Seventy years ago, after World War II, the U.S. began industrializing farming operations through a mix of policy decisions and self-centered business interests. This method of farming is neither inevitable nor efficient. More to the point, it can not be sustained.
Industrial agriculture treats the farm as a factory, with “inputs” (pesticides, fertilizers) and “outputs” (crops). The end-objective is increasing yields while controlling costs — usually by exploiting economies of scale (i.e. fencerow to fencerow “monocropping” and farm consolidation), and by replacing solar energy and manual labor with machines and petro-chemical inputs.
Chemical reliance
This industrialized model of farming is an inefficient approach to grow food for the world. In 1940, we produced 2.3 food calories for every fossil fuel calorie used. After seventy years of movement to industrialize our food and farming systems, our production has declined. We now get a single food calorie for every 10 fossil fuel calories used — a 23-fold reduction in efficiency.
Following this path we have become dependent on cheap, abundant oil, and on quick chemical “fixes” for agro-ecosystem challenges that are complicated and require deep, local and hands-on knowledge. Our reliance on chemical inputs is causing us to forget all we knew about successfully growing food.
Soil fumigation is a current practice that illustrates how we have set aside a key principle of skilled farming — that the health of the soil is critical to success. High volumes of volatile pesticides are injected into the soil before planting, disrupting the complex biological ecosystem that supports plant growth. More chemical inputs are then required to replace these biological supports — further deepening dependence on chemical inputs.
Hidden costs
In its narrow pursuit of yield, industrial farming hides (or “externalizes”) a variety of costs stemming from chemical dependence. Here are just a handful of these many hidden costs:
- Water: Industrial agriculture uses 70% of the planet’s fresh water. According to EPA, U.S. agriculture contributes to nearly 75% of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams.
- Climate change: The current food system is responsible for 1/3 of global greenhouse gas emissions. Our food system is fully dependent on oil for transport and the creation of pesticides and fertilizers derived from petrochemicals.
- Biodiversity: Bees, bats, amphibians and other beneficial species are dying off, and their declines are linked to pesticide exposure. Seven in 10 biologists flag today’s biodiversity collapse as an even greater threat than climate change.
- Human health: Pesticide exposure can increase risks of cancer, autoimmune disease (e.g. diabetes, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma), non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease and more. Children are especially at risk.
Industrial, pesticide-dependent agriculture exhausts the natural resources on which we all depend. It makes us sick and undermines the world’s capacity to feed itself. Now more than ever, farmers in the United States and around the world need support to shift from today’s toxic, ineffective and unsustainable model of agriculture into one that is productive, ecologically resilient, healthy and just.
Resources:
Global Harms of Industrial Ag: We know enough
National Family Farm Coalition