FATAL HARVEST

THE TRAGEDY OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE

EDITED BY ANDREW KIMBRELL

ISLAND PRESS                   2002

FOUNDATION FOR DEEP ECOLOGY

PART I

 

Front flypage

We find ourselves in the midst of a historic battle between two very different visions of the future of food in the 21^st century. The decades-long domination of the industrial model of food production is being challenged by a strong grassroots movement in favor of organic, ecological and humane food.

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture is designed to be an invaluable aid to the activists, farmers, policy makers, and consumers fighting for a more sustainable food system. The book’s many photographs and essays display the tragic consequences of how our food is produced – a system of industrial food production that yields a “fatal harvest.” Fatal to consumers, as the massive amounts of chemicals used in growing crops dramatically increase the incidence of cancer and other diseases. Fatal to our rivers, lakes and oceans that are polluted by pesticides and chemicals. Fatal to the genetic diversity of plants, as countless species are destroyed and replaced with universal high-yield crops and genetically engineered varieties. Fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge, corporate farms. Fatal, potentially, to the entire biosphere as modern agriculture contributes to global environmental threats such as ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and mass species extinction.

As it exposes the ecological and social impacts of industrial agriculture’s fatal harvest, this book also details a new ecological and humane vision for agriculture. It shows how millions of people are now engaged in the new politics of food as they fight against the chemical and biotechnological takeover of our food system. The book further details how organic food became the fastest growing sector in American agriculture and how many people are now moving “beyond organic” to save small-scale farming, the wilderness, and wildlife.

Even as the book helps readers to continue the important campaigns over individual food issues, it also provides the historical and intellectual groundwork for the struggle against the entire industrial paradigm, urging a rejection not only of the practices of agribusiness but also its mechanistic and reductionist worldview, which has so devastated our agricultural communities and the natural world.

Ultimately, the images, information, and vision in Fatal Harvest are intended to help transform each of us from a mere “consumer” of food into a “creator” of a new food future, giving us the understanding that each decision we make about the food we eat will create the social and environmental future that awaits our children and their children.

A healthy farm culture can be based only upon familiarity and can grow only among a people soundly established upon the land; it nourishes and safeguards human intelligence of the earth that no amount of technology can satisfactorily replace. The growth of such a culture was once a strong possibility in the farm communities of this country. We  now only have the sad remnants of those communities. If we allow another generation to pass without doing what is necessary to enhance and embolden the possibility now perishing with them, we will lose it altogether. And then we will not only invoke calamity – we will deserve it.

Wendell Berry

 

Dedication

To the agrarian mind, which is the only mind capable of rebuilding the culture of healthy soils, water cycles, richness, and diversity. May it multiply in future generations so they can recoup what has been lost and create farms and economies that are sustainable, humane, and beautiful.

 

And to the wilderness, that essential quality whereby nature in all her wisdom unfolds with a genius that can only be manifested by undomesticated, unhumanized, and unmanaged large portions of the landscape.

Prologue by Douglas Tomkins

We are currently in the midst of a crisis of culture and agriculture. This dual crisis, first described by Wendell Berry 25 years ago in The Unsettling of America, has now become tragically apparent. The cultural crisis is rooted in the transformation of America from an essentially agrarian culture to one that is now completely industrialized.

Our conversion from agrarian, local, fully integrated food systems to industrialized, monocultured agricultural production has brought a staggering number of negative side effects, many of them unanticipated. Throughout the entire food system, we can trace this crisis as it manifests itself in soil erosion, poisoned ground waters, food-borne illnesses, loss of biodiversity, inequitable social consequences, toxic chemicals in foods and fiber, loss of beauty, loss of species and wildlife habitat, and myriad other environmental and social problems. To make the crisis even worse, we continue to export our destructive industrial system of food production around the earth.

• The collection of illustrated essays and photographs in this book provides a comprehensive and integrated portrait of the current cultural and agricultural crisis.
• The book’s subject matter reaches into virtually every facet of our daily lives, beyond the obviousness of the meals we eat each day and the cotton clothes we wear.
• Agriculture, with is related processes, is the largest and most important industry in our economy.
• It is also a primary contributor to our environmental woes as it has created massive monocultures which have replaced our small and diverse family farms, poisoned our waters, air, and food, and biologically and aesthetically degraded our landscapes.
• If one wants to be an “environmentalist,” the study of agriculture and its catastrophic impacts is absolutely essential.
• I believe that a careful study of this book can be among the most important steps you can take toward creating a healthy, beautiful, and vibrant fully integrated food system.
• This book not only informs us about the crisis we are in but also provides very real sustainable alternatives to our current disastrous course.
• You will see and read of the work of farmers, activists, and organizations who vividly demonstrate that there is hope, despite the seemingly overwhelming odds against reversing the crisis of culture and of agriculture.
• We must join in solidarity with the countless activists all around the world to fight the threat of globalization, industrial agriculture, industrial forestry, aquaculture, toxics, and megatechnologies.
• We cannot rest until we have regained a culture and agriculture that is local, family-scale, and fully integrated with the richness and diversity of creation.

 

Introduction by Andrew Kimbrell

As were other Americans of my generation, I was brought up inundated with such corporate bromides as “better living through chemistry,” “progress is our middle name,” and even “DDT is good for me.” As for food, the future was clear. It was epitomized by the culinary habits of TV’s futuristic Jetson family, who met their daily nutritional requirements by eating various tablets rather than food. And emulating the astronauts, our future beverage of choice would be Tang. Behind all the jingle, ads, and media mantras of that time was the unquestioned message that the more we industrialized our food production, the more “modern” and desirable the food. Agribusiness and the food industry tirelessly promoted industrial food – food that depends on massive chemical and biological inputs, huge monocultures, and factory-like farms and that results in huge corporate profits. Over the years the media strategies have become more clever and the technology has grown more sophisticated, but the decades-old “artificial is better” worldview still dominates today’s agribusiness. The corporations continue to foist this industrial food model on us by strong-arming our elected officials and government agencies, buying out our educational institutions, suing recalcitrant farmers, and, of course, flooding the media.

• For much of the past half century, our indoctrination into this industrial food mind-set went without widespread challenge.
• Our highly urbanized society is far removed from the sources and origins of its daily bread, creating a tragic disconnect between the general public and the social and environmental consequences of the food being grown and eaten.
• This disconnect between us and our agricultural system was, and remains, essential “cover” that allows the corporations to hide the real and terrible impacts of the industrialization of our food supply.

Meanwhile, huge crimes against nature, biodiversity, and farmers are being perpetrated with little or no public awareness, as the industrialized agriculture revolution continues to transform America’s farmlands and food supply. We eat our daily bread without being conscious of the massive loss of topsoil, diversity, and farm communities involved in its production. We happily munch on hamburgers without a thought to the forest and prairies being destroyed for cattle grazing or the immense cruelty in the raising and slaughtering of the animals. Mothers continue to prod their youngsters to eat their vegetables, unaware of the pesticide poisoning of our waters, farmworkers, and wildlife that is involved in their production, not to mention the new human health and ecological risks of genetic engineering. This distancing and ignorance make us all unintentionally complicit in the eco-crimes and social devastation caused by current agriculture. In this way industrial food creates a moral as well as an environmental crisis.

• Despite untold millions spent in advertising and disinformation campaigns, people started making the connections between industrial food and ecological and social havoc.
• It soon became evident that a number of our most urgent environmental problems – whether water and air pollution, topsoil loss, or wilderness and habitat destruction – were direct results of our food production system.
• Some of those suffering from or treating cancer began to realize that one major cause of the epidemic was the chemicals in our food.
• Across the country numerous organizations fight against the misuse of pesticides and the genetic engineering and irradiation of our foods and for the protection of farmers and their communities.
• Millions of Americans have decided to vote day after day with their food dollars for a different vision of agriculture.
• More of us are eating organic than ever before, and organic food production, though still small, is the fastest growing segment in U.S. agriculture today.
• Ambitious projects are underway for (beyond organic) farming that is humane and ecologically sound and that comports with the needs of wilderness protection.

We therefore find ourselves in the midst of a historic battle over two very different visions of the future of food in the 21^st century. A grassroots public movement for organic, ecological, and humane food is now challenging the decades-long hegemony of the corporate, industrial model. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture is designed to be an invaluable aid in this critical battle, a timely treasure trove of ammunition for the growing public movement of activists, farmer, and policy makes against industrial agriculture. It will also be useful to all consumers as a mental and visual antidote to corporate efforts to disconnect us from, and obfuscate, the truth about industrialized foods. Through this book’s many photographs and essays (especially those in parts 3, 4, 5, and 6), readers will come to experience graphically the tragic consequences of how our food is produced. Readers will see that food production is indeed a “fatal harvest.” It is fatal to consumers as the massive amounts of chemicals used in growing crops make their way into livestock and fish and dramatically increase the incidence of cancers and myriad other human diseases. It is also fatal to consumers as new bacteria, viruses, and other disease agents poison this food. It is fatal to our rivers, lakes, and oceans, which are polluted by pesticides, chemicals, and the wastes from our factory farms. It is fatal to our vital topsoil, which is exhausted and eroded by massive monocultures and fertilizer use. It is fatal to our forests as more and more land is cleared and used for industrial-scale agriculture. It is fatal to the genetic diversity of plants as corporate agriculture destroys countless species with its universal use of high-yield monocultures and plantings of new genetically engineered varieties. It is fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms. It is fatal to seed saving and our collective ownership of seeds as a few transnational companies patent the seeds of the earth. It is fatal to our food security as the patented-crop monocultures become ever more susceptible to disease and insect infestation. It is fatal to our wildlife as pesticides and habitat destruction force many species into extinction. The system is also potentially fatal to the entire biosphere, for modern agriculture is a major culprit in the creation of a whole new genre of global environmental threats, including ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and mass extinction of species.

Faced with the mounting and irrefutable evidence of the dire consequence of their agricultural system, the corporate purveyors of industrial food have recently come up with some new strategies to try to blunt, and ultimately defeat, the growing opposition movement. One very effective strategy of agribusiness is the “big lie” technique. Here we see intensified multimillion dollar campaigns purveying false myths about the supposed benefits of industrialized agriculture.

• Part 2 of this book specifically identifies the 7 most popular and egregious “lies” of agribusiness and fully debunks these myths, an invaluable contribution to any activist working on these issues.
• Another recent tack is to recognize the drawbacks of industrial food, but then offer new corporate technologies such as genetic engineering, irradiation, hydroponics, and precision farming as the purported panacea to the myriad problems of industrial agriculture.
• Part 4 of this book derails this strategy and details how these new techniques are not the solution, but rather even more destructive and frightening parts of the industrial food problem.
• Our charge is twofold. We must continue to work on various industrial food issues, whether pesticides, farm loss, or genetic engineering.
• Along with this “stop-the-bleeding” effort, we must also devote ourselves to becoming “paradigm” warriors against the industrial worldview and for the revived agrarian consciousness.
• Our ultimate goals must include nothing less than altering the thinking and very habits of perception of the public and policy makers.
• In Part 7, Fatal Harvest outlines a specific vision for the future of agriculture.

 

PART ONE

FARMING AS IF NATURE MATTERED: BREAKING THE INDUSTRIAL PARADIGM

The Whole Horse: The Preservation of the Agrarian Mind by Wendell Berry