Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Feeding the machine

I was listening to a USDA propagandist on a radio talk show yesterday singing the praises of industrial agriculture.  There are 7-billion-and-counting mouths to feed on this planet, something that would be impossible to accomplish without the miracle of modern industrial farming. 

Thank you Monsanto.  Thank you Cargill.  Thank you Archer Daniels Midland.  Without you, we would all starve to death!

Never mind that it is precisely these modern industrial farming practices that have pushed the human population so artificially far above carrying capacity.  We are teetering on the precipice of a massive and inevitable human die-off because of industrial agriculture.  Industrial ag is the cause, not the cure.  Industrial ag is not our life-boat, it is the rope around our neck.

Of course it’s too late to back up now.  We have to continue to intensify our efforts to extract as many nutritionally vacuous calories as we can out of each mono-cropped acre.  There will be even more mouths to feed tomorrow.

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