The Time's article "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food" gives a great overview of the problems in the modern food industry, and how this affects the health and well-being of humans, animals and the environment.
"The Omnivore's Delusion: Against Agri-Intellectuals," written by Missouri farmer, Blake Hurst, argues against many of the points made by modern "agri-intellectuals," like the points made in "Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food."
Hurst opens his argument by telling about a flight that he took in which a man sitting near him was condemning the modern farming industry. Hurst takes offense, saying,
"He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather, and not incidentally, I suppose, to live like him as well."
I think Hurst has a valid point. Farming is a difficult and complicated enterprise, and it is not fair to suppose that reading a book or several articles makes you an expert on the subject and therefore an entitled critic. It is also easy for people, like me, and this businessman, to critique farming techniques when we are not relying on their output to make a living, and in fact, are benefiting from them at every meal. Hurst's reaction is totally reasonable. Most people would balk at the idea of being asked to do things in an "old fashioned" way when newer ways are much more efficient and productive. There would be a lot of protest if all Brown students were suddenly told that they had to hand write all of their notes and their final papers.
While it is unfair to ask only farmers not to take advantage of improvements in technology, I don't think that demand is unreasonable, if all people, not just farmers, are held accountable to it. We could all benefit from relying less on our gadgets and more on ourselves to get things done. If it is prescribed that farmers refrain from using pesticides, suburbanites should be made to bike or walk to work. Everyone must make sacrifices in order for our world to improve.
Also, many of the farming practices that I particularly object to, from what I have learned about them, are the ones that treat animals and workers inhumanely, like in the CAFOs, rather than smaller-scale individual farmers' practices. These establishments promote such widespread devastation: bad health and treatment of animals and workers, destruction of the land, pollution of nearby land and so on. This strikes me as really, terribly, morally wrong in so many ways and I think that there is just no excuse for this sort of enterprise. It is difficult, however, to draw the line. What makes this more wrong than a farmer that sprays his crops with pesticides that wipeout wildlife of the area, and affect humans in towns nearby through the watershed? Perhaps it is the concentrated mass of the CAFOs destruction that makes it seem worse. Or maybe because the results are more obvious. At what point does it become ok to favor certain beings? All agricultural practices require the manipulation of the environment, which includes some sort of judgment on the value of one life form over another (one plant's right to occupy a space versus a "weed's" right to that space) according to human self-interest. Perhaps Daniel Quinn is right in suggesting that the ultimate "fair" solution is to revert to a hunter-gatherer-type life (though the word "revert" reflects our society's assumption that our agricultural way of life is the more advanced way, and so "convert," implying that the two ways are more equal would be a better word choice).
Hurst makes a similar point in asserting that for every choice there is always a trade-off:
"Herbicides cut the need for tillage, which decreases soil erosion by millions of tons....The combination of herbicides and genetically modified seed has made my farm more sustainable, not less, and actually reduces the pollution I send down the river. "
I'd never thought of this (because I am not a farmer, and not an expert, and don't have the knowledge base to know this, so more appropriately I should say I have never heard of this before).
In talking about raising animals, Hurst says,
"We can do that [change the way we raise animals], and we may be a better society for it, but we can't change nature. Pigs will be allowed to "return to their mire," as Kipling had it, but they'll also be crushed and eaten by their mothers. Chickens will provide lunch to any number of predators, and some number of chickens will die as flocks establish their pecking order."
I agree with Hurst here, at least in that we cannot change nature. I do not, however, agree that this is a bad thing. Yes, it has some consequences, the loss of a few chickens or pigs and so less profit, but I would pay this price in exchange for better overall health for those chickens and pigs (while they live), and for the surrounding land and the humans who work with and consume the animals.
To end his piece, Hurst defends the farmer's connection to the land:
"Concern about this alienation, both between farmers and the land, and between consumers and their food supply, is what drives much of the literature about agriculture. The distance between the farmer and what he grows has certainly increased, but, believe me, if we weren't closely connected, we wouldn't still be farming. It's important to our critics that they emphasize this alienation, because they have to ignore the "industrial" farmer's experience and knowledge to say the things they do about farming.
Farmers are certainly more connected to the land than anyone who has no regular contact with it. And, while some farmers may harm the land through the use of pesticides or damaging farming techniques, people harm their bodies all the time through bad diets, little exercise, the use of drugs or medicines, and yet they are no less connected to their bodies. The solution, as I see it, is more contact with nature for the entire population. The Waldorf school's "Forest Kindergarten" (For Forest Kindergartners, Class Is Back to Nature, Rain or Shine) ) is an excellent example of how this could be implemented into society. Even in cities, projects like urban farms (Urban Farming, City Goats: Barnyard Animals in Backyards, The Rooftop Garden Climbs Down Walls)would increase people's interaction with nature and result in a better appreciation for it and more respect towards it. This is an easy thing to change on an individual basis: take a walk in a park, or plant a garden, or send your kids to play outside instead of letting them watch tv. In many ways, it is a money-saver too.
I am so excited! After learning all of these things about food production I actually get to be a part of it! This January, three friends and I are going to Costa Rica to work on organic farms for two weeks.
The second place we are going is called Finca La Flor (or Flower Farm) in the Orosi valley about 1.5 hours outside of San Jose. Here our volunteer work will deal with organic agriculture, botanical gardening and forestry, domestic animals and medicinal plants. 
