Heather – Years ago when there were problems with cotton growth, what was said I think was that the reason there was such a massive problem with this is that cotton was a monocrop. Sustaining the profitability of agriculture. The history of American agriculture (1776–1990) covers the period from the first English settlers to the modern day. A couple of people in the higher rungs of that office all came out of the agriculture chemical industry. It’s supporting a system of agriculture production that is killing the earth. Compared to chickens of the 1930s, today’s chickens bred for meat (“broilers”) grow to almost twice the weight, in less than half the time, using less than half as much feed.5 Genetic selection for these exaggerated traits has often come at the expense of the animals’ health, including increased risks for heart failure in broilers and udder infections in dairy cows bred for higher milk production.6. He narrowed it down to nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. What are the driving forces behind the agricultural industrialization process?. You go out into the cotton fields and the soil is dead because its been mono-cropped. So he wanted to have this man come out and trap the boll weevil that we may have on our cotton downtown. You also have farmer’s associations and unions that have decided to protest the imposition of these western companies in India. Figure 3.8 Postcards like this one were a means to promote the industrial culture emerging in towns like Oshawa in 1910. As with other trends in industrialization, the use of chemical and pharmaceutical inputs in agriculture offered gains in productivity, but not without health and ecological consequences. Nadia – Rashid, you just said that grass was a waste of land. This is why I talked about the science of the Newtonian mechanics that is of the thought and concept that we can dominate nature rather than be in harmony with it. Rashid – I call that “in-put substitution” as the commercial farms put the cows in a feedlot, feed them grains and they’re still grain fed. Heather – Wasn’t Agent Orange first used in Vietnam? New York, New York: Plume; 1993. Rashid – It’s a very simple proposition. He spent many years in India using elephant dung to grow food. You’ve got the savannahs, the tall grasses, the short grasses. It’s oxymoric to me to have organic food at Walmart that was produced in China that would have an organic stamp on it. 2013. There are a lot of folks who come up to me and say “Oh, Rashid you’re a master of this and a master of that.” And I explain, “No, as long as I’m living, I’m going to continue to learn.”. Sixty percent of the hogs in the U.S. are produced in facilities that confine more than 5,000 animals at a given time.17 Image credit: Brent Kim, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. You’ve got all kinds of plants. And it was thought this was the way to approach all of agriculture and all of life. Below is the audio and transcription of a July 2011 interview with urban farmer Rashid Nuri about both the history and impact of industrial agriculture. What they’ve been able to create in America is these food scientists and the government has been able to create this perception that this food is good and it’s not necessarily so.Caller (4) – More and more when I go to the store and want to buy some fruit none of them have seeds anymore – not even the watermelons. Rashid – The key indication of the quality of your soil is the number of the earthworms that you find. You need more of it in order to get it done. We think this is a good chemical that we think ought to be able to come out to our people – to be sold to the people. There’s no safety there. The USDA organic standard is a patented phrase. Rashid – No, golf courses and grass in front of your house is a waste. It is an organophosphorus compound, specifically a phosphonate. The French and English armies during the Hundred Years War marched back and forth across the land; they ransacked and burned towns, drained the food supply, disrupted agriculture and trade, and left disease and famine in their wake. Specialized farmers, by contrast, can focus all their knowledge, skills, and equipment on one or two enterprises, such as growing corn and soy, or fattening beef cattle. As the glaciers retreated and plant life patterns and growth areas changed in response, it meant that the need to move so often became slightly less essential - though undoubtedly the lifestyle carried on for thousands of years as people sought to maximize their resource acquisiti… 1600-1760: Proto-industrialization in rural areas, organized and financed by rich merchants (e.g., via the putting-out system7); Let me take a minute to explain. It doesn’t work. Agent Orange was one of the most financially successful chemicals ever created and it was designed by Monsanto. You can buy a politician. Rashid – So back to the farmer that would use the waste from his farm. And you’ll find this throughout the US Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency – the very companies that are doing the polluting and destroying the planet have their representatives helping to make the decisions in Congress, and in the executive branch. By hand, a person can thresh roughly 15 to 40 kg of grain per hour, usually by beating the harvested crop against a hard surface to shake the grain loose from the inedible chaff that surrounds it. Then, they use that surplus production to dominate the world politics by using food as a weapon around the world rather than guns. 1998;56(1):15-33. 2000;40:27-47. The history of American agriculture (1776–1990) covers the period from the first English settlers to the modern day. 3. History of Agriculture primer Compare the two images of tractors and list the similarities and differences and how has industrialization transformed the world's food production. The Ethics of Constrained Choice: How the Industrialization of Agriculture Impacts Farming and Farmer Behavior. So corn becomes the bullets.”  – Rashid Nuri. Look what kind of yields you will get, but it’s going to cost you this much to get it.” Then each year you come back you’ve to get more and more of the fertilizers. 24. It’s something that you buy. You can’t dominate nature. Henry Ford even credited the animal “disassembly” lines at Union Stockyards with inspiring the idea for his automobile manufacturing plants.3 Photo credit: John Vachon, 1941. What they have done is say “we know better than nature does and we’re going to control or dominate what happens in the soil.” That has got us where we are today. It’s very important. You have to rotate the crops and then the boll weevil would say, “Oh man, what is this soybean doing here?” This is one of the ways you can fool insects is by rotating of your crops. Almost all successfully industrialized economies have gone through these key stages in history, as the following examples show: U.K. path to industrialization:6. I have friends who have lived in the city of Atlanta all their lives. A tool is a necessity for all activities that are to be done years and years ahead. And the easiest way to lose it all is to have one thing – one crop – out there. But in the natural state of growth, we have an incredible diversity. Rashid – Yeah, that’s where it was used to defoliate the trees so they could see the Vietnamese as they were walking along the paths. In the eighteenth century, the world witnessed a revolution in agriculture led by three inventions—the seed drill, the threshing machine, and the cotton gin. Rashid stresses that it is by being in harmony with the natural world that we can grow healthy food for us all rather than using the dangerous, poisonous and unhealthy chemicals as applied in industrial agriculture. Although conditions like these still exist, the industrialization of agriculture radically transformed how the vast majority of food is produced in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Farmers were also motivated by economies of scale—the economic advantage of producing larger numbers of products. Earthworms are going to come into healthy soil. is another serious problem. And the reason is that they were able to look at the universe and put numbers to it and be able to predict what was going to happen. While Americans have long eaten with good health in mind, 1980 marks a turning point as food, nutrients, and health became fused in the American consciousness when the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services published the first Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In addition to its damaging environmental effects, the chemical has caused major health problems for many individuals who were exposed. Rashid – And the irony is that I’m using elephant dung now to grow food. And I would contend that anything that you buy that has more than five ingredients is not food. When the dust bowl in America happened before the Second World War, during the depression, there were a lot of factors that came together. Then we skip forward to the 150 years ago you’re talking about. James HS, Hendrickson MK, Howard PH. A chicken farmer, for example, might turn a greater profit on each bird by housing a larger number of birds (up to a point). Once upon a time, man had a much closer relationship to nature than he does today. This is why you’ve got all the suicides today in India because of their relationship with Monsanto (and all the chemical laden seeds and fertilizers being sold to Indian farmers). This should let people know that you can’t dominate nature. And the food and Drug Administration will not test to see if something is healthy. Rashid – He’s right. That’s never happened in history before. How this has been interpreted is that scientists today feel as though they can take apart nature and put it back together better than nature can do itself. Rashid – Actually, it was a little before that. 2014. Using a timeline and short readings, students will explore key milestones in the history of agriculture, with a focus on industrialization and the reasons behind it. Heather – Most of these farmers, as in India, have never had to borrow money like this before and they were historically self-sufficient in that sense. The meatpacking plant of Chicago’s Union Stockyards was a sprawling facility that handled the slaughter, processing, packaging, and distribution of cattle and swine. Heather – Rashid, you can apparently buy organic beef but apparently it’s defined as organic beef if that cow ate organic corn rather than being grass-fed beef. Caller (1) – Rashid, do you know of the company that produced the Agent Orange? They – the government – subsidize the production. Industrial agriculture got an early start in the United States. It is a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. Not only about the politics of food but most importantly “how to grow it.”. War is a very, very profitable enterprise. In just 12 years, between 1964 and 1976, synthetic and mineral fertilizer applications on U.S. crops nearly doubled.10, Pesticide applications on major U.S. crops, 1964–1992. Dramatic changes in agriculture were already in progress when the eighteenth century began… At the community radio station WRFG-FM in Atlanta, Georgia, I have a radio program entitled “Just Peace”, that I have been producing for more than two decades. Early Industrialization and Agriculture 1791 – 1870. I’ve got a book here called “Stuffed and Starved” by Raj Patel. Mutual relationship between industrialization and agriculture. Animals were typically raised with access to the outdoors. It’s a re-colonization of Africa. Having isolated those elements for the leaves and the roots he stated a theory, which is called the theory (law) of the minimum. Nadia – Rashid, I have two questions. Heather – Let’s talk a little bit about having that one crop in the field and also why farmers are committing suicide. As far as Bhopal, India is concerned it was agriculture chemicals that were being manufactured there. It is very important. You can’t save a 10th and put it back the next year. Almost all successfully industrialized economies have gone through these key stages in history, as the following examples show: U.K. path to industrialization:6. Rashid – No, we don’t have any elephants down there. By hand, a person can thresh roughly 15 to 40 kg of grain per hour, usually by beating the harvested crop against a hard surface to shake the grain loose from the inedible chaff that surrounds it. I’m a transplant as you may be able to tell. Doing this by hand involves an enormous amount of time and effort. There is a caller on the line. So, no, it’s not just America, and the western system its being exported all over the world. Can you explain please why if Monsanto and the chemicals it produces and other chemicals and companies like Monsanto, if they are so dangerous to us and to the planet that we’re living on, why are these things allowed by the FDA? Some people did well and they lived…they lived. Heather – So as always, thank you yet again, Rashid! From 1950 to 2000, production on U.S. farms more than doubled with less than a third of the labor costs.9 Photo credit: Dan Davidson, 2010. So what you put back is going to be a throwback from the previous generations of seeds where the seeds have been crossed genetically and thus that keeps farmer in debt to and beholden to the seed companies that provide them with new seed that they have to pay for. Vertical integration is a type of market concentration that occurs when companies gain control of multiple industries involved in the same products. It is important to note that this was a British development, as it is one of the indications of the increasing pressures of industrialization there even before the Industrial Revolution, while other European countries, with the exception of the Netherlands, from which several of the agricultural innovations in Britain were acquired, did little to encourage agricultural productivity. It is called edible landscaping. I think grass is one of the greatest waste of resources that you could possibly have – there’s more fertilizer used on golf courses and lawns than there is in agriculture. There’s some science behind that. I will use the bacteria – it’s natural – to kill soft worms. And they did this for a long time, but it doesn’t work because there are certain elements that have been left out. So the only thing that will come up are the corn, cotton and soybeans. 19. Cooper T. This Company Seeks to Dominate Snacks. The history of agriculture dates back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. It was the start of everything. San Antonio, TX: University of Missouri; 1996. Now, I will use BT but I don’t want a seed that has it in it. My understanding from doing some research is that the PLU’s for the GMO’s starts with the 4 letters for it being a food and number 9 is for organics and number 8 tells you its conventional. You have the different plants growing next to each other – companion planting – and the plants will repel insects and repel disease. It would be good if you could break down for the listeners what that is. Mutual relationship between industrialization and agriculture. In addition to all of this, in the 1990s Rashid worked under Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy (the first Black Secretary), as the Director of the Commodity Credit Corporation. Threshing rice. What do we do? Part of the requirement is to use lots of water to get the chemicals down in the soil, to hold them down, and to help them uptake to the plants. So, therefore, you have to keep coming in with chemicals and keep spraying it with all the fertilizers to make it grow and with lots of water to keep it because you can’t do it without water. Decisions about who produces our food, what food is produced, how it is produced, and who gets to eat that food have been steadily moving from … households and governments to … corporation boardrooms. However, the relative significance of farming has dropped steadily since the beginning of industrialization, and in 2003 - for the first time in history - the services sector overtook agriculture as the economic sector employing the most people worldwide. I respect the work you are doing in a basic and essential part of life that is just overlooked by everybody. Rashid – Yeah there’s a lot there. The grasses change over seasons. Shields DA. But I guess we should start at the beginning, right? History of Agriculture primer Compare the two images of tractors and list the similarities and differences and how has industrialization transformed the world's food production. 4  By comparison, just 17% of U.S. agricultural receipts were from non-meat food for people. Contact us for more information on the … However, all farming generally relies on techniques to expand and maintain the … USDA Economic Research Service. Rashid – Yes, isn’t that an anomaly that you’re going to have watermelon that has no seeds? But if you’re a small farmer and you’ve been convinced to use this new technology that is foreign to your farming history, you have to go borrow money to put in this crop. Still, by the end of the war, the typical American industry was small. By setting industrialization against the background of wider processes of economic growth, recent trends in economic history have once again placed agriculture at the center of debate on the formation of modern economies. In the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. was a rural country – about 40 percent of Americans were farmers and more than half of those people lived in countryside. Let me try to explain. Percentage of sales earned by the four largest companies in their respective industries.20,25 Earnings from food and agricultural industries have become increasingly concentrated among a small number of powerful companies. Generally, people make money and countries do very well when they’re dominating and winning wars. The share of the agricultural sector in the GNP was almost 50% in 1950, then 25% in 1980, 15.3% in 1990, 11% in 2005, 8% in 2016. So with hybridization you can’t tithe. The boll weevil just sat here waiting every year. By setting industrialization against the background of wider processes of economic growth, recent trends in economic history have once again placed agriculture at the center of debate on the formation of modern economies. If you go to the cash register or the self check-out you can put in the number of the commodity, it’s the same number at any store that you go in to. In the United States, agriculture generated $374 billion in revenue in 2018, when adjusted for inflation. The July 2011 interview with Rashid Nuri was by me, Heather Gray, along with questions from co-producer Nadia Ali. I am thinking of that because of what you say regarding the political elements in these big cities, especially and with you being an expert, I wonder if you could give a little more information on that? The number of U.S. hog farms declined from 1.85 million to 63,000 between 1959 and 2012. Antibiotics, for example, were introduced to swine, poultry, and cattle feed after a series of experiments in the 1940s and 1950s found that feeding the drugs to animals caused them to gain weight faster and on less feed.13 By 2009, 80 percent of the antibiotic drugs sold in the U.S. were used not for human medicine but for livestock production.14. It’s a freak. Dairy Industry. 16. This is the man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Green Revolution (see note #1 below) – thinking it was helping people.But what Green Revolution has actually done is it has created greater poverty around the world rather than riches. Consolidation and Concentration in the U.S. For most of our existence, humans were hunter-gatherers. Hoppe RA, Banker DE. • Note #1: The Green Revolution: The initiatives, led by Norman Borlaug, the “Father of the Green Revolution”, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, credited with saving over a billion people from starvation, involved the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers…, Health effects of the Green Revolution: The consumption of the pesticides used to kill pests by humans in some cases may be increasing the likelihood of cancer in some of the rural villages using them. 2 It’s an insidious system, but it’s the one we have. And the principal grains around the world are corn, wheat, rice and then there’s cotton as well. We are in an age now of wave theory, quantum mechanics as a way of looking at the universe. Heather – We need to say however that the problems with Agent Orange in Vietnam has been immense. Harnatar, India; circa 1906. Modern U.S. agriculture has been described as “the most efficient in the world, at least in terms of the dollar and cent costs of production.”1 The public health and ecological costs of industrialization, however, are not reflected in the prices of food. Wikipedia, • Note #5: Agent Orange is an herbicide and defoliant chemical, one of the tactical use Rainbow Herbicides. It’s insidious.Along with this use of the chemicals in the food, you had the US government subsidize breeding programs with grains. The shift to agriculture is believed to have occurred independently in several parts of the world, including northern China, Central America, and the Fertile Crescent, a region in the Middle East that cradled some of the earliest civilizations. 1 By 6000 BCE, most of the farm animals we are familiar with today had been domesticated. Doesn’t everything need water to grow? There’s mycelium in there, all kinds of micro-bacterias that are growing in the ground to make that soil alive – a living breathing thing. In order to grow these crops it takes a tremendous amount of capital. So the scientists have taken over agriculture production instead of people looking at nature and seeing what nature has provided and how nature works together. Early Industrialization and Agriculture 1791 – 1870. Many other industries in the food system, including animal slaughtering and processing, also underwent major consolidation. Lesson B: Industrialization of Agriculture Agriculture has dramatically transformed over the last century. Over the same period, the average size of U.S. farms more than doubled (from 215 to 487 acres).17. When and where did industrialized agriculture and ILOs come into being, and 2. Rashid – It’s supporting a system of agriculture production that is killing the earth. You’ve got tall plants, short plants, trees, forests wherever you are. Agriculture in the Industrial Revolution. Contact us for more information on the … Whichever nutrient is available to the plants and then the minimum amount will determine that plant’s ability to grow. How is it going to reproduce itself? Some 20,000 (mostly in developing countries) ended in death, as a result of poor labeling, loose safety standards etc. The farmers themselves are starving. Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, 2013. This is why you have a rush in Africa now to acquire that land. Historically, you plant a crop and every 10 seeds you get back you save one and you eat the other nine. Consolidation in U.S. hog farms, 1955–2015. You don’t find anything like that in nature. 38 Schmookler suggests that “inventiveness,” measured by the number of patents issued, is related to changes in the demand for the output of the industry. 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