The Need for Sustainable Food Production Systems - Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems - page 14

of having a large genetic reservoir can be illustrated by
example. In 1968, greenbugs attacked the U.S. sorghum
crop, causing an estimated $100 million in damage. The
next year, insecticides were used to control the greenbugs
at a cost of about $50 million. Soon thereafter, however,
researchers discovered a sorghum variety that carried
resistance to the greenbugs. No one had known of the
greenbug resistance, but it was there nonetheless. This
variety was used to create a hybrid that was grown exten-
sively and not eaten by greenbugs, making the use of
pesticides unnecessary. Such pest resistance is common
in domesticated plants, “hiding” in the genome but waiting
to be used by plant breeders. As varieties are lost, however,
the valuable genetic reservoir of traits is reduced in size,
and certain traits potentially invaluable for future breeding
are lost forever. There may very well be a soybean variety
somewhere in the world resistant to the new soybean rust,
but will plant scientists locate it before it goes extinct?
Increasing vulnerability to disease is also a serious
concern for domesticated animal species as they lose their
genetic diversity, but perhaps more serious is increased
dependence on methods of industrial food production.
Livestock breeds that are not adapted to local conditions
require climate-controlled environments, doses of antibi-
otics, and large amounts of high-protein feed.

farmers, especially in developed countries where mech-
anization and high levels of external inputs are the norm.
From 1920 to the present, the number of farms in the
U.S. has dropped from more that 6.5 million to just over
2 million, and the percentage of the population that lives
and works on farms has dropped below 2%. Data from
the 2000 U.S. census show that only 0.4% of the
employed civilians in the U.S. listed their occupation as
“farmer or rancher” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). In
developing countries as well, rural people who work
primarily in agriculture continue to abandon the land to
move to urban and industrial areas, which will hold an
estimated 60% of the world's population by 2030. As
shown in Figure 1.8, there are now far more people in
the world whose livelihoods are nonagricultural than
there are people who grow food, and this gap continues
to widen over time.
Besides encouraging an exodus from rural areas,
large-scale commodity-oriented farming tends to wrest
control of food production from rural communities.
This trend is disturbing because local control and place-
based knowledge and connection are crucial to the kind
of management required for sustainable production.
Food production carried out according to the dictates
of the global market, and through technologies devel-
oped elsewhere, inevitably severs the connection to
ecological principles. Experience-based management
skill is replaced by purchased inputs requiring more
capital, energy, and use of nonrenewable resources.
Farmers become mere instruments of technology appli-
cation, rather than independent decision-makers and
managers.

L OSS OF L OCAL C ONTROL O VER A GRICULTURAL
P RODUCTION

Accompanying the concentration of agriculture into
large-scale monocultural systems and factory farms has
been a dramatic decline in the number of farms and

4500

4000

3500

3000

World agricultural
population
World non-agricultural
population

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

FIGURE 1.8 Number of people worldwide involved in agriculture and not involved in agriculture. Source: Data from FAOSTAT
(2005). Figures for 2010 are projections.