likely

When is
intensification
ethically good?
A virtue-based
model

18

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

to call attention to the norms, practices, traditions and institutions that are particularly
characteristic of and valued by a particular community, rather than particular virtues
and vices. Like Aristotle, contemporary communitarians emphasize the need to have
a social environment, a form of community life, that will give rise to exemplary conduct
and that will allow people to appreciate the ways of life that such forms exemplify.
Agricultural ways of life have figured prominently in some of the most influential
articulations of virtue and vice. The ancient Greeks themselves developed a form of
agriculture based upon rough terrain, varying soil types and a Mediterranean climate.
Their farms were a diverse mixture of grain production and pastoral livestock, but
with heavy reliance on tree and vine crops. The mix of crops and long growing season
provided steady work for fairly small households all year round, while the trees and
vines involved lifetime investments for smallholders. Military historian Victor Davis
Hanson argues that this pattern of agriculture gave rise to unique forms of military
organization and tactics as well as the political culture of the city-state. The relatively
large proportion of the population controlling property and the nature of their stake
in the land made them both fierce defenders of egalitarian political forms and equally
fierce warriors who could be relied upon for phalanx manoeuvres requiring discipline
and loyalty. These character traits, so critical to the success of Greek city-states as
political and military entities, were thought to emerge naturally in a farming
population of smallholders. In contrast, the large-scale plantation-style irrigated
agriculture common among the Greeks military rivals relied on stratified societies of
slaves and masters who did not develop the requisite virtues.
The idea that forms of agriculture were seminal sources for community practice
and national culture reached its culmination in the intellectual cultures of seventeenth
and eighteenth century Europe. These ideas were especially influential for those who
framed the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In his Notes
on the State of Virginia (178184), Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States
famously wrote:
Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a
chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial
and genuine virtue. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support
of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.

Jeffersons key idea was that smallholding farmers would have a greater stake in
the stability and success of the new nation than either manufacturers or their labourers,
since both of the latter could pull up stakes and leave when difficulties arose. As
President, Jefferson went on to set a course for the development of the United States
as an agrarian nation, negotiating the Louisiana Purchase to ensure ample lands for
future generations of American farmers and authorizing the (Meriwether) Lewis and

WHEN IS INTENSIFICATION ETHICALLY GOOD? A VIRTUE-BASED MODEL

(William) Clark expedition to determine the suitability of these lands for cultivation
and transport.
Jeffersons plan was not, of course, an episode of intensification, as his strategy
called for extensive expansion of American farming rather than a transformation
designed to increase yields or use resource inputs more efficiently. Nevertheless, his
view is important because it shows that ideas about how farming systems and methods
produce virtues such as citizenship and community solidarity have had a profound
influence on political developments in the past. Plans for intensification that
substantially alter the pattern of land tenure, or that change the basic practices of
farming thought to be critical to the formation of exemplary patterns of conduct or
community identity are almost certain to provoke moral protest. Indeed, the most
memorable protests against British attempts at enclosure are not tracts arguing that
rights have been violated, but literary efforts such as Oliver Goldsmiths poem, The
deserted village, lamenting the loss of small village cultures thought to be particularly
characteristic of the British national character:
Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied.4

The Old Order Amish communities established throughout Europe and now
dispersed around the globe provide another example of a philosophy of agriculture
that relies heavily on virtue ethics. The Amish emphasize a very high degree of family
and community integration together with independence from the outside world. They
derive meaning from their ability to live together at a particular place with a great
stability of practice over generations. Agriculture is important because Amish
communities see dependence on outsiders as a potential threat to their ties to one
another. The Amish are notoriously suspicious of modern technologies, largely because
they see their effects as weakening social relations among members of the local
community. Nevertheless, Amish farmers are known for both high yields and
ecologically sustainable farming methods. From an Amish perspective, intensification
would not emerge as an ethically important goal, and intensifying practices that
weakened community bonds either by tempting members away from the household
or by increasing dependence on the outside world would be resisted. However,

Oliver Goldsmith. 1770. The deserted village. Accessed online at: www.ucc.ie/celt/online/E750001-001/.

19

20

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

Intensification: implications for reservoirs and fisheries

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen an unprecedented increase in the creation of
reservoirs throughout the world. The two major purposes of dams have been the production of
hydroelectric power and storage of water for irrigation. Nevertheless, damming a river to create a
reservoir has a major impact on water flow, the aquatic environment and life. From a utilitarian
perspective, the costs associated with these impacts (as well as the actual direct costs of building a
dam) are justified where the benefits from hydroelectric power and irrigation are greater. Arriving at
the optimal relationship between costs and benefits generally involves compensatory measures that
mitigate the costs associated with the impact on fisheries.
To the extent that hydroelectric power and irrigation water address problems of poverty and need,
there can be a strong rights-based argument for building dams. Yet reservoirs often involve the most
dramatic and irreversible transformations imaginable. From a rights perspective, the key issue is that
an effort to address human rights to basic energy and food needs may come into conflict with existing
land use and riparian rights. Rights arguments might be raised against dam construction when it seems
that affected parties either have not or cannot be feasibly brought into decision-making. Others might
argue that important traditions, communities and ways of life are lost both when dams involve the
flooding of native homelands for large communities, and when traditional fishing methods can no
longer be practised. These latter concerns appeal more to the ethics of virtue and vice; they suggest
that what is important is being able to live in a traditional way and to engage in traditional practices.
But dangers to fish stocks can come from water pollution and from overexploitation by fishing
communities themselves. Here, an existing or traditional pattern of rights may be permitting conduct
that has significant adverse consequences.
An additional problem is that the distribution of benefits from intensification, hydroelectric
generation or irrigation may not reach those rural communities most affected by the increased
development. Fishers are usually from a poor sector of society and are often ignored in decision-making.

intensification would not be seen as an evil in itself, and increases in yields that could
be attained by more effective use of household labour might be deemed entirely
acceptable.
These few examples illustrate how thinking in terms of virtues provides an entirely
different point of view from which to evaluate intensification. From the perspective
of a virtue theorist, agricultures role in forming both personal and national character
provides the basis for evaluating policies and technologies that transform the food
system. Periods of intensification would be justified only if they reinforce this role and
would be opposed if they tended to weaken it. The actual forms that a virtue

WHEN IS INTENSIFICATION ETHICALLY GOOD? A VIRTUE-BASED MODEL

perspective might take will be highly variable and will depend upon cultural traditions
and history. Thus, while utilitarian/consequentialist and rights-based approaches in
ethics point towards ethical standards that might be applied to virtually any
agricultural system, the specific content of a virtue approach is likely to be highly
dependent on local culture and may vary from one cultural setting to another.

21

22

Intensive livestock
farming provides food
for growing
populations but raises
food safety, equity and
animal welfare issues

tilitarian evaluation, as described

previously, is notoriously insensitive to
the distribution of benefits and harms
across society. As a result, the question as to how
burdens and benefits are distributed is raised in
acknowledgement of the widespread feeling that
improvements in efficiency and general welfare
can come about in a very unfair manner. One
possible response is simply to argue that, in
questioning whether intensification is fair, we are
calling for the methods and processes to be
evaluated in terms of their consistency with a
concern for human freedom (e.g. an appeal to human rights), or with respect to their
impact on traditions and community integrity (e.g. an appeal to virtues). Thus, one
might say that utilitarian thinking provides a basis for saying why, other factors being
equal, intensification is a good thing, while rights and virtue approaches sensitize us to
the other issues that must be attended to in order for intensification to be fully justified.
However, it is also possible to address the question in more classically consequentialist
terms. Doing so requires one to develop and defend criteria that can be applied to the
way that costs (or burdens) and benefits that are the outcome (or consequence) of
intensification are distributed among those affected. The standard utilitarian view
suggests that distribution is not important because it is the net or average impact that
matters. Yet one could argue that only outcomes in which no one is harmed are ethically
acceptable. Another possibility is to minimize the chance of the worst possible outcome,
an approach that may reflect the implicit decision strategy of poor societies trying to
fend off the risk of total starvation. Another view, adapted from the philosopher John
Rawls (19212002), is to recommend the option that has the greatest expected value5
for the poorest group within society. This
approach allows one to develop ethical
justifications that favour the interests of
poor or marginalized people over those
who are better off.
Although rights theory is sometimes
offered as an answer to questions of

How should
burdens and
benefits be
distributed?

5 Consequentialism is frequently used in connection with analytical

FAO/20065/C. CALPE

techniques that allow one to assign a probability to several different

possible distributions of benefit and harm that might ensue after
the selection of a given act or policy alternative; thus, an expected
value can be prospectively associated with each act or policy in
the opportunity set.

HOW SHOULD BURDENS AND BENEFITS BE DISTRIBUTED?

Intensification: implications for livestock

Intensification in the livestock sector could produce more food for growing populations, but there
are ethical issues relating to livestocks resource use, food safety and quality, equity and animal
welfare. Pollution of land, water and air from intensive livestock production and processing in both
developed and developing countries has become a widespread phenomenon, often acting as a
vehicle for disease transmission. Moreover, there are direct issues associated with the transmission
of diseases and general food safety. Overconsumption of animal products also carries a number of
human health risks. While an increase in the consumption of animal products in developing
countries would be highly desirable in combating malnutrition, it would not necessarily be wise
for these countries to follow the dietary practices of wealthy nations. Livestock consume about onethird of total grain production, with associated pressure on land and other natural resources, and
use of fossil fuel. It is possible to ask whether this grain should be fed to animals rather than
people. These environmental and food safety risks represent a catalogue of the possible costs that
must be weighed against the benefits associated with the intensification of livestock production.
However, it is also possible to address these questions in terms of rights and virtues. Do people
have a right to eat what they want even if their diet is found to be risky? Do people have rights to be
protected from environmental and food safety risks and, if so, should this protection stress
constraints on producer behaviour, or informing and educating consumers as to the nature of the
risks? Do traditional dietary practices thought central to peoples cultural identity ever override the
risk/benefit comparisons conducted in a utilitarian manner?
There are, furthermore, ethical issues about the distribution of benefits. While growth in
demand for animal products seems to offer opportunities for the rural poor, to date the large
majority of these rural people have not been able to take advantage of such opportunities. Thus,
there are important ethical issues about the fairness of efforts to intensify livestock production, and
the effects that such efforts have on traditional rural communities. Intensification in the livestock
industry also involves a set of issues that concern animals themselves. If unregulated,
intensification of livestock production is associated with animal management practices that do not
allow the expression of natural behaviour. Should these issues be addressed in terms of welfare
trade-offs between human beings and animals, or is it plausible to argue, as some have, that duties
and constraints on human behaviour should be recognized as amounting to animal rights?

distributive justice, difficulties also arise within the rights-based approach. In particular,
rights-based thinking is occasionally confronted with situations where rights seem to
conflict. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights notes that all persons
have a right to food. If one encounters a situation in which the only way to secure this
right is to violate other rights, such as property rights, which rights have priority? As

23

24

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

in the case of establishing the validity of rights, resolving conflicts among rights will
require use of philosophical arguments that support rights-based views. Henry Shues
Basic rights argues that rights have an internal principle of order that can be used to
resolve conflict. Some rights (such as the right to education or to vote) would not be
meaningful unless more basic rights (such as the right to food and personal security)
were already secure. Shue argues that basic rights should be secured for all before less
basic rights are secured for a few. Shues approach does not rely on cost-benefit
thinking as a tie-breaker, yet few would resist combining principles from utilitarian/
consequentialist thinking with approaches from rights theory.6
Virtue-based approaches typically address distributive issues either through the
idea of community so that community solidarity comes into play when a few
individuals may be put in a position where unreasonable burdens are placed upon
them or as components of a specific virtue, such as charity. In some settings, culturally
sophisticated mechanisms for sharing burdens can be imbedded in social norms that
would be articulated in the standard terminology of cultural identity, community and
personal virtue. However, some articulations of virtue have been particularly
insensitive to social inequalities. Virtue-based thinking (often with religious backing)
can be used to rationalize enormous inequalities in defense of a given social order. It
is no accident that the word aristocracy derives from Aristotle.

6 Indeed, one of the most sophisticated versions of utilitarian thinking (R.M. Hares two-level utilitarianism), argues that the traditions

of rights provide important sources of moral insight; only when we are very sure that the consequences of our actions are fairly
narrow and can be predicted accurately should cost-benefit considerations be allowed to override a traditional rights-based claim.
(See Henry Shue. 1980. Basic rights. Princeton University Press. 2nd ed. 1996.)

25

Who is
responsible for
ensuring that
intensification
occurs?

he 1996 World Food Summit recognized

that the then world population of 5.8
thousand million had 15 percent more
food per capita than the global population of
4 thousand million only 20 years earlier. The
productive potential of technological improvement
was demonstrated in the green revolution of the
1960s, where improved varieties resulting from
scientific breeding, largely in the international
public sector, coupled with investment in
irrigation, mineral fertilizers and institutional
infrastructures, raised food production and
productivity, particularly in rice and wheat in
Asia. But the uneven success of green revolution
technologies, with little uptake in Africa particularly, and its unforeseen social
consequences, showed that sustainable intensification was not just a result of
technological development but of government policy, and social and economic forces.
In the last decades, falling transport costs, together with the development of global
markets and growing trade liberalization, have given new focuses to the challenge of
ensuring a steady reduction in poverty through securing and maintaining adequate
long-term production levels as well as conditions of adequate access to food. There
are major new factors to consider, including changes to the biosphere resulting from
global warming, the as yet unproven potential of the new biotechnologies,
unprecedented urbanization and the reality of a world economy without a global
economy or global society.
Utilitarian/consequentialist and rights-based approaches in ethics have tended to
portray responsibility in very general terms: everyone has the responsibility for acting
in ways that produce the greatest good for the greatest number, or in accord with
duties to respect other peoples rights. Thus, if intensification is considered to be a
good thing, everyone is responsible for doing whatever he or she can to make sure
that it is achieved. Australian philosopher Peter Singer has published a number of
essays in which he puts forward this argument exactly, at least with respect to
responsibility for ending hunger. However, this view has been the subject of some
criticism. It seems to impose an overwhelming responsibility on ordinary people, as if
one cannot divert ones time and resources to enjoy life while someone else is hungry.
Furthermore, it creates a situation in which nothing is actually done: if something is
everyones responsibility in general, it tends to be seen as no ones responsibility in
particular. Singer has acknowledged that this may in fact be a weakness of the
utilitarian philosophy that he has advocated.

26

THE ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION

Intensification: implications for forestry

At present, most wood production comes from natural and semi-natural forests, which cover 95 percent
of the worlds forest area. Human interventions in forests may aim at very different objectives, not
exclusively targeting increases in industrial wood production, but also non-wood forest products and
the provision of conservation, protection, recreational and other environmental and social functions.
Total demand for wood products is increasing globally and the yield productivity of forest plantations
is higher than that of natural forests. However, a major ethical question regarding the intensification
of forests is whether it is acceptable to clear natural forests to establish forest plantations. According
to current estimates, about 50 percent of newly established forest plantations relied upon the clearing
of natural forests, particularly degraded and/or secondary natural forests. These decisions generally
stress criteria of optimization typical of utilitarian ethical decision-making.
In the case of natural forests, intensification is not a common concept or priority. Some of the reasons
for this relate to ethical concerns. Natural forests are managed for a multitude of functions to provide
a large range of products and services (non-intervention, like absolute protection of a conservation
area, is a management option). This multipurpose strategy limits options for intensification and
specialization on largely utilitarian grounds, but different groups of people have different expectations
of natural forests, frequently seeking to harvest different products of the forest or trying to obtain
different services from it. The equation specialization + intensification often creates conflicts between
these groups. Such conflicts raise questions about who participates in decision-making and when
formal criteria for involving affected parties need to be specified. Furthermore, in natural and
semi-natural forests, management cycles are much longer than in agriculture and require a series of
step-by-step, long-term practices. The purpose of forest management can change markedly over time.
Changes in the way that forests contribute to lifestyles, community and cultural identity and the broad
patterns of social organization are difficult to articulate in the traditional utilitarian language of costs
and benefits.

Ethical ideas that stipulate particular responsibilities for people who have special
roles such as teachers, holders of public office, technical experts and parents have
more typically been articulated in the language of virtue and community solidarity.
Thus, community leaders are people who have assumed or been appointed to a
particular social station that entails special duties. A virtuous leader therefore assumes
duties that are not those of the ordinary person, and in traditional societies such leaders
would also have the authority to ensure that these duties are carried out. Consequently,
in a traditional society, leaders might be acting rightly even when they order people to
do things that might not be consistent with a modern conception of rights. Military

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ENSURING THAT INTENSIFICATION OCCURS?

leaders, for example, can order citizens to sacrifice their lives for the greater good of the
community, and one can easily imagine situations in which changes in land use or
farming practice might be ordered as part of a leaders performance of special
responsibilities.
In modern societies, social roles are often highly rationalized so that particular
agencies are formed to take over roles that might have been understood as components
of a leaders virtue in traditional societies. Thus organizations such as the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have been assigned an explicit
social mission that entails a responsibility to ensure that food needs are met. The report
of the 1996 World Food Summit makes the case for a new round of intensification, and
places responsibilities on national governments, with organizations such as FAO
having major responsibilities for coordinating and facilitating that work. However,
officers within FAO have an ethical challenge in meeting this responsibility. On the
one hand, traditional models for interpreting the responsibilities these officers have
been delegated to carry out stipulate ethics of virtue, and many expect these people
to act as virtuous and authoritative leaders, especially when working in traditional
societies. These traditional ways of understanding ethical responsibilities provide an
implicit basis for acting ethically to discharge official responsibilities. On the other
hand, the rationale for forming organizations such as the United Nations has largely
been articulated in utilitarian or rights-based terms, and this language places significant
constraints on the authority of officers who occupy posts within these organizations.
Thus, the exercise of these role responsibilities requires ethical resources that may
exceed those on which the mandate of an organizations authority is based.

27

28

Conclusion

opulation growth provides the basis for a

utilitarian argument for intensification,
and traditional virtues of leadership might
provide an ethic for pursuing intensification for
the good of society. In modern societies, the
authority to pursue such good is constrained by
the rights of others. It is critical, therefore, to articulate the ethical rationale for
undertaking projects of intensification in terms that draw upon each of the traditions
available for specifying and critically evaluating an ethical responsibility. Omitting any
one of these ways of framing ethical issues results in a weakened capacity to articulate,
debate and ultimately assume ethical responsibilities that may arise in connection
with population growth and the attendant imperatives for intensification.

FAO/10995/J.VAN ACKER

FAO/17322/N.RUBERY

FAO/20722/A.PROTO

Agriculture will need to be further intensified in

order to meet a growing world populations demands
for food and agricultural products. Yet intensification
in itself, if not properly managed, carries the risk of
degrading natural resources and leading to decreased
food security. It can also have important socioeconomic consequences, particularly in relation to
rural livelihoods. In making policy decisions with the
aim of achieving sustainable agricultural
intensification, planners must therefore identify and
evaluate alternative strategies, in terms both of their
immediate and longer-term impacts and their
implications for all social groups concerned.
There is therefore a clear ethical dimension
to such policy formulation.
This issue of the FAO Ethics Series explores three
possible approaches to an ethical analysis of
agricultural intensification strategies. Human food
needs provide the basis for a utilitarian argument for
intensification, while the moral concept of virtue
addresses peoples duty to work for the good of
society. A rights-based analysis then reveals how
individuals pursuit of such good can be constrained
by the rights of others. Fostering debate around these
approaches helps us to articulate and, ultimately, to
assume ethical responsibilities for the intensification
of agriculture.