Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

from http://www.keepmainefree.org/myth3.html

THE MYTH:
Industrial agriculture is efficient.
THE TRUTH:
Small farms produce more agricultural output per unit area than large
farms. Moreover, larger, less diverse farms require far more mechanical and
chemical inputs. These ever increasing inputs are devastating to the
environment and make these farms far less efficient than smaller, more
sustainable farms.

Proponents of industrial agriculture claim that “bigger is better” when
it comes to food production. They argue that the larger the farm, the more
efficient it is. They admit that these huge corporate farms mean the loss
of family farms and rural communities, but they maintain that this is
simply the inevitable cost of efficient food production. And agribusiness
advocates don’t just promote big farms; they also push big technology.
They typically ridicule small-scale farm technology as grossly inefficient
while heralding intensive use of chemicals, massive machinery,
computerization and genetic engineering — whose affordability and
implementation are only feasible on large farms. The marriage of huge farms
with “mega-technology” is sold to the public as the basic requirement
for efficient food production. Argue against size and technology — the
two staples of modern agriculture — and, they insist, you're undermining
production efficiency and endangering the world's food supply.

While the “bigger is better” myth is generally accepted, it is a
fallacy. Numerous reports have found that smaller farms are actually more
efficient than larger “industrial” farms. These studies demonstrate
that when farms get larger, the costs of production per unit often
increase, because larger acreage requires more expensive machinery and more
chemicals to protect crops. In particular, a 1989 study by the U.S.
National Research Council assessed the efficiency of large industrial food
production systems compared with alternative methods. The conclusion was
exactly contrary to the “bigger is better” myth: “Well-managed
alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical
pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than
conventional farms. Reduced use of these inputs lowers production costs and
lessens agriculture’s potential for adverse environmental and health
effects without decreasing — and in some cases increasing — per acre
crop yields and the productivity of livestock management systems.”

Output Versus Yield

Agribusiness and economists alike tend to use “yield” measurements when
calculating the productivity of farms. Yield can be defined as the
production per unit of a single crop. For example, a corn farm will be
judged by how many metric tons of corn are produced per acre. More often
than not, the highest yield of a single crop like corn can be best achieved
by planting it alone on an industrial scale in the fields of corporate
farms. These large “monocultures” have become endemic to modern
agriculture for the simple reason that they are the easiest to manage with
heavy machinery and intensive chemical use. It is the single-crop yields of
these farms that are used as the basis for the “bigger is better” myth,
and it is true that the highest yield of a single crop is often achieved
through industrial monocultures.

Smaller farms rarely can compete with this “monoculture” single-crop
yield. They tend to plant crop mixtures, a method known as
“intercropping.” Additionally, where single-crop monocultures have
empty “weed” spaces, small farms use these spaces for crop planting.
They are also more likely to rotate or combine crops and livestock, with
the resulting manure performing the important function of replenishing soil
fertility. These small-scale integrated farms produce far more per unit
area than large farms. Though the yield per unit area of one crop - corn,
for example — may be lower, the total output per unit area for small
farms, often composed of more than a dozen crops and numerous animal
products, is virtually always higher than that of larger farms.

Clearly, if we are to compare accurately the productivity of small and
large farms, we should use total agricultural output, balanced against
total farm inputs and “externalities,” rather than single-crop yield as
our measurement principle. Total output is defined as the sum of everything
a small farmer produces — various grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and
animal products — and is the real benchmark of efficiency in farming.
Moreover, productivity measurements should also take into account total
input costs, including large-machinery and chemical use, which often are
left out of the equation in the yield efficiency claims.

Once the flawed yield measurement system is discarded, the “bigger is
better” myth is shattered. As summarized by the food policy expert Peter
Rosset, “Surveying the data, we indeed find that small farms almost
always produce far more agricultural output per unit area than larger
farms. This is now widely recognized by agricultural economists across the
political spectrum, as the inverse relationship between farm size and
output.” He notes that even the World Bank now advocates redistributing
land to small farmers in the third world as a step toward increasing
overall agricultural productivity.

Government studies underscore this “inverse relationship.” According to
a 1992 U.S. Agricultural Census report, relatively smaller farm sizes are 2
to 10 times more productive per unit acre than larger ones. The smallest
farms surveyed in the study, those of 27 acres or less, are more than ten
times as productive (in dollar output per acre) than large farms (6,000
acres or more), and extremely small farms (4 acres or less) can be over a
hundred times as productive.