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Despite having nearly a billion acres of prime farmland and a population of only 330 million people, the U.S. agriculture system, often claimed to be able to feed the world, can no longer feed its own population. At the same time, small and mid-sized farms are being driven out of existence. The number of U.S. Angela Huffman.
In the months before Patrick Brown was born in November 1982, his father, Arthur, lay down on a road near the familys farm to prevent a caravan of yellow dump trucks from depositing toxic soil in his community. Patrick currently operates Brown Family Farms on the land that Byron worked as a sharecropper once he was freed.
By destroying wetlands, industrialagriculture robs communities of natural flood protectionsjust as climate change fuels more frequent and severe floods, like those in the summer of 2024 that devastated communities, destroyed crops, and claimed lives in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. STACY WOODS: Yes. We estimated that the 30.4
Industrialagriculture is a term often used negatively, but is it the villain it’s made out to be? The debate surrounding industrialagriculture and farm consolidation is complex and multifaceted. The topic of farm consolidation is closely tied to this term, as one typically leads to more of the other.
When Jeff Broberg and his wife, Erica, moved to their 170-acre bean and grain farm in Winona, Minnesota in 1986, their well water measured at 8.6 These nitrogen-based compounds, common in agricultural runoff, are linked to multiple cancers and health issues for those exposed. ppm for nitrates. coli poisoning in their water. “I
Irrigation and farm equipment also depend on fossil fuels. By one estimate, the industry benefits from $7 trillion in subsidies annually, making inputs like synthetic fertilizer and pesticides artificially cheap and therefore possible to use on a vast scale. Meanwhile, we collectively pay the true cost.
Nearly four decades ago, Ron Mardesen and his wife Denise stopped using antibiotics on their hog farm, A-Frame Acres, in Elliot, Iowa. As the owner of a multi-generational farm, Mardesen has seen industrialagriculture and factory farming take increasing control over meat production in the last few decades.
For others, however, the Welsh countryside is a stark reminder of the damage that humans have wreaked upon the land through intensive farming and industry. Modern farming has had a broad and largely terrible impact on these neglected ecosystems, from birds to bugs to flora and fauna.
Food and Agriculture Organization calculates—which makes the problem of soil erosion so much more concerning. As Adrian Lipscombe, a chef and the Founder of the 40 Acres Project, put it: “If we don’t have soil health, we’re not going to have food.” Ninety-five percent of food nutrients come from soils, the U.N.
Catastrophe loomed everywhere I looked: in the dust bowls on the once-fertile plains of central Turkey, in the vanishing lakes of Mexico City, in the fetid cesspools outside the factory farms of North Carolina, in the disease-ravaged olive trees of Puglia, in the rapid wiping away of diverse food webs in every biome.
Cruising by on a boat, it’s easy to miss Jake Patryn’s farm, which looks like nothing more than an unassuming row of red and white buoys floating just off the coast of Machias, Maine. While he still casts his traps on occasion, farming kelp by hand and selling it as snacks and seasonings has become his main focus.
But for now, to offset flood risk from rising water levels, the State Water Resources Control Board has agreed to send more than 600,000 acre-feet of water (pretty much what Los Angeles consumes in a year) to areas where it can soak into the ground and replenish the aquifer beneath the San Joaquin Valley.
But the epic flooding this past March was simply unprecedented, says the owner of Lerda-Goni Farms. After a winter of record snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a sudden warm spell melted the lower reaches, unleashing nearly 40,000 acre-feet of water —a volume equal to more than a tenth of Las Vegas’ annual supply—in 48 hours.
(Photo credit: David Thoreson) Chris Jones, a retired University of Iowa research engineer and the author of The Swine Republic , explains that because of this difference in the soil, the region has never been well suited for large-scale industrialagriculture. So, when we try to farm at these very large scales.
Over the next 15 years, California will have to repurpose about 1 million acres of cropland, most of it out of the 5.5 million irrigated acres in the San Joaquin Valley. Railways and natural resources were diverted away from Allensworth to white-owned interests and farm holdings. a century ago found their way to Allensworth.
Shane Hamilton is a historian of American agriculture and agribusiness who teaches at the University of York in the United Kingdom. I was born and raised in rural southwest Wisconsin, where I attended a high school located in the middle of a 30,000 acre seedcorn field.
By destroying wetlands, industrialagriculture robs communities of natural flood protectionsjust as climate change fuels more frequent and severe floods, like those in the summer of 2024 that devastated communities, destroyed crops, and claimed lives in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota. STACY WOODS: Yes. We estimated that the 30.4
“ “My philosophy has always been that the health of soil, plants, animals, people, and the environment is one.” ” — Rattan Lal, professor of soil science + 2020 World Food Prize Laureate Conventional, or industrial, agriculture uses chemicals to defend crops from weeds, certain insect species, and diseases.
Through captivating case studies, Thurow’s hopeful book showcases farmers who have boldly gone against the grain of modern agriculture orthodoxy and are instead embracing regenerative practices—like agroecology and permaculture—that restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, and promote resilience against climate change.
It’s an all-too-familiar story for mission-driven agritech startups, one that illuminates the bargains even the most idealistic of entrepreneurs must strike to survive in a savage industry. Agriculture’s cycles are seasonal rather than quarterly, and its best ideas may need many years to bear fruit.
Kiersten Stead, DCVC BIO Kiersten Stead, Managing Partner, DCVC BIO: “The supervillain is misleading, unhelpful, marketing of food as “natural”, “non-GMO”, “clean”, or suggesting “processed foods are bad” , higher GHG emitting farming methods-“organic” “biodynamic”. Heroes are People who do the work on farms.
When farmer Joshua Manske heard about the acquisition of an Iowa fertilizer plant by Koch Industries in December, he saw it as a “microcosm of what’s going on nationally.” Because corn requires nitrogen fertilizer to grow, Manske is concerned that further consolidation of the fertilizer industry will drive his input prices up more.
For example, Frerick recounts how the ubiquitous strawberry brand Driscoll’s doesn’t actually grow any strawberries, but rather outsources farming, and with it, accountability for labor and environmental issues. Farmland Prime farmland is also susceptible to corporate takeover and accumulation of too many acres in too few hands.
Avoid the never-ending scroll on streaming platforms and instead refer to our list of recommended food and farming films, especially selected, watched and reviewed by the SFT team for your viewing pleasure. He has been born and grown in the Valley and his wish from when he was a small boy, is that he wanted his own farm.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, this amalgam of farming methods aims to keep the American agricultural juggernaut steaming ahead while slashing the sector’s immense greenhouse gas footprint. billion to hundreds of agriculture organizations, corporations, universities, and nonprofits for climate-smart projects.
But the US government’s insistence that GM crops are safe because they have been planted and consumed by US farm animals 25 years does not hold up. Though supposedly the beneficiaries of that grand US-directed experiment in industrialagriculture, they lack enthusiasm for its sequel.
To ring in the first day of summer, we at Civil Eats want to offer you a list of food and farming books we think are worth your time and attention. Brazil’s national requirement that 30 percent of school food ingredients be sourced from local and regional family farms helps empower and fund women agroecological producers.
Just blocks from the traffic-clogged bustle of Rio’s boulevards, the Jardim Botanico do Rio de Janeiro is a remaining 130-acre patch of the rainforest from which the city was carved three centuries ago. Locals and tourists alike go there to enjoy the bounty of Brazil’s legendary abundance of plant and animal life.
At those tables, farmers could grab an Advanced Acre Rx hat from WinField United, Land O’Lakes’ seed and chemical company, and a water bottle emblazoned with the logo for Truterra , its carbon market platform, in one fell swoop. They’re getting a tremendous amount of data from the farmer-participants.
Meanwhile, at an apple orchard in upstate New York, immigrant farmworkers signed the first United Farm Workers (UFW) union contract in the state, joining the legendary California-based union founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Compared to other industries, agriculture had one of the lowest rates of all, at 1.4
In 2014, Lowell and Evelyn Trom learned that a farmer wanted to build a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) across the road from their family farm in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota. By then, there were already 10 CAFOs within a 3-mile radius of their 760-acrefarm, so they knew the stench the facility would bring.
I heard a similar argument when I paid a visit to David Whittaker at Oak Meadows Farm , a pasture-raised poultry and hog operation near where I live in Whatcom County, WA. He was also leery of the notion that smaller farms could meet the countrys demands for chicken breasts, turkey dinners, and egg scrambles. Should You Raise Chickens?
Regardless, only 30 percent of the nation’s biggest livestock farms, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have waste discharge permits. In the case of Lake Erie, the industrial pollution of 50 years ago has been largely replaced by runoff pollution from fields in the Maumee River watershed.
But for decades, the state’s regulation of water benefited its largest user and its largest industry: agriculture. The once-abundant water allowed farmers to grow cheap cattle feed, attracting the feedlots, and increasingly, dairy farms, that dot southwest Kansas. That will allow the farm to turn off some wells.
But industrialagriculture—the second-largest source of damage to US wetlands—celebrated Sackett , because the decision opened millions of acres of wetlands to agricultural development and unmitigated pollution. million acres of wetlands. What are wetlands and why do they matter?
Department of Agriculture denied Albert Johnson Sr.’s ’s application for a farm loan in the mid-1980s, he went to a private lender who made him list as collateral all 20 of his cattle and his one bull. “I walks among the cattle on his family farm near Lexington, Mississippi, on Nov. When the U.S. Albert Johnson Jr.
To make way for those industrial fields of palm trees, some 30,000 acres of rainforest were cut down, a swath of destruction that one Indigenous leader called an act of “eco-genocide.” “We came to Peru in 2016 and bought two farms in Ucayali at a public auction,” he has said.
While Granddaddy Frederick loved farming, he faced such severe discrimination and anticipated the endangered state of small farmers that he swayed my father and his siblings away from farming. In federal food and agricultural policy, the best vehicle to achieve this change is the food and farm bill.
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