Given the entrenchment of conventional agriculture, is there any hope for the next generation? I ask Kevin. “There is hope, but we have to change things,” he says. “I do believe there is always hope. We have more people interested in our food than twenty years ago.”
We can see a revived interest in food all around us—witness the organic movement that started in the 1960s and grows stronger every year, the celebrity chefs on Food Network touting the benefits of fresh and local food, the popularity of farm-to-table eating. Consumers care about the origins of their food much more than they used to. But is consumer interest and awareness enough? Can the consumer actually create lasting change in the food market, the kind of change that will result in the widespread adoption of regenerative farming?
Ecological modernization theory argues yes, that consumers can inspire steady movement toward ecological sustainability within a capitalist democracy. How? “Environmentally minded free-market entrepreneurs acting in concert with the state and spurred on by consumers and movement organizations would yield a system that favored the development of technologies and social practices that would protect the environment, while still allowing for growing prosperity within a largely capitalist framework,” writes Dr. Brian Obach of the State University of New York at New Paltz.1 In this theory, the government steers private actors toward sustainability through flexible and locally appropriate measures rather than via a “command and control” approach over the entire market. Characteristics of the market economy, such as competition, can potentially be compatible with a move toward environmentally sound practices, Obach claims. Finally, social movements can generate ideas, policies, and support rather than just critiques from outside the system. Ecological modernization theory is a model in which environmental sustainability can coexist with marketplace profit, a view championed by writers such as Thomas Friedman and Al Gore.
When Obach applied ecological modernization theory to organic farming in the United States, he found that organic’s development is in many ways consistent with that theory. People within the organic movement are usually constructive participants rather than outside critics. The promise of profits spurred entrepreneurs to create organic-oriented businesses, and “while movements played the role of educating the public and spurring innovation, it was the market and savvy, socially conscious entrepreneurs who allowed organic practices to become widespread.”2 The state’s role has been more complex. Obach argues that the implementation of national organic standards is not command and control because the government worked with growers, movement activists, and other stakeholders when creating the standards.
But there’s another way to look at the development of organic: through the lens of the treadmill of production theory, which says that
the competitive quest for profit and the corresponding economic expansion that characterizes capitalism are not consistent with the earth’s finite resources, relatively stable ecological systems, and basic laws of thermodynamics. The central social actors within capitalist democracies—capital, labor, and the state—are all oriented toward economic growth, thus, no significant checks exist to redirect production toward environmentally sustainable practices, even as environmental reforms advanced by a weak or co-opted environmental movement may, on occasion, temporarily slow the treadmill of production.3
Treadmill theory is inherently pessimistic about a capitalist society’s concern for anything but profit. Social or environmental issues will never outweigh profits unless the power of law or extreme consumer backlash force companies to change their practices. All consumers can hope for under this theory is a temporary slowing of the treadmill. As Obach writes, “From this perspective organic agriculture is, at best, an authentic social change movement that was co-opted by the dominant treadmill forces, who redirected it in order to increase profits and expand production.”4 We know that big industrial farms and food companies did not experience a change of heart when they went organic; their motive was profit-driven, and they continually fight to relax organic rules to increase profits. Obach gloomily concludes that the development of organic fits both models and there is no “winner” in terms of how we can interpret what went on in the past or what might happen in the future.
If macroeconomics are inconclusive, then what about the microeconomics of individual wallets? We have all heard that in America consumers can vote with their dollar. Can’t consumers rebel and refuse to buy conventional and GM foods? Yes—and no. As Robert Albritton and others have pointed out, the individual economies of wallets are not very effective tools for change. He writes that consumers are not likely to modify their buying behavior given their limited resources, knowledge, and alternative options. The American recession of 2007–9, the effects of which are still lingering in the form of lost homes and stagnant wages, only weakened people’s buying power. Plus, Albritton says, it’s unfair to expect individuals to shoulder the whole burden of change: “If the individual is the main focus for change, then change is not likely to be effective, not only because of the unrealistic burden on individuals, but also because we are asking individuals to struggle against the root causes of the problem which remain intact.”5 Of course individuals can and should be involved in changing the food system, but we can’t expect them alone to topple a system so entrenched, so well-funded and organized, and so extraordinarily profitable for big companies.
The optimist in me wants to believe in the hope Kevin feels and in the tenets of ecological modernization theory. As a consumer, I feel powerful strolling through the Whole Foods aisle or shopping at my local farmers’ market. I can fill my basket with organic vegetables and grass-fed beef, GM-free tortilla chips and locally grown strawberries. But the treadmill keeps rolling in the background, deflating the power I momentarily feel. Profit is the only thing that matters in capitalism, and big companies and farms will not change until it becomes profitable for them to do so. We’ve seen this profit mentality in other cases, not just in agriculture. For example, the certainty of total environmental destruction and the demise of humankind hasn’t significantly reduced fossil-fuel use (see Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded). It seems rather naïve to think changing agriculture will be different. As a 2013 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report notes, “Bringing about change in agricultural management practices [for] climate or other reasons is not easy. More often than not there are important market- or tenure-related barriers that need to be overcome.”6 Appealing to intangible ideas like consumer health, climate change, or soil loss will not persuade most farmers, because many think regenerative agriculture is a bigger threat to their survival than any of those things.
Money aside, farmers often operate in tight-knit, small communities, where new philosophies are viewed with skepticism.7 People talk—and what they say can be vicious when someone’s actions appear to challenge the status quo. Many farmers fear being shunned by neighbors if they adopt regenerative practices. It sounds old-fashioned to those of us in the city, where few people know or care what we do, but this fear is real in rural America. Phil, for example, has endured years of criticism to his face and behind his back. Some people view a neighbor’s move away from conventional practices as a personal attack on their own farms and the community as a whole. If you reject our way of farming, the thinking goes, then you reject us.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Money could play a different role in farming. If farmers were incentivized, change would occur much faster, as we saw with the rapid conversion of farmland acres to corn production over the last twenty years, in part a result of government subsidies. We saw it also with the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), signed into law by President Reagan in 1985 and still active today. The program offered farmers the option of taking their land out of production in exchange for payments. Farmers switched to conventional agriculture in the first place because of the potential for higher profits. If money was enough to convert them to conventional, it stands to reason that money could also ease the transition back to regenerative agriculture.
As a dangling carrot, money is tempting, but it probably isn’t enough. The UNEP report advises that a combination of changes in farming practices, government policy, technology, and market conditions is more successful—taking an integrated approach rather than trying to overcome barriers individually. The most successful policies are attuned to local conditions, they write.8 The notion of local conditions is a key one to my mind, because it implies learning to work with local environments instead of fighting them. It also implies taking into consideration the context of farming communities and individual farmers when developing strategies for change. Local contexts might sound incongruous with government initiatives that tend to be “one size fits all.” In the U.S., though, there is a way to reach communities with county-specific information and assistance: the Cooperative Extension Service (CES).
The CES was founded in 1914 to turn research into practical farm tools and to educate farmers about new or existing farm technology. The CES began serving the nonfarm public as well, most memorably by assisting with seed, fertilizer, and tools for people participating in the Victory Garden program during World War II. The Victory Garden program was so successful that participants grew 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in the United States in 1943. Today, the CES works in six broad categories: 4–H youth development, agriculture, leadership development, natural resources, family and consumer sciences, and community and economic development. Each category includes a plethora of programs for children, teens, and adults, all with the intention of helping and educating communities.9
The CES is currently an ally with agribusiness, not with the regenerative farming movement. Land-grant colleges, themselves funded by agribusiness companies, oversee the CES and determine what information reaches the public, much of it from the agribusiness world. As a result, the CES is complicit in the “get big or get out” mandate. Berry notes that CES training was originally intended to assist farms that were, in the government’s view, “either too small or too unproductive or both.”10 Berry argues that the notion that small or not-so-profitable farms need to be “fixed” by government programs like the CES further contributed to the “get big or get out” theory—and he’s right.11 When the government pointed to certain farms and said, “You are not big enough and don’t generate enough profit—you need government help,” the government inherently placed a higher value on big farms.
But voters can change the mission and purpose of the CES. There are roughly 2,900 county and regional CES offices nationwide. We have 3,007 counties in the United States, so most areas are covered already or could easily become so. Redirecting this expansive network so that it provides sustainability training and food education, for example, means we could use an existing system, with existing employees, offices, and resources, to reach almost every county with the message of regenerative farming and thinking. CES programs could help today’s farmers and ranchers start the transition away from industrial agriculture, much like the CES once helped households across the country plant Victory Gardens.
Land-grant colleges also offer hope for the regenerative agriculture movement because they have the power to influence the next generation of farmers. But extracting these universities from the grip of agribusiness will be difficult. Many of the nation’s well-known schools are land-grant colleges: the University of California, Purdue, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell, Ohio State, Penn State and Texas A&M, to name a few of the 106 in existence. The federal government launched the land-grant system in 1862 with the goal of making agriculture a science, educating young farmers and urban citizens, and conducting agricultural research.12 As federal funding decreased, agribusiness companies saw an opportunity to influence education and research to their benefit. These companies built fancy research facilities (like the Cargill Plant Genomics Building at the University of Minnesota), endowed university positions (like the Monsanto–endowed chair for the Agricultural Communications Program at the University of Illinois), and funded research (like the University of California’s Nutrition Department research into the benefits of eating chocolate, funded by Mars, Inc.). They also infiltrated university leadership. For example, David Chicoine, president of South Dakota State University from 2007 to 2016, and current professor of economics there, has also served on Monsanto’s board of directors since 2009.
The most troubling issue is how agribusiness influences the outcome of university research, known as the “funder effect.” More than 15 percent of university scientists report changing their results or methodologies to please a donor. If researchers come up with unfavorable findings about agribusiness products, then the companies simply block the scientists from publishing their results under patent protection laws. An example from Food & Water Watch’s report Public Research, Private Gain:
When an Ohio State University professor produced research that questioned the biological safety of biotech sunflowers, Dow AgroSciences and Pioneer Hi-Bred blocked her research privileges to their seeds, barring her from conducting additional research. Similarly, when other Pioneer Hi-Bred–funded professors found a new GE corn variety to be deadly to beneficial beetles, the company barred the scientists from publishing their findings. Pioneer Hi-Bred subsequently hired new scientists who produced the necessary results to secure regulatory approval.
Evidence of corporate control over land-grant colleges goes on and on.13 The situation is not beyond repair, though. Land-grant colleges still rely on public funding and are therefore subject to public control. Food & Water Watch (a Washington-based NGO focusing on government and corporate accountability related to food and water) recommends specific actions that would help rid the land-grant colleges of corporate influence: (1) the farm bill should prioritize and fund research that benefits the public interest, (2) land-grant universities should be more transparent about their funding sources, (3) the universities should not allow the lure of profits to determine their research agendas, and (4) academic journals should enforce rigorous conflict-of-interest standards. The colleges themselves also need to enforce conflict-of-interest rules. Professors, board members, presidents—anyone who has the power to influence research and classroom curriculum—should not also work for agribusiness companies.14
All this is possible—a radical change in how America supports its farmers through subsidies, a retooling of the CES, a major redirection of the land-grant universities—but the biggest hurdle will be opposing the Big Ag lobbies in Congress. As Kevin says about the behavior of Big Ag, “Once you get on top of your business, you start rolling boulders down the hill so nobody else can climb up.” Companies at the top, like DuPont, Monsanto, and Con-Agra, have been rolling boulders at organic farmers for decades in the form of antiorganic media campaigns, and food companies like Coca-Cola and General Mills do this by fighting GM labeling and tougher organic standards.
Even the terminology—organic versus conventional—is part of a boulder-rolling attempt. “Conventional” means socially accepted, usual or established, and based on consent. In a way, this is an accurate word to describe industrial farming: it has become socially accepted and quite established. But “conventional” carries the connotation of normalcy and correctness, and that is exactly why agribusiness disguised industrial agriculture with that particular name. It sounds good to people who don’t understand what conventional agriculture actually means. “Conventional” sounds right, like the way things are supposed to be. The norm. In reality, conventional agriculture is a massive departure from farming as we have known it for some ten thousand years. There is nothing normal or long-standing about it.