A Rant Against the Assumptions of Industrial Agriculture

This article was passed along to me and I felt that I needed to respond in some way:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-perspec0104mcgovernjan04,0,1762931.story

I think McGovern & Matz bring up good points here. We cannot completely stop farming on a commercial scale at this time, and any change away from industrial agriculture has to be incremental.

Having said that, I do disagree with the unstated assumption in this article that U.S. industrial agriculture's goal is to feed the world. Agribusiness is just that: a business. When food is viewed as a commodity to be sold and purchased (not as a basic human right) it will go to those who can afford it. We can increase production 100-fold in this country, and the basic fact remains that only those who can afford it will have access to food, those that cannot afford it will go hungry.

The article quotes Norman Borlaug, the "Father of the Green Revolution," a revolution that significantly increased food production. But the number of hungry throughout the world remained either static or (especially more recently) has greatly increased since this "revolution." Yes, population has increased as well and I am unsure of the actual rates of growth comparatively, but I think we just need to question the assumption that more technology equals progress. The green revolution has brought increased crop yields but the number of hungry increases every day. The profits are not shared through equal distribution of food; rather, profits are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Monsanto, for example, dominates the GM seed industry. And while GM seeds have brought increased yields (in some, but not all instances) there has been no decrease in the total number of people without food worldwide. Monsanto has seen record profits (http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/01/05/daily36.html) for a while now, as a global food crisis continues to exist. At the same time, GM crops may actually be hurting U.S. agriculture significantly (http://www.organicconsumers.org/patent/exposed091702.cfm), and also has brought a dramatic rise in farmer suicides throughout the developing world, environmental damage due to increased pesticide and herbicide use, and unknown health effects that have yet to be tested on humans.

Another argument that is always used by industrial ag folks is that the U.S. is the largest donor of food aid, something that can only be done with our chemical and technological inputs. U.S. food aid is first and foremost a foreign policy tool & a way to help powerful interests at home. Legally, U.S. food aid must be purchased from U.S. sources and it must be shipped on U.S. ships. This often causes food aid to arrive anywhere between a few weeks and 6 months after it is first requested. U.S. packagers and shippers are often more expensive than foreign companies, causing up to 75% of all money spent on food aid to go to U.S. corporations, leaving only $0.25 to the dollar to actually buy food. Another problem is that once the food finally gets there, it is often sold by aid non-profits (to those who can afford it, not necessarily the hungry!) to raise money for their other programs.

In terms of aid undermining local farming, I recommend looking into the recent Niger famine. Basically, they had a surplus of food in the country that was stockpiled. People couldn't afford it so it just sat there. U.S. aid was shipped from the U.S. It took months to get there because U.S. food aid 1) has to be bought from U.S. sources 2) has to be shipped on U.S. ships. By the time the food got there, the famine was coming to an end. Farmers were able to grow again. But there was U.S. food aid sitting around that needed to be used, so they dumped it on the market, prices fell again, and farmers and the people suffered because of it.

Celia Dugger of the New York Times has really good coverage of U.S. food aid policy if you are interested in reading more. Below are a few articles that helped me understand the system a lot better:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/washington/03food.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/world/africa/02malawi.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/world/29food.html

What I think the authors do not see if that, for many, creating a more sustainable, localized food system is about more than just crop yields and productivity. (Even so, organically grown crops have shown to be as productive if not more than industrially grown crops. The reasons for this are many and I would be happy to expand on them later on). Rebuilding our food system is about redefining how we see food. It is taking food as a commodity and turning it back into a basic human right - what connects us to the land, the environment, our communities, our culture, and our own nutrition. Business as usual may increase production, but at what cost? If the food is not going to feed the hungry but only helps to increase profits of the Monsanto's of the world, why must Americans support these corporations through our tax dollars in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies? If industrial agriculture continues to destroy our environment while being one of the MAJOR contributors to greenhouse gases and the climate crisis, is it worth it? (Climate change is going to hurt the people that are most in need throughout the world most, further damaging the land that is already being exploited for cash-crops to be exported to the West). We must ask, What is the bottom line? Is it corporate profit? Or is it human well-being?