“[F]armers in 1941 wanted high-value grains like wheat and corn that they could sell off the farm, [but] they didn’t yet have the mined and manufactured fertilizers needed to get high yields from those crops. Instead, they colected nutrients from large areas of land using low-value crops like grass and alfalfa, fed them to animals, and let the animals concentrate the nutrients in their manure. The manure was then used to fertilize small fields of grains.”
So says Farming magazine (Winter 2009, p. 62), reminding us that agriculture as practiced today relies on artificial fertilizers and cheap trucking, not sustainable practices. Vast fields of corn and soy are as much a symptom as livestock factory farms. Only because of cheap petroleum and natural gas derived fertilizer can we maintain a system in which crops and livestock are not dependent on each other.
Cheap petroleum is also the greatest cause of environmental destruction, through climate change. Thus farming practices may be an indicator of environmental health– and right now the indicator is generally not good.
I try to model my food intake as though we did not have cheap petroleum: buy local, avoid prepared foods and corn syrup and soybean oils, and limit meat consumption to a couple of times a week. But it’s not easy when off-season cardboard tomatoes and cheap off-the-shelf bread are available at the store…
