Economics and Energetics of farming 3 – The politics of food production and the future of sustainable farming.

“Modern corporate driven Industrial Farming is not about food!  It is about chemical and oil corporations making money.  Food is merely the vehicle in which they do this: And as a value added bonus, also a way to provide the healthcare industry – really sickcare – with long-term clients.    Richard Jurin”

So, how did we get to this current farming energetics and economics?  My quote above suggests cynicism, but it really is an observation.  I do believe that many people working for corporate systems sincerely think they are doing good for humanity, but the corporate agenda is nearly always about making profits.  It is inherent in the beliefs of money and security that propagate the ideas that drive our modern hyper-consumer society.  The green revolution was the start of an idea that technology was more than just helping plants grow (fertilizers and pesticides) to the birth of advanced technological genetic manipulation.

For literally thousands of years, humans have farmed and succeeded well in this endeavor.    Farmers knew what to do and for millennia they applied that hard earned knowledge.  While food was used to control people and society, overall, farming was about producing food – it is after all the central part of life and until the last 200 years or, agriculture defined in some connected way what most people in the world did for a living.  Most people either worked directly in agriculture or worked in a connected industry that supported agriculture aand the movement of food.  It was about food, and if we produced more food than needed, then that meant we had stores in case of a bad harvest the next year.  And if a farmer could make extra money selling a bumper harvest, so much the better.  What changed was when big chemical and oil companies saw a unique way to expand their markets and they got involved in a big way.  With big money came big politics.

Since the late 1960s, we have had the global ‘green revolution that has tried to get everyone in the world to develop technology to grow more food, and then the philosophy of farming that said, “Get Big or Get Out” )e.g. Earl Butz).  The political system got on board and farmers to develop specific policies of farming, encouraged by generous subsidies from the governments.  Specific crops were emphasized regardless of whether we needed more of that crop.  Corn and soybean for instance got wholehearted governmental support since they allowed a lot of animal feed and corn fructose syrup to be made ad processed into other useful foods that were cheap (because they were subsidized) and made for great filler additives in the processed food industry.  This in turn encouraged massive monoculture farming of one to two species and ensued that the farmers must use unsustainable farming practices with and lots of chemicals.  This further emphasized excessive mechanization that used massive amounts of fossil fuels.  It became a vicious cycle.  To add to the stress, the soils were becoming depleted of nutrients requiring even more fertilizers.    Then add the effects of ‘unnatural’ chemicals in our food over a long time and you start to see a range of diseases and ailments which were once uncommon, being seen all the time.   A big plus for the healthcare ‘industry’ (and I use that word deliberately) that now makes megabucks treating the symptoms of all these maladies.  Don’t expect cures anytime soon.  Masking the symptoms and keeping you on drugs for life is what the pharmaceutical industry desires most.

When big money and power is involved and the word I hear is ‘innovation’ I no longer think social benefit – I hear control.  Big agriculture does not like organic and especially sustainable agriculture because they cannot make vast profits from it.  When you think about the new merger coming up of Bayer that are buying up Monsanto, you should be very concerned.  Consolidation of the global food system under international corporations raises my concerns.  So what stands between the blossoming global monopoly of our food supply and sustainable agriculture – in one word – YOU.

Sustainable Agriculture (SA) by its definition means local and in harmony with the natural world.  That precludes the absence of chemicals as much as possible and the advocacy of farming that works with natural systems in building soil and creating companion planting of crops, which negates the use of monocrop farming.  In a nutshell SA is a farming process that can practiced the same way far into the future; does not deplete soils faster than they form; does not reduce healthy soil, clean water; allows for natural genetic diversity, which is essential for long-term crop and livestock production; and creates better farming techniques using appropriate technology for any given region.  Let me be realistic here – I am not saying that Sa is the perfect farming since there are so many variables to be considered.  What SA does do is put the control of food in the hands of more localized communities that care about the quality of the food that is grown and not about the profits to be made.

Some farming areas will need more attention getting started after being released from heavy corporate agricultural use.  They may require Low-input agriculture, which is small amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, water, necessitating equipment requiring fossil fuel energy, etc., but it at least is step towards SA.  Obviously organic agriculture means no synthetic chemicals used.  This kind of organic farming can still work on a larger scale but requires more hands-on attention every day to make it work.  At least the chemicals are greatly reduced, if not immediately left out.  The good news is that many organic and sustainable farmers have worked out multiple options for dealing with farmers problems such as pests and weeds that have tested biocontrol, composting, etc.  I’m not going into the details here.  But, while corporate farms must have chemicals added to the dirt (you can’t call it soil when it is only base minerals and little biological life in it) and as pesticides, SA and organic farming build the soil and conserve its quality such that it contains more naturally occurring nutrients.  Good soil holds greater quantities of water, higher concentrations of microbial life, deeper nutrient-rich topsoil, and greater earthworm and other micro-fauna activity.  And SA doesn’t require the use of corporate involvement – indeed, it can almost do away with the need for any industry except the farmer and the workers and healthy seeds.  And a final reason to go with SA – heathy food creates healthy bodies and you know exactly what is in the food – none of the chemicals that industry don’t even tell us about.  We can bring back the 1:2 energetics ratio and with knowledge gained of various sustainable farming methods, maintain the yields we have today, increase food security, and making better choices on our food, and do it all without paying a fortune to corporate interests.