Not that I don't think there is much wisdom in what you say (I do), but I am wary of "reinvent the way we do X" solutions to ANY problem. Humans are conservative animals by nature (and I don't mean that in the political sense - or maybe I do?). We are reluctant to change unless we gain a CLEAR advantage in doing so.

Equally, our governmental and societal structures and systems have a fair amount of built-in inertia, and also resist change. Many of the systems and processes you refer to grew up over long periods of time and actually happened for reasons that made sense at the time. (Ever worked, REALLY worked, on a farm? Milked cows? Fed chickens and gathered eggs? Slopped hogs? Butchered any or all of the above? Irrigated fields? Plowed and disced? Weeded? Harvested? Bucked hay? I've done all of those, and any nostalgia for the "good old ways" comes from someone who HAS NEVER DONE IT the "old fashioned way"! That is SERIOUSLY hard work, folks.)

It is the very compartmenalization of agriculture in the US which makes it so efficient. The requirements for a good feedlot (ground doesn't need to be any good, but water, power and READILY AVAILABLE tranportation, preferably both road and rail, as well as reasonable access to processing facilities, are a MUST) aren't the same as good land for, say row crops (need good soil (for your chosen crop - these can vary widely), water, access to transportation (but not as critical, and rail is VERY optional). If an agribusiness specializes in raising and processing beef, they are neither likely to set up shop right next to a lettuce farm or a wheat farm, nor would the lettuce or wheat farmer WANT them to.

Farm subsidies are STUPID (and they NEVER did their intended job, of "preserving family farms"), and should be done away with poste haste - good luck with that.

Farming methods are mostly designed around large-scale CURRENT efficiency. Using feedlot waste as fertilizer (or chicken factory waste - it's even BETTER fertilizer) sounds great - what's the FDA gonna do when we start having salmonella, e coli, listeriosis and various fungus outbreaks from contamination?

I agree that we need to start thinking more frugally, and more long-term. We may HAVE to sacrifice some large-scale, current efficiency for more "sustainable" methods. But "the good old ways" WILL NOT feed the population we currently have. Wholesale changes to how we do things, over any short or even medium term, are not going to happen.

I see it as a combination: (i) slow and steady education, a sort of societal consciousness-raising, and (ii) development of new methods which maximize the efficiency of modern technology, but apply it in more sustainable ways. Pesticide runoff, topsoil loss, soil depletion, overreliance on petrochemicals for insect and disease prevention, etc. are all issues that we need to think about in new ways. I just don't see any chance we'll make wholesale changes in any of these any time soon.

In fact, a bold prediction: If the economy continues to slide, and IF Prop. 2 results in any significant cost increases, it will go by the wayside in a hurry.

Look, I'm happy to take my "40 acres and a mule" and feed my family - I just want 40 acres of the Sacramento Delta . . . oh, and you can keep the mule. Damn things are ornery. I'll just by a John Deere. But do you have ANY idea how inefficient it would be to feed my family with 40 acres of Sacramento Delta?

"Green" isn't a destination, it's a direction. You may not be happy with our progress (I'm not), but we must attack what is achievable.

That, or join the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" - you first! (Just kidding!).

Hi Steve,

While I haven't worked on a farm (I'm a city gal, it's true), my thoughts do not derive from sort of pie-eyed nostalgia for the good old days. Instead, the reading I've done indicates that we are shooting ourselves in the foot with our current production systems.

The type of agribusiness we're taking about--feedlots for the animals and monoculture fields for the crops--is a relatively recent phenomenon on the grander timeline of human food production.

While this process is "efficient" in producing cheap calories, it's not necessarily efficient in its impacts on us.

As the article I linked to indicates, "a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used...now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to prouce a single calorie of modern supermarket food."

The very thing that's allowed us to be so efficient--fossil fuels--are becoming more expensive. The system as it exists is unsustainable.

Moreover, this system is not a "free market" but rather one dependent on subsidies and, as you point out, government policies that favor factory farms rather than the "American farmer."

There are also dangers inherent in monocultures in our crops. We are able to farm this way due to oil based fertilizers, pesticides and Monsanto's genetically modified grains. In the feedlots, we have pollution problems and need to pump our animals full of antibiotics, breeding resistent strains of salmonella and e coli.

I'm certainly not advocating that everyone get 40 acres and go back to the farm. But I do think we would be smart to look at the interplay between the high cost of energy, recent food shortages and way way we've changed our food production.

And why not bring critical reasoning to bear on the issue? Isn't that better than hoping we get it right in time to avert worse consequences than disease and obesity in the first world and food riots in the third?

I agree, by the way, that green is a direction more than a destination. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about how best to travel the road.

Laura,

I don't disagree that our current system is fraught with problems - many of them serious. The problem is, no matter HOW many calories of fossil fuel we burn for each calorie of food we produce, ONLY modern farming methods can produce the amount of food our population requires, on the land we have available to farm. (Actually, one of our biggest problems, that you didn't mention, is the pace at which farmland is being developed for housing, strip malls, etc.)

All of the methods you discuss have one thing in common - on a given acre of land, they produce LESS food than current methods. There are trade offs, many negative, to our current methods. I would LIKE to transition, in reasonable steps, to more "sustainable" methods - assuming that we can (i) continue to feed out existing population, and (ii) develop more farmland, and (iii) look at "alternative" methods of food production, including hydroponics, aquaculture, and genetic engineering, and (iv) promote "mini-farming," like the WW II "Victory Gardens" (the average suburban lot will permit growing a significant portion of the vegetables a normal family eats).

Farm subsidies I oppose both for philosophical/ideological reasons, and because they support/encourage inefficient practices, but they are not a "cause" as much as an "effect" (if the factory farming were NOT so efficient, the companies that practice it would not have enough money or clout to lobby to obtain and maintain the subsidies they get). I don't disagree with you about directions we should be looking, I simply think that any idea that current methods will appreciably change in the medium term (I mean within the next ten to twenty years) is VERY optimistic.