Wendell Berry is one of the greatest writers of our time. His award winning books, essays, and poems have captured the soul of rural America. Yet, the rural lifestyle that Berry writes about with such passion and grace is a reality that no longer exists in most of America. When I interviewed Berry a few years ago, he told me that America, especially rural America, was worse off as a result of high-tech, intensive agriculture. Many of the staunchest critics of modern agriculture quote Berry in their call for a return to a more agrarian lifestyle. Yet, a just published study from Stanford University demonstrates with factual clarity that our world would be much worse off without modern agriculture.

According to the study, modern agricultural practices have helped prevent (not caused) global warming, controlled population growth, and improved the soil and water quality of rural communities. “Advances in high-yield agriculture over the latter part of the 20th century have prevented massive amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere - the equivalent of 590 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide - according to a new study led by two Stanford Earth scientists. The yield improvements reduced the need to convert forests to farmland, a process that typically involves burning of trees and other plants, which generates carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.” These were the major conclusions of a major research project not funded by Monsanto, but rather a product of the Woods Institute for the Environment: The Program on Food Security and the Environment, a joint project of the Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute. The Precourt Institute for Energy and FSE provided funding. “Our results dispel the notion that modern intensive agriculture is inherently worse for the environment than a more ‘old-fashioned’ way of doing things,” said Jennifer Burney, lead author of a paper describing the study, which will be published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Burney said agriculture currently accounts for about 12 percent of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Although greenhouse gas emissions from the production and use of fertilizer have increased with agricultural intensification, those emissions are far outstripped by the emissions that would have been generated in converting additional forest and grassland to farmland. To evaluate the impact of yield intensification on climate change, the researchers compared actual agricultural production between 1961 and 2005 with hypothetical scenarios in which the world’s increasing food needs were met by expanding the amount of farmland rather than by the boost in yields produced by the Green Revolution. “Lower yields per acre would likely have meant more starvation and death, but the population would still have increased because of much higher birth rates,” the study said. “People tend to have more children when survival of those children is less certain.” The researchers concluded that improvement of crop yields should be prominent among a portfolio of strategies to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Also last week, the USDA released a long-term analysis of the impact modern conservation has had on the Midwest environment.
Conservation practices installed and applied by agricultural producers on cropland are reducing sediment, nutrient, and pesticide losses from farm fields, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, as he announced the release of a comprehensive study on the effects of conservation practices on environmental quality in the Upper Mississippi River Basin. “The report confirms that farmers and ranchers are stepping up and implementing conservation practices that can and do have a significant impact on the health of America’s soil and water,” Vilsack said.

Additional regional cropland studies on the effects of conservation practices will be forthcoming over the next several months.
These two studies, while factual and credible, are not likely to silence the critics of modern agriculture. They provide proof, however, that the practices being used by the men and women in farming today are sound and are having a positive impact on our world and environment. Those who advocate a return to low-tech agriculture must consider the real impact that would have.

Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.