Industrial Agriculture and How it Came to Be.
Modern agriculture has provided for a tremendous amount of growth and progress in humanity as a whole, but the second-order effects of the industrial agriculture paradigm are resoundingly negative. How did a process of intrinsic vibrancy and life become a vicious cycle of degeneration?
There are two pivotal moments that got us here.
Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizer
Nitrogen is one of the primary limiting factors to plant growth, often second only to water. Yet, the air we breathe contains almost 80% nitrogen. Unfortunately, this atmospheric nitrogen is not directly usable to plants as a nutrient. As a result, nitrogen in the form of a plant nutrient is scarce and has been so throughout the history of agriculture. For much of this history, farmers have used crop residues, various forms of compost, animal, and even human manures to provide nitrogen and other nutrients to their crops. Agriculture was dependent on the rich, loamy topsoil with the sweet pungency of life springing forth from decay.
In 1909 Fritz Haber, a German chemist discovered an energy-intensive chemical reaction that synthesized ammonium, a plant-available form of nitrogen from abundant atmospheric nitrogen gas and hydrogen. This became known as the Haber-Bosch process. From this moment forward nitrogen fertilizer would be cheap and readily available. Biological-based (animals, manure, and compost) and integrated farming (crop rotations, diverse polycultures) were no longer needed to provide soil fertility. Agriculture was forever changed. Today, roughly half of all the crops consumed worldwide depend on synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
Fritz Haber eventually won a Nobel Prize for his invention. At the time the cause for celebration was merited. It is estimated that the discovery of the Haber Bosch process provided food for an additional 3 million people during a time of global food insecurity. Who could have foreseen the implications this would have on soil and human health decades later?
The Green Revolution
The second watershed moment occurred in the 1940s with the broad-scale crop breeding project known as the Green Revolution. The agronomist Norman Borlaug led this initiative starting in Mexico to breed high-yielding, disease-resistant wheat varieties. Mexico quickly went from an importer of wheat to a net exporter after broadly adopting hybrid wheat varieties and chemical fertilizers. Like Mexico, the US imported over half of its wheat prior to the green revolution. However, by the 1960s the US was also a net exporter of wheat.
India became the country most impacted by the green revolution technologies in the 1960s when the country was on the brink of famine. Borlaug spearheaded the development of a new rice variety that produced more grain per plant when paired with synthetic fertilizers and irrigation. Borlaug and the green revolution received credit for saving India from famine, becoming known worldwide
What wasn’t as well known at the time was that the new hybrid varieties were dependent on higher and higher rates of synthetic fertilizers that have been steadily degrading soil, polluting waterways, and producing a myriad of other ecological and health problems. Since 1940, the use of synthetic fertilizers has increased by more than 4x in the US on a per-acre basis. In addition, the green revolution fast-tracked the adoption of industrial agriculture, made possible by the invention of synthetic fertilizers.
The new high-yielding crop varieties could feed millions of mouths that may have otherwise gone hungry. At the same time, these new varieties displaced other more ecological adapted and culturally important varieties. For example, in India there were 30,000 rice varieties before the green revolution, today there are approximately ten varieties.
It has become clear that there has been a precipitous dropoff in the quality and density of nutrients in our food supply since the green revolution. This can be directly correlated with the injudicious use of synthetic fertilizers, the prevalence of varieties bred for yield over quality, and the overall reductive and industrial approach to agriculture. Consequently, our food system has become a dumping ground for processed foods devoid of nutrients that have no place in a healthy diet.
What is most important to understand from these two events is that together, they create a massive flywheel effect that turned a complex biological process into one dominated by synthetic chemicals.
The Path Forward
We have reached a crucial crossroads. One path takes us further down the route of ecological degradation. The other path begins spinning the flywheel in the direction of regeneration, vibrant life, and health in the agriculture system as a whole. The path towards more health will require a principle-based approach that marries technology with tradition, biology with chemistry, industry with ecology, and soil with health.
There is already a budding group of agriculturalists practicing this integrated approach. They share a common ethic of land stewardship that cares deeply about what is passed on to the next generation, a respect for the the life giving force of soil, and a reverence for high quality, flavorful and healthy crops.
