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Origins and Consequences of Farm-Level Pollution in Emerging East Asia
Table 1.2 Major Environmental Pollutants from Agriculture and Potential Hotspots: China, Vietnam, and the Philippines (continued) Pollutant
China
PM and gases • Corn, wheat, and rice residues from (in that order) burning • Autumn burning (in southeastern China) • Spring burning (in western China) GHGs (esp. N2O and CH4)
• Livestock rearing (esp. in South Central) • Nitrogen fertilizer (esp. in South Central, Northeast) • Rice irrigation (esp. in South Central)
Vietnam
Philippines
• Rice straw (in Mekong Delta, Red River Delta) • Corn husks (esp. in Northwest, Northeast, Central Highlands) • Coffee husks (Central Highlands) • Rice irrigation • Livestock rearing • Nitrogen fertilizer
• Corn husks (most grown in Cagayan, Mindanao) • Rice straw (most grown in north—Central Luzon, Cagayan)
• Rice (most grown in north— Nueva Ecija, Isabela, Pangasinan) • Livestock rearing (especially concentrated around Metro Manila, though small farms widely distributed)
Note: CH4 = methane; GHGs = greenhouse gases; N = nitrogen; N2O = nitrous oxide; P = phosphorus; PM = particulate matter. a. Antibiotics, hormones, other drugs, heavy metals, and other chemicals.
Structural and Policy Drivers of Farm Pollution Several of the pollution problems that the three study countries are facing have been magnified by patterns of structural development, some specific to the region. Changes in the organization of agricultural activities are implicated in many of the pollution problems observable in East Asia today. Agriculture’s responsiveness to changes in consumption patterns, for example, has been an important structural dynamic in the region and is likely to remain one for decades to come. The expansion of animal rearing and feed crop production is at the forefront of this phenomenon.59 The consumption of animal products is rising faster in Vietnam, Indonesia, and China than almost anywhere else in the world (based on FAOSTAT data from 2000–11). This and other patterns help explain the magnitude of certain pollution problems, the practices from which they originate, and the hazards they pose. Several patterns have been behind the region’s strong agricultural performance in recent decades, although others have resulted from it unintentionally.
Focus on Output and Yield Growth Demographic growth, and a societal focus on output and yield, shaped in part by policy and limited space for agriculture,60 have implicitly favored a “grow now, clean up later” approach that regards the environment as a resource for exploitation. Agriculture in the region has been profoundly shaped by the public sector’s decades-long focus on output growth through intensification, quantity over quality, and its only distant consideration of the environmental, health, or even longer-run agricultural productivity risks of the methods employed to achieve ever-higher yields (see box 1.9). The Challenge of Agricultural Pollution • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1201-9