Wow! I'm in awe of the brilliant proposals being submitted by our front pagers for a blue print to take the US into the 21st Century. The changes they are suggesting and their encouragement to 'Think Big' is not just an idealist view, it's a necessary view. The US is falling behind in most important categories because of our refusal to act beyond our immediate needs. The world needs our leadership and at the very least our participation to be able to move ahead on the immense challenges we face due to climate change and population growth.
But, they forgot something extremely important. The US and the world for that matter can not have an efficient and sustainable transition to the 21st Century without reforming our agriculture system. The US has a people killing, Earth killing food system which it is seeking to export to the rest of the world. This isn't a way to make the disastrous system disappear never to be seen again, No, this is a way to magnify the failure by perpetrating it onto other countries to make the world sicker and to accelerate the effects of climate change. What are they thinking?
The US Director of Agriculture, Tom Vilsach, is promoting a doubling of the amount of US exports of staples corn, soy and other major US corps by 2014. More than half of the corn and soy grown in the US now goes to feed animals not people. The monoculture of corn and soy grown in the US is now depleting our topsoil and making the use of fertilizers necessary. The fertilizers are causing massive runoffs into our lakes and rivers and accounting for over 50% pollution of those waterways and including the massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico which was created by the runoffs from livestock and farm production along the Mississippi. Our agriculture system has even been a job loser. What part of it doesn't work do they not understand?
The US is making this proposal just when the rest of the world seems to be waking up to the danger of the US style big agriculture type of food system.
Meanwhile, U.S. ag policy as expressed by Vilsack is putting us increasingly at odds with an emerging global consensus on how to structure food production in an era of climate change, resource scarcity, and population growth. The latest data point: the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has come out with a policy blueprint called "Save and Grow": A policymaker’s guide to the sustainable intensification of smallholder crop production." Its central premise reads like a direct rebuke to Vilsack: "The present paradigm of intensive crop production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium."
A review of agricultural development projects in 57 low-income countries found that more efficient use of water, reduced use of pesticides and improvements in soil health had led to average crop yield increases of 79 percent. Another study concluded that agricultural systems that conserve ecosystem services by using practices such as conservation tillage, crop diversification, legume intensification and biological pest control, perform as well as intensive, high-input systems.
Even at the recent Bonn talks on Climate Change there was the message NO Agriculture, NO Deal. They are starting to realize that we can not mitigate Climate change without reforming our agriculture model.
Brighter Green, a New York based think tank focusing on sustainable livestock agriculture, has even sent their Executive Director, Mia McDonald to China to warn about the dangers of their transition (pdf) to a more western diet and agriculture model
The US model of loosely regulated big agriculture has left us with a massive crisis in diet-related disease, and is a major contributor to Climate Change. We have exported our loosely regulated financial system, and our aggressive war policies all to disastrous results. Let's fix our food system before we consider exporting it.
1) The US needs to eliminate subsidies for corn and soy production that contribute to the monoculture that's depleting our topsoil and creating an American diet focused on animal products.
2) Using corn to produce ethanol has also promoted the monoculture agriculture system. There was some good news on that front. Finish the job.
3) Aid to small farmers who prove they are using eco-friendly farming practices.
4) A tax on carbon that includes a tax on energy and resource intensive food, especially meat and animal products..to motivate a reduction of the consumption of meat and animal products.
5) Last but not least, a major move away from Concentrated Animal Farming Operations or CAFO's, which have been responsible for a major public health problem of increased antibiotic resistance
6)One more, The FDA needs to become more effective at regulating what they deem necessary.
7)Yet more, The US needs to tackle immigration reform for many reasons. One being that our agriculture system depends on illegal immigrants and they are abused and taken advantage of because of their vulnerability and their illegal status.
8) While we're at it how about a national Meatless Monday proclamation. After all, the first Meatless Monday was spearheaded by Herbert Hoover
Our food system is at the nexus of energy, climate change, health care and our financial system. It's reform is a necessary component to our survival and transition to a healthier and greener future.