With the Dutch farmer protests and the civil unrest in Sri Lank, inspired in part by food shortages, farming has received more media attention recently than it usually does. It has been interesting to see how the agricultural aspects of both situations gets discussed.
As I understand things, in the Netherlands the government is requiring a national reduction of nitrogen emissions by 50% percent by 2030. As part of that effort the intended plan is to dramatically reduce the number of livestock in the country. Farmers have the option of relocating their operations to areas deemed less ecologically sensitive, reducing the number of livestock they raise, or shutting down their operation entirely.
In Sri Lank, a ban on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that went into effect April 2021 led to massive crop failures and a national food shortage.
The way both stories have been discussed is as a dichotomy between two alternative farming models: the status quo that the farmers are in favor of and the “green” or “organic” model that the governments intend. To present the possible agricultural futures of the Netherlands and Sri Lank as a choice between those two models is somewhat understandable, as that does seem to be the way the conflicting sides are talking about the matter.
But what’s missed in the media coverage (and in the debates themselves) is the fact that it is a false dichotomy. The two models that are pitted against each other are not in fact two opposing models, they are simply different variations of the same industrial agricultural model.
In the Dutch case, the reduction of number livestock doesn’t address the root cause of the pollution generated by livestock production. The assumption seems to be that livestock cannot be produced in a way that is at least ecologically neutral, let alone ecologically beneficial. But this assumption runs counter to two facts that should be well-known to those making agricultural policy decisions. The first is that there are a many examples of large-scale livestock farms that are improving soil health and having a positive ecological impact. The second is that animals have long had a symbiotic relationship with their surrounding ecology. For example, there were more large ruminants (buffalo and elk, for example) in the US in the 1600s than there are today, including all livestock. And yet these massive herds, far from being ecological liabilities, played an essential role in ecological health. Put pithily – it’s not the cow, it’s the how. And the same could be said for other livestock as well. We continue to relish the way the chickens fertilize our pastures through daily movement to fresh grass.
In the case of Sri Lanka, the decision to suddenly stop the use of synthetic fertilizers was, I think it’s safe to say, a major mistake. The assumption was that using industrial farming methods (mono-cropping with heavy tillage and use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides) could still be used without the use of some of the synthetic chemicals. But of course, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides exist precisely because of the problems created through mono-crop production with heavy tillage and no cover-crops. The solution to the pollution problem of industrial crop production is not to remove just one aspect of the industrial model and keep the rest, but move to a different model. And there are many great examples in this country and others of crop producers, on large scales, using a diversity of crops and cover crops with no heavy tillage to achieve greater yields and healthier soil.
Transition from an industrial model to a regenerative model takes time, though. The use of synthetics disrupts the soil-plant nutrient cycles and makes the soil and crops dependent on the synthetic chemicals. Going cold-turkey on the synthetics is the agricultural equivalent of trying to get off hard drugs cold-turkey, and it takes several years to re-establish the soil-plant nutrient cycles.
As one example of how the media coverage of farming fails to understand the complex relationships of soil microbes, plants, and animals, here are a few quotes from a (very representative) March 2022 foreignpolicy.com essay regarding Sri Lank:
“Farming is, at bottom, a fairly straightforward thermodynamic enterprise. Nutrient and energy output in the form of calories is determined by nutrient and energy input.”
This quote is a good example of the kind of reductionist view of soils and plants that undergirds the industrial perspective on agriculture. The idea that biology can be reduced to physics and chemistry, while never compelling from a philosophical perspective, has become less and less plausible as soil research has advanced.
And later in the essay one reads, “The notion that Sri Lanka might ever replace synthetic fertilizers with domestically produced organic sources without catastrophic effects on its agricultural sector and environment is more ludicrous still… Sustaining agriculture in Sri Lanka, for both domestic consumption and high-value export products, was always going to require importing energy and nutrients into the system, whether organic or synthetic.”
Again, the author’s claim here depends on a view of the soil as a question of deposits and withdrawals: crops withdraw nutrients and so to grow things we must add things to the soil. The more accurate model of soil and plants is of a functioning or dis-functioning biological ecosystem. The author’s perspective overlooks the many successful examples of not simply replacing synthetic fertilizers with organic ones, but through agricultural practices themselves. Gabe Brown, Dave Brandt, and John Kempf are but a few of the many US growers who do not use synthetic or organic fertilizers and generate above-average yields. I will write more about how this is possible in another post, but the fact is that bountiful harvests can be achieved with very minimal inputs beyond the plants and animal themselves.
In short, the coverage of the clashes between citizens and their governments in the Netherlands and Sri Lanka leaves one thinking that one side must be right and the other side wrong. In reality, there is a secret third option: regenerative grazing and crop production.