Box 1 - Sobering Observations

This chapter opens with some generalizations about cropping systems, provides some perspective on modern practices, and ends with a review of "agribusiness"-a capitalistic society's response to modern needs. But in some circles, the claim that American agriculture is the envy of the world, a grand accomplishment, is met with only muted applause.

Indeed, some people suggest that intensive agriculture means "paying for oil with soil"-that is, that soil contamination, soil deterioration, and loss of soil to erosion are the consequences of the system's incessant demands. Here's what the editor of Garden (vol. 1, no. 3, July/Aug. 1977) offers as an aside to an article by Wendell Berry entitled "Let 'em Eat the Future." It epitomizes this rising concern:

Species impoverishment is inherent in conventional agriculture. Out of the quarter-million extant species of flowering plants and the 2,000-odd species that have ever been used in agriculture, agribusiness deals with only a dozen or so, resulting in vast and dangerous monocultures, all taking up the same nutrients and the same amounts of water and subject to the same diseases. This sinister state of affairs we call American know-how.

Nor is American agriculture's extravagant use of energy exemplary. Obviously, it would not be possible, worldwide, to expend the 750 liters of fuel per hectare (about 80 gallons per acre) used for growing corn in the United States. Measured in terms of input of energy versus output, this is slovenly husbandry, far less efficient than that of the uneducated New Guinea tribesman, and not even close to "sustained yield"!