Paying a high price for 'cheap food'

[nosmokes]

original-Burlington Free Press

*BuyLocal
*Buy Organic
*Buy Fair Trade

My Turn: Paying a high price for 'cheap food'

By George Wuerthner

Whenever someone criticizes agricultural practices of America's farmers and ranchers as I do, supporters of the industry respond

January 28, 2007
At the end of this litany of supposed excuses or rationales for why we should continue to support both economic and environmental subsidies to industrial agriculture, they deliver their coup de grace to silence critics -- cheap food. Don't criticize farmers and ranchers because they are producing America's cheap food.

Cheap food? Agriculture is the most destructive land use in America. A field of corn, hay or alfalfa is one of the most simplified ecosystems around. Not only have these field crops destroyed and replaced native plant and animal communities, but they have greatly simplified bio-diversity. Add in the lands used for grazing by livestock, and as much as 70 percent of America's land is modified or at least ecologically compromised to accommodate agriculture -- to the great detriment of native ecosystems and animals.

Clearing tall-grass prairies for corn and soy, and short-grass and palouse prairies for wheat, has led to the functional extinction of these ecosystems. We need look no further than the Champlain Valley to see agriculture's impact on native ecosystems where the clay plain forests are jeopardized and 97 percent of the oak-pine plain forests are lost because of forest clearance, primarily for farming.
~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here