Intensive or monoculture farming—the industrial agricultural practice of producing way too much of one thing in order to maximize yield and profits—has serious global economic and ecological consequences. This, for the most part, is common knowledge. Despite all the patents, land grabs, pesticides and antibiotics, hunger and insufficient nutrition remain a problem for many people in the United States and around the world. But “Big Ag” isn’t just stiffing farmers, confining animals, polluting water supplies, failing to “feed the world” and, in the process, making a lot of money for a few corporations. According to Rob Wallace, it’s creating entirely new “agro-environments” for deadly pathogens to thrive.

Wallace is an author, evolutionary biologist and phylogeographer—someone who studies the forces behind the geographical spread and distribution of various living things, from viruses to mammals. His most recent book, Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness and the Nature of Science, tracks the ways influenza (bird and swine flus for example) and other pathogens are emerging within “an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations.” His blog, Farming Pathogens, explores the intersection of economics, food production, the environment and public health. In his words, the project is concerned with “disease in a world of our own making” and follows everything from “agriculture, infections, evolution, ecological resilience, dialectical biology, and the practice of science.” 

In his latest post, “Ten Theses on Farming and Disease,” Wallace hashes out why industrial agribusiness is “a scam” for farmers. He also makes the case that the epidemiological risks it poses could eventually kill a lot of people. The solution, he argues, is an end to the industrial food commodity paradigm, and the implementation of biodiverse, local, agroecological food systems.