Close your eyes and envision the idyllic organic farm with its rolling green pastures and salad bar fields of perennial grasses fed by the sun, which in turn, feed the contented grazing cattle, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and pigs. A sturdy farmer closely connected to his land and animals is working the fields, harvesting bountiful baskets of brightly colored vegetables and providing nutritious sustenance for both his family and those in his community. A traditional farmhouse and red barn in the distance only enhance the peaceful serenity of simpler times as the clean, crisp farm air fills one’s lungs.
A short distance away, but comparatively worlds away, a more massive monocultural landscape abruptly replaces the peaceful, idyllic scene; an acre after acre quilt work of grasses neatly separated, defying nature’s design to co-mingle; growing at the precise, uniform height for efficient harvesting. Nearby heavy farm machinery and metal buildings overshadow the fields, blocking the nourishing sun. Tractors tilling the fields, numerous workers armed with propane torches scorching weeds, truckloads of compost and organic feed arriving on schedule and departing with truckloads of commodity produce all occupy this busy workplace. Cattle and chickens are packed tightly in the metal buildings with only an illusion of pastoral grazing hidden behind a secured door.
The invisible cloud of nitrogen and biodiesel fuel shrouds the sky above. Ideally, the term “organic” implies that nature rather than the machine should supply the proper model for agriculture (Pollan 131). The large industrial organic farm demonstrates the ecological and economic contradictions of the picturesque small organic farm that one imagines with the organic label. The ecological idea that everything is connected to everything else further supports the premise that everything you eat is inseparable from how it grows and how it reaches your table (Pollan 147). Grass lies at the foundation of this food chain. Wherein Isaiah 40:6, “All flesh is grass.” “We come here to eat the animals that ate the grass that we cannot eat ourselves (Pollan 127).”
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Humans are not designed to eat grass, and we cannot bottle the sun’s solar energy for consumption; therefore we feed our bodies with the nutrients stored in the grass-fed meats. However, can the grassy middle landscape survive the advent of industry (Pollan 124)? Will industry interrupt the symbiotic rotational dance that ensures by the season end the pasture will in no way be diminished by the process – in fact; it will be the better for it (Pollan 127). Unlike corn, grass is not a commodity. There is no number 2 grass. It cannot be easily accumulated, traded, transported, or stored. It is highly variable, different from region to region, season to season, and farm to farm. Grass cannot be broken down and reassembled as value-added processed foods. Grass farming involves many variables, requires so much knowledge, and is challenging to systemize (Pollan 202).
So, as farm animals come and go, the grasses which directly or indirectly feed all animals, withstand, and the well-being of the farm depends mainly upon the well-being of the grass (Pollan 187). Organic greens that are not pumped up with synthetic nitrogen have slower growing leaves, thicker walls, less water requirement, increased longevity and tastes better than the alternative. Relevant information like the toxicity and nutritional value determine the healthfulness of food (Pollan 176). Economically, organic is the fastest growing sector of the food industry in which farmers and consumers work together; growing without any help from the government. One of the critical innovations of small organic farming is the passage of more information along the food chain between the producer and the consumer. However, in the industrial food economy, the price is virtually the only information passed along from producer to consumer (Pollan 136).
Organic, however, is more than a product price; it is an ideal. Small organic farms that model the Polyface methods in which the animals do most of the work defy the zero-sum proposition that states “if there is more for us at the end of the season then there must be less for nature – less topsoil, less fertility, less life (Pollan 127). Some of the factors affecting the nutritional quality are the soil, climate, genetics, and farming practices. Small organic farmers believe farms should control pests through crop diversion and rotation, supply as much of their own fertility as possible, and abstain from input substitutions or purchased inputs of any kind. Small organic farmers were successful at creating a food system in line with nature that allowed them to feed themselves and others locally and were more productive than big farms, but the challenge began when the demand for their products expanded beyond local and involved a much larger retail market.
In order to keep up with the growing market, small organic farmers needed to industrialize, but does this industrialization contradict the pastoral ideals the farming industry was founded upon? The grocery industry’s regional distribution system made it impractical for the support from small organic farms. It is more cost effective for large retailers to buy from large scale monocultural operations rather than numerous small polycultural farms. Small organic farms value complexity, diversity, and symbiosis which are often crowded out by the industrial-sized values of specialization, mechanization, and economies of scale (Pollan 161).
Unfortunately, industrialization may be more cost efficient, but it is not in the best interest of the animals because even if they are being fed organic feed, in the end, a CAFO is still a CAFO (Pollan 182). The “panic for organic” movement spiked retail consumer’s demand for organic food proportionally to the spikes associated with health concerns within the industrial food systems. The more public attention is focused on chemical pesticides, genetic modification, and food-borne illnesses such as mad cow disease and E. coli, the higher the demand for organics.
To the inexperienced eye, the industrial organic farm appears precisely like any other industrial farm. They are often owned and operated by large conventional farms, but for every chemical input used in conventional farming methods, an organic input is substituted. Compared to the small organic farm, the industrial organic farm is a more complex system involving corn and soybeans as well as fossil fuels, petrochemicals, heavy machinery, CAFOs, and an elaborate distribution system that transforms inputs of seeds and fossil energy into outputs of carbohydrates and proteins. It also generates a stream of waste in the form of nitrogen and pesticides, manure pooling, heat and exhaust produced by all of the machinery (Pollan 130).
It resembles less of a farm and more like a big business. The industrial organic meal has as much fossil fuel invested as a conventional equivalent. While growing on the industrial organic farm may use less fossil fuel than conventional farms, it loses the benefit when, unlike small organic farms, compost is trucked in from outside sources. The excessive tilling of the soil to remove germinating weeds before planting destroys the tilth of the soil, decreases the biological activity and depletes the nitrogen supply necessitating more input substitutions. Even though the industrialization of organic food comes at the price of consolidation which drives small organic farms out of business, the real value of industrial organic farming is found in the sheer amount of land and water no longer being polluted with chemicals which is an undeniable benefit to public health and the environment.
There are ethical costs to buying shipped products from large organic farms: greater expense, increased energy usage, the defiance of seasonality, which some may credit as a benefit, and the generation of foreign exchange (Pollan 175). Who exactly are the farmers behind the large industrial organic farms? Can one genuinely read their character by the books upon their shelves like one can those who both live and work on their small organic farms? Unfortunately, there will come a point when the process of industrialization will cost organic its soul – when supermarket pastoral becomes more fiction than fact (Pollan 139).
As organic agriculture has grown more prosperous, organic farming has increasingly come to resemble the industrial system it initially set out to replace (Pollan 151). The logic of biology meshes poorly with the logic of industry which is driven by the bottom line, so for now, unfortunately, the logic of industry rules. Sir Albert Howard’s, An Agricultural Testament, summarizes the organic ideal stating, “Mother earth never attempts to farm without live stock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and to prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves against disease (Pollan 149).”
Industrialization promises to simplify the job and reduce physical and mental work. It permits standardization and mechanization and in return offers efficiency. It provides problem-solving solutions in a bottle instead of in nature. Industrial organic farming changes the system more than it changes people. The cost is significant in that civilizations that abuse their soil eventually collapse (Pollan 151). Idyllic small organic farming operations take nothing away from the earth, leave no waste, supports water conservation, safeguards the health of soil and water, reduces exposure to chemicals and pesticides, encourages biodiversity, combats erosion, and fights the effects of global warming.
