One hundred years is a drop in the bucket relative to the roughly 6 Billion years the Earth is projected to have been alive. However, it goes without saying that the world is a far different place today than it was 100 years ago in almost every facet of human existence. This is especially true in the realms of food production, where the momentum and overall inevitability of globalization in the modern era is such that it has sufficiently doomed the scenario of the early 1800's where people knew who grew their food and where it was grown. Today, food production is truly a global event. Coffee farmers in Mexico supply New York coffee houses

The overriding trend since the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution, the invention of mechanized field machines, and the discovery of cheap synthetic fertilizers and pesticides has been from the small family-based farm to the large-scale agricultural farm. The apparent efficiency of this food production model is a Catch-22 a hundred years in the making. As with many things a cheap upfront cost does not necessarily result in a more valuable product, technique, or long-term investment. The main reason for the emphasis on synthetic-based field farming was due to the low cost and overall abundance of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in the post WWII era and a lack of overall knowledge about the repercussions of such materials regarding soil health, the corresponding plant health, and ecosystems in general. This window of waste resulted

in deadly lessons, such as the one outlined in Rachel Carson's groundbreaking book "Silent Spring" about the harms of DDT, which was used as an insecticide to mosquitoes and other disease carrying insects before military missions in Asian jungles. Other examples include the chemical ammonium nitrate, which is used as munitions and became useful as fertilizer, and organophosphates used for nerve gas, which are used as insecticides.The result is a century long transfixion on materials that deter natural biological processes, wreak havoc on the environment, and leave our soil being treated as inert mediums instead of the vibrant organisms that they are.

The Catch-22 in the scenario of the food production industry in the modern era is that fewer farms making more of the food is a more efficient means of producing it in terms of streamlining its yield, but not necessarily utilizing it and ensuring its viability. Much relies on ones definition and expectation of efficiency. If you are grading it by way of limiting overall labor and number of people involved it takes to produce food Big Ag is surely the more efficient. However, if you are grading efficiency in terms of nutritional value, long-term viability of arable land, amount of food grown vs. amount of food that ends up being utilized, harm to the environment, or distribution of treasure to farmers relative to return on production local agriculture comes out ahead every time.

It's akin to our reliance on computers and complicated economic systems. They allow for more informational ability and economic freedom, but they make us more vulnerable at the same time. Look at the repercussions of the feared "Millennium Bug" or 9/11 on our financial institutions and the prevalence of identity theft via credit cards, etc. If we had our transactions in a logbook instead of a computer there would be no need to worry about four numbers instead of two, or having John Doe act as a poser fleecing your accounts. Similarly, the more spread out and localized the food production system the better response it has to local conditions and demands; resulting in less waste in shipping, labor, shelf-life, and packaging. The object here is not to expect a return to manual data keeping or family based farming, but to make a point. The more knowledge we are armed with the better prepared we are and the better perspective we have to articulate and eliminate the problem.

It is common knowledge that the longer a piece of produce is off the vine the more it degrades in nutritional value. Having all of our produce grown in relatively finite areas means longer shipping times to get it on your supermarket shelves. The challenge should be to integrate food production directly into demand via Local Agriculture. By utilizing controlled environments in places not conducive to outdoor growth. Pinpoint production would allow for a more precise measure and reflection of demand. Excess could always be shipped around as needed, but the localized nature of production would eliminate the necessity to do so. Not only would utilization of produce be enhanced, but controlled environments would allow for a more predictable product. By separating production from unpredictable outdoor environments lenders will feel more comfortable seeding start-up money, farmers will feel more in control of their bounty, and the overall winner is the consumer. By utilizing smaller farms in more areas sustainable techniques utilizing the Rule of Return or hydroponics via the prism of the Food Movement can better sustain the soils and ecosystems

By ensuring that food is grown closer to where it is going to be eaten or utilized, less is wasted. Imagine for a second the amount of energy and material that goes into shipping tomatos from Israel or Canada to your supermarket shelf- all those cardboard boxes, all that cellophane, all that fossil fuel, all those man-hours, all those hours, days, and weeks off the vine. It's got to be packaged, shipped, and ferried around by people and systems that would be deemed unnecessary if grown

locally. For example, the average distance food is shipped from place of production to place of consumption is 1,200 miles ("Solviva", 89)! On the surface it seems like a no-brainer to produce food locally, why aren't we doing it tomorrow? For the same reasons we are not using fuel cells in our cars tomorrow. There is a tremendous amount of money, energy, and history invested and being lobbied for by Big Ag. The trend is undoubtedly positive, but people have yet to fully grasp the concepts of Local Agriculture, Fair Trade, Buying Power, Food Security, and the overall Food Movement. We continue to be strangled by our inability to come to terms and wrap our minds around the concepts of creating and replicating environments. It is the essence of the human condition. Surrounding environments do not influence our mortality, or that which drives evolution, survival of the fittest, and natural selection. We create environments for ourselves, why not for our food? Think igloos, earmuffs, central heating and air, jackets, hand warmers, hot chocolate, windshield wipers, tornado

With the ability to keep tabs on smaller farms and the ability to utilize "organic" techniques there is less resulting environmental degradation from synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. The farm as an "organism" can be integrated into the local environment or, via hydroponics and greenhouse growing, completely separated from the local environment. There is much fuss regarding "chemicals" used in Big Ag as if there is something intrinsically negative about them. Let's paint the picture. Plants "eat" ions. They eat them in soil as in hydro, we are just not used to thinking about it. Whether that ion comes from a salt or refined mineral (synthetic) or from an "organic" source is irrelevant to the plant. Plants eat the inorganic constituents of organic materials in the end anyway. "Organic" is a human endeavor. As discussed above, the nature of synthetic fertilizers themselves has NO detrimental effect on actively growing plants, but on ecosystems by tipping the balance of local nutrient levels one way or the other creating imbalance. This results in algae blooms and corresponding fish kills, etc. Insecticides, on the other hand, are a different story altogether, effectively poisoning local environments. They are only needed because synthetic fertilizers wreak havoc on biological systems, creating weak plants.

To be clear, there is no such imbalance created in a calculated recirculating hydroponic system.

By spreading the production to myriad food production operations, instead of ceding control to relatively few, more people benefit. By spreading the burden of food production there is greater utilization of resources via production diversity. The idea being that a few corporations growing the bulk of the food is an overall inefficient means of producing food. It may be an efficient means of producing cars or computers, but they are not ingested and have no shelf life. Homogenization stymies competition and is a major reason we outlaw monopolies in the United States. This scenario is no different from many of the arguments made against Wal-Mart openings and the corresponding closing of Mom and Pop stores.

The number and size of farms has changed to reflect the homogenization of the food production industry over the last 20 years:

As has the use of commercial fertilizer:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/AgChemicals/Questions/nmqa2.htm

Commercial Agriculture has also developed into a unique and controversial business opportunity in the form of patenting and GMO's. With the ability to patent life forms there is an economic incentive to, not only speed up the manipulation process, but actively market the resulting "product" without extensive and proper research into the repercussions of the altered genetics. For example, a soybean can be modified with a brazil nut gene and someone allergic to nuts could unknowingly eat the soya and get an allergic attack. The watershed in the US patent law as regards to life forms occurred in Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303 (1980) when a new, man-made microorganism that could break down oil was made patentable subject matter by a 5-4 decision of the US Supreme Court. Following that landmark decision, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has consistently granted patents on microorganisms, including unicellular organisms, bacteria, yeast, fungi, and other living entities, and on non-biological and microbiological processes.

There is, as always, an argument for both sides. The pro-business argument allows for the developer to reep the benefit of their effort by protecting the knowledge and "product" under law. But the counter argument states that the "knowledge" gained was never not known in the first place, only not documented. They say patents on life violate the cultures and traditions that have guided agriculture since its very beginnings. It is argued that the wealth of genetic resources

that we depend on has been carefully protected and nurtured by generations of farmers and indigenous peoples and it is their fundamental right to conserve, develop, use, control, and benefit from this biodiversity. That intellectual property rights, such as patents, undermine the rights of farmers and indigenous people by giving monopoly rights to corporations that simply repackage, or re-engineer, the collective knowledge and the plant and animal varieties of farmers and indigenous communities. The inevitable result being genetic erosion, increased use of chemicals and GMOs, and the loss of Food Security and culture. In the words of Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants, small farmers,agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities:

We are beginning to reach a point where our overall ability to produce food cannot keep up with our intrinsic population growth. (Food an pop. Growth) We need to be more imaginative, flexible, and efficient in our means of production to counteract this phenomenon. Local agriculture and hydroponics offer two relevant ways to do this. The bottom line is that we are at a crossroads in determining acceptable and preferable methods of food production and the inevitable result lies in the hands of the consumer. If we use our Buying Power to reflect our ideals and desires we will all be better for it.

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