Sustainable Farming

Attention Conservation Notice:
A rapid education about life, consciousness, and society, as well as a thorough discussion of the problems we face in corporate institutions, globalization, and food and resource supply. This book has something for everyone, and everything for someone. Recommended.

Overview:
Written by Fritjof Capra, (The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point, etc.), and published first in 2002, The Hidden Connections is a very thorough and convincing overview of the change we need to create in this world if we want humanity to survive and thrive for the next thousand years.

Part one is a rapid (and fairly dense) information download about the processes and evolution of life, cognition and consciousness, and sociology, especially with respect to the patterns and processes common to these three levels of organization. Capra then wants to apply the understanding of these patterns and processes in part two to solve problems facing big corporations, global capitalism, and biotechnology.

Part two, however, is mainly a review of the state of thing in these three arenas, the important current events, and what other people have thought and written about these. While link between parts one and two is somewhat tenuous, (both in terms of the application of the patterns to solving the global problems as well as in the writing style) the chapters in part two themselves link together very well, and explore the very important issues of global finance, and the inequality it has generated, as well as agricultural biotechnology, which is endangering biodiversity and sustainability of farming world over.

All in all, the book is an excellent overview of some of the major problems we face in the world today, and how we can solve them. Be sure to read it.

Recently, I wrote about the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the non-existent benefits of genetically modified crops:

Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops
... Despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields. ...

Biotechnology crops, like the Roundup Ready seeds from Monsanto are exacerbating the problems they were supposed to solve:

As more acres of "Roundup Ready" crops are planted, the use of the pesticide has increased. The increased application has led some weeds to develop a resistance to glyphosate, the generic term for the chemical in Roundup. And, in turn, farmers have had to apply stronger doses of pesticide to kill the superweeds.

- Business Week, February 2008

Nonetheless, we tend to think of technological progress as a net positive. Is biotechnology the answer to the problems of mechanical and chemical technology of the past few decades?

Do we need biotechnology to feed the world?

We've seen that the world already produces enough food for everyone. Hunger is not a result of scarcity, but of inequitable distribution.

... The second fallacy is that genetic engineering boosts food production. Currently there are two principal types of biotechnology seeds in production: herbicide resistant and "pest" resistant. [Herbicide resistant crops] allow farmers to apply [Roundup] in ever greater amounts without killing the crops. ... [The "pest" resistant crop] produces its own insecticide.
...
genetically engineered seeds do not actually increase overall crop yields. ... [in] more than 8,200 field trials... Roundup ready seed produced fewer bushels of soybeans than similar natural varieties.

(The other troubling aspect of GM foods - the terminator seed technology, is currently under a de-facto ban. It is legally prohibited in India and Brazil.)

Is biotechnology safe?

• There is no overall reduction in pesticide use with genetically modified crops.
• GM foods brings its own pollution hazard - biological and genetic pollution. The harmful effects of GM organisms on natural ecosystems is well documented.
• Genes from modified organisms can spread to other organisms, with unpredictable consequences*.
• Biotechnology may bring new toxins and allergens into the human food supply.*

Biotechnology is expensive and inefficient:

Despite the billions of dollars spent creating transgenic organisms, biotechnology is yet to bring to market a single product that actually benefits consumers. Why should the public pay for this effort that offers no advantages, but increases risks?



* For example the StarLink corn recall: Wikipedia, New York Times, and more stories from the NYTimes.

Food, Inc. is a new documentary by Robert Kenner that examines the state of food, and particularly "Big Food" in America. Doesn't look like it has been released widely yet, but should be certainly worth watching. Check out the trailers below:

Proponents of mega-farming often insist that highly mechanized, chemical intensive industrial agriculture produces food more effciently than small scale farming. I have already written about The Myth Of Large Farm Productivity, as well as the Energy Cost Of Food to show that this is false economically as well as energetically. Below are the facts against the proposed "efficiency" of mega-farming from the book Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy Of Industrial Agriculture:

... how does the "bigger is better" myth survive? ... because of a deeply flawed method of measuring farm "productivity" ... as the production per unit area of a single crop. ... If we are to compare accurately the productivity of small and large farms, we should use total agricultural output, balanced against total farm inputs and "externalities," rather than single crop yield as our measurement principle. 

...

Though the yield per unit area of one crop may be lower, the total output per unit area of small farms, often composed of more than a dozen crops and numerous animal products, is virtually always higher than that of larger farms. 

...

There is virtual consensus that large farms do not make as good use of even [farm labor and modern technology] because of management and labor problems inherent in large operations. Mid sized and many smaller farms come far closer to peak efficiency when these factors are calculated.

The Union of Concerned Scientists website has an interesting Food and Agriculture section. From their article "Hidden Costs of Industrial Agriculture":

It is time to transform agriculture into a sustainable enterprise, one based on systems that can be employed for centuries -- not decades -- without undermining the resources on which agricultural productivity depends. The question is how to do it. The choices are to stick with the current system and adjust around the edges or to fundamentally rethink it. UCS is aiming for the transformation of U.S. agriculture to a system that is both productive and practical over the long-term. Apparent advantages of the current, industrial approach – from high yields per acre, to chemical industry profits, to profitable CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), to foreign sales by corporate giants like Sara Lee, ConAgra, and Cargill – look very different when considered in the light of the health and other problems the approach creates, as well as the many ways in which consumers actually subsidize the destructive system with their tax dollars.

Also of interest from the UCS website: 

Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops
As the world grapples with concerns about food availability, this groundbreaking UCS report debunks widespread myths about the superiority of GE crop yields.

People in the developed world spend the least fractions of their household expenditure on food. ("We should all thank our productive and efficient farmers and ranchers for making that bargain possible." - Katy Coba, director of the Oregon Department of Agriculture) Does this reflect the true costs of industrial agriculture?

Environmental costs:

Intensive use of pesticides and fertilizers seriously pollute our water, soil, and air. ... animal factories produce 1.3 billion tons of manure each year. Laden with chemicals, antibiotics, and hormones, the manure leaches into rivers and water tables, polluting drinking supplies and causing fish kills. ... Currently, consumers pay billions of dollars annually in environmental costs directly attributed to industrial food production, not including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil...

Health costs:

Conventional analyses also ignore the human health costs of consuming industrial foods, including the contribution of pesticides, hormones and other chemical inputs to our current cancer epidemic... Taken together, these medical health costs [of cancer, food borne illnesses, obesity, diabetes etc.] are clearly in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Tax subsidies:

Price supports, price "fixing", tax credits, and product promotion are all forms of welfare for agribusiness. ... Taken together, these subsidies add almost $3 billion to the hidden cost of food to consumers.

In conclusion:

When we calculate the real price, it is clear that far from being cheap, our current food production system is imposing staggering monetary burdens on us and future generations [in the form of environmental, health and social costs]. By contrast, non-industrial food production significantly reduces, and can even eliminate most of these costs.

This is the third in the series of excerpts from the book Fatal Harvest. While these facts are now much better known, at least in the "organic lifestyle" community in the first world, industrial farming practices are increasingly being promoted by corporations and governments in the developing world. Hence, I am posting these excerpts so that they are available to everyone who is interested in this issue.

From Reuters:

Cuts to U.S. farm payments will be directed at farmers and ranchers with large incomes and big sales, and could affect 3 percent of farmers in the United States, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday.

Good news for small(er) farmers everywhere, but it seems unlikely that Obama can get this through the Congress.

Related news.

Farm Size versus Output in the United States, 1992

---

Median Farm Size Category (Acres)	Average Gross Output ($/Acre)	Average Net Output ($/Acre)
4	7424	1400
27	1050	139
...	...	...
694	249	51
1364	191	39

---

Since I briefly mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I've been trying to get a handle on the inverse relationship between farm size and output. The effect has been observed in all regions of the world, and is consistent across all farm sizes (page 8, in the .pdf).* Looking through the 2007 US Agriculture Census, I found that the effect still exists, though the difference in output seems to be smaller than in the table above (perhaps due to a difference in methodology?). Data from Table 58. Summary by Size of Farm: 2007 (.pdf) According to the Food First policy brief, the high productivity on small farms in the developing world is due to:

1. Multiple cropping
2. Land use intensity
3. Output composition
4. Irrigation
5. Labor quality
6. Labor intensity
7. Input use
8. Resource use

(for detailed explanation of each, see page 7 in the .pdf) On the other hand, larger farms are typically cultivated as monocultures, usually yield a single crop per year, use heavy machinery and significant chemical inputs, and produce low value commodities. The environmental costs of large mechanized agriculture is a different issue altogether! Since in the developing world the vast majority of farms are small, and the availability of farm labor is high, it makes sense to improve the efficiency and profitability of these farms by switching gradually to natural farming methods which are even more profitable due to

• near zero input costs
• low labor requirement
• a diversity of high value (and organic) crops

The conservation and enrichment of local resources is of course an excellent added bonus. These will also make the ecosystems more resilient in the face of a fluctuating climate in the next few decades. * Browsing through current academic literature, I got the impression that among economists, this effect is viewed as somewhat of an artifact; i.e. economics research papers tend to explain the effect on the basis of inequalities (in labor etc.) between small and large farms, rather than as a real farm productivity difference. I have tried to get some clarification from professional economists, but haven't heard anything yet. If you have any opinions one way or another, please let me know.

Michael Pollan (Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley) talks about* the need to change agricultural practices in the context of changing energy and environmental realities. Highlights:

• After automobiles, agriculture is the largest carbon emitter in the US
• Policy changes in the '70s took the closed nutrient loop solution to farming - small multicrop farms with animals on them - and divided it into two enormous problems - giant fossil fuel fed farms, and cattle feedlots that are animal waste producing factories.
• In the coming expensive-energy era, this industrial farming model is going to be unfeasible, and more people are going to have to return to farming in the US. For this to happen, the status of agriculture needs to be elevated.
  

Michael Pollan also wrote an open letter on the same theme to the president-elect a while ago.

On a similar note, watch this TED Talk by Mark Bittman:


Compared to US agriculture practices, developing world farming is far more sustainable and at the right scale. However, to improve the long term survival of small farming, we need to act now. Improving the profitability by reducing material and labor costs, and improving stability by enhancing biodiversity will prove to be the key factors.

* Hat-tip to Rachel Nisselson bringing the Michael Pollan interview to my attention.

P. Sainath has been a clear and rational voice for India's rural poor, farmers, and lower cast population, . He was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (considered Asia's Nobel Prize) for Journalism in 2007 (as well as many other awards). His numerous articles (including a series of articles on farmer's suicides) provide an illuminating and sobering overview of issues including small and medium farming, inequities in global trade, government corruption and inaction, etc.

For a quick overview of the issues he has covered, read this interview conducted after he won the Magsaysay award:

...
Q: One hears a lot of people arguing that small and medium farms are simply unviable in the global agricultural scenario. Do you agree? Is there really a model that can work for the small farmer in India, or are we going to see family farms go the way they did in the US?

A: First off, I think they're wrong to question viability in such simplistic terms. If you consciously develop something, and nurture it, then it becomes viable. What we have is a situation where agriculture in India is being made unviable by imposition. Is American agriculture really viable? You have a situation where cotton crop worth 3.9 billion dollars receives 4.7 billion in subsidies. The Europeans are throwing billions of euros worth of crops into the sea. Whose farming is really unviable? In reality, developed world farming is hugely wasteful, not to forget destructive of soils. And yet, the question is asked if Third World farming, especially small and medium farms, can last in the long run.
...

We need to move away from environmentally and socially destructive industrial agriculture, and the only way to do that is to nurture high output small agriculture by reducing the high input costs and the market distorting subsidies in the developed world.

Eliminating small farmers' dependence on big-industry inputs, including on all fertilizers, pesticides and machines will prove to be the critical issue of the next few decades.