Agribusiness vs. Sustainable farming

Sustainable farming could feed all 8 billion of us with a varied and nutritious diet. It would replenish soil and fresh water, absorb as much carbon and nitrogen as it gives off, and recycle animal and human waste. It requires no fossil fuels, toxic herbicides and pesticides, artificial fertilizers, or genetically modified crops. Medium scale cooperative farming integrated into cities and natural habitat can feed the world better than our current global food chain dominated by industrialized agriculture.

Currently, 2.5 billion peasant farmers, herdsmen, fishermen, and indigenous foragers use only 25% of the world’s agricultural land to feed 70% of its population. Even poor villages and urban neighborhoods in the Third World have marketplaces with fruits, vegetables, fish, live animals and bush meat. Small farmers have a wealth of experience, traditional techniques, and generational knowledge on local conditions. Many use traditional seeds that are genetically hardier and more versatile than the strains used by agribusiness. With land redistribution, an increased workforce, and science adapted to local conditions, farmers could feed the world with nutritious food.

Agribusiness creates a divide between haves and have nots, between the urban developed world that consumes excess calories and un-nutritious food, and the rural underdeveloped world that constantly struggles with food security.

Global agriculture produces 11% of greenhouse gasses, most from commercial farming, but including rice paddy farming and livestock. Decisions on what farmers should grow and how they should grow it are made by finance capitalists on Wall Street and agribusiness corporations.

Global agribusiness began with Columbus. Cotton, originally grown in the Indus River valley and ancient Mexico, was grown on plantations with slave labor in the Spanish Empire and in Virginia by the English colonists. Cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and rice were the first cash crops grown in the Americas with slave labor, sold in Europe, enriching plantation owners, merchants, bankers, and kings. American agribusiness today is worth $1.3 trillion.

Investment brokers in corn, wheat, soybeans and all major foods are determining factors in what farmers grow and the prices of foods. Blackrock, Capital Group, and Vanguard, all multitrillion dollar investment firms, dominate meat and dairy investments. Investments in oil and petrochemicals and their price fluctuations affecting fertilizer and transportation costs are factors. Demands by agribusiness and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, dominated by corporate interests, set standards and rules for growing crops and livestock. Monsanto forces farmers to use its herbicide and genetically modified corn and soy, harming their livelihoods, poisoning nearby farmers’ crops, devastating subsistence peasant farmers in Latin America, and introducing carcinogens, endocrine disrupters into food products. Oligopolies dominate major food commodities, in production, distribution, and retail sales, such as Cargill, Sysco, and Tyson in meat production, and Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger in retail sales, acting to maximize their profits at the expense of farmers and consumers.

Make each region autonomous in food production. Rely on crops native to an area, such as corn, beans, and squash in the arid American Southwest, and add exotic plants and animals that adapt well to local conditions, such as goats in arid areas. Grow crops and natural vegetation that absorbs water during wet periods and floods, restoring aquifers, and use irrigation during droughts. Reduce reliance on dams and levees to allow rivers like the Mississippi and Nile to flood and recede, replenishing the soil and aquifers. Communities should rely on locally grown crops, with exotics as supplements, to reduce transportation

Soil is a habitat that holds more than half the world’s species—bacteria, fungi, insects, roundworms. A third of the earth’s land surface is severely degraded and getting worse. Regenerative farming restores and stabilizes soil, aquifers, and the carbon cycle to reduce global warming. Mixed cropping—variety of plants together including legumes that add nitrogen and groundcover plants that suppress weeds, livestock for organic fertilizer, rotating crops. No till farming.

Intersperse natural habitat—forest, grassland, marsh, ponds. These are reservoirs for biological diversity, They restore damaged land, control pests, retain water and soil, and absorb carbon.

Apply modern scientific methods to local conditions dramatically increases productivity while reducing greenhouse gasses. Growing rice in alternate wet and dry cycles reduces methane production. Fermenting animal and human waste, collecting methane produced, and using the sterile solids as fertilizer, recycles carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

Making decisions locally, relying on the acquired wisdom of farmers, allows for flexibility and rapid adjustments to drought, flood, early frost, any weather conditions or needs of consumers.