“only a very small minority of people want to get their hands dirty”

“Admittedly, I write about technology and the efficiency of today’s farms–yet I see room for both large and small farms, giving consumers choices. And that is happening.”

Your point about people not wanting to get their hands dirty is valid, but I think it is more of an economic one than a cultural one.
People will be a lot more willing to put their hands in the dirt if they can make some money doing it. Right now they can’t because machines and chemicals do it cheaper. What it boils down to is this concept of efficiency. The price of entry to run an “efficient” industrial vegetable or grain farm is pretty high, you need to purchase or rent expensive machinery, you have to pay to run and maintain that machinery, pay constantly for various chemical inputs and on top of that you probably need a lot of land to be able to keep up with the discounting and bulk production of the other big operations out there.

I think we need to redefine this term efficiency. “Industrial Ag” often boasts of how efficient their operations and yields are. The efficiency they boast of is purely a monetary one though, and hinges on the fact that energy from oil right now is dirt cheap compared to human labor. So “efficient” really means “less human labor needed”. That’s pretty much it. If you look at energy use, human powered farms at the beginning of this century yielded a positive energy gain (you have to, otherwise you die!). If we look at farming with machinery and chemicals, it takes several times more calories of energy of input than you get out of the system in food….add into that soil erosion and a significant amount of pollution (from running machinery and pesticide/herbicide/fertilizer leaching) and the whole cost of the current system is staggering. In terms of whole yields, industrial agriculture manages to make some money, but in all other costs it is deep in the red. Ultimately these costs will catch up to us because they are based in a physical system that has limits, checks and balances and will ultimately start collecting on that debt.

So when industrial agriculture says “efficient” all they really mean is “makes money”. As oil prices rise, expect to see more human and animal powered farms. This goes back to my previous point, technology can take us only so far. And energy does not come from nowhere. We have been borrowing energy from the past to feed ourselves, but now we have to look at given the current energy available to us, how do we balance the books?? That is the technological challenge that we all face in the coming decades.

There will be a conference in New York City this September to demonstrate the overlap between sustainability, profitability and technology, in an effort to attract much needed investment capital to this sector.

For more information: http://www.newseedadvisors.com

I agree that your definition of “sustainable ag” (which is different from mine–another story) is not about hand tools and hard labor, similar to what I grew up doing on our small Iowa farm in the 60s and 70s. You are correct that there are very progressive organic farms today.

I believe the point that Fedoroff was implying (albeit poorly stated though) is that our society can’t go back to the millions of small farms that fed a completely different society 40-50 years ago.

Would I love to see more growth of small advanced farms today? Absolutely. The biggest challenge with that thinking is that only a very small minority of people want to get their hands dirty–in an industry I still love to this day.

Admittedly, I write about technology and the efficiency of today’s farms–yet I see room for both large and small farms, giving consumers choices. And that is happening.

Yet just like you, I’d like to see several binary arguments put to bed as well. Like the notion of ‘factory farms’ and ‘industrial agriculture.’ Certain people have such a warped notion of the ‘corporations’ that run them. 95% of them are run by simple families (like my brother’s family). And he doesn’t worship technology, like many don’t.

And the other disagreement that is way out there in left field is the notion that animals raised for food should be deemed the same as pets. Now granted, we had 4-H animals that we showed at county and state fairs, and we became real attached to them, like pets. But we knew their true purpose in life, and understood that. Now I love vegetables too (we had huge gardens), and I respect vegetarians– until they try to force their habits on others.

I’m not as sold as you are that our society is sold on technology keeping us perfect. And I have a hard time seeing a society that views agriculture as the foundation and lifeblood. Only a small minority actually realize that.

Your average consumers don’t care where their food comes from, as long as it’s relatively safe–which it is. Sure there’s issues here and there, but no system is perfect.

I’ve rambled long enough. Time to go get a juicy cheeseburger, with some veggies, too.

Kurt

Just to note my background–ex-Iowa farm boy who grew up on a small livestock & grain farm in the late 60s and early 70s. Today I live in the burbs of the Twin Cities, yet remain an agricultural journalist, as I have followed the industry since 1981.

What human technology does not do is teach us how to live within our means. There will always be limits to the system, no matter how far we push it. Right now we are reaching the end of the fossil fuels trajectory….the wax on Icarus’s wings is starting to melt, the our rocket fuel is starting to run low, and we need to figure out how to start finding and building parachutes so we can make it down safely and start preparing for the next big launch.