HOW CAN AGRICULTURE SURVIVE IN SOUTH AFRICA = NO-TILL (MINIMUM TILLAGE) - SPECIALIZED CO-OPERATIVE FARMING - PRECISION FARMING

HOW CAN AGRICULTURE SURVIVE

IN SOUTH AFRICA

NO-TILL (MINIMUM TILLAGE) - SPECIALIZED CO-OPERATIVE FARMING - PRECISION FARMING

Stes de Necker

Introduction

In 2004 it was already evident that South Africa’s land reform policies were not achieving its socio- economic objectives. The uncoordinated and sometimes haphazard funding of agricultural related projects failed to achieve the economic growth needed in this sector of the economy.

These unsuccessful policies, coupled with the increased economic demands on the agricultural sector, resulted in failed land reform and agriculture related development projects throughout South Africa. Numerous once productive and vibrant farming enterprises are currently little more than unproductive wasteland.

The Political Landscape of the South African Agricultural Sector

Away from the resources and energy of the main agricultural producing areas of South Africa, polite political expressions of loyalty, poor service delivery and sheer incompetence seems to be the order of the day.

Creative and effective participation in the global economy, by all farmers in the agricultural sector, requires an entirely different mindset – a mindset that dares to be less governmental, that challenges conventional development policies and foster competitive regional and global linkages.

With the best intentions in the world, present South African Government policies, mentorships, NGO’s and commodity organizations have at best only succeeded in the establishment of a few subsistence farming operations. These efforts are doomed to failure unless a long term remedy can be found to stop the continuous decline in economically viable agricultural production.

Nowhere in modern history has governments been able to conduct farming operations economically and sustainable within the confines of rigid governmental policies and statutory regulations. Communist Russia, Cuba and most recently Zimbabwe are prime examples of this incapacity. Numerous regimes in the rest of Africa have also failed to effectively produce food for their citizens.

Inadequate agricultural development policies coupled with constant rising input costs and the accompanying inability of many farmers to maximize revenue in the market place, have forced many farmers off their land.

Furthermore, the majority of South African farmers, especially emerging and existing small to medium scale farmers, are unable to stay abreast of modern scientific methodology and technology due mainly to financial constrains and inadequate support structures.

The proportional contribution of the agricultural sector to the Free State’s GGP has shown a constant annual decline since 2000. This decline has resulted in a net loss of some 175,000 jobs during the period 2000 – 2009. The biggest threat to future food security in South Africa is the current exodus of farmers from the agricultural sector due to economic pressures. 

Countries like Brazil, The Ukraine and China have largely converted to new generation fuel efficient tractors and farming equipment. Combined with modern production methods like for example scientific minimum tillage and water harvesting techniques, this change-over not only made it possible for many established farmers to survive the international economic pressures on agriculture, but also to increase their production and profitability. In South Africa the only successful farmers are those who are applying modern scientific methodologies and technologies in order to ensure their eventual success.

As a result of stable government and disciplined macro-economic policies, South Africa has managed to hang on to the international mainstream economy since 1994. This is however proving to be increasingly more difficult. Greater efficiency in terms of government service delivery, increased productivity and economically productive investment is critically necessary.

Should South Africa loose further ground in competing in the international economic arena it would most certainly join the likes of Zimbabwe, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia as the failed states of the recent world order. South Africa faces real and possible ejection from the first world economy to a position of a typical third world economy. This could happen sooner rather than later.

Opportunities

In the Free State Province of South Africa, prime arable land is currently available in the former self governing and independent homeland areas. Approximately 85 000 hectares of which at least 80% is available for food production, currently lies underutilized, for example in the former Bophuthatswana homeland area.

Farming operations after 1994, have become obsolete and uneconomical.

Post 1994 however, with the incorporation of these areas in a single united South Africa, these farmers no longer received the financial support on which they had become dependent. The result was that most farming operations in these areas, especially capital intensive operations such as production of grain crop, came to a sudden halt.

Pre 1994, substantial returns were produced on these lands with the help of the highly subsidized programmes of the then Bophuthatswana Government. This vast potential could, with the necessary management in best practice methodologies, again be harnessed into food production, effectively reducing the previously mentioned decline.

The increasing application of modern crop rotation systems, the development of new technology and the application of new tillage methodologies are rapidly creating vast new possibilities to solve the problems experienced with previous orthodox farming practices.

New generation tractors and implements designed primarily with a view to maximize fuel efficiency and optimal kilowatt ratios further reduce input costs significantly.

Modern cultivation methods, the availability of modern day precision farming models and technology, the advantages of specialized co-operative farming and the availability of large areas prime arable land, which have for more than a decade not been utilized for crop production, have presented what is certainly the biggest opportunity for profitable crop production in South Africa today.

With the application of sound financial and farming practices, scientifically proven best practices and new generation cost effective farming implements and technology, large areas of prime agricultural land, which once produced vast quantities of cash crops, can again become one of the major grain producing areas in the Republic.

The modern science of 'no-till' or minimum tillage

No-till cropping is a relatively new science in crop production, based on the principal that planting is done with the least possible disturbance of the natural soil.

The traditional practices of ploughing and tilling of the soil before planting, destroy the natural soil organisms and leave the soil unprotected to evaporation, wind erosion and flood damage.

The science of no-till, on the contrary, utilizes the natural soil organisms to promote seed germination and plant growth while protecting the soil against erosion and flood damage, at the same time limiting unnecessary evaporation of the moisture in the soil.

90 % of all maize production in Brazil is done today by way of the no-till system and increased yields of up to 30 % have been recorded in parts of that country.

Over and above higher yields in production, the system of no-till also saves up to 45% on fuel costs as well as machinery and equipment costs, because implements need only to move over a specific land area at the most three times as compared to the 5 or 6 times in the case of conventional cultivation.

Conventional crop production usually involves regular tilling with tractor-drawn implements that agitates the soil in various ways. Tilling is used to remove weeds, mix in soil amendments like fertilizers, shape the soil into rows for crop plants and furrows for irrigation, and prepare the surface for seeding. This can lead to unfavorable effects like soil compaction, loss of organic matter, degradation of soil aggregates, death or disruption of soil microbes, arthropods and earth worms, and soil erosion where top soil is blown or washed away. No-till farming avoids these unfavorable effects by reducing or excluding the use of conventional tilling.

Research has shown that repeated tillage destroys the soil resource base and causes adverse environmental impact. Tillage degrades the fertility of soils, causes air and water pollution, intensifies drought stress, consumes fuel, and contributes to global warming.  Farmers today are expected to produce food in ever greater quantities. This is becoming more difficult to do in view of declining soil quality which can be caused by soil tillage. It is becoming well known that no-till is an effective technique to reduce the degradation of soil. With this way of farming, crop residues or other organic matter are retained on the soil surface and planting and fertilizing is done with minimal soil disturbance.

A major obstacle that farmers often face with change to continues no-till is overcoming yield-limiting factors during the transition years, that is, the first years of no-till following a history of intensive conventional tillage. These factors are often poorly understood and are usually biologically driven. Some of the problems involve residue management and increased weed and disease infestations.

Experience seems to indicate that many problems during the transition phase are temporary and become less important as the no-till system matures. The judicious use of crop rotations, cover crops and limited soil disturbance may help reduce agronomic risks during the transition years. Farmers switching to continues no-till must often seek new knowledge and develop new skills and techniques in order to achieve success with this different way of farming.

Further research into these techniques is urgently needed to provide strategies for promoting no-till as a way to enhance agricultural stability in South Africa.

Effects on soil

In No-till farming the soil is left intact and crop residue is left on the field. Soil layers, and in turn soil biotics are therefore conserved in their natural state. Variations of the conservation tillage method may involve some working of the soil with attention paid to keeping soil compactation and carbon loss at a minimum. These variations include reduced tillage, i.e. strip-till, in which small strips may be tilled to allow space for planting seeds.

Strip-tillage is primarily used in areas where the soil profile contains a natural hard pan that creates a barrier preventing plant roots from moving deeper into the soil profile to access water and nutrients. Strip-tillage also creates a more suitable seed bed for crops where the harvestable portion is produced below the surface such as peanuts.

Pros and cons

There are advantages and disadvantages to no-till and minimum tillage systems.

No-till has carbon retention potential through storage of soil organic matter in the soil of crop fields. Conventional methods cause the soil layers to invert, air mixes in, and soil microbial activity dramatically decreases. The result is that soil organic matter is broken down much more rapidly and carbon is lost in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This, in addition to the emissions from the farm equipment itself increases carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Cropland soils are ideal for use as a carbon sink since it has been depleted of carbon in most areas. Conventional farming practices that rely on tillage, have removed carbon from the soil ecosystem by removing crop residues such as left over maize stalks, and further through the addition of chemical fertilizers which also have the above mentioned effects on soil microbes.

By reducing tillage and leaving crop residues to decompose where they lay, field carbon loss can be slowed and eventually reversed.

Further benefits

Other benefits of no-till include increasing soil quality {soil function}, protecting the soil from erosion, evaporation of water, and structural breakdown. Crop residues left intact help both natural precipitation and irrigation water to infiltrate the soil where it can be used. The crop residue left on the soil surface also limits evaporation and conserving water for plant growth. The reduction in the number of times equipment move over the field helps prevents the compaction of soil.

Less tillage of the soil reduces labour and related fuel and machinery costs. Less soil ploughing means less airborne dust which is a serious pollutant in some agricultural areas. No-till fields often have more beneficial insects and annelids {earthworm}, a higher microbial content, and a greater amount of soil organic material.

Disadvantages

Yield

Yields are often immediately impacted negatively by inexperienced no-till farmers. A combination of technique, equipment, pesticides, crop rotation, fertilization, and irrigation has to be found which is optimal for the area-particular conditions. However, excluding the need to till, and organize the soil into contours and drainage ditches is often sighted as increasing profit by reducing cost and labour, even with an initial diminished yield.

A problem that farmers may face is that in the spring the soil will take longer to warm and dry which may stall planting to a less ideal future date. One reason why the soil is slower to dry is that the field absorbs less solar energy as the residue covering the soil is a much lighter color than the soil which would be exposed in conventional tillage.

With no-till, residue from the previous year’s crops lying on the surface of the field, may have the potential of harboring pathogens. This may lead to a higher level of disease in the crop than that of an intensively tilled field.

Equipment

A primary disadvantage of no-till farming is the need for specialized planting equipment designed to plant seeds into undisturbed soil and crop residues. Fortunately today many types of no-till planters are readily available.

Chemicals

One of the purposes of tilling is to remove weeds. No-till farming changes weed composition drastically. Faster growing weeds may no longer be a problem in the face of increased competition, but shrubs and even trees may begin to grow eventually. This problem can however be solved by using a more aggressive herbicide and because of this, no-till is often associated with increased chemical use in comparison to traditional tillage based methods of crop production.

Crop rotation is also more important in no-till farming as soil conditions change. Some no-till farmers utilize a wide variety of crop cycles to exploit their particular soil condition and weed situation for maximum yields.

Erosion

While considerably less soil is displaced through no-till, drainage gullies that do form may get deeper every year instead of disappearing. This may necessitate either sod drain ways or permanent drain ways in extreme circumstances. Because no-till farming often causes a slight increase in soil bulk density there is a misconception that periodic tillage is necessary to “fluff” the soil back up. In countries like Brazil where millions of hectares of land have been no-tilled for over 20 years, water infiltration, biologic activity, soil aggregate stability, and productivity have all increased well beyond traditionally tilled land.

No-till farming mimics the natural conditions under which most soils formed; more so than any other method of farming in that the soil is left undisturbed except to place the seed in a position to germinate.

Summary

Comparison between conventional and no-till systems summarized.

Conventional systems	No-till
1. Soil tillage is necessary to produce a crop	1. Tillage is not necessary for crop production
2. Burying of plant residues with tillage implements	2. Crop residues remain on the soil surface as mulch
3. Bare soil for weeks and months	3. Permanent soil cover
4. Soil heating because of direct solar radiation	4. Reduced soil temperatures
5. Burning crop residues allowed	5. Burning mulch prohibited
6. Strong emphasis on soil chemical process	6. Emphasis on soil biological processes
7. Chemical pest control first option	7. Biological pest control first option
8. Green manure cover crops and crop rotations are options	8. Green manure cover crops and crop rotations compulsory
9. Soil erosion is accepted as an unavoidable process associated to farming on sloping land	9. Soil erosion is merely a symptom cause by soil mismanagement
Consequences of soil preparation and bare soil	Consequences of no-tillage and permanent soil cover
1. Wind and water erosion are unavoidable	1. Wind and water erosion near zero
2. Reduced water infiltration into the soil	2. Increased water infiltration into the soil
3. Less available soil moisture	3. More available soil moisture
4. Unavoidable reduction in the soil organic matter content thus reduction of soil quality	4. Maintenance or increase in the soil organic matter content [enhancement of soil quality
5. Soil carbon is lost as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere	5. carbon is retained in the soil enhancing its quality
6. Reduction of crop productivity	6. Crop productivity increase
7. Higher use of fertilizers and higher cost of production	7. Reduced use of fertilizers and lower production costs
8. Poverty, rural exodus increase of informal settlements and social conflict	8. Basic needs are satisfied, living standard and quality of life of farm families increased and depopulation of rural areas restricted and or even reversed
Off farm effects of soil erosion	Off farm effects of no-till
1. Sedimentation of rivers, reservoirs, dams and micro catchments	1. Reduction of sedimentation of rivers, reservoirs, dams and micro catchments
2. Reduced water quality	2. Enhanced water quality
3. Higher cost for government and for society due   to the effects of soil erosion	3. Reduction of cost for government and society due to limited effects of soil erosion

Specialized co-operative farming

Modern specialized co-operative farming is successfully practiced by New Zealand and Irish Agriculturalists. Having been faced by grave financial difficulties in the 1980s, they realized that for farming to survive those challenges, farmers would have to change the traditional practices of subsistence farming and farming being a way of life, to that of commercial and business orientated farming.

Cooperative farming must not be confused with communal farming systems being practiced in certain parts of the world. The well known Kibbutz system practiced in Israel is a form of communal farming, where a number of individuals share responsibilities in a single farming operation.

Cooperative Farming differs considerably from communal farming in the sense that separate farming operations, jointly, form a cooperative, each with its own responsibility within a chain of agricultural production.

The concept of cooperative farming, originated primarily in New Zealand in the late 1980’s, when the then Government of New Zealand virtually handed political power over to the opposition in the 1986 election.

At that stage, NZ was for all intense and purpose bankrupt, and the newly elected government inherited an economically devastated society. Many civil servants were retrenched and serious cutbacks in the country’s national budget had to be effected.

Not being in a the fiscal position to effectively support the New Zealand agricultural sector any more, organised agriculture approached the NZ Government with the proposal that should the government relinquish all unnecessary controls over the agricultural sector, the farming community of NZ will organize and regulate themselves in a system, which they believe, can restore the economic decline in the agricultural industry. The only government support they required, was for the NZ Government to protect the agricultural sector against foreign economic threads like dumping, subsidization, restrictive exchange controls etc.

Up to 1986, New Zealand used to be a nett importer of basic agricultural produce, Millions of Rands of dairy products, meat, poultry and grain were imported from South Africa at the time.

The NZ farmers came to agreement to work together in a system of specialized cooperative farming, where each farming enterprise undertook to specialize in a particular facet of the agricultural process.

In dairy farming, the system of specialized cooperative farming required that a farmer whose farming operation is best suited for pasture development, will revert to the establishment of, exclusively, pasture grazing, while a second farmer who may be better equipped for animal husbandry, will concentrate on rearing the most productive cows for milk production.

A third entity, separate from both the above, will concentrate on the most scientific milking practices and systems as well as the distribution of fresh milk and value adding. This meant that all three operations could be shared by three distinct farming enterprises, each one with its own identity and responsibility.

This system made it possible that the cattle owner, scientifically breed and develop his cow stock, allow it to graze on the pasture owner’s lands, which in turn was scientifically developed by the pasture owner to render optimal growth and nutritional value, and have the cows milked at the milking facility, which specializes in best practice milking procedures and fresh milk distribution.

A fourth, value adding component, who specializes in secondary dairy manufacturing like for instance powdered milk, yogurt, cheese, butter etc. is responsible for this function in the value adding chain.

The same principles were also applied in beef and poultry production, where the livestock owner, grazing pasture/ broiler facility owner, abattoir, and meat/egg processing facility, each operated as a separate profit centre.

Also in cash cropping and vegetable farming, the land owner from whom the fields are rented, the owner of the tractors and implements required for crop production, the crop owner, milling and distribution and secondary food production such as vegetable oils, margarine, cereals etc. all functioned as separate profit centres.

This system of specialized cooperative farming enabled the NZ agricultural industry to move, in a period of no less than fifteen years, from a position of nett importer to nett exporter of agricultural produce.  

Communal farming is nothing new to the African people and in most Africa regions, communal farming is the accepted rule rather than the exception.

Until very recently, Africa had a very strong feudal system of land ownership. Rural land belonged to a Chief, who in turn allocates certain portions thereof to feudal land dwellers who cultivates the land.

Even today, most of the land which belonged to the former TBVC areas, (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei) is currently State land under control of a host of Tribal Authorities within those areas.

Precision Farming

Modern advanced computer systems and GPS technology, has made it possible to perform farming operations must more cost effectively than in the past. With the proper application of these technologies, savings in production input costs of up to 35% can be achieved.

Precision farming integrates a number of technologies in order to optimize the benefits of mechanization, which is so essential for effective food production. By using satellite data to determine soil conditions and plant development, these technologies can lower the production cost by fine-tuning seeding, fertilizer, chemical and water use, and potentially increasing yield production and lowering costs — all benefiting the farmer. In turn, precision agriculture may have significant impacts far beyond the individual farm. Pollution is a common problem stemming from agricultural practices. 

Excess agricultural chemicals must go somewhere, and somewhere frequently means the common environment. Agricultural chemicals which may play a vital role in agricultural production, may well be considered pollutants once it has reached the common environment.

At its heart, the application of precision agriculture requires two spatial requirements:

(1) Concurrent knowledge of where the farm equipment is at any given time, and

(2) The value of one or more variables as a positioning function within a given field.

These variables requirements two sets of information; the “where” and the “what.”

Spatial precision needed for “where” varies from a few meters to a few centimeters, that can be satisfied by GPS, data processing systems.  In fact, using real-time GPS, it is possible to guide farming equipment to stay along a track of hundreds of meters long with only centimeter-scale deviations.

The second requirement, the “what,” is where remote sensing comes into the picture.

The electronics revolution of the last decades has spawned two technologies that will impact agriculture in future. These technologies are Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). Along with GIS and GPS there have appeared a wide range of sensors, monitors and controllers for agricultural equipment such as shaft monitors, pressure transducers and servo motors. Together they will enable farmers to use electronic guidance aids to direct equipment movements more accurately, provide precise positioning for all equipment actions and chemical applications and analyze all of that data in association with other sources of data (agronomic, climatic, etc). This will add up to a new and powerful management tool for the progressive farm manager.

Just as industrial manufacturing has changed radically over the last century, farming also need to change. The classic example of the farming being a way of life is long outdated. Farming has become a business which must be conducted on sound business practices. Costs, technology and economies of scale have forced most commercial farms around the world to change. And precision farming is beginning to play an ever increasing role in the quest for survival in the agricultural sector.

Precision farming should not be thought of as only yield mapping and variable rate fertilizer application and evaluated on only one or the other. Precision farming technologies will affect the entire production function (and by extension, the management function) of the farm. It is not only about an abstract measurement or characterization. It is about specific values at exact locations, assisting the farmer. 
   

Precision farming will result in an explosion in the amount of records available for farm management. Electronic sensors can collect a lot of data in a short period of time. Lots of computer storage space is needed to store all the data as well as the map graphics resulting from the data. There are currently a number of electronic controllers which will record data electronically.

It is necessary that fertilizer rates actually put down by the application equipment, is according to the requirements of the actual needs recorded by a prescription map. A lot of new data is generated every year (yields, weeds, etc). Farmers will want to keep track of the yearly data to study trends in fertility, yields, salinity and numerous other parameters. This means a large database is needed with the capability to archive, and retrieve data for future analyses.

Yield monitoring.

Instantaneous yield monitors are currently available from several manufacturers for all recent models of combines. It provide a crop yield by time or distance (e.g. every second or every few metres). It also track other data such as distance and tonnage per load, number of loads and fields. Yield mapping GPS receivers coupled with yield monitors provide spatial coordinates for the yield monitor data. This can be made into yield maps of each field. Variable rate fertilizer variable rate controllers are available for granular, liquid and gaseous fertilizer materials. Variable rates can either be manually controlled by the driver or automatically controlled by an on board computer  with an electronic prescription map.

Yield mapping during harvesting

Weed mapping

A farmer can map weeds while combining, seeding, spraying or field scouting by using a keypad or buttons hooked up to a GPS receiver and data-logger. These occurrences can then be mapped out on a computer and compared to yield maps, fertilizer maps and spray maps. Variable spraying by knowing weed locations from weed mapping spot control can be implemented. Controllers are available to electronically turn booms on and off, and alter the amount (and blend) of herbicide applied.

Topography and boundaries

Using high precision GPS a very accurate topographic map can be made of any field. This is useful when interpreting yield maps and weed maps as well as planning for grassed waterways and field divisions. Field boundaries, roads, yards, tree stands and wetlands can all be accurately mapped to aid in farm planning.

Topography mapping of a field

Salinity mapping GPS can be coupled to a salinity meter sled which is towed behind an ATV (or pickup) across fields affected by salinity. Salinity mapping is valuable in interpreting yield maps and weed maps as well as tracking the change in salinity over time.

Guidance systems

Several manufacturers are currently producing guidance systems using high precision DGPS that can accurately position a moving vehicle within a foot or less. These guidance systems may replace conventional equipment markers for spraying or seeding and may be a valuable field scouting tool.

The "layerd" approach.
Looking at a three dimensional analysis of a field

Several benefits are achieved from an automated method of capturing, storing and analyzing physical field records. Detailed analyses of the farm production management activities and results can be carried out. Farmers can look at the performance of new varieties by site specific area, measure the effect of different seeding dates or depths and show to their banker the actual yields obtained and the associated risk levels. It is imperative that trends and evaluations are also measured over longer time spans. Cropping strategies to control salinity for instance, may take several years to evaluate while herbicide control of an annual weed should only take one season.

Precision farming should be approached in stages, in order to ease into a more complex level of management. Precision farming does not "happen" as soon as one purchases a GPS unit or yield monitor. It occurs over time as a farmer adopts a new level of management intensity on the farm.

Implicit in this is an increased level of knowledge of the precision farming technologies such as GPS and GIS. What is perhaps more important for the success of precision farming, at least initially, is the increased knowledge that a farmer needs of his natural resources in the field. This includes a better understanding of soil types, hydrology, microclimates and aerial photography. A farmer should identify the variance of factors within the fields that effect crop yield before a yield map is acquired. A yield map should serve as verification data to quantify the consequences of the variation that exists in a field. Management strategies and prescription map development will likely rely on sources other than yield maps. The one important key source of data a farmer should not start precision farming without an aerial photograph.

Satellite image of a production field

Precision farming makes farm planning both easier and more complex. There is much more map data to utilize in determining long term cropping plans, erosion controls, salinity controls and assessment of tillage systems. But as the amount of data grows, more work is needed to interpret the data and this increases the risk of misinterpretation. Farmers implementing precision farming will likely work closer with several professionals in the agricultural, electronics and agricultural equipment manufacturing sectors.

Precision farming is ideally suited for improved economic analyses. The variability of crop yield in a field allows for the accurate assessment of risk. For example, a farmer could verify that for 70 % of the time, 75 % of the maize grown in field "A" will yield X ton per hectare. By knowing the cost of inputs, farmers can also calculate return over cash costs for each square meter of the field. Certain parts of the field which always produce below the break even line can then be isolated for the development of a site-specific management plan.

Knowing your exact profit or loss per hectare

Precision farming allows the precise tracking and tuning of production.

 The Key requirements for success

From a survey that was conducted amongst some of South Africa’s most successful commercial farmers and those who had to cease their farming operations due to bankruptcy, it became evident that in order to survive in the modern agricultural industry, not only in South Africa but worldwide, farmers need to be in full command of at least the following seven key requirements to remain successful viz:

2.1            They must be in possession of good productive land

2.2            They must be in a position to utilize modern cost effective and technologically advanced equipment

2.3            They must have a thorough knowledge of advanced scientific farming practices and processes

2.4            They must have a thorough knowledge of and access to modern financial methods and practices

2.5            They must have a sound knowledge of and be able to apply modern insurance methods to counter the impact of unforeseen disasters.

2.6            Optimal reduction in input costs and effective utilization of economies of scale.

2.7            Optimal marketing strategies to maximize revenue and securing optimal return on investment.

Conclusion

There is little space left in South Africa for mediocre economic activities and peace meal handouts to satisfy the needs of the masses.

South Africa is the most modern economy on the African continent and has already established itself as the gateway to the rest of Africa for most overseas business wishing to invest in Africa.

Retaining this position will however require a major paradigm shift and the speedy development of major reliable and economically viable business ventures.

The Five biggest Threats to Human existence - Saving our future

THE FIVE BIGGEST THREADS TO HUMAN EXISTENCE

SAVING OUR FUTURE

Stes de Necker

 Anders Sandberg

Every day we read or hear about ‘protecting the environment’, ‘protecting our natural resources’, ‘protecting our cultural heritage’, protecting the ozone layer’, and the list goes on. 

But seldom, if ever, do we hear about protecting humanity’s future.

It may sound illogical talking about saving something that doesn’t even exist yet, but when we understand the logic behind the reasoning, it is not such a difficult concept to understand.

Although there exist no guarantees that, if we take care of our environment or natural resources or the ozone layer, or whatever is necessary to take care of, humanity will still be around in future. What we do know however, is that if we don’t take care of these things now, chances are very slim that humanity will survive the threads to it’s existence.

In the daily hubbub of current “crises” facing humanity, we forget about the many generations we hope are yet to come. The future of humanity. Not those who will live 100 years from now, but 1,000 or 10,000 years from now.

We currently face risks, called existential risks that threaten to wipe out humanity. These risks are not just for big disasters, but for the disasters that could end history.

Not everyone has ignored the long future though. Mystics like Nostradamus have regularly tried to calculate the end of the world. HG Wells tried to develop a science of forecasting and famously depicted the far future of humanity in his book The Time Machine. Other writers built other long-term futures to warn, amuse or speculate.

But had these pioneers or futurologists not thought about humanity’s future, it would not have changed the outcome.

There wasn’t much that human beings in their place could have done to save us from an existential crisis or even cause one.

We are in a more privileged position today. Human activity has been steadily shaping the future of our planet. And even though we are far from controlling natural disasters, we are developing technologies that may help mitigate, or at least, deal with them.

Yet, these risks remain understudied. There is a sense of powerlessness and fatalism about them.

People have been talking apocalypses for millennia, but few have tried to prevent them. Humans are also bad at doing anything about problems that have not occurred yet (partially because of the availability heuristic – the tendency to overestimate the probability of events we know examples of, and underestimate events we cannot readily recall).

If humanity becomes extinct, at the very least the loss is equivalent to the loss of all living individuals and the frustration of their goals.

But the loss would probably be far greater than that. Human extinction means the loss of meaning generated by past generations, the lives of all future generations (and there could be an astronomical number of future lives) and all the value they might have been able to create.

If consciousness or intelligence are lost, it might mean that value itself becomes absent from the universe. This is a huge moral reason to work hard to prevent existential threats from becoming reality. And we must not fail even once in this pursuit.

With that in mind, I have selected what I consider the five biggest threats to humanity’s existence. But there are caveats that must be kept in mind, for this list is not final.

Over the past century we have discovered or created new existential risks – super volcanoes were discovered in the early 1970s, and before the Manhattan project nuclear war was impossible – so we should expect others to appear. Also, some risks that look serious today might disappear as we learn more. The probabilities also change over time – sometimes because we are concerned about the risks and fix them.

Finally, just because something is possible and potentially hazardous, doesn’t mean it is worth worrying about.

There are some risks we cannot do anything at all about, such as gamma ray bursts that result from the explosions of galaxies.

But if we learn we can do something, the priorities change. For instance, with sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics, pestilence went from an act of God to bad public health.

1. Nuclear war

While only two nuclear weapons have been used in war so far – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II – and nuclear stockpiles are down from their the peak they reached in the Cold War, it is a mistake to think that nuclear war is impossible. In fact, it might not be improbable.

The Cuban Missile crisis was very close to turning nuclear. If we assume one such event every 69 years and a one in three chance that it might go all the way to being nuclear war, the chance of such a catastrophe increases to about one in 200 per year.

Worse still, the Cuban Missile crisis was only the most well-known case. The history of Soviet-US nuclear deterrence is full of close calls and dangerous mistakes. The actual probability has changed depending on international tensions, but it seems implausible that the chances would be much lower than one in 1000 per year.

A full-scale nuclear war between major powers would kill hundreds of millions of people directly or through the near aftermath – an unimaginable disaster.

But that is not enough to make it an existential risk.

Similarly the hazards of fallout are often exaggerated – potentially deadly locally, but globally a relatively limited problem. 

Cobalt bombs were proposed as a hypothetical doomsday weapon that would kill everybody with fallout, but are in practice hard and expensive to build. And they are physically just barely possible.

The real threat is nuclear winter – that is, soot lofted into the stratosphere causing a multi-year cooling and drying of the world. Modern climate simulations show that it could preclude agriculture across much of the world for years. If this scenario occurs billions would starve, leaving only scattered survivors that might be picked off by other threats such as disease.

The main uncertainty is how the soot would behave: depending on the kind of soot the outcomes may be very different, and we currently have no good ways of estimating this.

2. Bio-engineered pandemic

Natural pandemics have killed more people than wars. However, natural pandemics are unlikely to be existential threats: there are usually some people resistant to the pathogen, and the offspring of survivors would be more resistant. Evolution also does not favour parasites that wipe out their hosts, which is why syphilis went from a virulent killer to a chronic disease as it spread in Europe.

Unfortunately we can now make diseases nastier. One of the more famous examples is how the introduction of an extra gene in mousepox – the mouse version of smallpox – made it far more lethal and able to infect vaccinated individuals. 

Recent work on bird flu has demonstrated that the contagiousness of a disease can be deliberately boosted.

Right now the risk of somebody deliberately releasing something devastating is low. But as biotechnology gets better and cheaper, more groups will be able to make diseases worse.

Most work on bio-weapons has been done by governments looking for something controllable, because wiping out humanity is not militarily useful. But there are always some people who might want to do things because they can.

Others have higher purposes. For instance, the Aum Shinrikyo cult tried to hasten the apocalypse using bio-weapons beside their more successful nerve gas attack. Some people think the Earth would be better off without humans, and so on.

The number of fatalities from bio-weapon and epidemic outbreaks attacks looks like it has a power-law distribution – most attacks have few victims, but a few kill many.

Given current numbers the risk of a global pandemic from bio-terrorism seems very small. But this is just bio-terrorism: governments have killed far more people than terrorists with bio-weapons (up to 400,000 may have died from the WWII Japanese bio-war program).

And as technology gets more powerful in the future nastier pathogens become easier to design.

3. Super intelligence

Intelligence is very powerful. A tiny increment in problem-solving ability and group coordination is why we left the other apes in the dust. Now their continued existence depends on human decisions, not what they do.

Being smart is a real advantage for people and organisations, so there is much effort in figuring out ways of improving our individual and collective intelligence: from cognition-enhancing drugs to artificial-intelligence software.

The problem is that intelligent entities are good at achieving their goals, but if the goals are badly set they can use their power to cleverly achieve disastrous ends. There is no reason to think that intelligence itself will make something behave nice and morally. In fact, it is possible to prove that certain types of super intelligent systems would not obey moral rules even if they were true.

Even more worrying is that in trying to explain things to an artificial intelligence we run into profound practical and philosophical problems.

Human values are diffuse, complex things that we are not good at expressing, and even if we could do that we might not understand all the implications of what we wish for.

Software-based intelligence may very quickly go from below human to frighteningly powerful. The reason is that it may scale in different ways from biological intelligence: it can run faster on faster computers, parts can be distributed on more computers, different versions tested and updated on the fly, new algorithms incorporated that give a jump in performance.

It has been proposed that an “intelligence explosion” is possible when software becomes good enough at making better software. Should such a jump occur there would be a large difference in potential power between the smart system (or the people telling it what to do) and the rest of the world.

This has clear potential for disaster if the goals are badly set.

The unusual thing about super intelligence is that we do not know if rapid and powerful intelligence explosions are possible: maybe our current civilization as a whole is improving itself at the fastest possible rate. But there are good reasons to think that some technologies may speed things up far faster than current societies can handle. Similarly we do not have a good grip on just how dangerous different forms of super intelligence would be, or what mitigation strategies would actually work. It is very hard to reason about future technology we do not yet have, or intelligence's greater than ourselves. Of the risks on this list, this is the one most likely to either be massive or just a mirage.

This is a surprisingly under-researched area. Even in the 50s and 60s when people were extremely confident that super intelligence could be achieved “within a generation”, they did not look much into safety issues. Maybe they did not take their predictions seriously, but more likely is that they just saw it as a remote future problem.

4. Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the control over matter with atomic or molecular precision. That is in itself not dangerous – instead, it would be very good news for most applications. The problem is that, like biotechnology, increasing power also increases the potential for abuses that are hard to defend against.

The big problem is not the infamous “grey goo” of self-replicating nano machines eating everything.

That would require clever design for this very purpose. It is tough to make a machine replicate: biology is much better at it, by default.

Maybe some maniac would eventually succeed, but there are plenty of more low-hanging fruits on the destructive technology tree.

The most obvious risk is that atomically precise manufacturing looks ideal for rapid, cheap manufacturing of things like weapons. In a world where any government could “print” large amounts of autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons (including facilities to make even more) arms races could become very fast – and hence unstable, since doing a first strike before the enemy gets a too large advantage might be tempting.

Weapons can also be small, precision things: a “smart poison” that acts like a nerve gas but seeks out victims, or ubiquitous “gnatbot” surveillance systems for keeping populations obedient seems entirely possible.

Also, there might be ways of getting nuclear proliferation and climate engineering into the hands of anybody who wants it.

We cannot judge the likelihood of existential risk from future nanotechnology, but it looks like it could be potentially disruptive just because it can give us whatever we wish for.

5. Unknown unknowns

The most unsettling possibility is that there is something out there that is very deadly, and we have no clue about it.

The silence in the sky might be evidence for this. Is the absence of aliens due to that life or intelligence is extremely rare, or that intelligent life tends to get wiped out? If there is a future Great Filter, it must have been noticed by other civilizations too, and even that didn’t help.

Whatever the threat is, it would have to be something that is nearly unavoidable even when you know it is there, no matter who and what you are. We do not know about any such threats (none of the others on this list work like this), but they might exist.

Note that just because something is unknown it doesn’t mean we cannot reason about it.

In a remarkable paper Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom show that a certain set of risks must be less than one chance in a billion per year, based on the relative age of Earth.

You might wonder why climate change or meteor impacts have been left off this list. Climate change, no matter how scary, is unlikely to make the entire planet uninhabitable (but it could compound other threats if our defenses to it break down).

Meteors could certainly wipe us out, but we would have to be very unlucky. The average mammalian species survives for about a million years. Hence, the background natural extinction rate is roughly one in a million per year.

This is much lower than the nuclear-war risk, which after 70 years is still the biggest threat to our continued existence.

The availability heuristic makes us overestimate risks that are often in the media, and discount unprecedented risks.

If we, humans, want to be around in future, we need to start doing something now to protect our future; to do something to mitigate the dangers that threatens our very existence.