Sustainable
Agriculture: Is the Past the Future of Farming?
For
thousands of years a form of agriculture has been practiced that differs from
the normally accepted and practiced totalitarian agriculture. This agriculture,
called sustainable agriculture, has been used in harmony with the environment
to provide humans while conserving the environment. Before the transition to
totalitarian agriculture, ten thousand years ago, humans would farm small plots
of land in ways which were relatively friendly to the environment. When modern
agriculture began to arise thousands of years ago, sustainable agriculture was
discarded as rapid farming innovations resulting in higher yields were favored.
Today, conventional agriculture has led to lower food prices for consumers
resulting in an abundance of inexpensive food. Now, back to description of
sustainable agriculture, why do I consider sustainable agriculture to be
conservation of the environment rather than preservation of the environment?
Let us examine what each of the two words means and then decide which describes
sustainable agriculture the best. Preservation is to “keep something as it is”
and conservation is “the greatest good for the greatest number under scientific
management of what is being conserved” (Williams). Clearly sustainable
agriculture is not as simple as maintaining the status quo. Sustainable
agriculture still uses some aspects of totalitarian agriculture. For instance,
farmers still have to provide water to their crops and look after the crops by
intervening in the affairs of nature (ie: removing weeds, raising plants in
greenhouses, etc).
Because those that
practice sustainable agriculture use less machinery, do not use any pesticides,
and limit the amount of fertilizers being used it means that they are taking
the utilitarian approach with a scientific view of what is more harmful to the
environment due to the use of ecological principles guiding the practice of
sustainable agriculture. Instead of using sustainable agriculture In modern
times, sustainable agriculture is still around, but in a much smaller capacity
than it was during previous millennia. A relatively small, but slowly growing,
amount of American farmers now practice sustainable agriculture. And this now
leads us to a look at an example of sustainable agriculture. The Intervale
Center and its group of partner farms have been practicing and promoting the
use of sustainable agriculture for over twenty years. Before its transition to
farming, the Intervale was used as a dump. Will Rapp, the founder of Gardener’s
Supply Company, and other members of the community wanted to turn the Intervale
into a place that could be used for gardening and farming. Ironically, Native
Americans had used the Intervale for agriculture purposes long before this.
Today the Intervale Center and its partner farms serve to strengthen
communities through sustainable community food systems. Community food systems
are designed to grow, process, distribute, and consume food in sustainable
manners while also enhancing the health of the community through environmental,
economic, social, or nutritional ways. The Intervale tries to fulfill these
goals by enhancing the viability of farming, promoting the use of sustainable
agriculture, and engaging communities in farming.
Farming by
conventional means requires the use of large farm machinery and chemicals such
as fertilizers and pesticides. Sustainable agriculture on the other hand does
not make much use of these technologies because they are harmful to the
environment. Those practicing sustainable agriculture do sometimes need to use conventional
technology in order to counteract the weather and other such factors. They
raise plants in greenhouses during cold seasons and then open the greenhouses
up when it gets warm enough for the plants to grow. Plants can’t survive well
when a dry period is going on so sustainable farms still need to irrigate their
crops. This irrigation gets done is sustainable and renewable ways such as
harvesting rainwater and not using more water than required. Sustainable
agriculture often uses other methods to raise crops in ways which prevent the
ground from running out of nutrients. They use crop rotation in order to do
this. One year a crop could be planted in some field. The next year the field
could be unused or have an entirely different crop planted instead. The
practice of crop rotation is not a new tactic; it has been used for a long time
in human history. Given how land runs out of nutrients, past farming techniques
that did not focus on farming the land to its maximum potential may hold the
key to sustainability. The Intervale utilizes greenhouses and protective plant
covering in order to raise plants during various seasons during which the
plants could not normally grow. Once the climate is right for the plants, they
are either taken outside and planted or, in some cases, are kept in the
greenhouses but with the greenhouses opened up.
Agricultural
policy, at least within the United States, has a very large focus on
totalitarian agriculture. Provided that farmers meet certain fairly
straightforward guidelines and regulations they are free to do whatever they
desire with the farm land. The American farmer has a mission to produce enough
food to feed the world. In order to fulfill this mission they must always farm
the land at its capacity. Beyond certain quality control requirements,
conventional farmers can farm next to rivers, water supplies, and animal
habitats without much fear of repercussions from releasing and spreading
pollution. Certain doctrines, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of granted
subsidies to farmers in return for not farming all of their land, but these
types of policies do not stop pollution since they merely make the farmers push
the capacity of the land which they are farming on to higher levels (Chaney).
Policies towards sustainable agriculture do not really occur on a national
level. Instead states, counties, or cities are more likely to implement them on
a wide scale. Organizations such as the Intervale impose sustainable
regulations on their partner farms as well; these farms must fit in with the
Intervale’s goals, beliefs, and mission in order to remain partners. There are
also larger organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that
certify certain foods as organic so long as they meet quality and farming method
standards.
Those who practice
sustainable agriculture usually try to break away from conventional agriculture
for ethical reasoning such as doing their part in reducing pollution and
farming waste. Sustainable agriculture acts as a counter to the current
convention of totalitarian agriculture since it lessens farming pollution,
particularly with regard to fertilizers being released. The release of
fertilizers plays a large role in polluting water supplies and the habitats of
animals. Non-sustainable agriculture creates point source pollution from the
carbon emissions resulting from farm machinery and it also creates nonpoint
source pollution as a result of farm runoff containing wastes such as
fertilizers and pesticides. Sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, seeks
to avoid these issues by utilizing more Earth friendly farming techniques. In
most cases of sustainable agriculture, no pesticides or fertilizers are used.
Farms practicing sustainable agriculture also often avoid using big, exhaust
emitting farming machinery. Because sustainable agriculture does not use the
techniques designed for the purpose of reducing farming expenses while still
maintaining a large output of produce more human labor is required to grow
fewer plants. As a result, food produced by sustainable agriculture ends up
being more expensive than that produced via conventional agriculture. This
raises the question of whether the practice of products grown in a sustainable
manner can be considered as a worthwhile alternative for consumers than
conventionally grown products and brings forth the debate whether any
restrictions should be placed on those partaking in conventional agriculture to
prevent or reduce environmental damages. As James Maroney described the
adoption and continuation of conventional agriculture during his presentation,
“we are adjusting the Earth to our agriculture, not adjusting our agriculture
to the Earth” (Maroney). This is a very adequate description of the Taker
lifestyle which promotes how “man was meant to rule the world” (Quinn 80-83).
The Leaver ideology, however, fits much more in line with sustainable
agriculture as it was with the Leavers that sustainable agriculture was first
practiced. Conventional agriculture defies the peace keeping law because Takers
“systematically destroy their competitors’ food to make room for their own”
(Quinn 127), while sustainable agriculture follows it, at least to a certain
extent. Ishmael describes the peace keeping law as “take what you need, and
leave the rest along” (Quinn 127). The extent to which sustainable agriculture
follows the peace keeping law is debatable since modern sustainable agriculture
still uses certain Taker technologies, such as watering methods and greenhouses
to alter the environment in which the plants live. In order for it to
completely follow the peace keeping law, truely sustainable agriculture would
have to place its success “in the hands of the gods” (Quinn 229) and risk some
crops failing rather than still enforcing human control over the plants.
Sustainable agriculture, without a doubt, follows the peace keeping law much
more than totalitarian agriculture does.
Many of the
decisions made in regard to making ethical agricultural decisions are
shortsighted and express Taker ignorance and an unwillingness to lose control
which has been gained over the years. This was another thing which James
Maroney discussed. He mentioned how difficult it was for agricultural change to
occur because the United States places such a high emphasis on conventional agriculture
than it does on sustainable agriculture. Conventional agriculturalists are
protected and are often exempted from laws that attempt to protect the
environment. This is why instead of attacking the conventional agriculture
dilemma directly Maroney instead focused on how conventional agriculture
practices are polluting the water supplies. Another reason that I think we
often run into issues when trying to fix the problems created by conventional
agriculture is because the US government is too conflicted by opposing views to
be able to make any decisions. A large portion of those required to enact any
large national scale change (ie: Congress) do not know much of anything about
the conventional agriculture issue and are focused on other issues instead.
Next we must look at how the mission of the American farmer is to feed the
world. When feeding the world, there cannot be any smaller scale agriculture
that produces less because the farmer’s mission cannot be carried out. Perhaps
the last key point related to the issues with tackling conventional agriculture
and promoting sustainable agriculture in its place is Mother Culture whispering
that more production and a surplus is good in every ones’ ears. Until these
misconceptions are cleared it will not be possible for ethical decisions
regarding the use of agriculture to be used.
I
found this project to be a good wrap up of the topics we covered in class this
semester since it takes them all and ties them together. Overall the project
went rather well, but I think perhaps the most complicated part was working in
a group. It can be fairly difficult to get a decently sized group of four
people to coordinate together due to differing schedules and things going on.
We did a good deal of our communication in a Canvas conversation which worked
out rather well considering that it was much cleaner than lots of emails would
have been. One group member didn’t do as much as the others, but we still
managed to get everything done on time. Another issue that we ran into was
finding an organization to visit. We were originally going to do VPIRG, but
they never answered us so we ended up going with the Intervale instead. In
conclusion, I thought that this project tied in nicely with the class and was a
good way of concluding and reflecting on what we covered this semester.
Works Cited:
Chaney, Allison. "Agricultural
Adjustment Act." Princeton University. Princeton University, 5 Nov
2012. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act.html>.
Maroney, James. Champlain College. Burlington, Vermont. 17
Oct 2013. Speech.
Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael:
An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. 80-83,
127, 229. Print.
Williams, Rob. "Ethics
and the Environment." Champlain College. Burlington, Vermont. 2013.
Lecture.
