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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Essay - Ripe for Change: Agriculture's Tipping Point
  • Date: Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:38:21 -0700

Essay - Ripe for Change: Agriculture's Tipping Point
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4119
by Claire Hope Cummings

Now, in the midst of so much unnecessary human and ecological destruction, we
are facing the necessity of a new start in agriculture. —Wendell Berry

The story of agriculture is usually told as an epic struggle between people
and nature. Ten thousand years into this narrative, it looks to some as if
people have the upper hand. After all, food production is keeping up with
population growth. But others say that this productivity comes at too high a
cost. Industrial agriculture is laying waste to soil, water, forests,
wildlife, and the life ways of traditional farming communities.

Conventional and sustainable agriculture have long debated the question: what
kind of agriculture works best for both people and nature? Then suddenly, as
in any good drama, while the forces of good and evil are having it out,
something happens to raise the stakes. Now, lumbering onto center stage comes
a real monster, global warming, and the conflict shifts from being about how
we feed ourselves to whether we survive at all.

We find ourselves at a dramatic point in human history. Agriculture, the
largest industry on Earth, is exhausting the planet’s biological support
systems. Two billion hectares of soil (more than the area of the United
States and Canada combined) have been degraded. In India, this damage has cut
agricultural productivity by almost US$2.4 billion a year. In Africa,
threequarters of arable land is severely degraded, worsening the hunger
crisis there. The annual cost of soil erosion worldwide is estimated to be
more than US$400 billion. Similarly, water quality and availability are in
peril. The 450 million kilograms of pesticides that U.S. farmers use every
year have now contaminated almost all of the nation’s streams and rivers, and
the fish living in them, with chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects.

And yet, as serious as this environmental predicament is, it will be energy
issues that determine the fate of agriculture. Industrial agriculture uses at
least 15 percent of all energy consumed in developed countries. So when oil
production peaks, fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture will face a day of
reckoning. And that inevitability raises a fundamental question: do we wait
for some widespread disaster to happen and let panic determine our social
policy? Or do we begin now to engage in purposeful social change?

Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” analysis provides a useful way to examine
the dynamics of such dramatic social transformations. Tipping points have
three essential factors, he says. One, lots of little behaviors accumulate
and begin to push a system toward change. Two, some ideas or issues “infect”
public awareness and spread like a virus, pulling the system toward even
greater change. Finally, one significant moment occurs when things “tip.”

It’s easy to recognize the first factor in sustainable agriculture’s tipping
point in the thousands of initiatives that support local and ecological food
production. Sales of organic products have been growing by 20 percent per
year for the last decade. In 2005, U.S. retail sales of organic food and
beverages amounted to almost $12.8 billion. Organic practices are being
proven at both large and small scales and more acreage is being planted in
organic crops. As consumer demand increases,Wal-Mart has begun stocking
organic food, and chains of mid-size natural grocery stores are expanding.
There are almost 4,000 U.S. farmers’ markets selling fresh local food.
Restaurants are putting sustainably raised food and fish on their menus and
hundreds of schools are serving organic meals. Fair trade and green labeling
programs are on the rise.

The number of ways to produce and consume sustainable food keeps growing.
Land grant colleges and new funding initiatives by foundations are
revitalizing sustainable agriculture programs. Ecologically minded farmers
and consumers are rejecting corporate technologies like genetically modified
organisms (GMOs). Instead, they are turning to plants bred with traditional
methods that are resistant to wind, drought, salt, and disease. They are less
expensive, they avoid the risks of genetic contamination, and they do not
require farmers to give up saving seed. Conventional farmers are adopting
sustainable techniques and finding, for instance, that nature-based pest and
weed controls are just as effective as toxic pesticides. No-till cultivation
is proving to prevent soil erosion and has the added climate benefit of
sequestering carbon.

These impressive technological and market successes are a tribute to the
pioneers of the ecological farming movement. And there is no reason to
believe that this innovative spirit can’t come up with even better ideas to
deal with the enormous challenges ahead. But what will transform this popular
enthusiasm into real and lasting changes are two other fundamental issues:
health and trade. These two issues, the second tipping point factors, are
shifting the public discourse over food and farming and pushing policy
changes worldwide.

The public is becoming increasingly alarmed by food-related health problems.
Rising rates of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and cancer and birth
defects from pesticides, plus a growing obesity epidemic in children and
adults, are grabbing headlines and raising health care costs. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture estimates that healthier diets alone could prevent
US$71 billion a year in medical expenses.

Trade issues are no less important. The billions spent every year on
subsidies have created over-production and rock bottom commodity prices for a
handful of agribusiness companies. When surpluses are sold overseas for less
than the cost of production, third-world farmers are put out of business. But
now, as world trade negotiators promise to end these practices, we are
presented with an unprecedented opportunity to reformulate farm supports.
Instead of paying for commodity production, these funds can be redirected
toward soil and water conservation, wildlife preservation, and maintaining
the culturally and biologically diverse farming systems that lie at the heart
of sustainable agriculture. The funding needed to transform industrial
agriculture is available; what’s missing is leadership. This fix will not be
easy. Entrenched political interests and agribusiness will not willingly
relinquish their stranglehold on the status quo.

But there may be no choice. The final tipping point factor, the one that will
result in dramatic and lasting change, is the issue of energy and global
warming. Renewable energy is already approaching its tipping point. Some
energy experts argue that renewable energy sources are now ready to begin
replacing oil and other fossil fuels. Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain
Institute says that in the next few decades the United States can get
completely off oil and revitalize its industrial and rural economies through
efficiencies, green design, and substitutions for fossil fuels. And,
inevitably, as energy becomes renewable, agriculture becomes sustainable.

Sustainable agriculture, for its part, will also make a significant
contribution to renewable energy production.Model farms have shown that they
can produce all the energy required for food production and provide excess
energy to the grid, using biogas generators, wind, solar, and fuel from farm
waste. Immediate reductions in fossil fuel use can be achieved with current
technologies. Sustainably produced crops can provide biodiesel for
transportation, and cornstarch-based plastics can be used for packaging. But
just calling something sustainable does not make it so. Growing GMO corn with
toxic chemicals for use in energyinefficient ethanol is not an acceptable
alternative. The key to successfully transforming industrial agriculture will
be the careful establishment and enforcement of standards that ensure
sustainability.

Obviously, we are not there yet. The public and business are engaging in
change, though government action is lagging. But what is different, as the
moment of reckoning approaches, is that we’re ready. Sustainable agriculture
can provide food self-sufficiency while reducing the economic and
environmental degradations of industrial agriculture. Just as the end of oil
does not mean the end of energy, and may instead be the beginning of the age
of endless energy, the same is true for agriculture. Industrial agriculture
was all about scarcity. Sustainable agriculture is all about abundance. And
knowing that, we can ensure that this age-old human drama need not play out
as tragedy.

Claire Hope Cummings is a lawyer and environmental journalist. She wrote
about genetically modified organisms and farming in the January/February 2005
issue of World Watch.




  • [Livingontheland] Essay - Ripe for Change: Agriculture's Tipping Point, Tradingpost, 11/06/2009

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