3 Big Myths about Modern Agriculture

[rangerrebew]

3 Big Myths about Modern Agriculture

Myths get in the way of our ability to restore degraded soils that can feed the world using fewer chemicals

    By David R. Montgomery, The Conversation on April 5, 2017
 

 

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

One of the biggest modern myths about agriculture is that organic farming is inherently sustainable. It can be, but it isn’t necessarily. After all, soil erosion from chemical-free tilled fields undermined the Roman Empire and other ancient societies around the world. Other agricultural myths hinder recognizing the potential to restore degraded soils to feed the world using fewer agrochemicals.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-big-myths-about-modern-agriculture1/

[Oceander]

Myth 1: Large-scale agriculture feeds the world today

According to a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. The FAO also estimates that almost three-quarters of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare – about 2.5 acres, or the size of a typical city block.

[Oceander]

Myth 2: Large farms are more efficient

Many high-volume industrial processes exhibit efficiencies at large scale that decrease inputs per unit of production. The more widgets you make, the more efficiently you can make each one. But agriculture is different. A 1989 National Research Council study concluded that “well-managed alternative farming systems nearly always use less synthetic chemical pesticides, fertilizers, and antibiotics per unit of production than conventional farms.”

And while mechanization can provide cost and labor efficiencies on large farms, bigger farms do not necessarily produce more food. According to a 1992 agricultural census report, small, diversified farms produce more than twice as much food per acre than large farms do.

[Oceander]

Myth 3: Conventional farming is necessary to feed the world

We’ve all heard proponents of conventional agriculture claim that organic farming is a recipe for global starvation because it produces lower yields. The most extensive yield comparison to date, a 2015 meta-analysis of 115 studies, found that organic production averaged almost 20 percent less than conventionally grown crops, a finding similar to those of prior studies.

But the study went a step further, comparing crop yields on conventional farms to those on organic farms where cover crops were planted and crops were rotated to build soil health. These techniques shrank the yield gap to below 10 percent.

[kevindavis007]

Myth 1: Large-scale agriculture feeds the world today

According to a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. The FAO also estimates that almost three-quarters of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare – about 2.5 acres, or the size of a typical city block.

Like I believe anything from the UN..

[Cripplecreek]

Myth 1: Large-scale agriculture feeds the world today

According to a recent U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, family farms produce over three-quarters of the world’s food. The FAO also estimates that almost three-quarters of all farms worldwide are smaller than one hectare – about 2.5 acres, or the size of a typical city block.

Globally 2.5 acres might be the average size of a small farm but in the USA 100 to 200 acres is probably a lot closer to the average size of a small family farm. The small diversified farm near me where they run a vegetable stand only has around 100 acres suitable for farming.



In my youth I worked on a big local dairy farm. They owned around 500 acres but leased another 3000 on top of that.

[Oceander]

Globally 2.5 acres might be the average size of a small farm but in the USA 100 to 200 acres is probably a lot closer to the average size of a small family farm. The small diversified farm near me where they run a vegetable stand only has around 100 acres suitable for farming.



In my youth I worked on a big local dairy farm. They owned around 500 acres but leased another 3000 on top of that.

wasn't the homestead act amount 40 acres? 

[thackney]

wasn't the homestead act amount 40 acres?

That was to feed themselves, not the neighborhood.

[Joe Wooten]

I call BS on this. I grew up in the cotton/grain farming area of West Texas and NONE of the local "family farms" were less than 2-3 SQUARE MILES in size. You cannot make a living growing cotton, wheat, and milo on a 400 acre farm. Farms that size are hobby farms, not full time businesses. All of the families who were full time farmers had family corporations where 2-3 generations of a family were the stockholders. The corporation bought the machinery, seed, and fertilizer and if they made a profit, it was split among them and a surplus was kept for lean years. "Organic" farming is inefficient and has crop losses much higher than "industrial" farming, although industrial famers could, and many do, benefit from the addition of more organic (in the true meaning of the word) matter to their soils. Many of those family farm corporations are going on over 50 years now, going into the 4th generation of the same family joining the company. Some of my old classmates grandkids are part of the corporation now.

[truth_seeker]

The average human has one teat, and one testicle. That is science, and statistics.

[Free Vulcan]

In Iowa, it's a hobby farm if it's below 1000 acres. Here it's the corn/bean rotation, and farmers are not very diversified. While a significant chunk these days goes to ethanol, a majority stil goes to livestock feed, or overseas. They are very subject to the boom/bust price roller coaster.

While they produce quantity, they do not produce nutritional quality like a smaller operation will. Then again nutrition isn't the objective, calories are. Suffice to say there are significant deficiencies in large scale agriculture as it stands today.

[r9etb]

Stokes' theorem!