Last time you came by a typical country-side field that had just been tilled, did you stop to wonder what happens with the top soil and intricate network of roots, mycelium, bacteria, worms, insects and countless other organisms, when the it’s disturbed like that? 

Industrialised agricultural practices that rely on intensive tilling, pesticides, and synthetic fertilisers are killing the soil; and has made soil erosion is the biggest threat to global food security that we are facing. 

In 2017, the FAO led Global Soil Partnership reported that 75 billion tonnes (Pg) of soil are eroded every year from arable lands worldwide, which equates to an estimated financial loss of US$400 billion per year. (source: Nature)

The most dramatic example of how bad in can get comes from the 1930s and The Great Dustbowl on the American prairies where millions of people were displaced and livelihoods ruined because of what started with excessive tilling. 

What had taken the prairie grasses thousands of years to build up was gone in less than a decade. The creation of new top soil is an incredibly slow process involving geological, biological and climatological factors. It takes over 500 years to make one inch of top soil, but only moments for heavy rainfalls to wash it away from fields where it lies exposed to the elements, that is, without the cover of plants and their root systems to ensure that rain water doesn’t run off causing erosion, but is absorbed due to the sponge-like quality of a healthy soils that have been exposed to minimal or no tilling.

This is not to suggest that we go back to pre-modern times. The mechanised tools for no till farming do indeed exist and are being employed. Just no where near to its full potential. Why not? Well, to a large extend because there are interests at play that would prefer to maintain the status quo. 

Lessons from the First Green Revolution

The First Green Revolution did indeed save a lot of people from hunger in the wake of WWII. But it did so in the short-term at the expense of long-term sustainability. That’s why it’s so crucial that everyone is at least aware of how important this is. Whether we choose to take action is another matter entirely.  

According to a FrontiersIn research group: “There is growing evidence that the current globalised agri-food system is neither sustainable nor resilient. It is responsible for around one third of the global GHG emissions and is a major driver of biodiversity loss.” 

“Furthermore, its structure and distribution mode do not provide food security for all and foster socio-economic inequalities between different parts of the planet. Consequently, an increasing number of scientists and members of the civil society are demanding a radical transformation of agri-food systems.” (Source: Frontiersin)

In recent decades, the industry behind the First Green Revolution, that is, hyper industrialised farming, has become increasingly consolidated around a few massive global players. These include companies Monsanto (recently bought by chemical giant Bayer), Syngenta, Cargill, ADM and ChinaChem, in a system relying heavily on synthetic fertilisers and toxic pesticides and herbicides. Such farming system kill biodiversity and result in crops that are less resilient and pest tolerant, less nutritious, and which have less flavour (Source: F. Lawrence, Eat Your Heart Out)

These companies, known for their aggressive lobbying practices, would point to the increase in production as a measure of success but, “the 13% increase in production rates for the most common crops between 2001 and 2012, due to technological improvements, more rigorous land management and an increased use of fertilizer, might have masked the ongoing degradation of soils and their ecosystem service delivery capacity”. (Source: Der Spiegel)

Patenting Life

One of the most cunning policies held by Monsanto, is that it does not allow its customers (farmers) to save seeds for planting; they must purchase its patented seeds each year. Where, for example, there used be thousands of strains of wheat, only three predominant types of wheat are grown in globally now. On what ethical, moral, legal and ecological grounds are Monsanto doing this?

Dire Repercussions

Saving seeds means a greater variety of strains that are highly adapted to the local environment. In India the conversion of traditional small holder farming systems that have existed for millennia, the conversion to intensive farming practices, lead by Monsanto, has resulted in a massive tragedy with over 200,000 farmers having committed suicide — most of them by drinking glyphosate, the active toxin in RoundUp – one of Monsanto’s best selling products. 

The farmers end up in debt because of the increasing degradation of their soil and increased need for fertiliser and chemicals to sustain yields, which they can’t afford and therefore take out loans (V. Shiva, Making Peace With the Earth)

These sad truths about its activities is something Monsanto has fought hard to obscure and paint a ‘greener’ picture of.

”The Monsanto Papers tell an alarming story of ghostwriting, scientific manipulation and the withholding of information," says Michael Baum, a partner in the law firm of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman, which is bringing one of the US class actions. According to Baum, Monsanto used the same strategies as the tobacco industry: "creating doubt, attacking people, doing ghostwriting.” (source: Der Spiegel)

The Second Green Revolution

It’s in our shared interest and in the interest of all life that we take view on how we would like the future of farming to look. Above all, the Second Green Revolution must be about soil health. Monsanto and the likes are already trying to co-opt the term and are promoting a version of the future that basically just turns up the volume on the existing parameters, increasing profits and continuing the decline of biodiversity and thus our chances of survival.

The alternative to monocultures and factory farmed animals is available and being used increasingly by farmers who’ve seen their livelihoods ruined because of soils that needed more and more chemicals to sustain the same yields, and fluctuating commodity prices.

Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton and one of the authors of the most recent IPCC report. 

“In some areas yields have stopped growing entirely.  My personal view is that the breakdown of food systems is the biggest threat of climate change (….) We need a farming system that is much more mindful of the landscape and ecological resources. We need to change the paradigm of the green revolution. Heavy-input agriculture has no future—we need something different.”

The immediate actions that each of us can take include

• Avoiding highly processed foods and factory farmed meat and dairy, the inputs for which come from hyper intensive agriculture.

• Eating a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, seeds and nuts.

• Using less but better quality meat and dairy for flavour, and whole grains + pulses as our main protein source.

What needs to happen on a political and regulatory level is:

• Shift farm subsidies to supporting regenerative systems rather than (currently) unsustainable practices.

• Put a tax on Ultra Processed Foods.

• Fund education about food, farming for children.

It’s Up to Us

What happens next is up to us. We can either continue to act as passive consumers without power to affect change. Or we can rise up as global citizens and demand change. That change comes as a result of the choices we make. Let’s make those choices matter.