BEFORE2030 - A LIVABLE FUTURE For people, planet, and all life
REDUCE AGRICIDE, INCREASE REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE WORLDWIDE
Many people won’t understand about this without some back-story. So here goes.
In the early twentieth century the chemical Haber/Bosch process led to the ability to make nitrogen fertilizer, whereas agriculture until that time relied on natural substances like animal manure or guano from sea birds. This process relies heavily on fossil fuels for its production.
After the second-world-war, the chemical industry involvement in agriculture increased exponentially. It helped fuel what is called the ‘green revolution.’ This agriculture, heavily dependent on fossil fuels, chemical production for fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, expensive machinery, land acquisition (larger areas farmed), genetic modification of seeds, did indeed increase food and feed output tremendously, but at what cost? Chemical runoffs into streams and oceans causing dead zones, (currently 415 worldwide, National Geographic Society), monocultures leading to super bugs and increased plant disease, massive biodiversity loss, deforestation, large carbon footprint, soil erosion, etc., make these practices not only damaging now, but worse as time goes on and eventually unsustainable, as non-renewable fossil fuels deplete into the future. Within the industrial animal production side of agriculture, similar problems exist, including the vast inhumane aspect of the system, and the outsized inefficiency of turning plant foods into meat. (More in: Encourage Plant Based Eating).
This has led to what some call the Agribusiness/pharmaceutical complex. Some companies own and supply the seed, the chemical processes and pharmaceutical products. Many of the ‘foods’ produced by this system, some call them ‘feed’ not food, also include ultra-processed foods that many now rely heavily on for their nutrition and that are not nutritious enough to support human health, and are in fact engineered to be addictive. Many current illnesses (80% Cleveland Clinic), are what are called ‘lifestyle’ diseases and can be directly linked to diets heavily dependent on ultra-processed foods.
Although many people around the world are dependent on this system, in 2022, more than 700 million people faced hunger and 2.4 billion people lacked year-round access to sufficient and nutritious food, according to the United Nations – therefore it hasn’t alleviated hunger.
That’s why many people consider this form of agriculture unsustainable and call for what is variously called, Regenerative farming practices, restoration agriculture, agroforestry, organic agriculture, etc., to restore soil health, reduce pollution, reverse biodiversity loss, use less water, benefiting both communities and planet. These practices would probably benefit from smaller farms, individually owned and locally distributed everywhere. Critics to this say, we can’t feed the world this way, but remember, throw away your idea of today’s farm being owned and worked by a farm family producing a large variety of products in an idyllic countryside setting. Today many farms are massive, even if owned by one family, who are really sub-contractors to large corporate concerns that dictate what you grow, selling you everything from seed, to machines, inputs of fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and then they control the buying and selling of your efforts, whether plants or animals and control pricing.
In the future we might seek guidance from the design practice of Permaculture, which is based in careful observation, gathering information and experiences to promote understanding of nature, the landscape and the people involved. Thus, Permaculture food systems are information and design intensive, whereas traditional agriculture was labor intensive, and industrial agriculture is energy intensive (Holmgren, 2002). This applies at all scales from the garden to the farm.
This is such an immense subject, that I’ll let Mark Hyman author of Food Fix conclude this section:
“There is one place that nearly everything that matters in the world today converges: our food and our food system – the complex web of how we grow food, how we produce, distribute, and promote it; what we eat, what we waste, and the policies that perpetuate unimaginable suffering and destruction across the globe that deplete our human, social, economic, and natural capital...Food is the nexus of most of the world’s health, economic, environmental, climate, social, and even political crises. While this may seem like an exaggeration, it is not. The problem is much worse than we think.”
If you only have time for one read, Food Fix, is it.
Further info:
Michael W. Fox, Agricide: The Hidden Farm and Food Crises That Affects Us All, second edition, 1996
Mark Shepard, Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, 2013
Mark Hyman, MD, Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time, 2020
IPES Food, A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045
https://foodtank.com
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW
Many people won’t understand about this without some back-story. So here goes.
In the early twentieth century the chemical Haber/Bosch process led to the ability to make nitrogen fertilizer, whereas agriculture until that time relied on natural substances like animal manure or guano from sea birds. This process relies heavily on fossil fuels for its production.
After the second-world-war, the chemical industry involvement in agriculture increased exponentially. It helped fuel what is called the ‘green revolution.’ This agriculture, heavily dependent on fossil fuels, chemical production for fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides, expensive machinery, land acquisition (larger areas farmed), genetic modification of seeds, did indeed increase food and feed output tremendously, but at what cost? Chemical runoffs into streams and oceans causing dead zones, (currently 415 worldwide, National Geographic Society), monocultures leading to super bugs and increased plant disease, massive biodiversity loss, deforestation, large carbon footprint, soil erosion, etc., make these practices not only damaging now, but worse as time goes on and eventually unsustainable, as non-renewable fossil fuels deplete into the future. Within the industrial animal production side of agriculture, similar problems exist, including the vast inhumane aspect of the system, and the outsized inefficiency of turning plant foods into meat. (More in: Encourage Plant Based Eating).
This has led to what some call the Agribusiness/pharmaceutical complex. Some companies own and supply the seed, the chemical processes and pharmaceutical products. Many of the ‘foods’ produced by this system, some call them ‘feed’ not food, also include ultra-processed foods that many now rely heavily on for their nutrition and that are not nutritious enough to support human health, and are in fact engineered to be addictive. Many current illnesses (80% Cleveland Clinic), are what are called ‘lifestyle’ diseases and can be directly linked to diets heavily dependent on ultra-processed foods.
Although many people around the world are dependent on this system, in 2022, more than 700 million people faced hunger and 2.4 billion people lacked year-round access to sufficient and nutritious food, according to the United Nations – therefore it hasn’t alleviated hunger.
That’s why many people consider this form of agriculture unsustainable and call for what is variously called, Regenerative farming practices, restoration agriculture, agroforestry, organic agriculture, etc., to restore soil health, reduce pollution, reverse biodiversity loss, use less water, benefiting both communities and planet. These practices would probably benefit from smaller farms, individually owned and locally distributed everywhere. Critics to this say, we can’t feed the world this way, but remember, throw away your idea of today’s farm being owned and worked by a farm family producing a large variety of products in an idyllic countryside setting. Today many farms are massive, even if owned by one family, who are really sub-contractors to large corporate concerns that dictate what you grow, selling you everything from seed, to machines, inputs of fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, and then they control the buying and selling of your efforts, whether plants or animals and control pricing.
In the future we might seek guidance from the design practice of Permaculture, which is based in careful observation, gathering information and experiences to promote understanding of nature, the landscape and the people involved. Thus, Permaculture food systems are information and design intensive, whereas traditional agriculture was labor intensive, and industrial agriculture is energy intensive (Holmgren, 2002). This applies at all scales from the garden to the farm.
This is such an immense subject, that I’ll let Mark Hyman author of Food Fix conclude this section:
“There is one place that nearly everything that matters in the world today converges: our food and our food system – the complex web of how we grow food, how we produce, distribute, and promote it; what we eat, what we waste, and the policies that perpetuate unimaginable suffering and destruction across the globe that deplete our human, social, economic, and natural capital...Food is the nexus of most of the world’s health, economic, environmental, climate, social, and even political crises. While this may seem like an exaggeration, it is not. The problem is much worse than we think.”
If you only have time for one read, Food Fix, is it.
Further info:
Michael W. Fox, Agricide: The Hidden Farm and Food Crises That Affects Us All, second edition, 1996
Mark Shepard, Restoration Agriculture: Real-World Permaculture for Farmers, 2013
Mark Hyman, MD, Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet – One Bite at a Time, 2020
IPES Food, A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045
https://foodtank.com
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW