The State of the World, 2017
The world has too many people, too many of whom are desperately poor, and too few are extremely rich. Such a dark-ages world is responsible for extensive destruction of nature and overwhelming global pollution. In fact, industries, cars, airplanes, and industrial farms are burning petroleum, natural gas, and coal. This burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet. A warmer planet, among other disasters, increases hunger.
There’s no magic to returning to an ancient age of perfection. No such era ever existed. People have always been in strife. But what distinguishes our age from previous eras is that for the first time in history the people of today have the power to inflict unimaginable self-destruction and risk annihilating the Earth. In addition, the rulers of the world don’t seem to be much troubled about this tragedy. Rather than vigorously moving to a non-polluting solar era, they are spending vast sums in armaments and technologies of control and power.
Agrarian Civilization Unites Humankind
Despite these global rifts, humans have common traditions of feeding themselves and working the land. From that agrarian beginning and way of life they built politics, science and civilization. Indeed, up to mid-twentieth century, most humans raised their food just like their ancient ancestors did.
This common agrarian culture has the potential to heal the natural world and give us enough time to mend our destructive and toxic ways. This is because small family farms raise food and benefit the human and natural worlds.
We need traditional small farms throughout America and the world. However, we must first subdue giant agriculture because it harms society and the natural world.
Industrialized Agriculture is Inimical to Civilization
Giant agriculture is addicted to petroleum. It burns vast quantities in running its large tractors and other machines. It uses even more petroleum in its “inputs”: huge quantities of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, without which it’s dead in the water.
Large-scale farming has divided animals from crops.
Farm animals are stationed in facilities known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. In a 2009 report, the National Association of Local Boards of Health concluded these operations “can cause a myriad of environmental and public health problems.” In fact, they do. They are bad for people and the Earth. Animals live their short lives in crowded conditions, eating continuously genetically engineered feed drenched with pesticides and antibiotics. The excrement and urine from billions of animals pollute the natural world and emit as much as half of all greenhouse gases from human activities warming the planet.
Industrialized farmers plant crops like corn and soybeans alone in gigantic sections of land. Seed corn, for instance, is “dressed” with deadly neurotoxic insecticides known as neonicotinoids. This makes the growing corn plant deleterious to beneficial insects like honeybees and insect-eating birds. Corn also in most instances has been genetically engineered so farmers spray their fields with toxic weed killers like glyphosate (roundup).
The combination of biocides in the gigantic area devoted to growing of crops like corn and soybeans makes agricultural fields deadly to insects, birds, and other animals.
Farm workers are not immune to this barrage of poisons. Indeed, they become guinea pigs. Often, they harvest crops that have been sprayed. And other times they work and helicopters or small aircraft spray biocides over them. They are exposed to a variety of hazardous chemicals with potential for great harm, including cancer, birth defects, sterility, behavioral disorders, learning disabilities, brain damage and psychological and neurological disease.
Chemical companies buy scientists and politicians. And alas to the scientist who blows the whistle. Professor Tyrone Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley revealed that the weed killer atrazine has been causing sexual abnormalities to frogs. The owner of atrazine, Syngenta, immediately started a campaign of retaliation against Hayes.
No biodiversity is possible in the industrialized vision of agriculture. Pesticides and one-crop farming have been decimating healthy, endangered, and threatened species. Industrialized agriculture is probably the largest trigger for the current sixth mass extinction wiping out wildlife. The “biological annihilation” of the current sixth mass extinction is equivalent to dramatic and tragic “population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization.”
The social effects of large farms are also deleterious to democracy and civilization. Large farms destroy and absorb the land of small farms. They break up communities, forcing them to extreme poverty and slavery-like conditions. Rural exodus intensifies the grave problems large cities face with food, housing, transport and employment.
Why I am Against Large Farms
I worked for two years for the US Congress and twenty-five years for the US Environmental Protection Agency. That experience taught me that pesticides are similar to agents of chemical warfare. They should have never be allowed in farming. Second, I observed the failure of environmental policies. Agrichemical companies influence EPA and governments worldwide.
Why Small Traditional Farms Are Beautiful
In contrast to the bad effects of large farms, small family farms draw from eons-tested wisdom of how to grow food. Nature is their model. Their seeds are full of biodiversity, growing into nutritious food.
Small farms often produce per acre equal or more food than large-scale farms. They cultivate merely a quarter of all farmland. Yet, small traditional farms are feeding the world. They grow a variety of crops, which brings the power of nature in minimizing harm from insects.
Ecologists study small traditional farms. In fact, a new field of science, agroecology, is enriching traditional small-scale farming with modern ecological science.
Small traditional farmers need more land. Their farms have none of the technology and power baggage of large industrialized farms. They produce nutritious food and give democracy, meaning and vitality to rural communities. They coexist in harmony with the natural world, being a potential prelude to ecological civilization. Their knowledge and example might heal the otherwise poisoned territory of factory agriculture.
That’s why small traditional family farms are beautiful.