2 thoughts on “Industrial agriculture vs. agroecology, and why it matters”

1. 

   Bill Chisholm

   February 10, 2014 at 10:16 am

   I received this from a long time friend and one time activist friend of mine… a farm girl in her day.. “When U.S. industrialism turned to agriculture after World War II, it went at it with all that it had just learned on the battlefield, using tractors modeled on wartime tanks to cut up vast fields, crop-dusters modeled on wartime planes to spray poisons, and pesticides and herbicides developed from wartime chemical weapons and defoliants to destroy unwanted species. It was a war on the land, sweeping and sophisticated as modern mechanization can be, capable of depleting topsoil at the rate of 3 billion tons a year and water at the rate of 10 billion gallons a year. It could be no other way: If a nation like this beats its swords into plowshares, they will still be violent and deadly tools.” —The Nation, June 5, 1995
   Here in the Potato Republic of Idaho one of the real lackeys of the Farm Bureau has introduced a bill in the Senate that would make it illegal among other things to take pictures of industrial dairies. Not long ago some caught some serious animal abuse on video. So now I have to ask myself is the State of Idaho through this bill going to be protecting and covering -up for animal abusers. Is that their intent? Probably not, but it came to me that having grown up in an agri-cultural community, my family was in the farm equipment business, as kids we got out of school to help pick potatoes. It was truly agri-culture. a community based around the growing, harvesting and selling of food. Then came the Green Revolution… I think it was Earl Butz.. the then Secretary of Agriculture that turned the agri-culture into industrial-ag… the mining of land and animals… and of course that led to an increase in abuses across the landscape and the destruction of many agri-cultural based communities.

   People became more and more disconnected from the land and from the production of food and the production of food became more and more disconnected from some of the basics of agri-culture, which were land stewardship, animal husbandry, good neighborliness among other things. Food became less and less food and more and more just a commodity and the manufacturing side grew and the nutritional values of food diminished, health issues for people, animals and land became an issue. People started to push back at the industrial-ag machine with its powerful lobbies and weak lackey political allies. Add GMOs and the battle lines are growing more intense… the impacts across the landscape and the well being of future generations even more critical. Something has to change and yesterday is too late.

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   1. 

      Ann Kreilkamp

      February 10, 2014 at 4:55 pm

      Yes, it feels to me that FOOD is the issue around which everyone can coalesce as we move forward. Along with water, it’s the most primal. Thanks for this, Bill. Agri-CULTURE. Yes. It used to be real.

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