
Agriculture, as we have come to know it is highly specialized mono-cropping. We grow one specific crop at a time at a particular location for the commercial purpose of producing the most with the least. Our farmers should be proud of their production efficiencies, but some are beginning to question the quality of their output. All-in-all it has been so successful that the “industry” has limited its specialization to only three types of commercial farming. However, it has become so homogeneous that there is no market power for the modern farmer who feels this impotence in what continues to be a declining career choice among the up-and-coming farming families. With only 1.3 % of the working population in the USA devoted to agriculture, it does follow the controls of agribusiness and does feed the entire population. Efficiency has an enormous cost to so many ecological norms that modern agriculture is continuing to push what would be the benefits of the ecology into another world. The farming efficiency of the US is apparent after visualizing that in 1900 40% of the population lived and farmed 60% of the country, but, today only 1% of the US farms just 20% of the land and more than meets the feeding needs of the increased population, sounds great! Why change it? If you were to visit other cultures, it is not too difficult to realize that efficiently growing empty calories for a growing population will face its end sometime in the not-to-distant future. Nutrition is absent to a large extent, more so than it should be in Western farming methodology. Giant agribusiness increasingly influences The Third World. However, their controls continue to be thwarted, to at least a less effective extent. In the Philippines, 4.5% of the population farms 30% of the land using primarily labor-intensive technology. Ironically, the Philippines is in a much better position to switch its mono-cropping to bio-diversified farming, using agroforestry princi
Page Count:
135
Publication Date:
2021-08-04
Publisher:
Independently published
ISBN-13:
9798544980148
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