For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;
A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;
A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it ...
Deuteronomy 8:7-9
But, America failed to heed the teachings of God, with sad results:
We have become dangerously focused on corn in the Midwest (and soybeans, with which it is cultivated in rotation). This limited diversity of crops restricts our diets, degrades our soils and increases our vulnerability to droughts. Farmers in the central plains used to grow a greater diversity of food and forage crops, including oats, hay, alfalfa and sorghum. But they gradually opted to grow more and more corn thanks to federal agricultural subsidies and expanding markets for corn in animal feed, corn syrup and ethanol. ...
The problem is not so much the drought but our over-reliance on this single crop. As droughts are predicted to become more frequent with global climate change, we must rethink our increasingly vulnerable agri-food system. As such, the failing corn crop may not be such a bad thing if it prompts a push for change.
The No. 1 culprit behind our overreliance on corn is the federal farm subsidy program. While subsidies are not categorically bad, they become a problem if they leave farmers with little choice but to focus on a few crops. The proposed farm bill now before Congress would make some progress by ending direct payments to farmers for certain commodities (most notably corn) in favor of expanded crop insurance. Even with that critical change, a floor price (below which farmers receive payments from the government) and a more robust crop insurance program for certain commodities will still mean that farmers narrowly concentrate on corn and soybeans in the Midwest.
American agriculture is heavily industrial. Corn is a crop monopoly because it has so many industrial uses, from substituting as a cheap sweetener for the more expensive cane sugar, to use as a biofuel as well as other industrial uses. Soybeans are another monopoly cash crop with widespread industrial use.
And, industrial agriculture is costly to our environment and economy:
Much of the agriculture practiced in the United States today is industrial-style agriculture. That is, farms are often very large, highly specialized, and run like factories with large inputs of fossil fuels, pesticides and other chemicals, and synthetic fertilizers derived from oil. This industrial agriculture is sometimes considered a great success. But is it? It has had large, complex effects on our environment, our economy, and our urban and rural social fabric. A new awareness of the costs is beginning to suggest that the benefits are not as great as they formerly appeared.
Many of the costs of industrial agriculture have been hidden and ignored in short-term calculations of profit and productivity, as practices have been developed with a narrow focus on increased production. The research establishment that underpins modern industrial agriculture has until recently paid little heed to the unintended and long-term consequences of these systems.
Alas, another side effect of large, highly specialized industrial agriculture is huge piles of animal shit which stinks to high heaven and pollutes our rivers and lakes:
Manure becomes pollutant as its volume grows unmanageable
.... Nearly 40 years after the first Earth Day, this is irony: The United States has reduced the manmade pollutants that left its waterways dead, discolored and occasionally flammable.
But now, it has managed to smother the same waters with the most natural stuff in the world.
Animal manure, a byproduct as old as agriculture, has become an unlikely modern pollution problem, scientists and environmentalists say.
Wooh! That is a visual hard to put aside.
A river alight with flaming pigshit.
Almighty God!
Please forgive us for the iniquity of ungoverned greed and lead us back to balanced, diversified framing as practiced by our fathers and mothers and grandparents on small family farms.
Please deliver us from the iniquity of bankers who have removed us from our lands and from the iniquities of soulless corporate farms and Archer Daniels and Monsanto and others and genetically modified plants and animals and stuff we haven't even heard of ... yet.
Amen.
PS. And please save the honeybees and the other bees, too. Amen.