Eco-Threats To Our Civilization’s Food Supplies

Eco-Threats To Our Civilization’s Food SuppliesAccording to The Writer’s Almanac, it’s the anniversary of “Black Sunday” in 1935, the day on which the Great Plains region experienced one of the largest dust storms in American history.  It’s an important reminder of what happens when farm land is misused, which, of course, is happening every day at some level.

Let’s begin with the article mentioned above:

That morning, the weather was clear and warm, little to no breeze. But by afternoon, the sky had turned a strange purple and the wind had started to whip. A towering black plume of dust shot across the Plains, from South Dakota to Texas, before people could react. Cars were shorted out, and animals were smothered on the spot – countless birds, mice, jackrabbits. Cattle’s stomachs were later found to be filled with several inches of dirt, their eyes cemented shut by a mixture of tears and dust.

The disaster of the Dust Bowl years was completely manmade. Motivated by a spike in wheat prices right after the First World War, settlers had rushed into America’s farmland to remove the native grasses and plant more wheat. When the price in wheat fell during the Depression years, farmers abandoned their now-empty fields. With no native grasses in place to hold the soil down, it was free to move in the air. A few more years of drought after that was all it took to turn a once-thriving prairie into an arid wasteland.

Nearly 850 million tons of topsoil was displaced in 1935 alone, with the worst dust storms hitting areas in Oklahoma and the panhandles of Texas. People adapted their lives to the dust. Women would knead their bread in a dresser drawer draped over with cloth, working the dough through two hand-holes cut in the drawer’s sides. They abandoned stovetop cooking in lieu of the oven, where less dirt could get through. Meals had to be eaten immediately or else they would accumulate a layer of dust. Children walked to school in goggles and dust masks.

Thousands fled to California during the Dust Bowl, overwhelming the state’s resources. Others suffered health and respiratory problems from the constant presence of dust. Homes and farm equipment were buried in great dunes of sandy dirt. The multiyear tragedy led to the federal government’s passing of the Soil Conservation Act in 1936.

Today, farmers use more careful agricultural methods to prevent the kind of erosion that would lead to another Dust Bowl.

 

Yes, our agricultural methods will prevent another Dust Bowl. But that doesn’t mean that our approach to agriculture and environmental stewardship isn’t creating other horrific problems.  Here’s a short list:

Monocropping.  There are significant short-term economic advantages to growing a single crop on a certain area of land, year after year, without resting the soil.  Obviously, farmers can specialize in planting and harvesting that crop, thus limiting the expertise and capital equipment required.  However, this practice severely depletes the soil; the plants (normally corn, wheat or soybeans) strip the soil of the nutrients it needs. This forces farmers to use fertilizers, which have environmental issues discussed below. There are also risks to our entire civilization associated with monocropping, e.g., a disease that hits a certain strain of wheat is both a) more likely to occur, and b) will more readily wipe out a huge portion of the world’s wheat harvest.

Chemical fertilizer run-off.  When the excess nitrates that are the base of chemical fertilizers wind up in our streams, rivers, and lakes, they often cause enormous algal blooms, resulting in “dead zones,” killing of all fish and other aquatic animals.

Pesticide residues.    Insecticides, fungicides and herbicides tend to bioaccumulate, i.e., to increase in concentration with the plants and animals on which our civilization depends for its food sources.  In particular, these poisons tend to move up the food chain, meaning, for instance, that the concentration of a particular chemical will be higher in the cow than in the grass it ate.

Desertification.  The Princeton University Dictionary defines the term as “the process of fertile land transforming into desert typically as a result of deforestation, drought, or improper/inappropriate agriculture.” I.e., it’s land that has lost its vegetation, water bodies, and wildlife.  Though monocropping (discussed above) leads to desertification, the more obvious causes are deforestation (cutting down trees) and climate change, the result of higher temperatures and drought conditions.  Approximately 30 million acres of farm land become barren every year.  California saw the death of more than 12 million trees in the recent drought, and another 35 million are severely compromised, many headed for the same fate.

Sea-level rise.  Due to the thermal expansion and melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic, the oceans will rise somewhere between one and five meters by the year 2100, reducing the land mass accordingly.

Arboreal disease.  In addition to abiotic tree diseases, e.g., those caused by air pollution, there are an uncountable number of biotic maladies.  Especially plants that are stressed from drought are susceptible to disease caused by insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses, parasitic plants, nematodes and other microorganisms—and of which become more virulent in warmer temperatures.

Wildfires.  A study conducted in 2016 shows that the number of wildfires in the Western U.S. has doubled in the past 30 years, due to global warming.

GMOs. There is no scientific reason to object to genetic modification per se; our civilization is merely doing in the laboratory in hours and days what previously was happening in the fields over years and decades.  But the process by which companies like Monsanto are patenting and licensing certain GMOs, and essentially forcing farmers to use them, is clearly abusive in the extreme.

Is there another dust bowl in our future?  No.  Are there severe assaults on the world food supply happening (and worsening) every day?  Absolutely.

 

 

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2 comments on “Eco-Threats To Our Civilization’s Food Supplies
  1. Frank R. Eggers says:

    Craig,

    You write a good article. How about adding something about bees?

    Two years ago, my little ornamental plumb tree produced a large number of plumbs. While it had been blooming, it was covered with bees. Last year it produced no fruit. This year I saw only a couple bees on it while it was blooming. I see that as a demonstration of the importance of bees and what happens when there aren’t enough bees.

    I agree with you on GMOs. I can see why some people are cautious about them but to reject them totally and believe that they are inevitably or usually harmful is an irrational and destructive over reaction. You could write something about the people who have died because of vitamin deficiencies resulting from rejecting GMO crops. Also consider that GMOs adapted to the conditions that climate change will cause may help us survive climate change. That said, I see Monsanto as abusive just as you do.

  2. marcopolo says:

    Craig,

    Thank you for reminding everyone of the most important industry needing good conservation practices and greater environmental technology.

    It’s inevitable the planet will be required to produce increasing amount of high nutrition agriculture and must do so without exhausting existing resources.

    Some area’s can be made more productive, while others need to be depopulated. The challenges will be daunting, but not insurmountable.

    Agriculture is an increasingly technical and complex business. Unfortunately, policies and market conditions for agricultural production are seldom instituted by people with a profound, or any, knowledge of agriculture.

    It appears, that because every one eats, all kinds of completely unqualified folk feel entitled to interfere with often well meaning, but impractical opinions.

    Politicians, interest groups, government bureaucrats, ideologues, speculators, financiers,environmentalists, advocates and lobbyists,specialized scientists, the media, opportunists, idealists, in all, a vast array of people of all hue interfere to the frustration of an increasingly small number of agricultural producers.

    Leaving aside the practices of companies like Monsanto, ( a very complex issue, not simplistic and not easily resolved), farmers (primary producers ) face all kinds of problems and pressures, but that’s hardly new !

    Frank quite rightly points out increasing concerns relating to bees. Craig, illustrates the dangers of mono-culture and over reliance on chemical fertilizer and pesticides.

    Issues such as global warming and rising sea levels are of little concern to most primary producers. Like Wild fires, most rural people hold different views on their cause and origin than largely urban based environmentalists.

    Craig, the problems that beset agriculture are far more complex than your simplistic list suggests. An atmosphere of understanding and cooperation would prove more productive than idealistic moralizing.