Editor’s note: This commentary is by James H. Maroney Jr., who has a master’s degree in Environmental Law & Policy from Vermont Law School and is a former farmer.
The VPR story “UVM Program Teaches Business Skills to Young Farmers,” (Sept. 1, 2014), which instructs them how to manage their money but reduces methodology to a personal choice, suggests to me that the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture should rethink its mission, specifically the meaning of “sustainable.”
USDA offers this definition: “Sustainable describes farming systems that are capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely. Such systems … must be resource-conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive, and environmentally sound.” It then equivocates, adding: “the term sustainable agriculture means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:
- Satisfy human food and fiber needs;
- Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends;
- Make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls;
- Sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and
- Enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.”(1)
Undoubtedly to keep pace with USDA, UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture website tells us the term seeks a “balance” between economics, ecology and social responsibility.
I agree completely that farmers must be rewarded for their work; I agree completely that they must farm “sustainably” i.e., to conserve resources and protect our water, soil and atmosphere. And I agree that agriculture must forge a connection to the community’s well-being (I paraphrase Center for Sustainable Agriculture’s mission statement.)
But the mission statement then suggests, actually states, that “different approaches make sense for different farmers and operations;” that conventional agriculture and organic are “on a continuum toward sustainability”; that farmers are “free to choose wherever on this continuum they think is right for them.” (link) There is, in other words, no important, economic, ecological or societal difference between conventional and organic agriculture. It is a matter of personal or economic expediency. What then is the point of the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture?
According to Vermont statute, farmers are free to choose between farming conventionally or organically. Yet, the simple, undeniable fact is that Lake Champlain is polluted, most significantly by agricultural runoff, which means conventional agricultural runoff: Vermont agriculture is 80 percent dairy and dairy is 80 percent conventional, QED.
I suggest that the Center for Sustainable Agriculture stand up for farmers receiving a return on their investment, for conserving resources, for maintaining clean water and atmosphere and for a healthy community.
Because American farmers overwhelmingly choose conventional, they lead the world in productivity. The genesis of this gain in productivity, often referred to as “The miracle of American agriculture,” was the replacement just after World War II of labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive mechanical practices for crop rotation, weed control, soil fertility and hired labor with cheap, toxic chemicals. The miracle appeared at first to work: farm yields tripled and farm costs plummeted, which drove consumer food prices down: the average American working family’s expenditure for groceries in 1940 was 35 percent of take-home pay, while today it is about 9 percent. Farmers, who all operate as individuals, were very keen to raise production and lower their costs; who wouldn’t? Consumers, who were told that the chemicals would be applied in minute concentrations and dissipate harmlessly, were very keen to buy more food for less. Everything was great!
Unfortunately, conventional agriculture was no miracle, most especially not in rural communities: farmers operate as individuals but they sell as a group. Group overproduction drives farm prices down, which is the proximate cause of farm attrition, which is the proximate cause of rural economic decay. Worse, the toxic chemicals did not dissipate harmlessly: they are the very substances, from massive applications of NPK fertilizer and the unregulated importation of hundreds of thousands of tons of high-protein feed supplements, that are polluting Lake Champlain, the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico for 40 square miles around the delta of the Mississippi River. We all like the notion of cheap and abundant food, but we cannot have the so-called benefits of conventional agriculture without the terrible cost.
UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture’s website posits that conventional agriculture is necessary to feed a growing population, soon to top seven billion. This is a canard: U.S. farmers, following the precepts of the conventional paradigm, cannot sell or even ship the massive surpluses of corn they produce.(2) This year’s harvest is on track to break all records. Will their concern for feeding a growing world extend to paying to ship this surplus to hungry people in Asia or Africa?
I suggest that UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture rewrite its mission statement to make clear the very real distinction between organic and conventional agriculture. I suggest that the Center for Sustainable Agriculture stand up for farmers receiving a return on their investment, for conserving resources, for maintaining clean water and atmosphere and for a healthy community.
Let’s get real: conventional agriculture and organic are not on a continuum; they are antithetical. Conventional agriculture was designed from its inception to externalize its wastes into the environment. That is not an incidental feature of the paradigm to be managed or ignored. It is the paradigm’s fundamental, economic precept. One cannot farm conventionally and not pollute the environment any more than one can take the alcohol out of gin. And gin without alcohol is — water.
Organic agriculture was invented from its inception as an antidote to conventional agriculture. The organic standards do not permit the importation of imports that boost production without regard for the environment. The National Organic Standards Board weighs each farm practice for its impact upon the environment, not its productivity. Conventional agricultural procedures are selected for productivity first, their impact upon the environment second, if at all. I agree completely that we should take the toxins out of conventional and when you do, you’re farming — organically!
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack came to Vermont last recently with $45 million to “help” Vermont farmers clean up Lake Champlain. Utter nonsense; Tom Vilsack came to Vermont to reinvest in U.S. food policy, which is predicated upon the overproduction and low prices driven by conventional agriculture. Vermonters are supposed to be grateful to Mr. Vilsack: 40 million of the world’s most prosperous consumers and a few out-of-state food manufacturers get the benefits, we get the low farm prices, the farm attrition, the rural economic decay and the pollution.
Notes:
1 — John Ikerd, as quoted by Richard Duesterhaus in “Sustainability’s Promise,” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (Jan.-Feb. 1990) 45(1): p.4. NAL Call # 56.8 J822
2 — See “Grain Piles up Waiting for a Ride, as Trains Move North Dakota Oil,” The New York Times, Aug. 25, 2014
