The Unheeding Story of Industrial Agriculture

Last fall, I studied environmental history in the elective course Humans and the Environment. For a short response paper assignment, I wrote about industrial agriculture using the sources we had read and discussed in class. The paper I submitted followed Chicago-style citation guidelines for footnotes and references. However, the blog format doesn’t support the footnote format, so I opted to post the writing without the footnotes. The bibliography is included at the end, and if you have any more questions about my sources, please reach out!

All eight billion people living on Earth must eat, which requires calculated manipulation to leach as much of Earth’s resources as possible. The earliest members of the Homo genus evolved about 2.6 million years ago. Their greater capacity for communication allowed them to process information and effectively harness resources. At the onset of the Holocene, when Homo sapiens had dominated all other species of Homo, humans transitioned to the practice of agriculture. This initial shift from hunting and gathering irrevocably changed the extent of human interaction with Earth’s landscape. Farming led to the development of trade networks, governmental systems, and growing populations. Agricultural success underlined the rise and fall of empires and, eventually, shaped the arrangement of current world powers.

The rapid transition to industrialized agriculture following World War II (WWII) systematically altered the agricultural and food production system in an unsustainable manner. 

Technological advances from WWII trickled into the American, and later global, agricultural systems, bringing unforeseen environmental and social consequences. German chemists Fritz Haber and Carol Bosch succeeded in synthesizing nitrogen into ammonia, a critical ingredient in nitrogen fertilizers. The drive for explosives during World War I motivated their chemical innovation. By the end of WWII, after ammonia products were heavily utilized in warfare, American farmers began to adopt the use of fertilizers to supplement the organic nutrients in the soil, which accelerated the growth of crops. Fertilizers were an effective but expensive tool to increase crop yield and support a growing population. Norman Borlaug and the Rockefeller Foundation furthered the industrialization of agriculture as they spearheaded the innovations and initiatives of the Green Revolution. Borlaug was tasked with increasing agricultural productivity in Mexico with the financial backing of the Rockefeller Foundation. His solutions included a large-scale increase in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  He successfully managed to increase crop yields, which, for Borlaug, “represented a triumph of human ingenuity, political will, and modernity.” The government used the name “Green Revolution” to push agrochemicals and industrialized farming in the United States and globally. 

Despite the superficial success of Borlaug’s mission, which was to build a stronger capacity to support a growing population, reliance on agrochemicals adversely impacted small-scale farmers and the environment. Mark Stoll, an environmental historian, explained the positive feedback loop that agrochemicals created, describing how “Greater production pushed prices down, which encouraged ever greater production to pay for investments and make a profit, which put unsustainable demands on soil.” Agrochemicals supplemented the soil with nutrients and killed off harmful pests, which brought commodity prices down. Farmers became reliant on the miraculous powers of chemicals to keep up with growing demand and lower prices. For farmers, this decreased profit margins and, in many cases, drove them into debt and out of the agriculture industry. The snowballing reliance on chemicals also degraded the environment. Fertilizers would run off into watersheds, leading to coastal dead zones that disrupted entire ecosystems. The overuse of chemicals exhausted the soils by depriving them of their natural biodiversity and nutrients. Pesticides also endangered the health of farmers. The advent of agrochemicals was a significant reason for the success of industrial farming, but their rise also contributed to our current agricultural gridlock.  

Although humans have created tools to tap into Earth’s resources, our current food system, set in motion during the post-WWII Green Revolution, is unsustainable and riddled with disparities. Nick Cullather describes the paradox of  “an intimate connection between the crisis of agricultural overproduction in some countries and the problem of malnutrition in others.” The rise of the modern fast-food industry, displacement of local stores and consolidation into larger chain supermarkets, and innovation of the refrigerator all contributed to this disparity. These shifts changed how food was distributed, building our current global food system, which doesn’t effectively divide the life-sustaining resources of food. Social, economic, and environmental issues are interwoven, and Cornell agricultural economist Chris Barrett refers to the multitude of food-related issues as a “food polycrisis.” While initially, the Green Revolution seemed to make positive headway in harnessing human innovation to support more people, the rushed and heedless process of setting up new food systems has caused a backsliding in global health patterns. Obesity rates and malnourishment rates have risen, and diabetes has become a growing burden on society.

Our current food system is unsustainable, and it should be reworked to prioritize soil health, effective food distribution, affordable health-promoting diets, and the needs of small farmers to compete in a global market. 

The lack of regulation and foresight throughout the transition to industrial agriculture has created an entanglement of issues. Following WWII, the agrochemical business boomed, and farmers adjusted to include these inputs in their routine practices. Although these chemicals increased crop yields, they percolated through ecosystems, wreaking havoc on the corners of life they touched, from the bloodstreams of farmers to the web of invisible biodiversity in the soil. Their rise also disadvantaged small farmers and favored consolidation. This food system is unsustainable for the soil, farmers, and consumers. This transition happened alongside the rise of consumer capitalism, becoming intertwined and inescapable. Stoll described, “After the horrors and destruction of World War II, consumer capitalism promised to the world a new Eden, a garden of earthly consumer delights, where a veritable cornucopia poured out every good thing and many new marvelous things.” Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, our heedlessness will soon overwhelm our current agricultural system. As humans, agriculture and food are our lifeblood.

It’s time for large corporations, agrochemical producers, and government entities to be held accountable to redesign our food system for a sustainable future. 

Bibliography

Cullather, Nick. “The World Food Problem,” in The Hungry World: America’s Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, 11-42. Harvard University Press, 2013.

David Wallace-Wells. “Food as You Know It Is About to Change.” New York Times, July 28, 2024.

Kinkela, David. “Green Revolutions in Conflict: Debating Silent Spring, Food, and Science during the Cold War,” in DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World, 106-135. University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Stoll, Mark. Profit. Polity Press, 2023.