Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Hidden Costs of Industrial Agriculture
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_industrial_agriculture/costs-and-benefits-of.html
Union of Concerned Scientists

Much of the agriculture practiced in the United States today is 
industrial-style agriculture. That is, farms are often very large, highly 
specialized, and run like factories with large inputs of fossil fuels, 
pesticides and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil. 
This industrial agriculture is sometimes considered a great success. But is 
it? It has had large, complex effects on our environment, our economy, and 
our urban and rural social fabric. A new awareness of the costs is beginning 
to suggest that the benefits are not as great as they formerly appeared.

Many of the costs of industrial agriculture have been hidden and ignored in 
short-term calculations of profit and productivity, as practices have been 
developed with a narrow focus on increased production. The research 
establishment that underpins modern industrial agriculture has until recently 
paid little heed to the unintended and long-term consequences of these 
systems.

Damage to Natural Systems

Approaches to producing food must be measured partly by their impact on the 
natural ("life support") systems that we depend on. The currently dominant 
system of industrial agriculture – which voters and taxpayers have 
unknowingly promoted and subsidized through ill-considered government food 
and farm policy choices – impacts the environment in many ways. It uses huge 
amounts of water, energy, and chemicals, often with little regard to 
long-term adverse effects. But the environmental costs of agriculture are 
mounting. Irrigation systems are pumping water from reservoirs faster than 
they are being recharged. Toxic herbicides and insecticides are accumulating 
in ground and surface waters. Chemical fertilizers are running off the fields 
into water systems where they generate damaging blooms of oxygen-depleting 
microorganisms that disrupt ecosystems and kill fish. Unmanageable and 
polluting mountains of waste and noxious odor are the hallmarks of 
industrial-style CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) for poultry and 
livestock.

Many of the negative effects of industrial agriculture extend far from fields 
and farms. Nitrogen compounds from Midwestern farms, for example, travel down 
the Mississippi to degrade coastal fisheries and create a large "dead zone" 
in the Gulf of Mexico where aquatic life cannot survive. But other adverse 
effects are showing up within agricultural production systems themselves -- 
for example, overuse of herbicides and insecticides has led to rapidly 
developing resistance among pests that is rendering these chemicals 
increasingly ineffective.

Economic Costs

Estimating the economic costs of industrial agriculture is an immense and 
difficult task. A full accounting would weigh the benefits of the somewhat 
lower prices consumers pay for food and the profits of agri-business giants, 
including fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers, against the health and 
societal costs of environmental pollution and degradation, for instance.

Such costs are difficult to assess for a number of reasons. One difficulty is 
our partial understanding of potential harms. A good example is the potential 
for endocrine disruption that many pesticides appear to have. Endocrine 
disrupters are molecules that appear able to mimic the actions of human and 
animal hormones and disturb important hormone-dependent activities like 
reproduction. More research is needed to determine the extent of the health 
and environmental damage done by such compounds and the relative contribution 
of agriculture and other sectors and activities. And in some instances, such 
as water pollution and global warming, agriculture is only one of several 
important contributors.

Among the many environmental costs that need to be considered in a full cost 
accounting of industrial agriculture are

    * the damage to fisheries from oxygen-depleting microorganisms fed by 
fertilizer runoff
    * the cleanup of surface and groundwater polluted with CAFO waste
    * the increased health risks borne by agricultural workers, farmers, and 
rural communities exposed to pesticides and antibiotic resistant bacteria

In addition, there are enormous indirect costs implicit in the high energy 
requirements of industrial agriculture. This form of agriculture uses fossil 
fuels at many points: to run huge combines and harvesters, to produce and 
transport pesticides and fertilizers, and to refrigerate and transport 
perishable produce cross country and around the world. The use of fossil 
fuels contributes to ozone pollution and global warming, which could exact a 
high price on agriculture and the rest of society through increased violent 
weather events, droughts and floods, and rising oceans.

The full costs of industrial agriculture—including the hidden costs of CAFOs 
revealed by UCS in the recent report CAFOs Uncovered—call into question the 
efficiency of this approach to food production.

Agriculture at a Crossroads

It is time to transform agriculture into a sustainable enterprise, one based 
on systems that can be employed for centuries -- not decades -- without 
undermining the resources on which agricultural productivity depends. The 
question is how to do it. The choices are to stick with the current system 
and adjust around the edges or to fundamentally rethink it. UCS is aiming for 
the transformation of U.S. agriculture to a system that is both productive 
and practical over the long-term. Apparent advantages of the current, 
industrial approach – from high yields per acre, to chemical industry 
profits, to profitable CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), to foreign 
sales by corporate giants like Sara Lee, ConAgra, and Cargill – look very 
different when considered in the light of the health and other problems the 
approach creates, as well as the many ways in which consumers actually 
subsidize the destructive system with their tax dollars.

Sources

R. Drury and L. Tweeten, Trends in Farm Structure into the 21st Century, 
American Farm Bureau Federation, citing USDA data, 1997. Environmental 
Protection Agency, Pesticides Industry Sales and Usage: 1992 and 1993 Market 
Estimates, 8-9, 1994.
A.V. Krebs, The Corporate Reapers, Appendix C, "The Nation's 100 Largest 
Farms," Essential Books, 1992.
P. Raeburn, The Last Harvest, Simon and Schuster, 37, 1995.
S. Smith, "Farming -- It's Declining in the US," Choices, 8-11, (1992).

Last Revised: 08/24/08