Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
public source of information and research on farm problems lends a sense
of stability to an unpredictable and competitive enterprise.
Despite advisors' and growers' interests in maintaining state-funded
sources of local agricultural expertise, it is unclear whether and for how
long the political will for public support of these resources will continue.
U.S. agriculture has come so far from the Jeffersonian vision of a rural
farming class—can one still argue for the idea of agriculture as a public
good? Because food itself is a public good, I believe that agriculture remains
one as well and that the communities and agricultural environments where
food is produced are of particular importance for the future of the United
States. While it may be unrealistic to expect that farming can or should be
turned back wholly to older modes of production, critics of industrial
agriculture such as Thomas Lyson make a compelling case for a return to
more localized systems of food production and distribution, a model Lyson
terms “civic agriculture” (2004). Local community-based problem solving
is a key element of this model, but rather than seeing a role for the land-
grant universities and Cooperative Extension, Lyson focuses on the
failures of these institutions to promote the vitality of agricultural com-
munities in the past. There is certainly plenty to fault in this history, but
alternative visions of local collaborations between growers and experts—in
many cases actually inspired by extension experiences in the developing
world—suggest the possibility of more holistic and egalitarian modes of
cooperation (Chambers, Pacey, and Thrupp 1989).
The environmental impacts of industrial agriculture are another source
of concern for the future of U.S. food production. As I described in chapter
6, growers and agricultural researchers face diffi cult questions of how to
maintain industrial agriculture in its current form and scale, especially its
use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, its reliance on fossil fuels, and
the ever-increasing scale of food production. Further, if predictions about
the future of the Earth's climate in the twenty-fi rst century hold true, then
human-induced climate change will likely have strong impacts on U.S.
agriculture. Recent projections indicate that weather will become more
extreme, with long periods of drought and intense rain patterns that may
increase the risk of fl ooding (Easterling et al. 2007). These changes will
disrupt the farming places as well as the knowledge and techniques that
growers have developed to grow crops in these locales. If the Nation's
Breadbasket becomes too dry or the Great American Salad Bowl is perpetu-
