The way we produce food has gone through many revolutions. 10,000 years ago, the domestication of plants and animals reshaped human civilization. For the first time, we were able to live in one place while providing for ourselves. Over time, being able to grow and harvest our own food gave rise to sedentary communities. There was no longer the demand for highly nomadic lifestyles, following the seasons for hunting and gathering.
Subsistence farming was how we ate for hundreds of years. Families grew their own food and shared it within their local communities. Children helped on their parents’ farm, getting up at dawn to feed the chickens. Everyone played a role in the journey from dirt to plate. There was no refrigeration or mass transportation, what you grew was what you ate.
Prior to World War I, agriculture in the U.S. continued the way it had for generations. Food was shared amongst neighbors. It was a privilege – a celebratory thing – to have successful harvests. Food was a valuable, occasionally scarce, resource. Farms were managed solely by manual labor. They were small plots of land, diverse in their crops and maintenance styles. Corn was planted next to the carrots on the neighbor’s land. There were not the sprawling acres of monoculture crops that you see driving through America’s breadbasket today: miles and miles of carefully pruned soybeans.
In the ‘roaring 1920’s, new demands on how we used produce ushered in a new stage of food production. People began to move into cities as the allure of urban development pulled many away from the little family farm. The ‘20s saw the first glimmers of industrialization. Trains and cars began to transport food from the farms to the cities. The growing majority of people no longer directly produced their own food. The steak on their plate was not the result of years of their own blood and sweat. The extent of their relationship to food was store, to pan, to plate. Food began to be viewed as a commodity. It was no longer something you worked to produce, but instead became something you purchased on an errand along with shampoo and shoes. This was a drastic paradigm shift in such a short amount of time.
This was promptly followed by one of the darkest eras in America’s history in the 1930s. The Great Depression saw unemployment rates of 24.9%. At the same time, the Dust Bowl, considered one of the greatest ecological disasters in the U.S., removed an estimated 1.2 billion tons of topsoil from the most agriculturally productive regions. Thousands of farmers and anyone in rural communities were forced to move to cities for work to feed their families. The rate of urbanization grew exponentially. The 1930s was effectively a total economic and environmental disruption.
The economy recovered during World War II. Industrialization exploded, bringing with it the development of assembly lines, huge growth in infrastructure resources, and technological and chemical innovations. The new generation of Baby Boomers had cars, refrigerators, T.V.s, and lived in the suburbs with mowed lawns and white picket fences. Interstates were paved and consumer goods became mass produced. The growth of consumerism changed the way we valued things. Children of the Great Depression, having been accustomed to poverty, fueled a desire to purchase and own more items than you might need.
All of the factories that had produced weapons and supplies for World War II were repurposed to supply these commodities. Chemical developments used in weaponry were the groundwork for fertilizers and pesticides. In the words of Jim McNeil, “when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”. We had certainly developed quite a hammer with our new technology and machinery, and reliable, safe food production was the new nail.
Prior to the development of pesticides, namely DDT, farmers used lead arsenate. Farmers were dying from pesticides. DDT changed the game. A human could take a bath in DDT and have absolutely no side effects. There were advertisements for DDT infused children’s room wallpaper to protect them from malaria. And it worked. Most insects die on contact with DDT. The damaging effects of DDT on birds would not become apparent for generations, as the chemical accumulated in the food chain.
This industrialization of farming brought commodity farming into its golden age. Tractors, mechanical plows, fertilizer and pesticide sprayers were suddenly everywhere. Farmers were doing much less weeding and digging in the dirt. Machinery made it easier, faster, and more reliable. The larger farms that could afford better equipment outcompeted the small family farm. The majority of food produced was frozen, packaged, and sent to far off cities, not given to your neighbor or sold at the farmers market. There were less farms and less farmers, but more farmland.
It was not until the 1970s that the resulting pollution began to appear. We began to notice that we were losing species. The bald eagle was almost gone. The environmental movement was born, and with it came new demands for reform of our agricultural and social systems.
In the 1980s, subsidies were implemented to allow large scale monoculture farming to continue. Farming had become too expensive for the farmers to grow food. Fast-breeding organisms have a phenomenal ability to adapt to technology. DDT no longer killed bugs the way it had. They were becoming resistant. The newer technologies to replace DDT were expensive and made farming a competitive industry. Only the largest farms could turn a profit. These new pesticides were also becoming more dangerous and less effective.
In the following decade we developed GMOs to fight off pests in new and creative ways. But these were even more expensive. The GMO controversy is a never-ending one. Are we playing God by editing the genetic makeup of corn? Or are we saving lives by making it drought-resistant? The main alternative concept to GMO planting is organic farming, which uses only non-synthetic chemicals and aims to promote soil health.
Today, the pendulum is beginning to shift. There are growing efforts for regenerative and sustainable farming. It is well-proven that relying only on large-scale monoculture farming has poor ecological results. The diversity of agricultural methods available to us now provides us with choices we didn’t have before. Food can come from permaculture, organic farming, and hydroponics. We are diversifying our agricultural toolbox and setting ourselves up for resilience.
There is much work we have left to do to repair our relationship with food and the land, but I think it should start with remembering how to put our hands in the soil and get a little dirt under our fingernails.