This is a discussion started on the CDAE faculty listserve and posted is here with permission from Bob Parsons & Josh Farley, professors in Community Development and Applied Economics at UVM. Join the conversation by posting your own comment below.
Big ag maybe is not the big monster its made out to be?
Food Systems Insider: Stanford finds big benefits from Big Ag
- Bob Parsons
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Comment from Josh Farley:
This article reminds me of a bicycle I saw on sale recently. It was $4000 knocked down from $8000. Clearly, the best way to save money was to buy this bicycle, but buying it would nonetheless have bankrupted me. It’s definitely an imperfect analogy, but the question is not whether big ag is better than slash and burn, but rather whether or not it is sustainable in the long run. I don’t think that anyone can deny that big ag is highly dependent on fossil fuels, and that fossil fuels are a finite resource. I suspect we would end up using fewer hydrocarbons if we just converted them directly into carbohydrates in the laboratory. This would truly minimize our environmental impacts, allowing the vast majority of ag land to return to nature. However, most people would question the good sense of humanity relying for it’s survival on explicitly non-renewable resources. We somehow think it’s a better idea to rely on agricultural systems that rely on those resources.
I have no clash with the argument that we currently need fossil fuel dependent agriculture to feed 7 billion people. I have serious problems with anyone who claims that we don’t need to wean it from fossil fuels and soil erosion. I agree with Wes Jackson that ultimately, annual crops are probably unsustainable. As I understand it, many of their ancestors were opportunists that thrived in areas were floods or fire had wiped out existing plant communities, leaving barren soil. Jackson is developing perennial grains with massive root systems that sequester huge amounts of carbon, build soil, require no annual plowing, are both drought and flood resistant, require far fewer fertilizers and pesticides, etc.–all characteristics of perennials in general.
I doubt that small scale, organic ag based primarily on annuals is sustainable in the long run. We can’t be satisfied with any system that uses up fossil aquifers or soil faster than it can replenish, that is a net emitter of CO2 or other pollutants, and that depends on non-renewable resources.
Also, the tone of the article was not exactly one to win converts!
Cheers,
Josh
Follow-up resource from Bob Parsons:
Check out this video on farm productivity and population challenges. It does go over some points but does raise questions of how we feed 9 billion people without more land.
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/basf-world-without-farmers-one-hungry-planet/791155589
- Bob Parsons
And Josh’s response:
Basically I have the same comment as the previous e-mail. Big ag has pulled off a miracle, managing to feed everyone. But it has done so by drawing down the finite stock of fossil fuels–basically solar energy stored over many millennia, that we can now use up as fast as we choose. Sustainable ag has to rely entirely on solar energy, which is essentially infinite over time, but arrives on our planet as finite flow. In 1940, I would guess that agriculture generated far more calories than it consumed. Now, ag consumes
far more calories than it generates. If we believe that low entropy energy is required to do work, and is available as a combination of finite stock and finite flows, then from the perspective of thermodynamics, we’re moving in the wrong direction. Of course, if we hadn’t made this move, we’d probably have a billion or so fewer people on the planet, thanks to
starvation.
- Josh
Bob’s response to Josh:
Its another view by an ag magazine, not intended to change minds of Big Ag opponents or for their primary reading. The reality is we need productivity if we are going to feed 9 billion folks, But no one system is pure or without need for evaluation and change.
The reason I sent this out was to show another side of the story which some folks at UVM need to see occasionally. Many have their perceived views without any knowledge how agriculture operates. Just getting people to read and see another view can be eye-opening. I dislike the term sustainable because no one knows what technology is going to be available in the future and its relative costs. Future costs don’t mean much to people who are hungry today.
I was on an organic dairy farm last year where the farmer rated their sustainability by not using petroleum based fertilizers and sprays. His “unsustainable” neighbor used chemical fertilizer and thus was not environmentally friendly as their organic farm in his view. However, due to confidentiality, I couldn’t tell him that the neighbor used very minimal fertilizer and spent only 1/3 as much on diesel fuel and gas as the organic farm. While this individual was focused on fertilizer, he seemed to forget where his gas for the car and truck and diesel for their tractors came from.
Its like when folks save gas by riding your bike but create large amounts of carbon by flying. The bike helps but few of us are not going to ditch the planes until Scotty can “beam us up” to wherever we want to go. But I’ve never heard an estimate on how much energy that required on Star Trek.
So I don’t expect us to drop high productive ag methods but it will have to change due to resource availability. They have changed due to higher fuel and fertilizer costs in recent years. Farmers, despite not using their calculus to estimate their production and demand functions everyday, do think about marginal return vs marginal cost. Raise the cost without any additional revenue, and they do react. Vermont dairy farmers lost their underwear last year and would be going around with barrels but the barrels cost more than China made cotton briefs. But they are buying less fertilizer, lower price seed, looking closer at no-till, harvesting haylage for higher protein, and cutting production levels a bit. They are reacting as expected. So the system will adjust as we see prices adjust.
- Bob
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