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"End of Cornucopia" for
u.s.
Agrlculture?
by Catherine Leru
[Repnnutd lrom an artocle on 1he
Joumal
of Curr&nt
Soct•l lssues.
Win1er 1975
lssue]
Ear1y thos past summer, Seetetary of
Agricultura Earl Butt confodently pre–
dicted thatthe Unoted States position in
the intemational eommunity would
eon–
tinue to be bolstered by the vast
emounts ol grain pouring out of -the
cornucopia of the Midwestern Corn
Belt. "Food is power." he told the press
os he unveiled the U.S. Oepartment of
Agrícultuto (USDA) predictions of a rec–
ord 1974 com crop ol 6.4 billion bush·
els.
That was July. By mid-August, USDA
economiSta, gloomily surveying the sun
parched. drought-riddon Midwest. re–
visad thoir optimistic statistics: a
4 .
7
bill lon bushel crop, 1
2
peroent below
last year's production levels. Butz t old
the public that the livestock leed situ·
ation was "critica l." and that food
prices might go up as much as
i
4 per–
cent over the next year.
The Sec:tatary
was
consistantly rig.hl
about one thing:
Food
os power. And il
an abundance ol food is a mainstay of
U.S. preeminence in woo1d affairs. our
position is more vulnerable than anyone
in the federal govemment would like
10
admot.
The vulnerabolrty ol the U S. agricul–
tura! $Y5tom os
the
result of our ever
oncreasing dependence on energy-onten–
sive agricultura! technology. a growing
reloance on processed loods. and the
development of genetocally engoneered.
" green revolutoon" hybrid crops whoch
demand vast doses ol water. lertilozer
and pestocodea. The riae of corporate ag–
riculture has encouraged the use of
unecologicallarming practicas which fly
in the lace of every known "law" of
natural systems.
Woth frightening regularity, scientists
ere realizing that the U.S. agricultura!
systom uses moro onergy than it pro–
duces. lt deponds complotely on mam–
moth inlusions ol petroleum and natural
gas in the lorm of luol, fertilizers. pasti–
cides, herbicidas snd various drugs and
chemicels used lo produce livestock.
lO
Without a continuing llow ol cheap los–
sil fuels and petroleum-based agri–
chemicals,
we
nuoy diseover that the
fablad American cornucopia is almost
empty. ·
Farm Revolution
-
How Benelicial7
Despite
~his
year's poor showing. the
USDA proudly hails American agricul·
ture as the most productiva in the
world. The Oepartment's 1970 Year–
book fairly burst with pride in
its
de–
scription of the transl ormetion of the
Ameñcan farm scene: ..Farmers are
now
pur~hasing
way more products,
goods and services, as they must il they
are
10
have today's modern tech·
nology ... (Fony years ego] they were
still providing most oftheir own produc·
tion needs -
horsepower (and its
leed), soil farti litv (clover rotation). live–
stock leeds, crop seeds and workers.
Today' 's farmer buys prodigious
amounts of his production needs -
ter·
tilizers, formula leed. hybrid seads, in–
secticides. herbicidas, tractor luel -
end employs a myriad of custom ser–
vices such
as
.¡nechine harvesting. ferti–
lizer and pesticida spraying and aorplane
crop dusting.
··
Sinee 1950, while this change was
occurring, the number of acres under
cultiVation in the United States has
r-.
mainad constan!, about 325 million
aetas. but the number of people livtng
and working on these larms hu
dropped by SO peroent.
Tho
number ol
larms in ope<ation has been
reduced
by
three million (and continuas
10
drop at
the rata or 2.000 par week) since the
t940s. But, and this is the USDA' s
piSes dB résistance.
farm production
has gone up 60 pareent .
Massive Energy Expenditure
The scenario sounds unbelievably
rosy thus lar, but
a
closor look at the
components ol this production incrcasc
reveals the basic vulnerability olthe sys–
tem. According lo the USDA's own fig–
ures. fertilizar (usually made from
petroleum or natural gas) use has in·
creasod 1O·fold sonce 1946, and the
uu
ol lossol fuels
10
power farm equip–
ment has grown SO pareen!. And the
-use ol energy on the farm
is
only 1he
boginning. Research done by Eric Hirst.
now
ol the Federal Energy Administra·
tion [indocates] that lood-ralated onergy
use
g,_ 3.3 percent between 1960
and 1970
-a
rete double that
ol
pop–
ulation growth.
Geo<g Borgstrom, tho noted author of
The Hungty Plllr>et and e prolessor
01
food
science and human nutntion at
Michigan S1ate University, has com–
putad that the energy input into an acre
of aoybeans grown in lowa was
2.3-
to
3 .
5
times greater than the lood energy
produced by the soybeans. Even more
appalling are his ealculetions ol compar–
ativa onergy use in food production.
" The difference in calorie intake
bé–
tween the U.S. and India is not, as gen–
erally assumed, 1.31 O calorías per day,
but rathor 9, 182," he wrote in a recen!
issue of the Swedish scienco journal ,
Ambio.
Borgstrom explained the gap by
comparing the amounts ol energy con–
sumad in the plants and animels in·
gestad by the average lndian and the
average American, es well es the energy
usad to produce the leed eaten by meat·
producing livestock. The average Ameri–
can consumes 10,017 ealories worth ol
primary energy daily, while the average
lndoan consumes only 773. Borgstrom
notes.
" 11
tha energy intensiva larming
of the kond practicod in the Unitad
States were apploed wor1dwide. this
would requore
sorne
35
10
40 percent ol
the total wortd onergy account."
lt appear$ that there
os
something se–
roously wrong woth the American agri–
cultura! system. Sonce 1910, Unitad
States agrocultural efficoency, as mea·
sured in energy. ha.s decreased 10-fold.
Al the tum ol the century, accordong lo
Univ•rslty of W1sconsin researchers
Carol and John Steinhart. the American
larmer usad less then one calorie ol en–
ergy 10 extract one caloría of food en–
ergy from the soil. Their research
indicates that farmers now spend close
10
1O calories ol energy for every one
obtainod
In
lood . As an ironic slap-in·
tho~face
to American ..offtciency,· · tho
Steinharts also note that many "primi·
tive" societies obtain anywhere from
l ivo to 50 calorles of food per calori e
investad in agricultura! production.
Divtorsity Gi ves Way to
M onoculture
Oiversity is the backbone ol a healthy
ecosystem. serving as nature's in·
sulation against disease. incfemen t
weather and pests. But American agri–
culture (read agribusiness) has. in the
past three decades. abandonad diver–
·Sity.and optad instead lor homogeneity.
Centurias of plant evolution have been
replacéd by laboratory developed hybrid
seeds, and natural ecosystems featuring
a broad variety of 'plant species hove
been preempted by thousands of acres
of single crops.
11) lhe days before this genet lc unifor–
mity, farmers in different parts ol the
country plantad the seads right for their
cfimate and soil conditions - e saad
that was the end product ol thousands
ol years of gel)etic development. An
ominous portent of the luture occurred
in 1970 when a
blight~rrying
virus
infectad the corn crop
ol
the nation and
felled 15 peroent ol it. Almos! every
foeld
of com in the nation was equally
vulnerable lo the disease, tha protoetoon
ol
diversity having been eliminated.
In tha days befora hybrids and agri–
chemicals. larmers grew com in thr..
year rotation
cycles
of corrH>Ots-clover
in arder
to
regenerate soil nutrients.
(Ciover
acts as a nitrogen fixer in the
soil.) Fanmers
usad
little
or
no fertilizers
and plantad about 10,000 seads per
acre. aecording
10
USDA statistics. By
1970. farmers had replacad crop rOta·
tion with 150-pounds-per-acre
appl~
cations of nitrogen fertilizer and were
planting 25,000 seeds par acre. Yields·
par-acre had jumpad
10
90 or 100 bush–
els. But this increase. attributad by the
USDA to hybrid seads alone, actually
was the result of extensivo lertililation
and more efficienl planting technology.
Soil Fertility -
What'a That?
The USDA has consistently failad to
tell the public the truth eboutthe effect$
ol this system on the soil, the nation's
niost besic and valuable resource.
Al·
1hough chemical fertilizers have been in
existente since the 1840' s, their w ide–
spread use did nol begin until the mid·
20th century. Their presence has
brought about a change in the definition
ol soil fertility.
Once lertility was a measure
ol
SOtl
structure and nutrient content. the re–
sult of years of carelul farming
and
maintenance.
Tha
word " fert ile" today
·often refers only
10
the amount ol threo
importan! water soluble nutrients in the
soit - nitrogen. phosphorus and potas–
sium . These nutñents are the ones most
commonly lound in chemical fenilizers
Forgotten are healthy soil structure,
water content. trace minerals and the
prasence of organic matter (humus) -
all ingradients ol lertile soil. The impor–
tante ol these three elements
10
lood
production has been so over-rated that
the soil itself has olten been ignorad .
According 10 Michael Allaby and Floyd
Allen in their book
Robots 8ehind thtJ
flow,
" NitrOjjen-phosphorus-potassium
fenilizers beoomo a
.~.~bstituto
for IÓnd
"
Allaby and Allen have documentod
other effects excossive use of chemical
fertiliter has had on the soil. ' ·As the
use ol artificial ferti lizar lncreased. leos
WEEK
ENDINO MARCH 8, 197S