21 Reasons Why We Need to Abolish Industrial Agriculture

Posted 10/7/04

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Oligopoly?

"Four companies control 80 percent of U.S. beef packing."

Five control 75 percent of the global grain trade.

Five control 64 percent of the global agricultural chemical market.

As farm sizes increase, community health takes a dismal turn: there's less employment, more absentee ownership, and higher levels of poverty.

It's no wonder farmers are having a tough time when they receive just 21 cents of your food dollar - the rest goes to advertising, distribution, and middlemen.

Keeping Dollars at Home

One study shows that each dollar spent with a local food business is worth $2.50 for the community.

Genetically Engineered?

In fact, we eat foods with GE ingredients without even knowing it … they're in everything from baby food to granola bars.

Many countries insist on the labeling of GE foods, but not the U.S.

Pesticides!

Most Americans have traces of half a dozen pesticides in their urine

They wind up in the air of nearby suburbs, in the streams flowing out of farm country, and in the produce we eat.

Farm workers are on the front lines of this chemical warfare, suffering tens of thousands of poisonings each year.

To top it off, these chemicals are becoming less effective over time. There's been a tenfold increase in both the amount and toxicity of insecticide use since the 1940s, but the share of the U.S. harvest lost to pests and insects has gone up, not down.

Providing Save Haven

These measures pay back in other ways as well - providing lands that offer livable habitat for fish, frogs and other animals.

Overdrawn!

Across the nation, we're losing soil 17 times faster than it naturally replaces itself.

But fertilizers don't stay on the farm; they pollute the groundwater and are washed downstream to bays and estuaries, where they are a primary cause of low-oxygen zones that are deadly for fish.

Over 75 percent of our water use in both Oregon and California goes to farms, and in California that means a deficit for the state's aquifers of 475 billion gallons a year.

Balancing the Books

Drip irrigation - feeding water directly to the soil through tubing - has been shown to cut water use and in many cases increase crop yields as well.

And farming practices such as planting cover crops and leaving crop residue on fields - common tools in the organic farmer kitbag - nourish the soil and protect its long-term health as well.

Gassed!

In order to better survive the long journey to market, many tomatoes are picked while hard and green, then they're gassed with a hormone to help them ripen.

1500 miles!

1500 miles from field to fork - that's the trek made by the average fruit or vegetable these days.

Nine percent of America's total energy consumption is used to produce, process and transport our foods.