The Failure of Industrial Agriculture

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The Failure of Industrial Agriculture

Two years ago, Italy faced one of the worst droughts in recent history. Unable to combat the lack of water with proper irrigation systems or underground water reserves, regional water bans and severe restrictions were implemented in southern regions, limiting both personal and business related use, in order to prevent a full blown water crisis throughout the entire country. Both domestic and foreign economies suffered from the giant losses incurred due to crop failure and a shortened growing season. Some experts have attributed the extreme droughts in both Southern Italy and other areas of Southern Europe, like Spain and Greece, to years of detrimental agricultural practices in the area. Research has shown that these practices, most of them integral to the tenants of industrial agriculture; a form of farming that employs large tracts of land and excessive amounts of resources in order to produce large returns of a single crop; are stripping the soil of vital nutrients, depositing harmful fertilizers in the ground, and employing other deleterious measures that are making them unsuitable for long term use.

Industrial agriculture has been employed by farm owners for years now. Based on the capitalist ideal that mass production of one good will reap more profits, the industrializing of the common farm has become the leading form of agriculture in many countries world wide. It has undeniable benefits for the consumer, making it very desirable in the American and European economies, where it was founded. The ideas of traditional market systems, with inputs and outputs, are applied to agriculture in hopes of increasing yield, be it corn, cows, or bushels per acre, and decreasing the cost of...

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...anic farms in Europe, where an EU push to abandon the industrial methods of the past and to look to more sustainable ones, are producing 60 &endash; 80% of the crop yields that are being produced on industrial farms (UCS). Since there is less governmental backing for the large scale production farms, organic ones are beginning to show their true capabilities. In fact, even the UNDP report after Johannesburg states that "organic farming methods seem able to provide similar outputs, with less external resources, supplying a similar income per labor-day as high input conventional approaches." Organic farming can supply the world with the amount of food necessary, but only if subsidies are adequately distributed to make these low-input, low-tech farms competitive.

Sources

Union of Concerned Scientists. www.ucsusa.org/news.cfm?newsID=328> Accessed 29 April 2004.

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