Corduroy Orange

A recent article in The Economist has questioned the wisdom of efforts aimed at making agriculture more sustainable. A key passage from this article contends that chemical inputs help make the most out of available agricultural land by increasing yield per acre:

But not everyone agrees that organic farming is better for the environment. Perhaps the most eminent critic of organic farming is Norman Borlaug, the father of the “green revolution”, winner of the Nobel peace prize and an outspoken advocate of the use of synthetic fertilisers to increase crop yields. He claims the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is “ridiculous” because organic farming produces lower yields and therefore requires more land under cultivation to produce the same amount of food. Thanks to synthetic fertilisers, Mr Borlaug points out, global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10%. Using traditional techniques such as crop rotation, compost and manure to supply the soil with nitrogen and other minerals would have required a tripling of the area under cultivation. The more intensively you farm, Mr Borlaug contends, the more room you have left for rainforest.

The current state of large scale agriculture is, despite any claims to the contrary from Norman Borlaug or anyone else, disturbing. Admittedly, complete cessation of chemical fertilizer use is not realistic. Relying entirely upon them, however, is short-sighted and will only lead to compounded troubles in the future. Striving toward reduced synthetic fertilizer dependency is not only a realistic goal, but a desireable one, especially because chemical fertilizers show reduced efficiency the longer they are applied: each successive year of fertilizer use requires more of the chemicals to match the yield of previous years.

Research by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations shows the declining efficiency of chemical fertilizers quite clearly: in 1960, nitrogen efficiency of fertilizer applications was near 80%, as measured by megatonnes cereal produced/megatonnes fertilizer applied. Efficiency has decreased steadily and today it hovers near 20% [1]. Not only that, but the environmental impacts of the increased applications that are required to maintain current production levels are undeniable. The quantities of fertilizers and pesticides used by large-scale, monocropping agri-business “can increase nutrients and toxins in groundwater and surface waters, incurring health and water purification costs, and decreasing fishery and recreational values” [1].

Further evidence of the biological impacts of massive chemical inputs comes from a study of amphibian populations in St. Lawrence Valley, Canada, in which “after observing nearly 30,000 frogs and toads, [researchers] determined that the incidence of limb deformities in frogs in agricultural areas was nearly seven times greater than those living in non-agricultural areas” [2]. Many of the problems associated with runoff are as a result of the form of nutrient that synthetic fertilizers provide. Fertilizers are formatted to be immediately accesible to the plants grown in the soil to which they are applied, “but the same properties that make these fertilizers immediately available to plants also makes them pollutants in surrounding surface waters, groundwater, and the air” [3].

Sustainable-practice farmers still need to provide nutrient input to their soil, but they seek to lessen the harmful effects associated with their inputs.

Organic farmers depend on the same three nutrients [nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium], but they use crushed rock for phosphorous and potassium, and then count on soils teeming with microorganisms to make the rock supplements available to plants on a slower basis. Organic farmers typically add nitrogen by sowing nitrogen-fixing cover crops, plants on whose roots flourish symbiotic bacteria that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and make it available to the growing crop [3].

While Mr. Borlaug is correct in stating that such practices alone could not support the world’s need for food, changes to current agri-business practice are required to ensure that our food supply remains safe for future generations. I have a hard time understanding why the concept of working with the land instead of trying to dominate the land is so controversial. We need to get beyond the money involved in manufacturing chemicals and shipping produce across the country and pay attention to the fact that current practices endanger the guarantee of having a reliable supply of food into the indefinite future.

One of many blogs to comment on the topic is Marginal Revolution, where a spirited debate about the Economist article is taking place among a wide range of commenters. One such comment comes from Bertram, who shifts the debate towards the politics of omnivorism by writing, “It’s not the land the animal occupies that makes meat land use inefficient. It’s the amount of land needed to grow the food that the animal eats. A person might live on one pound of grain a day but you would have to feed a cow 10 pounds to get enough meat for a person to live on for one day.”

The statistic he cites is based on the proposition that the cow should eat grain or corn. Such a diet is not natural and is a symptom of meat being raised irresponsibly. Cows are meant to digest cellulose (from grass), not carbohydrate from corn. By feeding cows a diet they are unable to properly digest, farmers produce the necessity of keeping the animals on antibiotics. The close quarters in which the cows are kept does not help. They are large animals that ought to have room to graze. Meat raised in such an environment often makes good use of hilly land that otherwise would not be farmable. Unfortunately, meat raised in this manner is not rewarded by the USDA’s grading system, which places undue emphasis on marblization–the veining of fat within muscle tissues that results in large part from a diet of carbohydrates.

Anyone who has ever driven through the Midwest has seen large scale feedlot operations in all of their putrid glory. Cows are coralled so close together that they cannot move, producing lagoons of waste that enter the groundwater untreated. Nor is the practice limited to beef.

North Carolina’s hogs now outnumber its citizens and produce more fecal waste than all the people in California, New York, and washington combined…. But while human waste must be treated, hog waste is simply dumped. [...] The festering effluent that escapes from industrial swine pens has given birth to pfisteria piscicida, a toxic microbe that thrives in the fecal marinade of North Carolina rivers. This tiny predator… inflicts pustulating lesions on fish whose flesh it dissolves with excreted toxins… [and] has killed so many fish—a billion in one instance—that North Carolina must use bulldozers to bury them beneath the rancid shores of the Neuse River and pamlico Sound. Pfisteria causes brain damage and respiratory illness in humans who touch infected fish or water [4].

Clearly, this situation does not describe an agricultural system that is poised to take us into the next century as a healthy population. Even a Republican economist reading the description of the effects of hog waste on the environment would surely take umbrage at the threat to his fishing and hunting grounds!

I do not recommend that our culture should stop eating meat entirely (indeed it irks me whenever anyone makes such a proposition). However, we do need to start raising our animals more responsibly. Our policy makers should recognize the harmful effects on our environment (from untreated waste), our children (from excess consumption of hormones), and our food safety (from excess use of antibiotics and the resulting antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria) and shift the grading system to favor meats coming from responsibly-raised animals. Simultaneously, as consumers we should reduce the amount of meat we consume by reducing portion sizes and not insisting on having meat at every meal.

Moreover, we need to acknowledge that the problems facing our agriculture system are widespread. Monocropping by agri-business producers steadily depletes the soil the crops are grown in, requiring more input of fertilizers, thereby increasing pollution to waters, thereby harming fish, etc. The problems compund through the food chain. We are part of the food chain. We are not immune to the destruction. And that includes Norman Borlaug.

[1] Tilman, David et. al. “Agricultural Sustainability and Intensive Production Practices,” Nature, vol. 418, 8 August 2002, page 673.

[2] Kahn, Gene. “Understanding Organic Farming,” Sustainable Cuisine White Papers, page 7. New York:Earth Pledge Foundation, 1999.

[3] Johnston, Sarah. “More than Food for Thought,” Sustainable Cuisine White Papers, page 100. New York:Earth Pledge Foundation, 1999.

[4] Kennedy, Robert F., Jr. “I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham!,” Sustainable Cuisine White Papers, pages 66-67. New York:Earth Pledge Foundation, 1999.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 9:57 am and is filed under Rant, Sustainable Food, Unearthed Texts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.