Alternative Agriculture - Encyclopedia of American business

An agriculture that will provide current and future generations with ample, wholesome food obtained in ways that are economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsible. Interest in alternative agriculture has grown in recent years largely in response to limitations and unforeseen adverse side effects of modern conventional agriculture. This article discusses the nature of alternative agriculture, and why it has gained national attention. The connections between alternative agriculture and rural communities are examined, as are some future prospects for alternative agriculture.?

The Nature of Alternative Agriculture

Farmers? adoption of alternative agricultural practices continues to be restrained by lack of research-based information on such practices; by customs, institutions and government policies that historically have supported conventional agriculture; and by lack of consensus concerning the goals of alternative agriculture?especially those of a social nature. Growing awareness of the meaning and mission of alternative agriculture not only could help to lower those restraints but also begin a process of revaluing rural communities and reshaping American culture.?
Alternative farms are generally more diversified and smaller in size than conventional farms (Bird et al., 1995). Alternative farmers favor use of integrated production methods that will conserve soil and water, protect the environment, and to the extent possible, substitute renewable resources and human skills for purchased, nonrenewable resources. They seek to minimize or exclude use of synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizer. Production, to them, is not a factory-like process of converting inputs into outputs. Stewardship of the land is considered as important as profitable farming.?
Other schools of thought and farming approaches included under the alternative umbrella include organic, regenerative, ecological, biodynamic, low-input, perennial polyculture, and biological agriculture. In recent years, sustainable agriculture has become an especially popular term.?

Why Alternative Agriculture Has Gained Attention

Fueled by science, technology and favorable government policies, extraordinary gains in food production at home and abroad have repeatedly quelled doubts about the ability of farmers and our natural resources to meet the food needs of the world?s expanding population. Why then is there interest in alternative agriculture? One reason is uncertainty as to whether conventional agriculture will always be able to produce as abundantly as it has in the past. More widely publicized concerns are raised about these effects of conventional agriculture: (1) farmers? heavy reliance on nonrenewable energy sources for fuel, fertilizer and other inputs to farm production; (2) excessive loss of topsoil from erosion; (3) declining soil quality due to salinization, compaction and pollution by toxic chemicals; (4) surface and groundwater pollution from environmentally harmful chemical pesticides and fertilizers; (5) depletion of underground aquifers due to continued expansion of irrigated farming; (6) health and safety risks to farmers, hired farm workers, and consumers due to use of chemicals in both the production and processing of food; (7) loss of fish and wildlife habitats caused by monocultural and chemical-intensive farming practices; (8) farmers? dependence on federal price and income support programs for many commodities, programs that have rewarded high yields through intensive farming practices and discouraged diversified agriculture; (9) the demise of owner-operated family farms due to chronically low incomes caused by escalating costs of land, production inputs, and the financing of both, and persistent downward pressure on the prices farmers receive for their products; and (10) the increasing size of remaining farms and rising average age of surviving farmers.?
Until recently, such concerns were repeatedly overshadowed by the importance the nation attached to increasing food production, and by faith that science and technology would always be able to mend whatever adverse effects a productive agriculture might have. Alternative agriculture was regarded as a fringe idea. For example, in 1980, the USDA published a detailed report on organic farming, including recommendations for research on the subject (USDA Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming). A year later, a new Secretary of Agriculture who spoke for conventional agriculture referred to organic agriculture research as a dead end.?
But interest in alternatives was not to fade. Congress passed the Food Security Act of 1985 urging USDA researchers to give the subject more attention. A few years later, the National Academy of Sciences released a major study entitled Alternative Agriculture (National Research Council, 1989). And the Congress appropriated funds to support the research on alternative farming systems that it had authorized in 1985. Doing so, it launched a new and visible program, now called the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.?
At first, many farmers, agricultural organizations, the farm press, and colleges of agriculture interpreted alternative agriculture as unfair criticism of the nation?s modern and highly productive agriculture. They said that they, too, supported soil and water conservation, environmental protection and food safety, adding that unproven alternative farming methods would only cut farmers? profits, lower production, increase the cost of food and invite hunger and starvation.?
Yet, concerns about conventional agriculture continued to surface due to recurring fears, if not disturbing evidence, of pesticide residues in food, groundwater pollution, excessive soil erosion and other adverse economic, environmental or social effects of conventional farming. Proponents of alternative agriculture became more organized and vocal. In 1990, major farm legislation passed by the Congress reaffirmed federal support for sustainable agriculture research and education and offered farmers additional incentives to conserve soil and water, protect wetlands and other wildlife habitats, and to experiment with environmentally beneficial farming practices.?

Alternative Agriculture and Rural Communities?What Are the Connections?

While public attention has centered largely on environmental concerns and the desire for safe and wholesome food, growing support for alternative agriculture also reflects concern about the steady weakening of traditional economic and social ties between farmers and rural communities. The trend began decades ago. To be profitable, farmers adopted more specialized and efficient methods, bought more of their production inputs, and sold more of their products outside their immediate communities. To stay competitive and prosper, they increased the size of their farms by purchasing neighboring farms. As a result, the total number of farms in the U.S. is now roughly two million, down from a peak of nearly seven million in the mid-1930s. The drop came gradually, but its ultimate impacts on both rural and urban America were enormous. During the 30-year period from 1945 to 1975, ?? the largest migration in the history of mankind occurred in the U.S., when 20 million persons left the farms and ranches of this country and went elsewhere looking for a job.? (Bergland, 1992).?
Changes in the number and size of farms are among the more visible signs of what is now often referred to as the industrialization of American agriculture. There are other signs, such as a steady shift in the control of farming from farmers to other people and organizations. Huge companies like ConAgra and Philip Morris now own, operate or otherwise control not only the production of crops and livestock, but also the shipping, processing and retailing of final food products. More and more farmers who produce broilers, eggs, turkeys, beef, hogs, fruits and other commodities do so under contract with large corporations. The firms supply inputs, tell farmers what production practices to use, and market the resulting products.?
Farmers contract their production of crops and livestock for several reasons. Some are no longer willing or able to cope with the managerial, financial or technical risks of modern agriculture. Contracting, they hope, will ease those burdens and provide them with a decent and predictable income. Others have done so because the merging of competing local marketing firms in their areas has closed off past markets, leaving them with no choice but to contract with a surviving firm, learn to produce and market other products, or go out of business.?
Gains in efficiency and profit are major rewards of industrialized agriculture. Unfortunately, they often invite offsetting problems. For example, large-scale confinement feeding of livestock tends to increase disease risks and create major waste and other environmental problems due to the unnatural concentration of animals.?
The economic and social impacts of agricultural industrialization are among the least well understood. Economist Stewart Smith (1992) sees today?s industrialized agriculture as an advanced stage of a process through which most of the farming activities once performed by farmers are now carried out by firms that make and sell production inputs and market farm products.?
The process began long ago when farmers replaced animal power with tractors and, more recently, substituted synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers for crop rotations and other non-chemical methods of controlling insects, weeds and diseases. As a result of those trends, Smith estimates that only 9 percent of the total dollar returns paid to participants in the food system now go to those directly involved in farming activities (farmers, farm workers and farm service providers). Participants in the input manufacturing and distribution sector get 24 percent and those in the marketing sector, 67 percent.?
On the surface, those shifts tell only a story of progress. Thanks to the efficiencies they have made possible, we are among the best-fed people in the world. But the true cost of that progress has not been fully recognized. For example, as control of farming continues to shift from the farming sector to input and marketing sectors, the farmer becomes more of a hired laborer. Proponents of alternative agriculture fear that, as a result, the watchful eyes of the farmer are being replaced by those of corporate analysts and managers who work in distant office buildings and are more interested in maximizing company profits than in ensuring the survival of environmentally beneficial farming. Of course, even on farms that are still owned and operated by farm families, physical absence is no longer uncommon. More and more family farmers must now work part-time off the farm to help pay the bills.?
These developments have been steadily redefining traditional ties between agriculture and rural communities in ways that may benefit neither. Studies of the impacts of agricultural industrialization on rural areas ??generally suggest that it is not so much the scale of operation but the social organization of the farm that influences rural communities. Large farms with industrial- type relationships tend to have negative influences, while owner operator farms generally have positive influences.? (Browne et al., 1992).?
A related change over recent decades has been the steady influx of manufacturing and service industries into rural areas. Today, only one out of six counties in the U.S. is economically dependent on farming (that is, receives at least 20 percent of its earned income from farm wage or salary jobs and self-employment). Increasingly, farmers who supplement their incomes with off-farm employment have jobs in nonagricultural fields, which is another reason why the ?culture? in ?agriculture? is undergoing changes never imagined.?

Future Prospects for Alternative Agriculture

Support for alternative agriculture is growing. More and more farmers appear to be aware of, and are experimenting with, environmentally beneficial production practices. Soil erosion rates are down. Agricultural research and extension programs are generating and disseminating credible information on alternative farming systems. Sales of organically grown food, though still a tiny fraction of consumers? food expenditures, have increased 20 percent a year for the past five years. At the same time, evidence of significant change in the way farmers farm is spotty. Existing data show no appreciable drop in farm use of synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers. And, the trend toward industrialization, if anything, is accelerating.?
Important barriers to adoption of alternative agriculture include a lack of science-based information on alternative farming systems and practices, inadequate market outlets for alternative crop and livestock products, and the persistence of farm and other public policies that give artificial advantage to conventional agriculture. The importance of these barriers varies from one part of the country to the next. They are least restraining in areas characterized by diversified family farming with close ties to neighboring rural communities. They are formidable in parts of the country dominated by large-scale, industrialized, monoculture serving distant markets. The nation?s heartland, a vast area of corn and soybean production, is a case in point.?
Corn and soybeans dominate Midwest agriculture not only because of favorable soils and climate, but also because of economic efficiencies that provide farmers with good access to inputs of seed, fertilizer, pesticides, equipment, know-how and credit, as well as markets for their crops. Federal commodity and related support programs, as well as the research and educational assistance of the land-grant colleges of agriculture, also have favored corn-soybean agriculture.?
Contributing importantly to each of the barriers to adoption of alternative agriculture in the U.S. is a basic lack of consensus concerning the ends or goals of such an agriculture, and therefore agreement on specific changes needed in conventional agriculture.?
Ambiguities continue to frustrate meaningful discourse on the subject, thwarting development of public policies needed to support adoption of alternatives. Misuse of the popular term ?sustainable agriculture? exacerbate the problem. The term was embraced in the 1980s by proponents of alternative agriculture who believed that the yardstick of sustainability provided a pathway for research to support the scientific legitimacy of alternative farming systems. But its meaning has been weakened by lack of consensus as to what should be sustained, and for whom. Moreover, the term is now used routinely to describe not only farming practices expected to contribute to sustainability, but also unproven practices that people hope will do so. In many cases, little thought is given to how so-called sustainable practices will affect other parts of the total farm system.?
For example, enthusiasts of no-till farming, an effective way to reduce soil erosion, often equate the practice with sustainable agriculture. But if no-till farmers use more synthetic chemical herbicides to control weeds previously killed by cultivation, as many are inclined to do, the net effect may not be a truly sustainable agriculture.?
Precision farming is another example. By using high-technology methods and sophisticated equipment, precision farming increases the efficiency of production. Manufactured fertilizer inputs can be reduced with the help of equipment that adjusts fertilizer applications to within-field differences in nutrient requirements. But while impressive, those efficiencies may be offset partially by increased reliance on costly equipment or off-farm expertise. Precision farming also tends to postpone consideration of more fundamental changes that might eliminate the need for manufactured fertilizer inputs, such as crop-livestock diversification and extensive use of rotations.?
The future of alternative agriculture is clouded especially by lack of agreement on what is meant by the common assertion that alternative, and sustainable, agriculture must be socially responsible. To some, it means simply an agriculture that favors family farming and enhances the quality of rural life. Others (e.g., Allen and Sachs, 1993) believe alternative agriculture lacks true meaning unless it deliberately seeks to ensure social justice and equity and satisfies requirements such as humane treatment of animals.?
Perhaps the most important unanswered question is whether adoption of an environmentally sound, productive and economically viable agriculture automatically will lead the way to an agriculture that is socially responsible. The belief that it might is expressed by Fred Kirschenmann, a farmer and spokesperson for alternative agriculture. He writes that ?If behavior, at least in part, changes values, then alternative agriculture practices, poised on the principle of restraint, may give birth to revitalized rural communities; revitalized in the sense of having a new sense of purpose and a new set of values that could reshape American culture and revalue rural communities. It is reasonable to predict that if sustainable agriculture is successful, it could create an alternative future in which rural America could lead the way to a cultural renaissance of the human spirit in which self-sufficiency, happiness, and security are redefined? (Kirschenmann, 1992).??

? Neill Schaller

See also Agriculture, Sustainable; Agroecology; Biodiversity; Conservation, Soil; Cropping Systems; Environmental Protection; Food Safety; Groundwater; Land Stewardship; Organic Farming; Permaculture; Pest Management; Policy, Agricultural?
References

• Allen, Patricia and Carolyn Sachs. ?Sustainable Agriculture in the United States: Engagements, Silences, and Possibilities for Transformation.? Pp. 139?167 in Food for the Future: Conditions and Contradictions. Edited by Patricia Allen. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1993.?
• Bergland, Bob. ?The USDA Structure of Agriculture Study and Other Lessons from the Past.? Pp. 64?72 in Alternative Farming Systems and Rural Communities: Exploring the Connections. Greenbelt, MD: Institute for Alternative Agriculture, 1992.?
• Bird, Elizabeth Ann R., Gordon L. Bultena, and John C. Gardner, eds. Planting the Future. Developing an Agriculture That Sustains Land and Community. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1995.?
• Browne, William P., Jerry R. Skees, Louis E. Swanson, Paul B. Thompson, and Laurian J. Unnevehr. Sacred Cows and Hot Potatoes. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992.?
• Kirschenmann, Frederick. ?What Can Alternative Farming Systems and Rural Communities Do for Each Other?? Pp. 25?38 in Alternative Farming Systems and Rural Communities: Exploring the Connections. Greenbelt, MD: Institute for Alternative Agriculture, 1992.?
• National Research Council, Board on Agriculture. Alternative Agriculture. Washington, DC.: National Academy Press, 1989.?
• Smith, Stewart. ?Farming Activities and Family Farms: Getting the Concepts Right.? Joint Economic Committee Symposium on Agricultural Industrialization and Family Farms: The Role of Federal Policy. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, October, 1992.?
• U.S. Department of Agriculture. Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, July 1980.

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