by Bill Duesing
There has been remarkable positive movement toward growing food for people near where they live, which is often called agroecology. Methods used in this local, healthy and sustainable food system model maximize use of local resources, including sun and waste products and minimize use of fossil fuels, agro-toxins and abuse of people.
Almost two decades ago, I was
inspired by a speech delivered by visionary organic farmer, Fred Kirschenmann,
to write "Two Visions" for my October 3, 1997 Living on the Earth
broadcast.
Two
Visions
Two
distinctly different visions for the future of our food system have emerged:
one is industrial, the other is ecological.
The
industrial paradigm urges society to amplify research and the application of
intensive, high-input technologies for growing, processing and marketing food
in order to feed an expanding human population.
Proponents
of the ecological paradigm for our food system believe that if the human
species is to survive, the work of feeding ourselves must be incorporated into
the "larger task of restoring the health of local ecosystems" and
communities. They "suggest that this requires not only a redesign of
farming methods, but also of the entire food and agriculture system."
Producing and preparing food should become an integral part of our lives.
The
basics of a food system are really quite simple. Soil supports plants which use
sunlight to turn air and water into delicious things to eat. Animals turn some
of the plants into other good food. Meals are prepared and eaten.
In the
ecological model, the plants, animals and eaters share the same ecosystem.
Wastes from one species nourish others by way of nature's elegant cycles.
Growing and preparing food are integral to the culture, education, joy and the
spirit of each community. While home, school and community gardens are the most
important elements of an ecological food system,
community-supported-agriculture projects, farmers markets, organic farms, as
well as small and part-time farms (especially in urban and suburban areas) are
also critical. All of these human-scale endeavors are expanding steadily here
in the US and around the world. Grassroots organizations believe that these
elements help restore the health not only of people and local ecosystems, but
of rural and urban communities, as well.
The
approach of the industrial food system is very different. This system
disconnects people from direct experience in producing food and disconnects
food production from the elegant natural cycles that allow ecosystems to
function. Instead it creates concentration of ownership, extremely large-scale
monocultures and highly-subsidized facilities which produce, for example,
millions of hogs or chickens, millions of pounds of margarine or millions of
gallons of herbicide each year. It also tends toward boring, inhumane and
oftentimes dangerous employment for its workers.
Because
food is produced very far from where it is eaten, distribution becomes the most
important element in the industrial model. Large agribusinesses use contracts
with farmers, vertical integration and other forms of coordination to control
the flow of food from "farm to mouth." Large chemical, drug, seed and
equipment companies take an increasing share of farmers' earnings for their
high tech, toxic, dangerous, and genetically-engineered inputs. Globalization
of all these activities is big right now, with the overriding goal in all cases
being higher profits to please investors.
While
the ecological approach maximizes the use of solar energy, recycles organic
wastes and uses non-renewable resources sparingly, the industrial approach
voraciously consumes soil, water, packaging materials and energy.
In fact,
energy from fossil and nuclear sources used for growing, processing,
transporting, packaging and marketing has become the most important ingredient
in the industrial food system.
This
system discards farmers and their knowledge as it eliminates locally-adapted
plants and animals in favor of laboratory creations. The industrial system is
quickly narrowing the diversity of food plants that we eat and the diversity of
plant and animal species on Earth.
Proponents
of the industrial vision would have us forge recklessly ahead on their path,
putting all our hopes for future eating into the hands of genetic engineers,
large-scale, far-away farms and global food processors. Their record so far is
not good.
Practitioners
of the ecological system strive to involve as many as possible in the rewarding
work of feeding themselves. They have found that local, ecological food
production nourishes more than bodies. It nourishes spirits and communities,
too.
(This
transcript, and those from all of my weekly Living on the Earth
broadcasts from late 2005 through the fall of 2010 are archived online
by the University of Massachusetts Library. The special collections unit there
also houses the NOFA archives.
Progress
That was 1997. The issues haven't changed much. Progress in the last 18 years, however,
toward the ecological vision is evident all over Connecticut (and indeed the
planet). It is inspiring what people can do. There has been a veritable
explosion of gardens, small farms, community farms, college farms, farmers
markets, and food and farming related organizations. Each of these inspires and connects more
people directly with their food.
In 1997, the Hartford Food System
and at the time, all-volunteer CT NOFA had been around for about 20 years and
Common Ground High School (on a farm in New Haven) was just beginning. The founding of the Working Lands Alliance
and from that the Connecticut Farmland Trust wasn't even on the drawing
board. Farmers markets were few and
mostly small. There were only a handful
of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture farms) offering a weekly share of the
produce.
In this century, notable markets
such as CitySeed's four in New Haven and the famous Coventry Regional Farmers Market
got going. Those markets and others all
over the state stimulated farmers to produce more food and grow more kinds of
crops for a longer season. They encouraged a wave of new and young farmers
which in turn encouraged CT NOFA and UConn to begin beginning farmer-training
programs. The new farmers started their
own organization, the New CT Farmer Alliance.
Community Farms are one of the
most promising of these developments.
They are run by non-profit, community-based organizations to produce
food for people where they live, to provide education and a connection to the
soil. Bridgeport, Hartford, New Haven, New Britain and New London all have one
or more community farms. Many suburban towns have them too, connecting with
school children and enthusiastic volunteers from local businesses. The
Community Farm of Simsbury trains new organic farmers as well as providing food
for the needy.
Land trusts and churches are
growing food for food pantries and towns are establishing Agriculture
commissions. There's now a ConnecticutFood System Alliance.
In our town, the number of people
producing eggs and maple syrup increases each year. More of our neighbors are growing their own
food.
We have a long way to go, but
based on this growth and the concomitant benefits (called positive
externalities) they have a very promising future.
Small Farms Feed 70 Percent of
the World's Population
Local agriculture has a good track
record. According to a report
from the ETC Group, 70 percent of the world's population is fed by a variety of
peasant and small-scale food systems.
The ETC Group is an international organization which is dedicated to
"the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological
diversity and human rights." It traces its roots to Eleanor Roosevelt's
work to help poor, mostly black tenant farmers in the 1930s.
That means that only 30 percent of
the earth's population is fed by the agro-industrial food system. However, the system that fills our
supermarkets and chain restaurants to overflowing uses 75 to 80 percent of the arable
land and 70 percent of the water and fuel used for agriculture. Not so
efficient, but they always want us to buy and consume more.
Despite the widespread benefits of
agro-ecological systems, the agro-industrial system is growing steadily because
of its power and wealth, and the fact that it can spread many of its real costs
(called negative externalities) elsewhere: the planet, people, even, maybe
especially, farmers. Recent news provides good examples.
Big agriculture was a huge
supporter of the recently-passed Trade Promotion Authority (and the Trans
Pacific Partnership that it enables) in part because it would mean more hog
factories and more corn and soy farms to feed them in Iowa. (To my thinking,
more hog factories is a sufficient reason to reject this trade process.) However, as one farmer there said, "It's
really important that we are able to export our product. We have a moral duty. We're feeding the world
here." I guess she hadn't read the
ETC report about who really feeds the world.
This chart indicates the drastic reduction in diversity of crops on
Iowa farms in the last century. You can imagine a lot of delicious
meals on farms and in communities in 1920. Especially since many of the
farms had large, bountiful gardens, too. It would be tough to eat well from the farms in 2002. Any other crops are only grown, if at all, on less than one percent of the farms. All the Roundup, and now 2-4,D to control weeds in the GMO corn and soy makes gardening much harder.
External Costs
One aspect of the system used to
produce more pork for people to eat in Asia is particularly negative: the
millions of tons of nitrogen applied to and leaking from corn fields and
draining out of confined hog feeding operations. Nitrogen is a critical ingredient
for growing corn to feed pigs, cows, chickens, people and cars. (Covering 90
million acres, corn is the most widely grown crop in this country. Except for the produce section, corn is a
part of almost everything in the supermarket: meat, dairy, one or more
ingredients for many processed foods and a key ingredient in soda.)
A recent study by an
international team of scientists found that the annual human and environmental
costs of nitrogen pollution attributable to agriculture is twice the value of all
the corn produced! The nitrogen running
off of farms and animal factories already adds a million dollars a year to the
Des Moines, Iowa water company's costs.
Nitrogen is also a major cause of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico
(the size of Connecticut this year, I hear) and the trouble in our own Long
Island Sound. Nitrogen fertilizers also release greenhouse gases when applied
to the soil.
Nitrogen pollution is just tip of
the iceberg when it comes to the environmental costs of the industrial approach
to growing food. Broad spectrum herbicides and insecticides greatly diminish
biodiversity and resilience, above and below ground, over vast swaths of the
Midwest which was once one of the planet's most diverse and productive
ecosystems.
And, it looks as if even the
farmers who apply the nitrogen will bear some of the costs this year. According to the University of Illinois,
farmers who grow corn in central Illinois, some of the best land in the
country, may lose money on every acre they harvest after paying rent for the
land. However, we taxpayers will make up
some of the difference through crop insurance and other subsidy programs. You can see complete crop budgets here.
The barrage of low cost meat and
processed and fast food adds another external cost - to human health. A recent Brookings Institution Study found
that "if all of the American children who are now obese mature into obese
adults, the cost to the nation would be $1.1 trillion in additional health care
expenses and lower productivity over their lifetimes." What are the costs
of other diet-related diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and
dementia?
This system is clearly not
sustainable. Environmental pollution,
farmers driven out of business and sick people do not bode well for our
future.
And yet industrial agriculture
isn't giving up. It is deeply committed
to growing more of a few, largely genetically-modified crops for processing
into foodstuffs to be shipped to wherever people have money to pay. As Richard Manning says in his very
thought-provoking and provocative, 2004 book, Against the Grain: How
agriculture has hijacked civilization, "The goal of agriculture is not
feeding people; it is the accumulation of wealth." Powerful voices from many public sectors are
aware of how unsustainable and dangerous the industrial food system is. And
they are speaking out about it.
Pope Francis, for example,
recently said: “A true
ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate
questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry
of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
And The People's Test on Climate in
2015 stated: "Nothing less than a systemic transformation of our
societies, our economies, and our world will suffice to solve the climate
crisis and close the ever-increasing inequality gap."
It's challenging work to make
social change, but in this case, our lives depend on it.
