Many sustainable agriculture advocates tout the recent growth of organic agriculture as proof that an alternative food system is possible.
But growing market share vastly overstates how much food is actually produced organically. In reality, organic production accounts for little more than 1 percent of total U. Meanwhile, only a bit more than 5 percent of food sales come from organic producers, mostly because organic sales are overwhelmingly concentrated in high-value sectors of the market, namely produce and dairy, and fetch a premium from well-heeled consumers.
Scale, technology, and productivity make good environmental sense and economic sense. Because organic farming requires more land for every calorie or pound produced, a large-scale shift to organic farming would entail converting more forest and other land to farming, resulting in greater habitat loss and more greenhouse gas emissions. Another benefit of large-scale U. That benefits the U. In the contemporary environmental imagination, highly productive, globally traded agriculture is a bad thing—poisoning the land at home and undermining food sovereignty abroad.
But in reality, a pound of grain or beef exported from the United States almost always displaces a pound that would have been produced with more land and greenhouse gas emissions somewhere else. Iowa farmer Ernie Goebel loads corn seed into a planter mounted behind his John Deere tractor before planting corn on the farm he was raised on near Luxemburg, Iowa, on May 9, An accurate understanding of the benefits of the U.
First, the United States should double down on technology and productivity. Better seeds, irrigation, fertilizers, feeds, and animal breeding—together with precision farming made possible by big data, GPS systems, and rural broadband—could significantly improve both the competitiveness and environmental performance of U.
Second, liberalizing trade agreements can improve global food security, benefit U. Free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA have historically been a target for environmentalists, who argue that they hurt poor farmers in developing countries while opening up U. But overall, agricultural trade benefits the global poor and further liberalization could lift millions out of poverty while improving food security.
Further reducing trade barriers, particularly for goods with relatively low environmental footprints, would also concentrate production in places with an environmental comparative advantage. Third, the United States should stop growing crops for biofuels and incentivize farmers to produce food for export markets.
About 40 percent of U. But today, the country is awash in oil, and the transition to electric vehicles is just getting started. Continuing to use some of the most highly productive farmland in the world to grow corn for biofuels also has terrible environmental costs. Under the best of circumstances, biofuels have a marginally lower carbon footprint than conventional petroleum-based fuels.
If President Joe Biden were to change just one thing about the U. Even in the early nineteenthcentury, New York City was a cosmopolitan enclave with a transitory population made up largely by immigrants.
In , New York adopted a grid system of numbered streets and avenues to efficiently develop and sell property in Manhattan. Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in New York City contributed to an increase in disease, and cholera and yellow fever ravaged the city. A polluted aquifer, overcrowded housing, a lack of sewers and basic sanitation, and the existence of polluting industries near wells and residential areas contributed to an unprecedented mortality rate.
In addition, the rapid expansion of densely packed wooden buildings led to many fires, culminating in the Great Fire of New York in , which devastated the city. With the development of steamboats and canal routes, waterborne shipments quickly became more popular than shipment over land. By , New York City had reestablished itself as the financial and mercantile capital of the western hemisphere. Baltimore grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, becoming the largest city in the American South.
Thanks to the milling technology of Oliver Evans, Baltimore dominated the American flour trade after George Peabody — developed an extensive network of financial and mercantile institutions while endowing libraries and museums and aiding the poor.
Despite the displacement of the black labor force with the arrival of German and Irish immigrants, and increasing poverty in the black community, Baltimore had the largest number of free blacks in the nation on the eve of the Civil War. By , Boston was transformed from a relatively small and economically stagnant town to a bustling seaport and cosmopolitan center with a large and highly mobile population.
Boston benefited greatly from being an international trading port, exporting rum, fish, salt, and tobacco, among other products. The population approached 25, by A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and allowed for a proliferation of mills and factories. Road networks were constructed to aid transportation, especially of cattle and sheep to markets. Boston became one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries.
Thomas Jefferson and his party of the Democratic- Republicans took issue with what they perceived as favoritism given to commercial classes in the principal American cities. Jefferson thought urban life widened the gap between the wealthy few and an underclass of landless poor workers who, because of their oppressed condition, could never be good republican property owners.
Rural areas, in contrast, offered far more opportunities for what Jefferson viewed as property ownership and virtue.
Over the course of his two terms as president—from to —Jefferson reversed the policies of the Federalist Party by turning away from urban commercial development. This shift would not last, however, and future administrations prioritized the growth of urban industry. The membership of political parties in the Second Party System was reflective of urbanization and wealth.
Whigs tended to be wealthier; they were prominent planters in the South and wealthy urban northerners—in other words, the beneficiaries of the market revolution. Democrats presented themselves as defenders of the common people against the elite. Members of the emerging business elite in these northern cities forged close ties with one another to protect and expand their economic interests. Marriages between leading families formed a crucial strategy to advance economic advantage, and the homes of the northern elite became important venues for solidifying social bonds.
Exclusive neighborhoods started to develop as the wealthy distanced themselves from the poorer urban residents, and cities soon became segregated by class. The profound economic changes sweeping the United States led to equally important social and cultural transformations. The formation of distinct classes, especially in the rapidly industrializing North, was one of the most striking developments. The unequal distribution of newly created wealth spurred new divisions along class lines.
Urban centers became characterized by working-class families and high rates of poverty. Although most working-class men sought to emulate the middle class by keeping their wives and children out of the work force, their economic situation often necessitated that women and children contribute to the support of the family.
Working-class women in urban centers made up a high percentage of the work force, and many working-class children went to work in factories. Union activity and striking, spearheaded by women factory workers in the s, were important means by which workers could address harsh manufacturing conditions. Workplaces in the industrialized North in the early nineteenth century were notoriously crowded and dangerous, offering low pay and no job security.
Factory work was extremely difficult, requiring hour shifts in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. The workplaces created for the sweating system comprised anywhere from a few to more than one hundred workers.
The first local trade unions in the United States formed in the late eighteenth century. In , Philadelphia shoemakers organized the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers a reference to cordovan leather in an effort to secure stable wages.
After striking for higher wages, in , eight union leaders were brought to trial and accused of conspiring to increase their pay rates. The defendants were found guilty in a Philadelphia court, a decision that established labor unions as illegal conspiracies. However, the ruling was overturned in a landmark legal decision issued by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in March, In Commonwealth v. In the early s, more than half of Americans were farmers or lived in rural communities.
A diversified farmer, for example, might need to manage and care for many different vegetable crops, a composting operation, a flock of egg-laying hens, a sow, and her litter of piglets. Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle.
Over the course of industrialization, specialization was applied to nearly all facets of food production. Diversified farms gave way to genetically uniform monocultures—fields planted with just one crop species at a time, such as corn, wheat, or soy, over a very large area.
Meat, milk, and egg production became largely separated from crop production and involved facilities that housed a single breed of animal, during a particular period of its lifespan, for a single purpose e. Farmers, once skilled in a breadth of trades, fell into more specialized roles.
Specialization was also applied to animal genetics, as selective breeding produced animals designed for a single outcome—large breast meat, for example, or increased milk production. The combine harvester performs two processes at once: cutting grain reaping and removing it from the inedible part threshing. Mechanization in agriculture greatly reduced the need for human and animal labor.
From to , production on U. Threshing rice. Harnatar, India; circa Mechanization brought tremendous gains in efficiency. By hand, a person can thresh roughly 15 to 40 kg of grain per hour, usually by beating the harvested crop against a hard surface to shake the grain loose from the inedible chaff that surrounds it.
In the same amount of time, a mechanized thresher can process to kg of rice, sorghum, or beans, or 1, to 2, kg of corn. Like work on an assembly line, specialized labor often involves repetitive tasks that can be performed by machines. This meant routine jobs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops, milking cows, and feeding and slaughtering animals could be mechanized, reducing and in some cases eliminating the need for human and animal labor.
Between and , the share of the U. In some cases, mechanization brought tremendous gains in efficiency. Grain and bean crops, such as corn, wheat, rice, and soy, must be cut from the fields reaped and removed from the inedible parts of the plant threshed. Doing this by hand involves an enormous amount of time and effort. Fertilizer applications on U. In just 12 years, between and , synthetic and mineral fertilizer applications on U.
Pesticide applications on major U. Between and , total pesticide applications on major U. Most of this was accounted for by herbicide use. Over the years shown in this graph, U. The early s saw the introduction of synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides, innovations that have become a hallmark of industrial crop production. Chemical and pharmaceutical use also became commonplace in newly industrialized models of meat, milk, and egg production.
Antibiotics , for example, were introduced to swine, poultry, and cattle feed after a series of experiments in the s and s found that feeding the drugs to animals caused them to gain weight faster and on less feed.
As with other trends in industrialization, the use of chemical and pharmaceutical inputs in agriculture offered gains in productivity, but not without health and ecological consequences. Benefits of Sustainable Agriculture. What Is Regenerative Agriculture?
Learn the Key Principles. Environment Truly sustainable farms do not use chemical pesticides, fertilizers or genetically modified seeds. Public Health Without the use of hazardous chemical pesticides, sustainable farms are much safer and healthier for their farmers, workers and surrounding communities, and the food they produce is free of chemical residues.
Animal Welfare Sustainable farmers and ranchers raise their animals in ways that allow them to graze or forage, move outdoors freely and express natural behaviors, without the stress and illness common in factory farms known as CAFOs Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. Social Justice and Food Production. Learn Why It Matters. Local Economies and Workers Years ago, independent farms were the backbone of the rural economy, as farmers spent money at local businesses, from the feed store and implement dealer to the coffee shop.
It is important to buy sustainably produced food , to demand a different kind of agricultural system. While food grown and raised sustainably is more expensive, we would like to see a structure of government incentives and supports that favors these production methods, making them more affordable.
In the meantime, people who can pay the premium are building the market for these goods. Voting with your vote is also important. While food and agriculture are not frequent topics in Washington, DC, in farm states, there are frequent bills introduced in the state legislature that would affect local food communities. They are on issues such as: making it harder for communities to block a new CAFO or to file a complaint on an existing one; relaxing rules on agricultural runoff; or obscuring details of farm ownership.
Such bills are generally driven by corporate interests and big farm groups that claim to speak for all farmers. But organizations of independent family farmers are partnering with environmental, public health and other groups to fight these bills. At the county, state, federal and institutional level, you can support increased investment in sustainable agriculture research, as well as education for beginning and transitioning farmers.
Throughout farm country, there are corn and soybean farmers who would prefer to be growing food more directly for people, but do who not have the knowledge, market, equipment or wherewithal to make a change.
Education and incentive programs for these farmers can help. Get the latest food news, from FoodPrint. Households in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Part 3, Feeding the World.
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