Shepherd Ogden I SEMS
Post Office Box 1512
Burlington, VT 05402 USA
THE
FATAL HARVEST
READER­
THE TRAGEDY OF INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
EDITED BY ANDREW KIMBRELL ISLAND PRESS
WASIIINGTON ... COVELO ..
LO~DO~
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WARSHALl
acreage. But, as long as one can picture thc ideal farm, ideal market,
and ideal govermnent in practical detail, a future with permanent
farms and rich soils is much more than a quixotic dream.
WATER
The Overtapped Resource
MARK BRISCOE
and our most squan­
dered natural resource. Nearly 40 percent ofthe world:~ food supply
i..~ produced using highly wasteful irrigation systems that are depleting
nonrenewable ground/Dater, sterilizing the soil, and carrying car­
cinogens and other toxins into our drinking water. A quick glance
at history reveals that civilizations dependent upon unsustainable
irrigation practices, as u ours today, are ultimately doomed. If we
are to save our.~elve.~, it is vital that we choose sustainable means of
food production and alternative u)ater management strategies.
FRESHWATER IS ARGUABLY OUR MOST PRECIOUS
~
ater, a simple compound of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen
atoms, is fundamental to all life. Indeed, water and life are so
intricately associated that we can scarcely conceive of a situation where
the latter might arise without the fonner. The human body is 60 percent
water, and water is essential to all of the body's physical processes,
from the conduction of electrical nerve impulses to the maintenance
of a steady body temperature. People can survive extended periods, up
to several weeks, without eating food. But a person who fails to
replenish water used by the body and lost to evaporation will die
within a matter of days. Water, of course, plays similarly crucial roles
in the life of plants and is therefore also integral to food production.
It is not surprising that water has been a determining factor in
the development and history of human civilization and agriculture.
The earliest agricultural societies were elustered in regions where
rainfall was sufficient to produce adequate crops to feed their popu­
lations. Around the year 4000 B.C.E. all this changed, when members
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of an established farming society migrated into the Mesopotamian
plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. There long, dry sum­
mers often ruined their crops before harvest time. Rather than move
on to an area with a more hospitable climate, these farmers, known
to us as the Sumerians, devised a means of diverting water from the
Euphrates River to their fields - thereby developing the world's first
irrigation system.
Irrigation greatly increased crop yields, and before long the
Sumerians were producing food surpluses. This allowed some mem­
bers of the society to devote themselves to pursuits other than subsis­
tence agriculture. Archeological evidence indicates that the
Sumerians became the first people to develop the wheel, the sailboat,
and yokes that allowed them to plow their fields with the assistance
of domesticated livestock. On top of these achievements, the Sumerians
were the first civilization to employ writing.
A number of other irrigation-based societies arose in the cen­
turies after the Sumerians - in Pakistan's Indus River valley, in
China's Yellow River basin, and eventually in several different parts of
North and South America, to name but a few. Almost all of these civ­
ilizations have two things in common. First, they rose to great heights
of cultural and agricultural achievement. Second, with a single excep­
tion, they nltimately failed. History demonstrates that irrigation
places great strain on the environment by depleting natural water
sources and reducing the quality of the land. And, says director of the
Global Water Policy Project Sandra Postel, "The inherent environ­
mental instability of irrigated agriculture can weaken seemingly
advanced cultures, rendering them less able to cope with political and
social disturbances."
Today, approximately 40 percent of the world's food production
comes from irrigated land. In the United States, some 21.4 million
hectares of farmland - about 11 percent of all the land in produc­
tion - is irrigated. In parts of the American West, the percentage is
much higher.
Given the dismal success rate of earlier irrigation-dependent soci­
eties, the sustainability of the developed world's current irrigation
dependency is uncertain. "Westerners call what they have established
out here a civilization, but it would be more accurate to call it a
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beachhead," writes Marc Reisner in his classic work, Cadillac Desert:
The American West and Its Disappearing Water. "And if history is
any guide, the odds that we can sustain it would have to be regarded
as low. Only one desert civilization, one out of dozens that grew up in
antiquity, has survived uninterrupted into modern times. And Egypt's
approach to irrigation was fundamentally different from all the rest."
Indeed, from antiquity until recent decades, irrigation in the Nile
River valley centered on the river's natural flood cycle, which allowed
farmers to irrigate without depleting water resources. Of equal sig­
nificance, the Nile floods replenished the soil by washing fertile silt
from the Ethiopian highlands down onto the valley's croplands. Only
recently has the sustainability of Egypt's irrigation practices come
into question. "For thousands of years Egyptian farmers irrigated by
simple diversions from the Nile and nothing went badly wrong,"
explains Reisner; "then Egypt built the Aswan High Dam and got
waterlogged land, salinity, schistosomiasis, nutrient-starved fields, a
dying Mediterranean fishery, and a bill for all of the ahove that will
easily eclipse the value of the irrigation 'miracle' wrought by the dam."
WATER SCARCITY
The most immediate and obvious problem associated with unnatural
irrigation-based farming is that it requires a steady source of water
but does nothing to replenish this source. In many places, depletion of
underground aquifers, primarily from irrigation, far exceeds the nat­
ural rate of renewal. Thus, underground water reserves are shrinking.
In the United States, this problem has become particularly acute in
California and other agricultural sections of the West. "California is
overdrafting groundwater at a rate of 1.6 billion cubic meters (bcm)
a year, equal to 15 percent of the state's annual groundwater use,"
says Postel. Well over half of the state's use is in the highly produc­
tive agricultural region of the Central Valley, which is the origin of
about half of the fruits and vegetahles gro"rn in the United States.
Even greater depletion is occurring in the massive Ogallala
aquifer, which stretches from the Great Plains to the Sonthwest and
underlies portions of eight states. This single groundwater formation,
says Postel, contains more water than would flow through the
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Colorado River in two centuries, and provides more than 20 percent
of all the water used by {lS. irrigation projects. The depletion rate for
the Ogallala is about 12 bcm per year. In the decades since massive
irrigation projects drawing on the Ogallala began in :"lebraska, Kansas,
Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, the United States'
largest groundwater reserve has lost over 325 bcm of water that has
not been replenished by nature. This staggering total equals the
amount of water that would flow through the Colorado River over the
course of 18 years.
Groundwater depletion is not merely an American problem. In
addition to the United States, countries and regions accumulating
severe groundwater deficits include India, China, North Africa, and
Saudi Arabia. Worldwide, the annual depletion of aquifers, due pri­
marily to agricldtural irrigation, amounts to at least 163.6 bcm.
The overuse of nonrenewable underground aquifers carries with
it a number of consequences. Even before wells run completely dry,
depletion increases the cost of pumping the water above ground, and
irrigation in agricultural communities can become prohibitively expen­
sive. In time, small fanners with tight operating budgets are squeezed
out. Only large, wealthy operations that can afford the technology to
pump water from deep beneath the surface remain in business, thus
exemplifying the maxim in the West that "water flows uphill toward
money." However, even those fanns able to afford higher irrigation
costs are likely to recoup their expenses by switching from staple
crops to high-priced luxury crops.
Depending on local characteristics and the extent of the deple­
tion, declining groundwater sources can bring the utter collapse of
communities and farms that owe their existence to irrigation. In
Cadillac De,~ert, Reisner says that thanks to irrigation and federally
funded water projects, "states such as California, Arizona, and Idaho
became populous and wealthy; millions settled in regions where
nature, left alone, would have countenanced thousands at hest."
When the water dries up or becomes too expensive to extract from the
ground, farms reliant upon irrigation fail, and communities built
around them disappear. When the pumps shut down, farmers either
struggle to make a living with lower yielding dry-land farnring or take
their acres out of cultivation.
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Moreover, population growth and a growing trend towards
urbanization often pit city dwellers against fanners in competition for
what remains of overtaxed water supplies. An influx of people into
regions like the American West places even greater stress on water
resources that are already strained. In yet another example of water
flo",ing uphill toward money, wealthy urban areas are obtaining the
water rights held by rural irrigation districts in exchange for cash
payments. A number of these deals have proven very controversial,
with some rural advocates arguing that the cities' water demands will
force farms to take acres out of production. As the population of the
West continues to climb, disputes over water are likely to follow a
similar track.
Even more may be at stake than the future of the West's urban and
rural communities. A likely ultimate loser in these disputes over water
is nature itself. "I think when the crunch comes and you have four or
five or six endangered species demanding more water, and agriculture
demanding more water, and urban areas demanding more water, the
situation becomes politically intolerable," says Reisner. "And 1 think
that given the political forces arrayed against each other, you're more
likely to lose the Endangered Species Act or at least modify it, than
you are to cut L.A. back by 60 to 70 percent or to cut some of the
fanners off entirely."
Of course, even if we somehow overcome the problem of dwindling
water resources, unnatural irrigation carries with it other inherent
and potentially devastating consequences.
SALINIZATION OF THE LAND
Carthage, the greatest rival to the Roman Republic during the first
and second centuries B.C.E., finally succumbed to a lengthy siege
which ended the Third Punic War in 146 B.C.E. Roman soldiers,
motivated by rage, vengeance, and a desire to prevent a fourth Punic
War, demolished the city and its harbor, slaughtered most of the citi­
zens, and sold those who were spared into slavery. As a final touch,
the Romans sowed the fannland surrounding the city with salt to
render the countryside sterile and ensure the absolute extermination
of Carthaginian civilization.
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WATER
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.
Today, much of the American West faces a fate similar to that of
the Carthaginian landscape. The threat comes not from Roman
legions, but from self-inflicted irrigation projects that over time leave
substantial salt sediments in the soil. "Nowhere is the salinity prob­
lem more serious than in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the
most productive farming region in the entire world," Reisner tells us
in Cadillac Desert.
Mineral salts, including sulfate, carbonate, and chloride salts of
sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium, are naturally dissolved
in all potential sources of irrigation water, from rivers and lakes to
underground aquifers. When farmers apply this water-salt mixture to
their crops, the plants absorb the water but leave the salts behind. As
if that were not enough, irrigation can also promote another type of
salinization. Water applied to frequently irrigated croplands can
cause water tables, which also contain dissolved salts, to rise beneath
the fields. As the water tables approach tbe surface, a portion of the
water evaporates, leaving its salt in the soil. In many irrigated fields,
both types of salinization occur simultaneously.
A typical iITigation scheme that applied 10,000 tons of water per
hectare annually would simultaneously deposit between two and five
tons of salt in the soil. In the United States, salt buildup affects about
23 percent of irrigated land - though in some areas a much higher
portion of the land is affected. In fact, Significant salinization is dam­
aging about 35 percent of the irrigated land in California and nearly
70 percent of that in the lower Colorado River basin.
Eventually, unrcmoved salt buildup lowers crop yields, or, in
extreme cases, renders the land completely sterile. Such is the case in
parts of the San Joaquin Valley. "There are already thousands of acres
near the southern end of the valley that look as if they had been
dusted with snow; not even weeds can grow there," says Reisner. "An
identical fate will ultimately befall more than a million acres in the
valley unless something is done."
Managing the salt buildup in the soils can be tricky and expen­
sive. In the San Joaquin Valley, federal and state governments pro­
posed a massive canal project designed to drain salty agricultural
runoff from the fields. The project proved an utter failure. First, a
lack of funds necessitated scaling back the grand scope of the
endeavor. Then problems arose when natural and man-made poisons
in the runoff water contaminated waterfowl nesting lands at the ter­
minus of the drainage canaL Even if we manage to solve the problems
of finance and disposal of contaminated runoff, it is likely we will be
fighting a losing battle so long as inefficient and unsustainable iITiga­
tion practices remain in place.
AGRICULTURAL RUNOFF
Of course, irrigation is not the lone culprit behind agriculture's water­
related problems. Each year, U.S. farmers apply approximatcly 800
million pounds of pesticides to their fields. When these pesticide
applications are followed by rains or irrigation, the poisons can seep
into the groundwater or contaminate waste water running off 'of the
fields and into nearby streams and rivers. The federal government's
1998 National Water Quality Assessment (NWQA) Program found
pesticide contamination in all of its river and stream samples and in
more than half of its samples taken from shallow groundwater wells.
Altogether, the program detected 83 different pesticides or pesticide
breakdo\\'Tl products, and almost invariably the contaminated sam­
ples contained residues of multiple pesticides. Some 66 percent of the
stream samples contained five or more pesticides. Most of these pol­
lutants were originally sprayed or spread on cropland and then either
washed into nearby streams or absorbed by underground aquifers.
The NWQA found the highest concentrations for commonly used
herbicides, including the suspected human carcinogens alachlor,
atrazine, and cyanazine. Tbese chemicals are found in dangerously
high concentrations in the drinking water of many people who live in
rural agricultural areas, and they are not removed by water treatment
systems. The problem of pesticide contamination is not one that can
be cleared up overnight. Even poisons that have not been used for
decades persist in groundwater and streambed soil sediments. The
NWQA found numerous stream samples contaminated with DDT, the
highly toxic insecticide which the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) banned in 1972.
Even more highly concentrated in farm runoff than pesticide
residues are plant nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. Each
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year in the United States, fanners apply about 12 million tons of
man-made nitrogen and 2 million tons of man-made phosphorus fer­
tilizers to their fields. Applications of manure add an additional 7
million tons of nitrogen and 2 million tons of phosphorus to the soil.
Not surprisingly, a significant portion of these nutrients eventually
winds up in aquifers and streams. Approximately 20 percent of the
shallow wells located on farmland tested in the NWQA had nitrate
concentrations exceeding the EPA's drinking water standards. The
problem is most serious in the Central Valley of California and in parts
of the Great Plains and the Mid-Atlantic. Nitrate in the human body
reduces the ability of the blood to transport oxygen. The most serious
health threat posed by excessive nitrate levels is methemoglobinemia,
a type of nitrate poisoning that can be fatal to infants.
In the NWQA, phosphorus levels exceeded suggested EPA stan­
dards in 80 percent of stream samples. High phosphorus levels pro­
mote the growth of nuisance plants and algae, which can kill fish and
other aquatic life by reducing levels of dissolved oxygen in streams.
These algal blooms can also damage municipal water systems.
FIXING WATER PROBLEMS
Water covers two-thirds of the earth, yet a mere 3 percent of this total
is in the form of freshwater, suitable for drinking and agricultural
use. Much of this 3 percent is inaccessible, locked up in pennanently
frozen glaciers and ice caps or located too deep within the earth to be
reached from the surface. Freshwater is both rare and precious.
Nonetheless, the greatest portion of the water used by people goes
into woefully inefficient irrigation for agricultural production. The
vast majority of irrigation around the world relies on simple systems
in which either fields are flooded or water is channeled down furrows.
Experts estimate tbat as a result of spillage, seepage, and evapora­
tion, nearly half of the water diverted for irrigation never makes it to
the fields.
Other types of irrigation have proven much more efficient. A new
type of sprinkler irrigation in which nozzles are placed low to the
ground has resulted in up to 95 percent efficiency. This compares very
favorably with traditional sprinkler systems in which the water is shot
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high into the air and a significant portion of it is likely to evaporate
or be blown away from target crops.
Fanners have achieved the best efficiency 'with drip irrigation
systems, which slowly provide the crop roots with water a single drop
at a time. Drip irrigation uses from 30 to 70 percent less water than
flooding and has been shown to increase crop yields by 20 to 90 percent
over that typical for fields irrigated in other ways. Making efficient
irrigation systems economically viable for small-scale and poor fanners
around the globe could reduce agricultural water usage by around 37
percent. These efficient systems, by reducing the amount of water
applied to the fields, also decrease problems associated with saliniza­
tion, erosion, and agricultural runoff.
Perhaps even more important than improving irrigation efficiency,
fanners and consumers can change their habits and practices to make
better use of the water resources available to us. For instance, fanners
can elect to grow crops better suited to the soil types and water avail­
ability of their lands. Planting of drought-resistant crops in semi-arid
climates can reduce irrigation without taking land out of production.
Another option involves intercropping, the planting of a variety
of crops together in a single field, rather than the conventional mono­
culture method of growing a single crop in regularly spaced rows. The
consistent and complete groundcover of an intercropped field not only
maximizes the use of soil moisture, but also cuts dov.'ll on evaporation
and reduces the need for irrigation.
Governments can encourage farmers to make decisions that sup­
port these sustainable practices by doing away with water subsidies
that promote inefficient irrigation farming. Such subsidies have made
large-scale irrigation projeets relatively inexpensive in regions where
free-market economics would have otherwise placed a premium price
on scarce water resources. "In an arid or semi-arid region, you can
irrigate low-value, thirsty crops such as alfalfa and pasture grass only
if you have cheap water," explains Reisncr. "If you need forty or fifty
thousand pounds of water in places like Califoruia and Colorado to
irrigate enoll':rh
can't even
o fodder to raise two dollars worth of cow, vou
.
consider it if forty thousand pounds of water costs seven or eight dol­
lars (as it would if you bought it from the California Water Project).
But it makes perfectly good sense if the government sells you the same
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quantity for thirty or forty cents - as it does if the Central Valley
Project is your source." By actually placing a price on water commen­
surate ~'ith its value, governments could go a long way toward reducing
wasteful and unsustainable practices.
As consumers, the choices we make can also affect the amount of
water used by agriculture. Producing a pound of corn requires some­
where in the neighborhood of 100 to 250 gallons of water. However,
as Reisner suggests, growing enough grain for livestock consumption
to produce a pound of beef can require 20 to 80 times more water, up
to 8,500 gallons. Food production for the diet of an average North
American requires twice as much water as for the diet of an average
Asian, who eats significantly less meat. "By moving down the food
chain, Americans could get twice as much nutritional benefit out of
each liter of water consumed in food production," writes Sandra
Postel. "Stated otherwise, the same volume of water could feed two
people instead of one, leaving additional water in rivers and streams
to help restore fisheries, wetlands, recreational opportunities, and
ecological functions overall.'"
OUR FORGOTTEN POLLINATORS
Protecting the Birds and the Bees
MRILL Il'IGRAM, STEPHEN BUCHMANN, AND GARY NABHAN
are critical to
fruit and seed production. Without them, the ability to regenerate
the biotic community would be lost. Yet worldwide, we are currently
facing a pollination crisis, in which pollinators are disappearing at
alarming rates as a result of habitat loss, pesticide poi.mning, dis­
eases, andpests. As a society, we must work together to confront this
impending crisis and devise workable plans for protecting these
pollinators that are essential to healthy functioning of wild and
agricultural communities.
POLLINATORS, INCLIJDlNG BIRDS, BEES, AND ANIMALS,
P
ollination - the transfer of pollen from one flower to another­
is critical to fruit and seed production and is often provided by
insects and other animals on the hunt for nectar, polJen, or other floral
rewards. Insect pollination is a necessary step in the production of most
fruits and vegetahles that we eat and in the regeneration of many for­
age crops used by livestock. In fact, animals provide polJination serv­
ices for over three-quarters of the staple crop plants that feed
humankind and for 90 percent of all flowering plants in the world.
Recent surveys document that more than 30 genera of animals ­
consisting of hundreds of species of floral visitors
are required to
pollinate the 100 or so crops that feed the world. Only 15 percent of
these crops are serviced by domestic honeyhees; at least 80 percent
are pollinated by wild bees and other wildlife. Who are the pollina­
tors? Our recent analyses of global inventories of biodiversity indicate
that more than 100,000 different animal species
perhaps as many
as 200,000 - play roles in pollinating the 250,000 kinds of wild
flowering plants on this planet. In addition to countless bees (the