Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

POLICY CONFIRMATION AND GAP: It is dangerous to treat food and agriculture 
like widgets. Thinking about food as an isolated commodity, like a computer 
chip for example, extracts from its reality. It denies its connections to the 
earth, the environment and our own health and survival; that is, to its need 
(and ours) for renewal and for the planet's ability to sustain that capacity 
for renewal. The startling trends outlined in this article suggest the need 
to call for a policy of 'reverse onus'. Such a policy would require free 
traders and corporate interests to prove to publics why their products and 
policies are not harmful, not the other way around - the way things currently 
are.


Globalization (globalization@iatp.org)    Posted: 07/10/2003  By  
mritchie@iatp.org
============================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 16:03:58 +0500

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=22&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Rice Bowl, Dust Bowl: Agribusiness and the Future
by Lise Maring

We've all read the articles concerning our declining fisheries. It was in the 
Washington Post, the New York Times,
and even our local newspapers. For the first time, we began to hear about how 
the oceans are being "mined" by large
commercial interests with their miles and miles of nets. But the world's 
fisheries aren't the only renewable resources that
are suddenly becoming nonrenewable. Two other very vital resources are also 
in danger of being depleted. What you
haven't read much about yet is that corporate interests--similar to those 
that are mining the oceans--are also in control, either
by direct ownership or indirectly through ownership of food processing 
facilities, of much of the world's agricultural lands,
and they are in the process of mining our soils and groundwater.

These interests comprise a handful of transnational food companies that 
distribute an amazing abundance of food products
to the thousands of supermarkets across the country each and every day. Some 
days it seems as if there is an infinite supply
of food, and the stores are veritable cornucopias with shelves that are 
always stocked full. These companies include such giants as Kraft Foods, 
ConAgra, and ADM. They depend on "economies of scale," which means large-scale
processing and world-wide supply and distribution; this in turn requires 
consolidated farming and huge numbers of acres
dedicated to monocultures of crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans.

Essentially, the small farms can not compete with the huge industrialized 
factory farms with their large pieces of specialized
equipment. Many of these family farms end up being sold for housing 
developments or to the neighboring industrialized farms.
Thus the number of small farms decreases each year, while the acreage per 
farm increases.

The six founding countries of Europe's Common Agricultural Policy had 22 
million farmers in 1957; today that number
has fallen to 7 million. Just 20 per cent of the European Union's wealthiest 
and largest farmers get 80 per cent of EU subsidies.
Canada lost three-quarters of its farmers between 1941 and 1996, and the 
decline continues. In 1935 there were 6.8 million
working farmers in the US; today the number is under 1.9 million.1

Agribusiness has had a great impact on our society, one we pretty much take 
for granted. Many colleges have now changed
the title of their programs from Agriculture to Agribusiness. Here, students 
learn as much about economics, import and export
law, international relations, and the stock exchange as they do about the 
various varieties of corn, the diseases of beef cattle,
and the latest irrigation techniques.

So, that's progress, right? Technology and the market at their best. If this 
approach lowers our food prices, makes more
food available to everyone, and gives us such a great variety to pick from, 
what's the problem?

Well, let's back up a minute and look at some other numbers--let's see what 
our cultural and economic prejudices have cropped
out of the big picture. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Census 
Bureau, there are over 291,000,000 people in the
United States with one new hungry mouth being added every 10 seconds. The 
world population, on the other hand, is currently
 at 6,300,872,412 people and rising. The estimated population for the year 
2050 is now at 9,078,850,714.

Landscape ecologist, Eric Sanderson, and his team found that 83 percent of 
the surface of our planet is already in use by
us humans for such things as farming, mining, fishing, and as a place to 
live. They also found that most of the land that can
be farmed for rice, wheat, or corn is already being used for that purpose.2

Between 1950 and 1981, the area in grain expanded from 587 million hectares 
(ha) to 732 million ha. By 2000 it had fallen to
 656 million ha, and between 1950 and 2000, the cropland area per person 
shrank from 0.23 to 0.11 ha-an area half the size
of a housing lot in suburban America.3

To bring it down to a more personal level, David Pimentel, a professor of 
ecology and agricultural science at Cornell University,
has estimated that each person in the United States requires 1.9 ha of 
cropland and pasture per year for their food needs, while
a person in China requires only 0.4 ha because of the primarily vegetarian 
diet.4

And where is your 1.9 hectares of land located? It most likely isn't in your 
backyard. In essence, there are little pieces
of it scattered all over the world. Most of our food travels an average of 
1,200 to 1,500 miles before getting to our plates.

But, with all the technology and latest scientific knowledge that 
agribusiness has available, aren't they making the most
efficient use of the land and increasing the yield each year? The answer is 
no. It turns out that the small farm, with its
smaller acreage, but greater variety of crops, actually yields more per acre 
than the industrial farm. The reason for this
is partly due to the very economies of scale that characterize agribusiness.12

In the United States, current agricultural practices are destroying the 
topsoil about 18 times faster than it can be replenished,
and we depend more and more heavily on artificial fertilizers to fill the 
gap.4 Moreover, as Europe and Asia adopt the American
agribusiness ways of agriculture, they can expect to see similar results.

"In fact, corn cultivation in this country is, for the most part, an
energy-consuming environmental disaster," according to David Pimentel. "Corn 
is the number one cause of erosion or total
soil loss in the United States. It uses more fertilizer than any other crop. 
It's the largest user of insecticides. And it's the largest
user of herbicides."5

"And every year, from every plowed acre in Kansas, an average of two to eight 
tons of topsoil wash away."
magazine.audubon.org/landinstitute.html
"One kilo of corn protein causes 22 kilos of topsoil loss. One kilo of beef 
protein causes 145 kilos of topsoil loss."
www.earthrise.com/ERPlaEnviron.html


Furthermore, just as bacteria are evolving faster than our antibiotics, and 
insects faster than our insecticides, so are
weed plants evolving faster than the herbicides can keep up, thus more and 
more herbicide is needed to kill them each
year on larger and larger pieces of land.11

It's not just Western countries' agricultural lands that are suffering 
topsoil loss. According to Janet Larsen of the
Earth Policy Institute (EPI), the growing demands of the world's current 
human population are turning productive land
 into desert on every continent. The cultivation of marginal lands has caused 
extensive soil erosion everywhere, while
billions of cattle, sheep, and goats have pushed pastures beyond their 
sustainable limits. In the western United States,
cattle have left about 10% of already arid lands barren, and about two-thirds 
substantially degraded. Larsen believes
desertification plagues up to one third of the earth's land area, affecting 
more than 1 billion people in 110 countries.8

In March, 2002, the FAO admitted that the number of chronically hungry people 
in the world is not decreasing as fast
 as they predicted in 1996. FAO concluded that the world's grain production 
would have to rise every year by 1.2% to
meet the needs. This is 17% higher than what was being produced in the 1990s. 
But since we are already using all
available croplands, this means the increase would have to come from the 
existing lands. Unfortunately, according to
Lester Brown of the EPI, it may be a losing battle since grain yields have 
actually decreased rather than increased.7

In other words: bottom line, what we are doing to the fisheries, we are doing 
to the land. We are currently in the process
of "mining" our soils. Because whatever value is in food comes from the soil, 
the air, and the fertilizer we put on it--and
the fertilizer comes from soil (if it is manure) or from oil (if it is 
synthetic)--and oil is running out.

Now, let's take a look at the water situation. Only about 3% of the water on 
our planet is freshwater. Groundwater accounts
for about 14% of that 3%, while ice sheets and glaciers account for about 
85%. The rest is in lakes, streams, reservoirs, the
air and soil, and rivers. In the United States, groundwater supplies about 
50% of our drinking water, 40% of the water used
for irrigation, and about 25% of the water used by various industries.

Just to give some idea of how much water it takes to keep things going in 
today's society, according to the EPA
and John Ryan it takes about:
700 gallons of water to make a Cheeseburger10
25 gallons of groundwater to irrigate each 2 square foot area of wheat field10
1,851 gallons of water to refine one barrel of crude oil
25 gallons of water to make one pound of plastic.
World water demand has tripled over the last half-century. According to
Lester Brown of the EPI, governments are satisfying the growing demand for
food by overpumping groundwater, a measure that virtually assures a drop in 
food production when the aquifer is depleted. Knowingly or not, governments 
are creating what Brown calls a "food bubble" economy.6

According to Brown: "Aquifers are being depleted in scores of countries, 
including China, India, and the United States,
which collectively account for half of the world grain harvest. Under the 
North China Plain, which produces more than
half of China's wheat and a third of its corn, the annual drop in the water 
table has increased from an average of 1.5 meters
a decade ago to up to 3 meters today."6

"In the United States, the water table has dropped by more than 30 meters 
(~100 ft.) in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and
Kansas--three key grain-producing states. As a result, wells have gone dry on 
thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains.
"6 In California's San Joaquin Valley, where large quantities of vegetables, 
such as tomatoes and lettuce are grown, the land
subsided around 9 meters (~27 ft.) between 1925 and 1977 due to the 
extraction of groundwater.9

In other words, we are in the process of "mining" our very finite freshwater 
supplies, and it is a process that is invisible to
most of us until our wells start to run dry.

We are pushing the sustainable limits of our world and are threatening to 
overwhelm it. It is not only the world's fisheries
and fossil fuels that are becoming depleted. It is also our precious, 
life-sustaining resources of water and soil. To add to the
uncertainty, we are changing our climate in ways that will transform the 
areas we now consider our prime agricultural lands
into desert. But, according to Eric A. Davidson in his book "You Can't Eat 
GNP,", ".One economist argued that we need not
worry much about the effects of global warming on the economy, because the 
only sector of the economy that he considered
strongly influenced by the climate is agriculture, which contributes only 3 
percent of the United States' GNP." One can only hope
that this economist will not someday have to eat his own words.

We in the industrialized nations enjoy a fantastic range of foods, literally 
from soup to nuts, including a vast variety of seafood,
grain products, meats, fruits, and vegetables. But many of us don't realize 
the heavy price we are paying for the luxury of importing
food items from all over the world and at every season of the year. Unlike 
the prodigal son, we have no other home to return to if
we choose to squander our inheritance and that of the future generations.

Lise Maring worked for several years at NASA's Langley Research Center and 
briefly at the Goddard Space Flight Center as
a contractor employee. She is currently working as a technical editor/writer 
but has also been a systems analyst, a database
administrator in NASA's technology commercialization program, an operations 
lead for a remote sensing data processing center,
and chair of an interagency user services team for NASA's remote 
sensing-oriented Earth Observing System (which was part
of the Mission to Planet Earth program.) She also runs several online groups 
that are community and/or environmentally-oriented
and is the newsletter editor/writer for the York River Group of the Sierra 
Club.

Footnotes:

www.newfarm.org/depts/gleanings/0503/peasantrevolt.shtml
news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_HumanFootprint.html
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update21.htm
dieoff.org/page136.htm
Weiss, Rick, "Corn-Burning Benefits Hinge on How Its Grown," Washington Post, 
January 27, 2003, Section A, Page A8.
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update22.htm
www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993457
www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update23.htm
Glennon, Robert, "Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of 
America's Fresh Waters", Island Press, 2002.
Ryan, John C. and Alan T. Durning, "Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday 
Things," Northwest Environmental Watch, Seattle,
January 1997.
McCarthy, Michael, "Superweeds Signal Setback for GM Crops", 
Independent.co.uk, June 23, 2003.
www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1999/w99v6n4.html

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