Is this the end of agribusiness?

Question

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5712

and what do you envisage taking its place? will it be a new organic 'green revolution' as in cuba?

Answer 1

The exponential increase in the human population throughout the 20th century (1.5 to 6.0 billion) has been fuelled by scientific agriculture and industrial methods of production and distribution. Fertilisers and pesticides are byproducts of the oil industry, and powered machines are dependant on it.

Without it food production would crash causing mass starvation, followed by disease and social chaos leading to wars and crime.

Answer 2

All of us involved with agriculture have been saying exactly what was called for in the article, have been warning for years that a problem is in our future, and like everything else it always seems no one stops to listen until some group finally puts it on the table in words that are unmistakably clear "It ain't working!" We need to produce locally and keep it local, what is needed. This import export in regard to foods, especially with consideration of those who have been used and abused (only to remain hungry and poor), needs to be done away with. We also need to stop short cutting the natural processes that are nature and look at the real picture, the big picture, that it is not all right to monoculture hectare after hectare, that sitting back in a board room with your white collar and your "futures" manipulating computer programs is not being a farmer, it is being a criminal. A few make their money while hundreds starve every minute and the land runs poisoned into the oceans. Something is wrong when our basic foods cost more and more because oil prices rise while stuffed shirts lounge around their pools pinching the bottoms of women 30 years their junior. "Green revolution"? Is that the color of a fight when the hungry people finally get tired of seeing there children eat cookies made from dirt! I don't think it's green. There will always be agribusiness, but in the end it will be more realistic, it's just a shame no one listened many years back when first warned. Society is like an elephant, slow to start to run, hard to direct, but it will get to where it needs to be. You just don't want to get in the way when it's decided your underfoot.

Answer 3

I'm not sure if you know exactly what this is actually all about.  First, the "green revolution" mentioned in this article has nothing to do with things like global warming or pollution.  It refers to the massive increase in farm productivity in the developing world that occurred during the 1970s and 1980s.  During this period, countries that were incapable of feeding their own populations adopted modern farming practices and many went from net food importers to net food exporters.  The practices adopted were essentially the same as those used by the large agribusiness entities in the US and Western Europe, namely the use of nitrogen based fertilizer, pesticides and modern land management.

This article is advocating doing away with these practices as they are unsustainable, but it does not explain how a loss of yield, back to the days before the green revolution, could be avoided.

The end of agribusiness, not if we want to continue to feed the worlds growing population.

Answer 4

Agra business will always be here but the demise of factory farming will raise prices and land us in a food shortage even if we grow our own gardens to supplement out food. No good answers either way