In the 1970s, environmentalists and politicians in the imperial core quivered in their seats over the
prospect of a population explosion. Malthusian prophecies of total collapse and Thanos-esque
proposals of racial extermination pervaded political thought. For many, it seemed the
end of the world was at our doorstep, and one of the main worries was that food production wouldn’t
be able to support the billions of mouths that would be born in the coming decades. But then
the green revolution happened, and everything was supposedly better. Labor-saving technology
and fossil fuel-laden chemicals pulled the world back from the precipice of famine and death.
At least, that’s the dominant narrative that has been pushed since the 1970s. Today,
though, we’re going to deconstruct this story about industrial farming,
and answer the question: can small-scale regenerative farming feed the world?
This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream,
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The Problem with Industrial Agriculture:
The so-called Green Revolution was a temporary patch on a much
larger food system crisis. If anything, the industrial farming explosion in the 1970s, which
implemented new labor-saving technologies like combine harvesters, high-yield seed varieties,
and consolidation of farmland to increase global food production, seems to have done more harm
than good. Part of this has to do with the fact that the Green Revolution substituted the cost
of labor with that of fossil fuels. Instead of endless hours on the farm, landholders just used
fossil fuels to power their harvesters, tillers, and develop synthetic fertilizers. For an aging
farming population, this was great news. You could get the same yields you were getting before,
and only have to work two weeks in the spring and two in the fall. For the soil, the atmosphere,
and the insect and bird populations, however, this new industrial agriculture spelled disaster.
As a result of the tireless tilling practices of industrial agriculture, which churns up and kills
the fragile microbiome and organic matter of the topsoil, the health of conventionally tilled soil
is now diminishing at more than twice the rate that it’s regenerating, a crisis which leading
soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal describes in one word: “bleak.” Our new fossil fuel agriculture,
embodied in the miles of corn and soybean monocultures in the heartland of the United States
and now being pushed on the imperial periphery by agribusiness giants like Bayer-Monsanto
and Syngenta, has also meant a significant greenhouse gas emissions, to the tune of 24%
of our total global yearly greenhouse gas emissions. And on top of all of that,
industrial agriculture is killing waves of insects and birds, and crushing the bodies of
farmworkers and prisoners forced to work grueling harvesting hours for little or no pay. We stomach
the mounting toll of industrial agriculture because it’s supposedly feeding the world. Yet,
most of the monocropped farmlands in the imperial core don’t directly produce the food
going into our mouths. Most often the vast fields of corn get churned into animal feed,
fuel, or various sugars and additives that do eventually reach our mouths, but in an extremely
roundabout way. Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa, also known as AGRA,
an initiate back by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation, reveals industrial farming’s failure
to feed the world: “In the countries where AGRA operates, there’s been a 30% increase in the
number of people who are suffering hunger, and the agricultural productivity is kind of the same
as it was before AGRA began” Indeed large-scale industrialized agricultural endeavors only account
for 50% of global food production. And it’s the farms that are producing the other 50% that we
must look towards for an escape route out of our current unsustainable capitalist farming system.
Small-scale Farming Can and Does Feed the World:
Before the combine harvester and the synthetic fertilizer,
the world was feeding itself through the labor of millions of small-scale agricultural endeavors
across the globe. Today, that’s still the case. Small-scale farms produce 51% of the world’s
food. So the question of whether small-scale farming can feed the world is a short answer:
yes. But of course it’s a little more complicated than that. Regardless of the style of farming,
we are currently producing more food than we need, which means that hunger and food
insecurity are less a question of production, than one of distribution, access, and infrastructure.
All of which are exacerbated by systems of oppression like racism, classism, imperialism,
and capitalist exploitation. In the United States for example, 40% of food produced is wasted,
yet there are thousands of marginalized communities suffering from food apartheid
and access to nutritious and tasty food. All this is to say that as we transition away from
large-scale foss-fuel-centric agriculture to small-scale agroecological pursuits,
we must also transform food systems outside of the farm. But before we get to possible approaches
to that gargantuan problem, we first need to understand why small-scale regenerative farming
can not only heal our relationship with the land, and reverse the effects of fossil capitalism,
but also provide a breeding ground for the masses to topple our global capitalist system.
Why Small-Scale Farming Matters:
In the outskirts of Albany, New York, lies a farm. Drawing on African-Indigenous roots and knowledge,
farmers there have turned a patch of land from barren soil into a thriving ecosystem in a matter
of years. They’re growing food that’s going to communities of color that lack access to tasty and
nutritious food because racial capitalism deemed their area not fit for profit and ultimately
freshly farmed produce. And they're growing this food while sequestering carbon into the soil.
Instead of big tractors, there are hands in the dirt. Instead of miles of monoculture,
there are acres of polyculture. Instead of industrial agriculture,
there’s afro-indigenous permaculture. The farm is called Soul Fire Farm, and it’s just one of
the countless examples of why small-scale farming is essential in the imperial core
and periphery alike. To be clear, when I say “small-scale farm” I mean agricultural practices
based on traditional knowledge that seeks to grow a diverse range of plants for local consumption
while healing the soil in the process. This can take a number of forms from backyard intensive
farming operations, to permaculture informed food forests, to indigenous-led hemp-based
operations. All of these are devoid of the tilling, chemicals, and highly mechanized
processes that divorce farmers from the land, and ultimately lead to a world where food comes from
the grocery store and not the ground. In terms of the environment, a regenerative small-scale farm
can be a mighty tool in the work to forge resilience and tackle the climate crisis.
If done correctly, a small-scale regenerative farm can capture carbon in its soils to the tune
of one to two metric tons per hectare, promote a biodiverse landscape through crop diversification
and perennial trees and flowers, which also build resilience in the face of extreme weather. And
it can do all of that while using significantly fewer fossil fuels and toxic chemicals, all while
achieving similar yields. Alongside the clear environmental necessity for small-scale farming,
these farms have the potential to be a nexus for change. Farms are what keep us alive and tie us
together, which means they can be a space for affinity groups and organizations to gather and
strategize, to strengthen bonds. Soul Fire Farms does exactly that. They offer up their farmland
to leftist organizers and communities in need of a space to build power. But farmers themselves
also have power in numbers and can be agents of change. Just look towards India, where the might
of farmers was on display for months, bringing key entrance roads into Dehli to a standstill in
protest of a proposed neoliberal farm bill. At the end of the day, the small-scale farm can instigate
big change, but that change only happens when thousands if not millions turn back to the soil,
putting in the hard work that regenerative agriculture requires to heal the land.
How we build a better system “You give everything to the land... and then you,
yourself, physically, wear out and, mentally, you wear down and, spiritually, you start to
question.” That’s a quote from a small-scale farmer in the U.S. who reveals the stark reality
of developing viable farming alternatives under capitalism. Farming is hard work, there are no
two ways about it. Indeed, the rate of suicide amongst farmers, whether in the U.S. or India is
extremely high compared to other occupations. A 2016 study of alternative farms in Ohio, reveals
what most small-scale farmers already know, the labor requirements of small-scale agriculture are
on average 15% higher than industrial agriculture. And in our current global capitalist system,
where fossil fuels have artificially driven the price of food to the floor, that extra labor often
goes unrecognized in the form of 65 hour work weeks or hordes of unpaid interns. This shows
us that a regenerative farming revolution must be accompanied by a full-scale societal revolution.
Fortunately, the two can be and indeed are interconnected. In the imperial periphery,
anti-capitalist indigenous-led farmers’ movements like La Via Campesina are already showing the
world that another more nurturing reality can exist. Under the umbrella of Via Campesina,
farmers’ protests like that in India and Indonesia are exposing the untenable reality
of life as a peasant farmer under capitalism. But outside of the bounds of capitalism,
the small-scale farm can act as an anchor to a thriving communist, anarchist, eco-socialist,
or solarpunk society, wherein the farm and the work of healing the soil and nourishing
the community aren’t foisted onto one person, but shared throughout the community via farming
co-ops like in Cuba or community workshares. The small-scale farm is bursting with radical
change for our environments, our bodies, our relationships, and even our politics,
but that change can’t happen from behind our screens. We must get out into the land,
find those toiling away in the soil and help them build a revolutionary tomorrow.
If you’re curious what farming of the future looks like, or what small-scale farms are paving the way
towards that future, then you’re in luck! I wrote a small section all about future agroecological
farms and the tools we can use to get there, but I cut it out of this video because it felt like
a tangent and I wanted to appease the Youtube algorithm. Instead, I’ve uploaded that section
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