For them, sustainability is the greatest virtue and is best achieved by encouraging small farms and organic practices. They frown on monocultures and chemical fertilisers. They like agricultural research but loathe genetically modified (GM) plants. They think it is more important for food to be sold on local than on international markets. Brazil’s farms are sustainable, too, thanks to abundant land and water. But they are many times the size even of American ones. Farmers buy inputs and sell crops on a scale that makes sense only if there are world markets for them. And they depend critically on new technology.
Despite the contradiction here–like the fact that it states that the country “loathes” GM seed, and yet has the second-largest land mass planted in them (after the U.S.), and that the country supports small farms, and yet most are many times the size as those in America, and that farmers are buying inputs on a huge scale yet shun chemical fertilizers–Brazil is doing things differently and I’m sure the U.S. could learn something from their model. The article goes on to explain that between 1996 and 2006, the total value of Brazil’s crops increased 365 percent without subsidies. With a wealth of land and water resources, and value placed on agricultural research–notably in breeding grasses, cattle and their own GM soy, and using lime and lab-produced micro-organisms, making fertile previously unproductive soil–we are only seeing the beginning of Brazil’s industrial prowess.
However, the article paints a rosy picture of industrial farming, and fails to mention any of the environmental impacts this kind of high-intensity production is having. As one commenter notes, “The Cerrado – Brazilian Savanah [sic]- is the second largest area of Biodiversity in Brazil. Second only to the Amazon. Hence, large areas are being destroyed in order to produce commodities.” Another commenter alighted on the fact that a higher rate of insects in the tropics and vast monocultures would require higher rates of pesticide use and, “Thus, the critical headwaters of Brazil’s two major rivers become heavily freighted with toxic agricultural chemicals, with “externalized” consequences for river ecology and downstream users.”
On a recent trip there, I saw that on the consumer side, Brazil is also implementing some of the most forward thinking policies to end hunger–including universal school feeding and subsidized restaurants, both of which favor local buying, as well as urban agriculture programs, added markets for local farmers, and even writing into the Brazilian constitution last February that food is a right of citizenship. Further, Brazil has already achieved a Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger ahead of the 2015 deadline. But these actions were taken out of necessity, because when food is placed into a market context it fails to feed everybody equitably.
So are industrial agriculture and organic agriculture just producing different products, and some people will always be “dumb” enough to buy organic food (According to the House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-MN)? Big Ag would have us believe that there is room in the market for everyone. But without the government propping it up with subsidies, the industrial behemoth would not survive. Without abundant energy and water resources, industrial agriculture would be paralyzed.
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