Kimberly J. Workinger
Agriculture supplies the food and fiber we need from the land. When humans stopped hunting and gathering, we started culturing or growing our food. At first, we did this in a sustainable way. We had many different plants and animals growing and being harvested on farms and for the most part the produce harvested supported the farmer. In this polyculture system crops were rotated and manure from the animals living on the farm was spread to replenish the nutrients removed by the crops. Farmers and their environment were in balance. As people moved away from farms into the cities with the advent of industrial societies, fewer and fewer farms were feeding more and more people. According to the USDA in 1920 there were 6.4 million farms utilizing 9.6 billion acres of our country to make food. The average farm was 148.2 acres. In 1992 there were 1.9 million farms on 9.5 million acres meaning that the average size had jumped to 491 acres. (1) This trend continues today. As farms grew in size, they increased their yields per acre to meet the demands of the people. With the emergence of monocultures, vast areas of land were used to produce a single crop. With no animals living on the farm, their manure that was spread as fertilizer had to be replaced. Factories that had once made weapons for WWII used these same ingredients to make synthetic fertilizers. Also in the 1940's the pesticide industry began to flourish due to advances in chlorine chemistry, producing chlorinated hydrocarbons, such as DDT. Seed companies developed specialized seeds that were resistant to drought and insects as well as the mechanization that came along with harvesting the increased yields. From planting to harvesting to the manufacturing of fertilizer, agriculture became an oil dependent industry. As long as oil was available and easy to get, food remained inexpensive. In recent years, oil prices have been variable and rising resulting in increased food prices. Climate change is affecting weather and the consistent, reliable availability of those crops. Heat waves, droughts, and severe storms are increasing in severity, and all threaten successful harvests. While producing the food is more expensive both in terms of energy and resources, moving it from where it was produced to consumers all over the world is also energy intensive. Some believe that modern energy-intensive agriculture is not sustainable. Others contend that only by developing more resistant seeds, better fertilizers, more effective pesticides and increasing mechanization on the farm will we feed the world expected to include nine billion people by the end of the century.