Like so many other people, I have been wasting too much time on a Facebook game called Farmville.  While I have not yet reached the point of awakening in the middle of the night to harvest my virtual crops (sleep is sacred in this house), there are some mornings where the well-being of my fake plants takes precedence over breakfast and tea.

So I was bothered when my Farmville friends and neighbors were mysteriously earning levels and money faster than I was.  Disguised as a helpful neighbor, I began to spy on my friends’ farms.  While chasing away foxes and crows, pulling weeds, and fertilizing crops, I snapped pictures with my telephoto lens in order to discover the secret of their success.

Mono-cropping, anyone?

Farm animals penned together in tidy rows.  The sweet smell of the virtual manure lagoons…

And what farm would be complete without the hum of a trusty tractor and harvester, which can be purchased for a mere 30,000 gold coins each.  These minimize the arduous labor of clicking on each plot to plant, harvest, plow, and plant again.  Of course, you will have to pay dearly for the fuel, as it must be bought with Farmville dollars, best acquired by donating real money to Zynga, the company that created Farmville.  (An apt parallel to the real world, in which we are all paying more dearly than we realize for our fuel habits.)

Common techniques throughout, it seems:

And finally, new from the creators of Farmville…

A dairy building, so your cows never again have to see the light of day.

On Maximizing Profit

So what does Farmville have to teach us about industrial agriculture?  A few things come to mind, but the main thing is this:

It is natural for individuals to maximize profit.  In the world of Farmville, where pollution, overcrowding, soil degradation, and other ecological consequences do not exist, my neighbors found the most efficient way to maximize their profit, either in terms of Farmville gold coins or experience gained from planting crops.  In the real world, where the costs are externalized (air and water pollution), or can be compensated for in some other way (fertilizers and pesticides), we see similar results.

Perhaps if we can find a way to internalize these costs, and take a step back from the global tragedy of the commons in which we find ourselves, the real world might look a little less like Farmville.  Or Farmville might look a little less like the real world.

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1. The Sustainable Agriculture Fad

Last Thursday was Blog Action Day: Climate Change.  Thousands of bloggers from around the world, across countries and across topics, took a day to blog about climate change.  It was a profound example of the power of collected action — nearly 32,000 posts reached an estimated 17 million people.

But as I was skimming through some of the posts, I noticed something.  It’s something I’ve also noticed in almost every article I’ve read about sustainable agriculture.

There’s a big pink elephant in the room, and it’s growing exponentially each year.

Meet My Elephant.  I call him “Population.”

There is much to read about fighting climate change, from the very small (eat less meat, turn off the lights) to the very large (complete overhaul of the transportation and energy infrastructure).  The same goes for sustainable agriculture, where it seems that battle lines are now being drawn between advocates of old techniques and those that trust in new technology.  In many of these debates, the elephant is mentioned offhand.

feed a population of 10 billion people…

mitigate increasing carbon emissions – rapid development, rapidly growing populations…

The wording changes, but underneath all these conversations is the knowledge that  in the future, we will have to address the same problems we have now, but for many more people.

I’m not advocating government population control policy or saying that everyone should stop having children immediately.  But I do wonder why we’re not talking about this more.  Especially when there is one easy and affordable thing we can do that will make a dramatic difference.

Educate Girls

If we want to reduce our population growth, the easiest thing we can do is educate girls.  This means that if we want to fight climate change, if we want to reduce poverty, if we want to be able to feed our population more effectively – we need to educate girls.

I’m not really sure why we can’t seem to talk about the elephant in the room.  (Do any of you know?)  But it seems like even if we can’t talk about the problem, we should at least be able to start talking about one of the solutions.

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Last week (or maybe the week before by now – I am slow!), The Ten Reasons They Hate You So made the rounds in a couple of sustainable agriculture social networking circles.  I was astonished to learn that, as a liberal arts educated advocate of sustainable agriculture, I hate farmers.  In order to educate my adversary so that they can best combat people like me, Mike Smith lists the first five reasons that I (along with people like me) hate farmers and agricultural scientists.

I don’t often find an article so utterly compelling or appalling that I feel the need to respond to it.  Perhaps it was just having my supposed hatred of farmers spelled out so clearly for me that prompted this response.  I highly recommend reading, or at least skimming, Mike Smith’s post before reading this one.  It may get you as irritated as I am.  At the least, the list below will make more sense.

1.  They hate you because you trust in science.

I don’t hate you because you trust in science.  Actually, I’m a big fan of science.  But I don’t think you get to choose which science you listen to.  You can’t hope to feed the world while ignoring the scientifically documented consequences of unsustainable agricultural practices;  consequences that are intimately connected to feeding the world.

I don’t have “faith that farming can grow the food pie for everybody without draining the Earth of its resources.”  Rather, I am certain that we must find a way to do so, because when the Earth’s resources are gone, the result will be famine on a scale we can hardly imagine.

I am also certain that the solution will be scientific in nature.  But it can’t be science that is focused only on increasing production while ignoring the scientifically documented ramifications of unsustainable agricultural practices.

2.  They hate you because you’re messing with their kids.

I don’t hate you because you’re messing with my kids.  And actually, no offense to your kids, but I care a lot more about the food I put in my body than whether you’re feeding your kids organic or not.  But why is it wrong for me to care what I feed my own kids?  And to spend my money accordingly?

3.  They hate you in order to fight the power.

It’s not about fighting the power of an “imposed American cuisine of meat, potatoes, cooked vegetable and the ultimate WASP Jello-mold salad.”  It’s about obesity and diabetes.

It’s not a “post-structuralist” questioning of science.  It is science itself saying, “The way we eat isn’t healthy.”

And I am baffled by how me buying, with money, a share in a local CSA is advocating “local farming a la communist Cuba.”  Isn’t the whole point of capitalism purchasing (and thus creating demand for) products you find valuable?  Silly me – I thought small, local businesses were the heart of our economy.

4.  They hate you because you’re white.

Well, this is a hard one.  Because I’m white.  So I’m not really hating you because I’m white.

But as a white person, I do think the USDA might want to examine their recommendation on drinking milk, both because I’m lactose-intolerant and because scientific (there’s that thing I’m supposed to hate again) evidence indicates that in spite of consuming vast quantities of milk, our bones aren’t actually stronger (Sources: 1, 2, eat fish, the list could go on and on).

And my taste for “brown” foods has nothing to do with a counter-cultural fight against dominant white culture.  It has a lot to do with nutritional science.  And with the fact that I think brown rice tastes better than white rice.  So there, White Power!  Your rice doesn’t taste as good!

5.  They hate you because you’re male.

I am a woman, so clearly I’m a big man-hater.  Except as a wife (of a man), I am grateful that my family has the economic flexibility for me to be “consigned to the kitchen and the garden” when I have children.  I actually really like my kitchen and my garden!  I look forward to being home and raising my kids.

I’m still not really clear on why being pro-sustainably farmed, healthy food means I’m anti-male.  Gender equality has a long way to go in this country.  But that is certainly not specific to agriculture.  My criticism of unsustainable agriculture has nothing to do with the anatomy of the farm owner and operator.  Maybe I should go ask some of the male advocates of sustainable agriculture what I’m missing here.  Surely they know why I should be hating their farming counterparts.

Reasons six through ten.

I honestly can’t decide whether I’m looking forward to or dreading the release of reasons six through ten: Norman Rockwell through Ronald Reagan.  But I do hope that any farmers who read Smith’s post are smart enough to recognize utter nonsense (and blatant sexism) when they see it.

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Farming is not adapted to large-scale operations because of the following reasons: Farming is concerned with plants and animals that live, grow, and die.  – “Ancient” agricultural textbook (Cornell University, 1942)

Social systems are not adapted to large-scale operations, because social systems are concerned with humans that live, grow, and die.

Part of the problem with society today is that we have gotten too big.  Our social systems are designed with the end result in mind, and then reverse engineered to find the starting point.  Macro level goals are broken down into micro level steps ill-suited to meeting the needs of the living building blocks that make up the system.  We see this problem across the board, from education to health care to agriculture.

We consistently see education failing, in spite of increased emphasis on results-based standardized testing.  Ask any teacher why.  They are living it every day.  Every child is an individual.  Every child learns differently.  Teaching to the tests takes time away from real learning, which is a matter of meeting individual needs on a micro basis.

Health care is the same situation.  Ever person is different.  Our health does not benefit from top-down management.  Actual health care and treatment is lost in a sea of diagnostic coding, frivolous testing, preexisting conditions – insurance paperwork.  That is, if you have access to health care at all.

And agriculture.  Nutritional, environmental, and ethical issues.  Large-scale agriculture is failing us.  (For those that say it is the only way to feed the world, please note: We have more than enough food to feed the world.  Hunger is a result of other failing social systems.)

In spite of Malthusian warnings, the world’s population is still growing.  We’re getting bigger.  So we are going to need to reevaluate our systems.  Because the ones we have now aren’t gonna cut it.

Take a close look.  If the building blocks that make up the system live, grow, and die, it is likely that that system is already failing.

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“Yearning in the human soul to smell a flower, pet a pig, and enjoy food with a face has never been stronger,” preaches Joel Salatin, the man responsible for Polyface Farms, one of the best known working cases for commercially viable sustainable agriculture.  I hope – no, pray – that he is correct.  Because sometimes I worry that I am wrong, and that the growing trend towards eating organic, beyond organic, local and hyperlocal does not exist.  What if it’s just a fad?

I read a lot about sustainable agriculture – books, articles, blogs, and even down to the mini-conversations that try to happen within 140 characters on Twitter.  And it seems to me that people really care a lot about what they eat and where it comes from.  But maybe it only looks like that to me because I’m paying attention to it.  I am increasingly connected to the various sustainable food movements.  It is like that psychological principle that we seek things out that reinforce our preexisting beliefs – confirmation bias.  I become more aware and I believe in it.  Then I filter my inputs so that it seems like everyone is on board.

But confirmation bias aside, it does seem like the right moment for the sustainable agriculture to succeed, or to fail.  In spite of some depressing food-related legislative changes, we have a White House with a vegetable garden on the lawn, and a first lady who publicly advocates real food as a matter of course.  No matter how depressing they may be, at least legislative developments from the Farm Bill to food safety indicate that food is a big issue.

Food is also increasingly connected to the public dialogue on health and health care.  Obesity has become an epidemic in the United States.  Diabetes, especially Type II and childhood onset diabetes are receiving increased media attention.  Michael Pollan connected the dots between food and health in his recent New York Times op-ed.

But while being a big issue is necessary for a substantial level of change to occur, it is not always sufficient.  In fact, too much talk translated into too little action will result in fatigue.  The issue once in the front of peoples minds is pushed to the back by rhetoric and too much babble.  We are already seeing it happen in terms of green washing.  What will it take to prevent it from happening with sustainable agriculture as well?

If the battle for real food is going to be won, we must see sufficient change before the chatter is too loud for too long.  And in order for that to happen, the sustainable agriculture movement needs to find some level of consensus on wat success looks like, and how it will be measured.

What does sustainable agriculture mean to you?

Photography: http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant/ / CC BY 2.0

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I spent a couple hours on Saturday morning watching The Future of Food, a documentary about genetically engineered foods.* I generally consider myself fairly educated about environmental and health issues. I try to be an engaged citizen and consumer. And I like to rant about things to my skeptical family, which means I have to be pretty careful about my facts. But this movie got me. I didn’t know all of this. I barely knew any of it. Which makes me think that most people probably don’t know about it at all.

Just a partial list of some new-to-me facts:

• 97% of vegetables that were grown at the beginning of the century are now extinct. That’s just scary. What would be saying if it were 97% of animal species lost in a century?
• The right to patent living things was deliberately left out of the Constitution. Maybe they had a good reason?
• Monsanto vs. Schmeiser. This is just unbelievable.
• Transgenic corn has been genetically engineered to have BT, a bacterial toxin, in each cell. This kills not just harmful insects, but beneficials as well.
• BT corn is not FDA tested, but is GRAS – “generally recognized as safe.”
• 25 countries require labeling of GMOs. We are not one of them. We could be, if the bill ever makes it out of committee. (It will need to be reintroduced this Congress.)
• In ten years, all of the food in the world could be controlled by six companies, one of which will be American. Any guess as to which company? Walmart.

This film reminded me again that politics is in everything. “The personal is political.” And the political is personal. We wouldn’t allow companies to patent our bodies, would we? Why are we allowing them to patent other living things? When they patent our food, it is personal.

Patents do not protect traditional knowledge. Rather, they limit the process of passing on traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge is key to building resilient communities over generations. How much has been lost in the last two generations? There is a whole community forming today around relearning and revitalizing skills that we could have learned from our grandparents – growing and preserving food, and even basic cooking. The more we allow companies to limit access to things no one person should own, the more we risk losing these fundamental skills.

Now let me clarify that I am a capitalist. I really do believe in capitalism. But I do not trust a corporation to self-regulate food safety and nutrition. Corporations are designed to maximize profit, not nutrition. The FDA exists for a good reason.

In order for corporations to continue doing what they do best (providing what consumers want), consumers need to be able to choose what to buy. And in order to exercise choice, we must have access to information. If genetically engineered foods aren’t labeled, we cannot choose.

We also need to start paying attention to who is running our government. In The Future of Food, they narrated a long list of Monsanto-government crossovers throughout the last decade. Just one – Michael Taylor, who was responsible for GMOs bypassing FDA testing in the early 90’s, previously represented Monsanto as Senior Counsel at King & Spalding. In the best of worlds, there would be no such thing as a conflict of interest. But Washington is not and has never been the best of worlds.

Do you take your children personally? Do you take their food personally? If so, now is the time to start taking politics personally.

* The Future of Food website does not appear to include the Hulu link. If there is not a screening near you, or if you are lazy like me, you can watch the film online.

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