The American model of agriculture comes with a heavy price. I'm not going to go into a big diatribe here about the giant agribusiness corporations and their lobbyists that control so much of the way we get our food supply. Others have done and continue to do that better. Instead, I'm simply going to point to a column by Mark Bittman in the NY Times today about A Simple Fix For Farming.
The results of a multi-year study show that it's possible to produce crop yields that compare with the current methods while reducing the amount of chemicals needed by vast amounts. It doesn't require complicated new technology or a total makeover of farming - just a few changes with a big bang for the buck. More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
American agriculture has become dependent on a model of food production through heavy use of chemicals - fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified seed stocks adapted to them, etc. While this produces vast amounts of food (climate change willing), farmers are forced to buy lots of chemicals and use them in energy intensive ways to get those yields. The side effects include chemicals in the food we eat, chemicals in the soil, and chemicals in the water supply. (That last item can have huge effects - and that includes drinking water.)
The organic farming movement is a reaction to this, as is eating locally. It is possible to grow food that is healthy and abundant without relying on chemicals - but so far that involves a premium at the cash register for most people. A study cited by Mark Bittman suggests there is a solution that lies between the extremes of food as industrial product versus food as a hand-crafted artisanal product. The gist of the study is here in Bittman's column:
The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. On another, they planted a three-year cycle that included oats; the third plot added a four-year cycle and alfalfa. The longer rotations also integrated the raising of livestock, whose manure was used as fertilizer.
The results were stunning: The longer rotations produced better yields of both corn and soy, reduced the need for nitrogen fertilizer and herbicides by up to 88 percent, reduced the amounts of toxins in groundwater 200-fold and didn’t reduce profits by a single cent.
In short, there was only upside — and no downside at all — associated with the longer rotations. There was an increase in labor costs, but remember that profits were stable. So this is a matter of paying people for their knowledge and smart work instead of paying chemical companies for poisons. And it’s a high-stakes game; according to the Environmental Protection Agency, about five billion pounds of pesticides are used each year in the United States.
emphasis added
While you'd think that such a finding would be getting trumpeted far and wide, Bittman notes that the researchers had several rejections from prominent journals before finally publishing the study at PLOS One. Bittman found out about it through the Union of Concerned Scientists website.
Studies like this are a direct threat to the bottom line of the big agricorps, which means spreading the word against a flood tide of industry 'common wisdom' will take some doing. Chemicals aren't abandoned completely - but instead of broadside application in bulk they can be targeted on an as-needed, where-needed, when-needed basis. The experiment at the Marsden farm has one downside, if you can call it that - it calls for a bit more labor to manage a more diverse farming strategy. But at a time of high unemployment, that sounds more like a feature than a bug - and the profits remain the same while the environment does far better.
While you can read the study at PLOS One, or the summary at Concerned Scientists, let me hit a few high points right here.
• A longer crop rotation through several different crops before a field is planted with the same crop again means that insect pests and weeds that are a problem for each crop have a harder time persisting.
• Reduced pesticide use means natural predators can play a larger role in controlling pests, with less damage to the natural environment too.
• Adding animals into the mix (like cattle) means their manure gets used as fertilizer where it's created, instead of becoming a huge problem as in feedlots. There's also a savings in the energy costs needed to transport food to the animals and the manure to the fields.
• Diversifying farming in this way makes smaller farms more viable economically - and more resistant to crop failures, disease outbreaks, etc.
• Reducing the amount of chemicals consumed not only is better for the food, soil, and water, it reduces the toxic waste generated producing those chemicals and saves the energy used to transport them.
• It makes budgeting simpler for farmers when they don't have to worry about fluctuating prices for chemicals bought in bulk, or specialty pest-resistant seed stocks - or at least not as much.
• The growing reliance on genetically modified seed stocks may turn out to be a trap; crop rotation is effective way to deal with pests, and the Marsden study shows, does not carry a financial penalty.
• By diversifying the crops they grow, farmers may be better able to cope with weather events like droughts, and crop prices that go up or down depending on everyone planting the same thing having a good year or a bad year.
There's nothing radical in this study and its conclusions except for one thing. It directly threatens the bottom line of the giant corporations who have shaped agricultural policy to favor the mass consumption of their products at the expense of human health, the environment, and the people who produce our food. Turning that around is not going to be easy. The predictable response from industry will be: disinformation with counter-studies, attacks on the study and the people who produced it, legislative and financial incentives to protect their markets, and so on.
Note: This isn't about all farming, which is a pretty diverse part of the economy. It focuses mainly on the corn-soybeans-livestock segment. But, that's still a big chunk of the overall business and the implications are still relevant to farming in general.
The good news is that the recommendations coming from the Marsden Farm don't really require all that much to implement. It's a matter of getting the word out, changing the thinking at ground level, and applying horse sense instead of chemicals. The bad news is that billions of dollars are riding on this NOT happening. We're still living with the toxic legacy of Earl Butz and the industrialization of farming. Maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back. The politician who can find a way to sell this to the Heartland could shake up the road to the White House that starts in Iowa.