A thoughtful reader left a provocative (no, not that kind, the thought kind) comment on a post of mine last summer, asking some interesting questions about industrial agriculture:

On a more serious note, do you think the industrial food system is bad in-and-of-itself, or in the ways it currently operates? Could the system be changed? More importantly, could we (as in all almost 7 billion of us) survive without the industrial food system? How do we address the issue of food distribution (and why aren’t we doing a better job of it now)? I’m not sure if there are solid answers to these questions. As it is, I’m just kind of thinking out loud.

I hit the first two questions in Can Industrial Agriculture Work?.  Now on to the “more importantly.”  It really is more important, because for now, if a solution involving changing our behavior doesn’t work for us, it’s not going to happen, no matter how good for the planet it may be.

Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?

Study after study shows that as far as yield per acre is concerned, sustainable agriculture done right outperforms industrial agriculture.  It just does.  (Why do we care about yield per acre? Lots of people, crowded planet, limited fertile farmland.)  What we tend to look at with industrial agriculture is yield per dollar.  And with that as its focus, industrial agriculture beats organic for that.

But, and this is a big but… BUT that yield per dollar equation relies on two major inputs: oil and water.  One more time – industrial agriculture relies on cheap and easy access to oil and water.  We have no reason to believe that oil is getting cheaper (see: What is peak oil?).  And we more or less know that, barring some huge technological breakthrough, we are in trouble when it comes to fresh water, the kind our animals, our food crops, and our families need to survive.

At what cost?

The other thing to remember about industrial agriculture is that those prices you see in the grocery store aren’t real.  If you live in the US, they’re actually heavily subsidized by your tax dollars.  You may not realize it, but much of our current agricultural system is propped up by the Farm Bill (although this year, maybe not?), without which current practices would be absolutely unsustainable (that is, one way on top of all the other ways they are already unsustainable).  Prices as we know them simply don’t reflect reality.

As for the externalized costs of industrial agriculture – costs to the land, water, animals, our own health – they are… heartbreaking.

And these prices, this system, our “food reality,” is indeed, unsustainable.  It is not really a question of whether we can feed the world – over 10 billion people by 2050 – without industrial agriculture.  We can.  We know we can.

Photo CC ||  http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkoshy/

Honestly, I believe we really cannot feed that many people with industrial agriculture, at least not as we know it today.  Sustainable agriculture means more efficient land use, definitely a must-have for a more crowded planet.  It also means not depleting our limited resources, rebuilding rather than decimating the land we are using to grow crops, and moving away from buying food with oil.  Industrial agriculture isn’t working for the planet, and as we try to feed more and more people, we will feel the crunch and it will become clear that it’s not really working for us now.

Related posts:

1. Can Industrial Agriculture Work? (Part 1)
2. The Sustainable Agriculture Fad
3. Why I Feed My Pets Raw

This was a really great question posed by a reader on a post called Canning & Gratitude:

On a more serious note, do you think the industrial food system is bad in-and-of-itself, or in the ways it currently operates? Could the system be changed? More importantly, could we (as in all almost 7 billion of us) survive without the industrial food system? How do we address the issue of food distribution (and why aren’t we doing a better job of it now)? I’m not sure if there are solid answers to these questions. As it is, I’m just kind of thinking out loud.

Instead of writing a novel in the comments, I promised her a blog post with my thoughts on her excellent questions.  In fact, it will probably end up being a series of blog posts, because yeah – big questions.  Long answers.  Lots of thoughts.

First off, is the industrial food system bad in-and-of-itself?

No.  I tend to think no on this one.

Part of this answer will depend on what we mean when we say “industrialization.”  We could probably debate that until the proverbial cows come home.  But for the purpose of this pondering, we’ll use the Wikipedia definition:

Industrial farming is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of livestock, poultry, fish, and crops. The methods of industrial agriculture are technoscientific, economic, and political. They include innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale in production, the creation of new markets for consumption, the application of patent protection to genetic information, and global trade.

Industrialization, like anything, is a tool.  How we use it is our choice.  Given this definition, industrial agriculture is actually a portfolio of tools, and we have a choice about the directions we take with and goals for which we develop them.

Innovation in farming methods and agricultural machinery are not inherently bad.  Innovation in farming methods and agricultural machinery that disregard the bigger picture, the health of the whole, and sustainability over the long term are a huge problem.  That type of industrialization will not serve the planet OR our own needs.  These methods excel at maximizing profit, but fail across the board in numerous other ways.

Photo CC || http://www.flickr.com/photos/walmartcorporate

Industrial agriculture as it exists now, with it’s priorities “misaligned,” so to speak, fails us nutritionally.  It fails the planet.  It fails our children and their children.  It fails those who are starving for lack of access to food in a world where there is enough to feed everyone.  Which leads to the next question…

Could the system be changed?

I believe very strongly that it could be.  It is absolutely incredible the ingenuity, creativity, and flat out awesome that humans are capable of when we get ourselves moving towards a clearly-defined goal.

But right now our incentives are all weird.  Between agricultural subsidies from the farm bill and corporations having the rights of actual human beings, it’s a weird, incentive-skewed world out there.  All of our awesome humanness is being directed in funky directions, distracted, or minimized.

If we could somehow get rid of all that, I think the ingenuity and investment currently fueling industrial agriculture could create a system that looks very different.

What I wonder though is if industrial agriculture might always look… well, industrial.  Look at industrial organic and how far it has strayed from the original spirit of organic agriculture.  The criteria are met, certainly, but industrial organic operations are taking on a lot more of the “industrial” these days than we necessarily picture.  Does industrial agriculture just end up looking industrial?

Or maybe industrial could also look like solar and wind powered farm machinery.  Or vertical urban agriculture.  Or things we haven’t yet dreamed of because of weirdified feedback loops.  Clean industrial.  Sustainably industrial?

I don’t know.  But I’m hopeful.  How about you?  What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Industrial Agriculture Ate My Facebook
2. The Sustainable Agriculture Fad

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.

Related posts:

1. The Sustainable Agriculture Fad