The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals [via A&L Daily]

when . . . asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand. . .

He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather, and not incidentally, I suppose, to live like him as well. He thinks farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families. I would not presume to criticize his car, or the size of his house, or the way he runs his business. But he is an expert about me, on the strength of one book, and is sharing that expertise with captive audiences every time he gets the chance. Enough, enough, enough.

You can tell by the clever title of the article which silly book he refers to. It's one I've mocked as well for being superficial nonsense written by a very poorly educated journalist who, sadly, teaches journalism. Much is revealed.

On the desk in front of me are a dozen books, all hugely critical of present-day farming. Farmers are often given a pass in these books, painted as either naïve tools of corporate greed, or economic nullities forced into their present circumstances by the unrelenting forces of the twin grindstones of corporate greed and unfeeling markets. To the farmer on the ground, though, a farmer blessed with free choice and hard won experience, the moral choices aren’t quite so easy. Biotech crops actually cut the use of chemicals, and increase food safety. Are people who refuse to use them my moral superiors? Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons. The biggest environmental harm I have done as a farmer is the topsoil (and nutrients) I used to send down the Missouri River to the Gulf of Mexico before we began to practice no-till farming, made possible only by the use of herbicides. The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river.

Finally, consumers benefit from cheap food. If you think they don’t, just remember the headlines after food prices began increasing in 2007 and 2008, including the study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations announcing that 50 million additional people are now hungry because of increasing food prices. Only “industrial farming” can possibly meet the demands of an increasing population and increased demand for food as a result of growing incomes.

As noted in an update to Fashion Victims: IMV this isn't just the darkly humorous antics of some sub-cult with tin foil hat beliefs since they do real harm to agriculture, especially in food insecure developing nations. The negative environmental consequences of "sustainable" farming are well documented and commented. The whole system must be evaluated and the net effects reported, and when this is done there is nothing virtuous about "sustainable" farming. Like current climate hustles that don't actually help the climate, fashionable ag delusions don't help the environment or improve food quality or safety.

Paul Johnson is forecasting a move toward vegetarianism. But if we assume, at least for the present, that most of us will continue to eat meat, let me dive in where most fear to tread.

Lynn Niemann was a neighbor of my family’s, a farmer with a vision. He began raising turkeys on a field near his house around 1956. They were, I suppose, what we would now call “free range” turkeys. Turkeys raised in a natural manner, with no roof over their heads, just gamboling around in the pasture, as God surely intended. Free to eat grasshoppers, and grass, and scratch for grubs and worms. And also free to serve as prey for weasels, who kill turkeys by slitting their necks and practicing exsanguination. Weasels were a problem, but not as much a threat as one of our typically violent early summer thunderstorms. It seems that turkeys, at least young ones, are not smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown. One night Niemann lost 4,000 turkeys to drowning, along with his dream, and his farm.

Also chicken hawks, coyotoes, domestic dogs, owls, etc. etc. etc. One year when I had turkeys on pasture and an early rain storm hit I went out and herded them under a shed roof just in case. None drowned. It was already November so they were pretty well grown, and so may not have been in real danger, but they really are pretty dumb. OTOH the wild turkeys that live here are truly admirable birds and good neighbors that I'm glad to host for part of their lives.

It is an article of faith amongst the agri-intellectuals that we no longer use manure as fertilizer. To quote Dr. Michael Fox in his book Eating with a Conscience, "The animal waste is not going back to the land from which he animal feed originated." Or Bill McKibben, in his book Deep Economy, writing about modern livestock production: "But this concentrates the waste in one place, where instead of being useful fertilizer to spread on crop fields it becomes a toxic threat."

In my inbox is an email from our farm's neighbor, who raises thousands of hogs in close proximity to our farm, and several of my family member's houses as well. The email outlines the amount and chemical analysis of the manure that will be spread on our fields this fall, manure that will replace dozens of tons of commercial fertilizer. The manure is captured underneath the hog houses in cement pits, and is knifed into the soil after the crops are harvested. At no time is it exposed to erosion, and it is an extremely valuable resource, one which farmers use to its fullest extent, just as they have since agriculture began.

In the southern part of Missouri, there is an extensive poultry industry in areas of the state where the soil is poor. The farmers there spread the poultry litter on pasture, and the advent of poultry barns made cattle production possible in areas that used to be waste ground. The "industrial" poultry houses are owned by family farmers, who have then used the byproducts to produce beef in areas where cattle couldn't survive before. McKibben is certain that the contracts these farmers sign with companies like Tyson are unfair, and the farmers might agree. But they like those cows, so there is a waiting list for new chicken barns. In some areas, there is indeed more manure than available cropland. But the trend in the industry, thankfully, is toward a dispersion of animals and manure, as the value of the manure increases, and the cost of transporting the manure becomes prohibitive.

This is an important subject to be clear about. The idea that manures are not valued or used is obvious nonsense and always has been nonsense. The task is to distribute it and the impediment is cost of transportation and handling. The evolving system is to better distribute production as well as consumption, and is motivated by rising costs for other fertilizers as well as the compound benefits of using such soil amendments.

The nitrogen problem is this: without nitrogen, we do not have life. Until we learned to produce nitrogen from natural gas early in the last century, the only way to get nitrogen was through nitrogen produced by plants called legumes, or from small amounts of nitrogen that are produced by lightning strikes. The amount of life the earth could support was limited by the amount of nitrogen available for crop production.

In his book, Pollan quotes geographer Vaclav Smil to the effect that 40 percent of the people alive today would not be alive without the ability to artificially synthesize nitrogen. But in his directive on food policy, Pollan damns agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels, and urges the president to encourage agriculture to move away from expensive and declining supplies of natural gas toward the unlimited sunshine that supported life, and agriculture, as recently as the 1940s. Now, why didn't I think of that?

Well, I did. I've raised clover and alfalfa for the nitrogen they produce, and half the time my land is planted to soybeans, another nitrogen producing legume. Pollan writes as if all of his ideas are new, but my father tells of agriculture extension meetings in the late 1950s entitled "Clover and Corn, the Road to Profitability." Farmers know that organic farming was the default position of agriculture for thousands of years, years when hunger was just around the corner for even advanced societies. I use all the animal manure available to me, and do everything I can to reduce the amount of commercial fertilizers I use. When corn genetically modified to use nitrogen more efficiently enters the market, as it soon will, I will use it as well. But none of those things will completely replace commercial fertilizer.

Well, yes and no. The spirit of these grafs is correct but the facts are incomplete. For centuries before nitrate synthesis was developed fossil deposits were mined and carried to fields. Chilean saltpeter (sodium nitrate), potassium nitrate and Peruvian guano are among some of the better known sources of nitrates for both agriculture and war during the industrial revolution. See Secret Ingredients and Fossil Fertilizer for more about this. But ammonia synthesis from natural gas wasn't even the first synthesis method. Norwegian Saltpeter (calcium nitrate) was synthesized using electricity from hydro-electric dams in remote Norwegian locations with no better use for the power or transmission lines to carry it to population centers.

It is just the hydrogen in natural gas that is of value for ammonia synthesis. Methane (CH4) is converted to ammonia (NH3), but any source of hydrogen will serve. Methane is just cheap, not unique. With power even water is a good source. Hydrogen is also an off gas of pyrolysis, which has led to some new facilities that produce ammonia and biochar from corn stover. How elegant. A grower sells a portion of his stover to the biochar plant and buys back some biochar and some ammonia, all in a short haul local circuit.

The key point of all of this eye glazing detail is that the agri-intellectuals are full of manure. They have no idea what they are talking about and the things that they advocate are antithetical to the principles and concerns that they claim to hold. It's useful to remember that "intellectual" is just a pose, not a indication of intelligence or education, except in a contrarian sense. Intellectuals are not very smart or well educated. This is obvious, except to the intellectuals, since they aren't bright enough to grasp it.

N.B. This also explains much about Obama. He apes intellectuals and sucks up to them so he gets their support, but he can't actually do the job since he's just a poser for posers.

Update: Lot's of folks talking about The Omnivore’s Delusion