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Sustainable agriculture

By Jim Chen at al.

Several weeks ago, Susan Schneider posted about a new group promoting production agriculture. In that post Susan spoke of the need for a dialogue about sustainable agriculture, as opposed to advertising campaigns. I agree with her. Thus, I offer several brief comments about sustainable agriculture.

Sustainable agriculture will be technologically neutral. Standards that a priori rule out certain techniques or approaches are not technologically neutral and will not be promote sustainable values for the environment, for the community, or for the economics of farmers.
On this point, the Plant Biotechnology Journal (2011) 9, pp. 2-21 has a good review article entitled, "The role of transgenic crops in sustainable development."

Sustainable agricutlure will be scale neutral. Standards that attempt to classify small as good and large as bad are not scale neutral and will not promote sustainable values. On this point with regard to safe food, it is important to remember that bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and other mycotoxins give not one whit of concern for the size of the farm these living entities contaminate. Indeed, much evidence exists that small-sized farms often have higher contaminantion rates than larger farms.
Two examples make this point.
Free range chickens and other open pen livestock are often more contaminated because these free range animals more readily encounter bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and mycotoxins that exist very widely in the soils and on the plants where the livestock ranges. What counts is management, not the size of the farm.
Raw milk is a second example in which the enthusiasm for small farms ignores the significant and dangerous contamination that easily occurs. Pasturization was and is a great social health advance and standards should not disparage food safety for an ideological preference for small or "natural."

Full post as published by Agricultural Law on December 16, 2010 (boomark / email).