Food and Agriculture
Food Systems in a Steady State Economy
A steady state economy with stable population and consumption requires a fixed quantity of food. There is no need for constantly increasing the amount of food produced, and there is a calming effect on the landscape – not as much land needs to be in crop-production mode. In order to reduce energy and material usage, the farm sector is decentralized into local systems of production, distribution and consumption. Decentralization results in fewer large-scale agribusiness operations; less reliance on fuel; less application of pesticide, herbicide, and fertilizers; less reliance on long-distance transportation to ship crops to processing plants and supermarkets; and less use and disposal of plastic for packaging. Consumers of food (all of us!) can expect increased food security, healthier foods, and more personal relationships with farmers and other people working on food production and distribution.
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More of this…Local food production, distribution and Image credit: DMolsen |
Food Systems in a Pathologically Growing Economy
With growth as the goal, you get more of what we already see in food production: huge factory farms with absentee corporate owners, unhygienic feedlots with overcrowded conditions for animals, increasing reliance on dwindling groundwater supplies, and increasing dependence on chemical additives and genetic manipulation to meet increasing demand for food. More land is converted from natural areas to farms, and more fish and game are caught to feed growing populations. The most basic contributor to well-being, access to a secure food supply, rests on a thinner and thinner foundation when the costs of growth are ignored.
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Less of that…Factory farming and unhealthy conditions Image credit: EPA |
Exemplary Agriculture
The Land Institute is an organization that promotes a sound approach to agriculture. Its purpose is to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. This concept is known as Natural Systems Agriculture – the point is to use the valuable lessons inherent in ecological systems that have been evolving for eons.
