The essential purpose of food, which is to nourish people, has been subordinated to the economic aims of a handful of multinational corporations that monopolize all aspects of food production, from seeds to major distribution chains, and they have been the prime beneficiaries of the world food crisis. A look at the figures for 2007, when the world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control the cereals market, saw their profits increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively; the leading chemical fertilizer companies such as Mosaic Corporation, a subsidiary of Cargill, doubled their profits in a single year.
—Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, president of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly, speaking to world leaders on the Millennium Development Goals, in October 2008
Being a farmer is hard these days. Commodity prices soar and fall along with the prices of gas and fertilizer and consumer confidence, and the ever increasing amount of land needed to earn a living makes it hard to enjoy the job. It's always been hard to be a farmer. But a generation or two back, at least it was a family affair that brought with it a set of values and joys that made up for the long hours and backbreaking work.
As part of my research for this book, I met with groups of synthetic-chemical farmers around the country. These focus groups enabled me to hear, as free of bias as possible, what chemical farmers think and feel. I chose focus groups, a classic form of market research, because I felt it was essential for me to listen, to reach beyond our comfort zones and try to understand what all of us face and how we face it differently. I wasn't trying to change their minds. I was just trying to understand. And while I know lots of organic farmers, I didn't know enough chemical ones who would speak openly to me. And so I listened to farmers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Newton, Iowa; and Georgetown, Kentucky. They didn't know who I was or why I was there to hear them talk about their challenges and issues. To them, I was just the lady in the room taking notes (since the farmers we interviewed don't live near places that have the one-way mirrors usually used for focus groups). I was surprised to discover that farmers are highly sought after for focus groups; you have to pay them more than the usual $50 to show up. (We paid each farmer $100 in cash for 2 hours of their time, and at the end I revealed who I was and what my research was for.)
The first thing I realized is that I love farmers—even the chemical ones. There is something about their ruddy faces, rough hands, and unpretentious, stubborn natures that makes me happy. Chemical farmers are hardworking men (yes, they are mostly men) who believe they are being good stewards of the land and are trying hard to eke out a living in a very complicated system. They talk about the smell of good hay the way people in Napa Valley talk about the bouquets of fine wines (although in far fewer words). They pay very close attention to nature and respect its complexities. Chemicals do make their job easier. And the chemical companies have infiltrated their lives.
Many of the farmers I listened to rely on “crop consultants”—some of whom are independent and others who are paid by chemical companies—to help them decide what and when to spray and how to best manage their challenges. Some farmers I met with had very little education (one Amish man had received only an eighth-grade education in a one-room schoolhouse). Many farmers spoke of their “chemical dealer” as their most trusted source of information. In Iowa, most farmers belong to “co-ops” that pool their resources so they can buy chemicals and seeds more cheaply. Those co-ops are funded by the chemical companies and staffed with trained chemical agronomists who advise the farmers on what to spray and when.
The insights I gained from listening to the farmers are reflected throughout this book. But one thing is totally clear to me: Farmers are caught on a treadmill they can't quite see and don't know how to get off of. They believe they need more land to produce more, which will allow them to make more money. Chemicals enable that growth. But as you will learn, most do not grasp the classic economic principle that the more they grow collectively, the less they will earn individually.
The farmers constantly repeated phrases straight from the chemical companies’ brochures: We need to feed the world. We need to increase production so we can make more money off the land we already farm. If we could only export all this extra corn, our problems would be solved. (Surprisingly, they would rather see subsidies go away and they view the government and all its rules for farmers as major annoyances.)
Some are curious about organic methods, others are resentful. The number one factor that turns a resentful farmer into a curious farmer is seeing another farmer making the switch to organic and succeeding at it.
All of the farmers think growing organically is a lot harder than using chemicals. They believe they would have to reduce the size of their farms and need a lot more human help, which is very hard to get. Farms used to be worked by large extended families, and the children pitched in, too. These days, farm families are smaller, but the farms are bigger so farmers must look for outside help. They trust chemicals more than people—chemicals usually do exactly what the labels say and don't require constant supervision. At their core, farmers are fiercely independent.
One college-educated farmer who has a day job as an engineer said that he saw organic farming as the ideal, but he didn't know how to achieve it. He tried it, but then fell back into using chemicals for its ease. An older gentleman described organic as “a beautiful plan,” but said he just didn't have the life left in him to figure it out. He was, however, very troubled by the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.
Even though farmers in different regions may grow different things, I heard many similar themes from all of the groups. (A common one: People want to move into houses near farms until they realize that farms stink.) These farmers understand what most people don't—that the reality of farming today is a far cry from the romantic view of farming from the past.
What's it like to be a chemical farmer these days? Let's take a look.
Chemical farms are in production on about 930 million acres in the United States and 3.8 billion acres globally—the vast majority of all agricultural land in the world. Currently, the synthetic-chemical system includes both genetically modified organism (GMO) and non-GMO crops, since GMO seeds have yet to be developed for many fruits, grains, and vegetables. But the chemical system and its effects are similar for both types of seeds.
Most food crops start with a seed. But the seeds today are not like the seeds farmers have used for thousands of years. Instead, farmers are strongly encouraged to choose those that have been genetically modified with the help of a bacterium—perhaps Escherichia coli or salmonella1—in order to resist the herbicide they use to keep their fields weed-free. (Isn't it interesting that those are two of the bacteria that worked?) These bacteria act as a kind of barrier for the DNA being transferred and they create antibiotics in the process (another contributor to our overexposure to antibiotics). Billions of dollars were spent to develop this seed, yet the government required absolutely no health and safety testing before the seeds were planted.
When farmers purchase GMO seed, they sign contracts prohibiting them from saving seeds produced by this year's crop to plant next year. The seeds are protected by patents. This is a kind of rental agreement (and the landlord is a slumlord), and the farmers must renew their leases each year by buying new seeds (at higher prices). GMO-seed companies charge more for their seeds than standard hybrid2 ones. They are referred to as “improved” or “better” seeds by farmers and, even more enthusiastically, by investors. By choosing this expense, farmers commit to paying more for seeds each year.
With this first choice of seed, farmers are choosing their system—chemical or organic. There is no reason to choose a GMO seed and grow it organically. The seed is designed to thrive despite being sprayed with herbicides. GMO cotton could be grown organically, since an organic pesticide was inserted into the DNA of the plant, but in general, if a farmer is buying GMOs, he has bought into chemicals. The primary GMO seeds are corn, soybeans, and cotton, the cultivation of which accounts for 15 percent of all farmland in the United States, but about 33 percent of the tillable acres (farmland includes orchards and pastures, which aren't tillable “fields”).3
Farmers plant the seed in soil that is likely weak and degraded from overtreatment with chemicals and undertreatment with natural, organic materials. Soil, if not renewed with organic matter and treated with care, inevitably loses fertility over time. It's the equivalent of a person only taking vitamin pills instead of eating real food.
Chemical farmers believe that to make more money, they need more land. Few large-scale farmers own all the land they farm. Rather, they lease land to increase their revenues and cover the costs of their investments in machinery. So each year they look for more land to lease. Landowners who lease to farmers often don't care what the farmers do to the land so long as they can keep earning more money per acre. Absentee landowners are the worst—they expect the farmer to subsidize their urban “Lexus lifestyles.”4 Farmers do the math of how much they might earn per acre, per bushel, and per pound and gamble that by the time harvest comes around (if the weather has cooperated), they have made the right bets.
Once a farmer commits to the chemical system, he needs to buy more synthetic fertilizer to help crops grow in the depleted soil. These chemicals require lots of energy from petroleum and other sources to make, package, transport, and distribute on the farm fields. The chemicals are typically made and sold by the same companies who sold him the seeds. The chemical and seed companies are making healthy profits while the farmer struggles to pay and often falls into debt to keep this cycle going. And each time the price of fuel goes up, the prices of chemicals soar, because agrichemicals are petroleum byproducts.
All crops require water to grow. In farming regions such as California, where many of our fresh fruits and vegetables are grown, water is scarce and the soil is naturally dry. When the soil is irrigated regularly and treated with chemicals instead of organic materials, over time the salinity increases. Eventually, these soils become so salty that nothing grows in them at all.5 It's one of the ways deserts are created.
In other areas, such as the Midwest—our “breadbasket”—there is more frequent rainfall, so farmers have less need to irrigate. But with rain comes erosion and more weeds. That water running over and through weakened soil takes the soil and chemicals with it and flows right into wells, streams, and rivers and eventually down to places like the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and all of our oceans. There, the excess nutrients meant to feed our plants cause algae to grow, starving aquatic life of oxygen and making sea life more scarce. Who tries to clean this up? The federal government, using our tax dollars.
Because farmers face serious financial risks from threats like insects, plant diseases, and weather, farmers need insurance. Federally subsidized crop insurance covers some of their risks. But many also purchase insurance through the American Farm Bureau, which claims to represent their concerns in Washington. And once again our tax dollars go to cleaning up the chemical cocktails unleashed in the environment and bailing out farmers when things go bad—which these days happens more often than not.
After farmers have bought seed, planted it, fertilized it, watered it, and insured it, it starts to grow. But so do weeds. This is where GMO seeds really “pay off.” The farmers don't need to bend over and pull weeds, or even hire people to pull weeds. Instead they spray their fields with Roundup or another herbicide. Roundup typically kills all plants—except those that have been genetically modified to resist it. For a while, the farmers are happy because their fields look nice and neat, with no weeds to compete with the crops for food and moisture. Eventually, though, the weeds start to resist Roundup, so the farmers need to spray even more. They see that weeds are becoming resistant to the chemicals they use, so they employ “chemical rotations” to try killing them by alternating atrazine and other, stronger herbicides with the Roundup.6 Once again, the chemical companies profit the most from this stage of the process, while the farmers and the government pay the most. Before the introduction of GMO seeds, farmers tilled the land with tractors to control weeds. But frequent tilling to control weeds can lead to soil erosion. Farmers who want to qualify for federal funds under the farm bill conservation program must use techniques other than tilling to prevent soil erosion. So in a ridiculous turnabout, they use more herbicides than before, not less, thanks primarily to government regulations.
Now there's a new problem brewing. Since all the “weeds” are gone, there is less for the plant-eating birds to eat and no hospitality extended to all the good insects and birds that keep the naughty insects under control. Suddenly, the farmers have bug problems, so they need to apply insecticides to kill the bad bugs. And the chemical companies rake in the dough.
Outbreaks of E. coli and other foodborne illnesses have sparked concerns and demands for new safety measures. Many E. coli outbreaks are linked to unsanitary slaughtering and harvesting practices, which are rampant in industrial agriculture. Some studies have shown that the unnatural diet of corn and soy fed to cattle in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) increases the E. coli in their digestive tracts.7 The chemical industry—in an effort to escape blame for its own foul deeds—has convinced the government that wildlife is the cause of disease outbreaks and are calling for “sterile” farms!8 For centuries, farmers have relied on hedge-rows and wetlands to keep their land healthy by preventing wind erosion and providing habitat for beneficial animals and insects. Those are now being forceably removed to prevent wildlife from walking through the crops, since most wildlife make their homes in the hedgerows and wild areas on and near farms.
The weather is a risk factor, too. Add a flood or drought—you pick—and the problems multiply. A flood causes more run-off and erosion, and the wimpy root systems typical of chemically fed crops can't maintain their tenuous grasp on the soil. In a drought, irrigation can prevent some crop loss, but not all. Chemically farmed plants are more fragile when they don't have enough water because their weak root systems aren't strong enough to find water. Either way, the farmer must rely on insurance to cover his losses, banks to cover his costs, and the government to save his ass.
Insurance premiums are just one factor in the massive debt farmers accumulate. The giant tractors they use (and that slow traffic for the rest of us) cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Few chemical farmers ever pay off their debts.
Now it's time to talk about sex. All creatures are programmed from birth to reproduce, and reproduction happens with sex, even in plants. Without sex, there are no corncobs, no soybeans, no fruits, no vegetables, no food. GMOs are like one giant pandemic of sexually transmitted disease. Pollen from these plants drift on the wind into non-GMO fields and do what comes naturally—procreate. A perfectly good organic field becomes contaminated—raped, if you will. Chemical companies—Monsanto is renowned for this—have claimed that farmers who saved seeds from GMO crops stole their “intellectual property” and sued them for damages, in some cases even when the farmer swore he never planted them in the first place.9 In recent years, Monsanto has filed at least 100 lawsuits around the country related to this “theft.”10
You can't see the difference between a GMO seed and an organic one that's been contaminated. The farmers being sued lose—not just financially, but also because they must scrap seeds they may have cultivated and bred over many years to produce the best yield for that farm. (It reminds me of how rape was often considered the victim's fault—and she was the one who suffered the shame and punishment for it.)
Fortunately, “terminator seed” technology is prohibited. Terminator seeds were GMOs that became infertile after 1 year. Or made celibate, if you will. But sex is essential to our survival. “If not for sex, much of what is flamboyant and beautiful in nature would not exist. Plants would not bloom. Birds would not sing. Deer would not sprout antlers,” writes Olivia Judson, PhD, an evolutionary biologist, in her book Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation. “For reasons that remain mysterious,” she adds, “the loss of sex is almost always followed by swift extinction. Apparently, without sex you are doomed.”11
Finally, harvest time comes. Farmers growing crops that can't be picked by machine (such as some fruits and vegetables) have to hire help, many of them migrant workers. They are often illegal immigrants who have no health insurance, and they bear the brunt of the damage caused by toxic farming practices, with much higher rates of cancer, birth defects, and other diseases. But because they are just itinerant laborers, their problems are not the farmers’ responsibility. I have heard about farmers actually enslaving illegal immigrants to do their dirty harvesting work for free.
Farmers that don't need laborers sit alone in the cabs of their air-conditioned tractors, driving back and forth for hours and maybe days, listening to the radio, eating sandwiches, drinking coffee. They may remember hearing stories when they were growing up about how harvesting used to be a joyous time when neighbors came together to help each other and then celebrate. Now, to tell the truth, farmers may be kind of lonely. Their giant, debt-inducing machinery harvests the crop and takes it to market. Since most crops are a commodity, they sell for the going rate, whatever that may be. No matter how much time and sweat farmers put into growing their crops, they get what the market says it is worth. Though the whole biofuel craze has raised the demand for corn, for instance, at the end of the day farmers still are falling behind in their payments. Farm subsidies may help a bit, but the complicated effort it takes to figure it all out depresses them, they say, since it's never enough to solve their problems for good.
A person who works a lot with farmers told me there is “no graceful way out” of this chemical system. Chemical farmers who consider switching to an organic method will encounter many disincentives. Government subsidies will be withdrawn, and they may owe too much money to too many people to make the risk worth the effort. Bankers would scoff at the idea and maybe even forbid them to transition to organic. Plus, it takes 3 years of “getting off chemicals” and cleaning up in order to become certified organic. During this time, yields decline as the soil recovers from years of abuse and the farmer struggles to learn a whole new farming system with only negligible government assistance, insurance, and other help to get through those 3 years. This very difficulty is why we need to make substantial changes quickly.
What about the food itself? Only a tiny percentage of GMO crops go directly from the fields to our tables. Most of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are made into sweeteners (particularly high-fructose corn syrup), animal feed, cereals, crackers, bread, chips, and fuel. Increasingly, these crops are being exported to other countries, putting millions of farmers in other countries that don't share our overly generous subsidy programs out of commission and into starvation.
Corn and increasingly soy are used to feed livestock, which are kept in large feedlots to fatten them up. Eventually you consume the corn when you order your giant steak at the local steakhouse or a cheap burger at a fast-food restaurant. If any by-products of our corn-based farming are left over, they're sent to public school systems to feed our children.
What happens to all the waste, the leftover plant and animal material from our farms? Little that is natural is returned to the soil to be composted. Most farm waste (including dead animals) is fed to animals or sold for fuel. Some farmers fertilize their fields with sewage sludge, or municipal waste. It contains human waste, which is contaminated by pharmaceutical drugs and cleaning supplies that have literally been flushed down the toilet, as well as industrial waste.
In concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—these are more like food factories than farms—thousands of hogs, cattle, and poultry are fattened before slaughter. Their waste is funneled into large slurry ponds, and it tends to run off into water supplies and emit methane, which is another potent greenhouse gas and a major contributor to our climate crisis.
Rather than use the waste, as nature does, to reinvigorate the soil after a hard growing season, the fields are left bare. They get neither a warm layer of compost nor a protective cover crop. Winter winds and rains lead to more erosion. Any mycorrhizal fungi that might have been in the soil storing carbon have been decimated by fungicides, and the few that remain starve without cover-crop roots to live on during the winter. The landscape is desolate. There are no seeds to save. In fact, the “gene police” from Monsanto may slip into fields throughout the season to make sure that all the rules are being followed—and they won't hesitate to sue if they believe there has been an infringement.12 Winter is long and dark for farmers, who know that they have to start the cycle all over again the following spring.
Throughout this synthetic-chemical cycle, fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides run off the fields, as does topsoil, polluting freshwater sources and damaging the health of the country and the environment. The chemical system puts much more carbon into the air than it takes out. Meanwhile, no one has tabulated the long- or short-term health consequences of farming with chemicals—not just in the United States, but around the world. Farmers are just barely surviving, the government and the American people are left to pay the bill for cleaning up the environment and health care costs that are out of control, and our relationships and reputation as good global citizens are seriously jeopardized. The only parties who are walking away from this scenario better off financially than they were when they began are the global GMO seed and chemical companies, and the lobbyists who feed off of them.
It all sounds like a postapocalyptic science fiction story, yet all of this is happening right now. We just haven't connected the dots. We are bombarded every day by bits and pieces that don't seem to add up and leave us feeling like we can't understand or control the problems, let alone solve them.
What do farmers in America think of Monsanto, Syngenta, and the other agrichemical companies? I would describe it as a codependency with a chemical addiction as the glue that binds them together. They think a lot less of Monsanto since they got them hooked on Roundup Ready GMO seeds and then “jacked up the price of seed.”13
Few of the farmers caught in this deadly cycle believe they are doing anything wrong. They love their big tractors and take pride in their beautifully neat and weed-free rows. They view their work as feeding the world and sustaining the legacy of the Great American Farmer. But beneath these positive feelings, many farmers confess that they long for the time when farming was more manageable, more profitable, and more family oriented.
Dan Wiese, the facilitator of my farmer focus groups, has been talking to farmers and their wives for more than 20 years. He's been hired by almost every chemical company to find out what farmers need and how to sell it to them. He's from Iowa, and he insists that GMOs save money and time. But what they've done to the social system of Iowa, he believes, is a crime. Chemicals and GMOs have both enabled and forced farms to grow ever larger, causing population densities to fall so low that small towns wither and schools must consolidate.
“When the school is gone the town begins to die, too,” Wiese says. “It's like taking the heart out.” He also lamented the Iowa flood of 2008. The flood before it crested at 19 feet. In 2008, the flood's high point was 32 feet. About 9 square miles in eastern Iowa was underwater, and much of Cedar Rapids is still uninhabitable. Yet we fail to make the connection between how chemicals destroy the soil's ability to absorb and hold water and the increase in devastating floods.
In my research on farmers, I was especially interested in visiting Kentucky.
It has fewer certified organic farmers than any other state, according to the USDA, and it's one of the few states where the number of organic farmers is declining, dropping from 23 in 2006 to just 3 in 2007.14 (Fortunately, in most other states the number of organic farmers is increasing.)
In a Comfort Suites conference room right off the highway in Georgetown, Kentucky, under a glaring fluorescent light, eight farmers, Wiese, and I talked about farming. One woman attended, although she stated right up front that the only reason she farmed was that she loved her husband and he loved to farm.
After the discussion, I concluded that Kentucky agriculture is in a state of transition. Its main cash crop has traditionally been tobacco, and there isn't much demand for organic tobacco, though some is exported to Germany. That must be grown by the three certified organic farmers “up in one corner of the state,” ventured one farmer in the focus group. Many farmers in Kentucky still grow tobacco because no other crop generates as much money per acre, even though it is an extremely chemical-and labor-intensive crop. Tobacco companies are very involved in (some might say they dictate) how farmers grow their tobacco and which chemicals must be used. To get a contract with a tobacco company, farmers must agree to comply with their exacting demands.
Many Kentucky farmers are switching to vegetables and hay to feed the still-growing (although struggling) horse racing industry, an important market in Kentucky, the home of Churchill Downs. They joke that horse owners want hay and alfalfa that are green in color, not realizing that the weather in which it is grown and dried, rather than the quality, dictates the color. Many stables pay a fortune to have the green stuff shipped in from out west, “because their horses won't eat it if it isn't really green,” despite the fact that local hay is only a couple bucks a bale. The farmers all had a good laugh about how the recession had suddenly “changed the horses’ appetites for local hay.”
These farmers, like all farmers, struggle most with the dramatically falling prices for their crops, while the costs of producing them are going up. And there seems to be no end in sight.
Many of the Kentucky farmers have been working the same land for generations. One elderly gentleman, who could trace his farm back to the 1700s, expressed concern about contaminated wells. He sits on the water board for his town, and the levels of some chemicals are so high that residents have been urged to drink bottled water. His perspective was that “this is just like the fall of Rome, where the Romans had exported all their farming and spent all their time obsessing about sports.”
When I revealed who I was and what I was doing, the farmers were surprised and curious. One young man had attended culinary school but couldn't find a job, so he was working 60 hours a week managing a local deli and growing vegetables on the side. After he found out what I was working on, he pulled me aside and said that the main reason he used chemicals was as a form of insurance. There are so many risks in farming, he said—weather, bugs, prices, and diseases—and using chemicals made him feel less vulnerable to those risks.
Another farmer asked me why, if organic is so much better for you, he doesn't see any advertising saying that. I explained how the USDA's rules for organic labeling prohibit companies from making that claim. “If that yogurt company [whose products] supposedly make your digestion better can make that claim, why can't an organic farmer?” he asked. That's a good question!
After I returned home, I was told by a friend that Kentucky's biggest cash crop is now marijuana. Kentucky is the second biggest producer of pot in America, right after California.15 You certainly wouldn't want organic inspectors coming on your land if your primary source of income was a certain illegal weed.
What about farmers in the rest of the world? Again, the Web sites of chemical companies would have you believe that without GMOs and chemical crop protection, there will be mass starvation and environmental destruction. In fact, the exact opposite is true.
Our government (with its arguably well-meaning subsidies to farmers), combined with the chemical companies, are the two bullies in the alley who have delivered to farmers everywhere the one-two punch.
Let's take a look at India. For years the price of cotton was low around the world because there was more cotton than people needed—and most companies buying cotton choose the lowest-priced source. Then US farm subsidies artificially reduced the price of American cotton and suddenly, the cheapest cotton was coming from America, not India. Even though the cost of living in India is a fraction of what it is in the United States, suddenly Indian farmers couldn't make a living. That was the first blow.
Now you have the follow-up blow. Desperate Indian farmers get calls from companies using Bollywood movie stars and Hindu deities to help sell the farmers on “magic” seeds. With literally nothing to lose, Indian farmers borrow money to buy the seeds and the companion chemicals, never realizing that the price will increase each year. After the first year, they find out that it costs much more to maintain their crops due to the ever-increasing prices of seeds and chemicals. Yet they are still plagued by insects and, like all promises of magic, the yields are disappointing at best. Before long, the money lenders are knocking on their doors and there is not enough revenue from the crops to pay the debts.
More than 160,000 Indian cotton farmers have killed themselves in the past decade. The favored method of suicide? Ingesting chemical pesticides.16, 17
The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, with the urging of and $12 million in funding from the World Bank and the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, was an unprecedented survey of agriculture around to world designed to determine the best solutions for feeding the world. More than 400 scientists and 30 countries participated in the proceedings, including nongovermental organizations and nonprofits from those countries who have on-the-ground experience working with farmers. The resulting reports, released in 2008, looked at many aspects of farming, from reducing hunger to improving rural livelihoods to long-term development that is healthy for people and the environment. It also looked at the impact of government subsidies that encourage farmers to dump the surpluses from countries like the United States on the global market and destroy local markets. The survey report's sweeping and comprehensive recommendations include returning to more “natural” and traditional farming methods (away from GMOs and chemicals). Giving women the right to own the land they farm was another radical recommendation (women still aren't allowed to own property in many countries). Building roads so farmers can get their crops to market is a simple but obvious idea. Finally, they recommend ending subsidies.18
Not surprisingly, a representative from Syngenta, Deborah Keith, PhD, Syngenta's crop protection research portfolio manager, walked out of the meeting on the recommendations before it was completed. In a commentary published in the April 2008 issue of New Scientist, she explained why.19 The facts on organic farming she cited were straight from the Syngenta Web site, which at the time claimed that it would take three times more land to feed the world with organic farming practices, and that organic farming offers no health benefits. (Syngenta has since changed the information offered on its Web site.)
“Sadly, social science seems to have taken the place of scientific analysis,” says Keith about the recommendations from the international survey. “Social science” is often invoked when an idea is being discredited. To many people, social science is unfairly perceived as one step removed from pseudoscience and a step and half from quackery. The complexity of human behavior and the value of a human life have no place in business. And another revealing comment from Keith: “Innovation is only created through investment, and investment must be rewarded—another seemingly obvious fact which was overlooked.”20
In the Akola region of Maharashtra, India, where there were 5,000 suicides from 2005 to 2007, a local textile company started contracting with a few hundred small farmers to grow organic cotton for them. The textile company pays a fair price and trains the farmers how to grow organically. The farmers seem happy and the textile company has been able to provide organic cotton fabrics to meet the growing global demand.21
There have been no farmer suicides since the program started.
That is social science.