An obvious, yet poignant question I used to ask my students to get them thinking – “What does the term Sustainable Agriculture imply about modern industrial agriculture?” I am always amazed how so many people talk about sustainability but still practice unsustainability as something that is commonplace and acceptable. As I have said in recent posts, Food choices equals energy choices. This doesn’t mean that we must all become vegetarians tomorrow, but we do need to think of the current and future consequences of an increasing meat diet on the planet. To do that we must do Systemic Analysis to increase the energy input versus output ratios that approach what our ancestors used to get from their traditional farming. As an example of the imbalance of our current system, from 1900 to 2000, the area of global cultivated land increased 33%, yet, the energy inputs increased 80 times!
From this current and acceptable perspective when referring to agriculture, I ask, “Is the Green Revolution a Success?” From the MDC perspective it would seem Yes. Yet, when one is obliged to view the larger perspective, the cost of such success hinges on the inordinate use of expensive and energetic technologies involved and also the socio-cultural costs that are rarely mentioned. For instance, it is a given assumption in the MDCs that everyone wants to develop a Euro-American lifestyle. What if they don’t, but simply would like to gain more comforts and luxuries within their own frame of reference. (That is yet something else to talk about at some point.) Globally, the land we use (38% converted for agriculture) that can be farmed (grazing 26% and arable farming 12%) has long been exceeded. All new land is either at the expense of forests that are cut down (e.g. rainforest slash and burn) or else highly marginal lands that usually require extensive irrigation. In these cases, traditional agriculture is also not the most appropriate technology since it tends to cause excessive erosion of the soil in these areas. Our ancestors did amazing things with terracing and irrigation in marginal lands, but the pressure from human development and human population growth is creating an ecological crisis in the amount of soil that is being lost worldwide. Sustainable farming is using the best of modern agricultural thinking with older philosophies to retain soils and increase crop yields, while maintaining food quality. Think about what I said at the start of this post – What is implied by sustainable agriculture that we blindly accept without question – or is it simply gross apathy?
Contrary to the belief that agricultural technology is alleviating global hunger, industrialized farming creates a need to convert more natural land to cropland (deforestation and habitat conversion); negative effects on natural resources; increased pollution and reduced biodiversity; erosion, salinization and desertification; increased susceptibility of monocultures to crop diseases; water depletion because of increased irrigation; and declining soil quality resulting in lower yields despite all the chemicals. Integrated Pest management (IPM) is more finicky than simply spraying a field with chemicals, but it gives us healthy food with excellent yields. Do GMOs work? – sort of (see earlier Post, Health – Food 1). But then even if you are a GMO advocate, should scientists and corporations be “tinkering with” our food supply? Are biotech corporations testing their products adequately, and is outside oversight adequate? And should large multinational corporations exercise power over global agriculture and small farmers?
The Solution: I’ve said it many times. We need to think differently and more locally when it comes to food. In areas that have converted to Organic Polyculture they have touted claims of over 60,000 lbs food per acre! The market for organics is not yet large but is growing fast (1% of U.S. market, but growing 20%/yr and 3–5% of European market, but growing 30%/yr). I love listening to reason s why people will not go organic. The first is that it costs more. Simple economics – the more people that buy organic the lower the price becomes and the more the producers will change their system to meet the needs of the customers – those two words again – Consumer Sovereignty. Your buying power changes the whole market system. Other advantages for consumers: healthier; environmentally better food. But yes, you will have less uniform and appealing-looking food. Actually the current system has that as well, but the food that doesn’t look perfect never makes it to the grocery stores. Our current system will happily let food rot in the fields and orchards if it is blemished. Try eating a blemished organic heirloom tomato like a Cherokee Purple and then eat a beautiful looking unblemished regular tomato (designed to be mechanically picked green and withstand an impact of 20lbs per square inch when it hit the side of the hopper). Most of our food used to be deliciously tasty. Nowadays, the need to storage and delayed delivery to stores all over the world seems to have had a strange effect on much of the industrialized food hybrids hen it comes to taste. Not that all hybrids are increasingly becoming tasteless. One person has had a dream of something new for over 25 years. Wes Jackson founded The Land Institute (https://landinstitute.org/) to develop Perennial Poly-cropping – returning to hybrid-crops that don’t need planting each season. They state on their website; “The Land Institute and our partners are not working to tweak the now predominant industrial, disruptive system of agriculture. We are working to displace it… It took 10,000 years for humans to become reliant upon an industrial agriculture built upon annual crop monocultures. In the past forty years, The Land Institute and our partners have been breeding new perennial grain and seed crops and researching ecologically intensified polycultures that mimic natural systems.” Sounds good to me – transforming the system. So what else has been occurring in moving us along to SA? TBC…..
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