Intensity vs Sustainability

Intensive Agricultural Production

Intensive Agricultural production is a more recent trend that has many harmful implications for humans and the environment. It is identified by the large-scale change in the relation of humans and the environment (Sutton & Anderson, 2004, p. 252). This includes new methods to push the boundaries of biology to achieve higher crop yields and productivity.

Sutton & Anderson explained how this new way of systematic thinking attempts to control and limit nature, emphasizing outcomes like scales of production and labor usage (2004, p. 259). Agricultural production upscales the amount of machinery and animals to help with labor, resulting in more food produced. We must keep the implications of these subsistence techniques in mind as we go on with technological and biological advancements. Chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are efficient in some ways but are notoriously very polluting and inefficient for the ecosystem.

New Subsistence Methods

• Chemical Usage
• Water Management Systems
• Tools and Heavy Machinery
• Domestication of plants and Animals

Harmful Implications

Although genetic modification of plants has led to higher crop yields and specialization of edible species, chemicals used in agricultural production result in environmental erosion and disrupt the relationship between people and nature. Chemicals may be added to enhance for various economic reasons such as increasing crop yields or reducing times to harvest. While seemingly beneficial, the pesticides pollute huge supplies of water and kill animals and plants in the ecosystem.

If new techniques such as chemical usage in fertilization result in more food produced at a mass scale, on the other hand, it also takes magnitudes of energy to fuel the intensive agricultural processes. Sutton & Anderson explain that locally-grown foods do not experience as much transportation costs as the large-scale manufacturers resulting in less environmental destruction and pollution (2002, p. 260). It it is more environmentally friendly and healthier for people to eat locally. However, rooted socio-economic structures and policies favor large-scale production, pushing smaller farms out. 

Even though there are chemically grown foods that benefit the population, food disparities still exist. People experience the environmental effects of pollution differently across geographies. People are still starving or getting unequal access to nutrition despite there being more than enough food produced in the world to feed an extra 1 billion people. So chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, animal labor, and new intensive farming machinery while seemingly helpful for humans are harming the relationship between people and the environment.

Traditional resource management

Traditional resource management (TREM) is coined as “the application of traditional ecological knowledge to maintain or enhance the abundance, diversity, and / or availability of natural resources” (Fowler & Lepofsky, 2011). However, it was not always thought of as a permeable or changing framework. 

Originally it encompassed the study of practices and methods of resource management methods that have been passed down from generation to generation, including non-industrial people and their relationship with the environment. This original definition invites the perception of North American people to think that they are different than the natural world instead of functioning as a component of it (Fowler & Lepofsky, 2011). However, it is the knowledge of any local ecosystem, that is integral for helping to maintain that ecosystem.

Resource management practices in the colonial U.S. differ from those of TREM in that it is largely invasive to the ecosystem. Traditional resource management practices are often viewed by American policy to be too inefficient and passive. What Dr. Lepofsky was trying to get at when she said that the First Nations people of coastal British Columbia were “not passive hunter-gatherers” was that their traditional knowledge of clam harvesting is a means of gaining knowledge and learning for their people. The First Nations of coastal British Columbia consider the clam knowledge or clam gardens ancient as the act of cultivating them as a traditional practice that is fully linked to subjects of nature resilience and sustainability. 

Traditional Resource Management/TREM practices such as clamming and more broadly traditional substicence techniques are at risk because of policy. For example, Dr. Leposfky explained in a University of Washington lecture that clam walls, raised areas with bedding that is suitable for clam harvesting, largely increase clam yields for people to harvest by creating more tides. 

This method of intensive agricultural production of clams pushed out the indigenous people from their homes through policy, now resulting in a changed ecosystem, unproductive clam bed, and smaller clam sizes because of the traditional resource management (TREM) being pushed out of inclusion from the natural environment. Dr. Lepofsky tells stories of young kids who know parts of knowledge of clam harvesting such as “keeping the beach clean” were only learned in parts, incomplete, and stopped when colonial reform and disease wiped the First Nations from the beaches. Practical and longstanding, the TREM traditions which have been sustained and maintained for thousands of years with no harm had been limited and controlled by settler reform.

It is important to think about challenges to TREM and sustainability and work to integrate past knowledge of relearning in people, systems, policy, and the environment. This can include choices from the personal level and policy level.

Sustainability

Traditional resource management is one approach to overcome the industrial agriculture sustainabiliity challenge. However climate change is not a simple topic. Orr discussed in his work, 4 Challenges to Sustainability, how sustainability is a deep-multifaceted problem requiring:

1. More accurate models, metaphors, and measures to describe the human enterprise relative to the biosphere
2. Marked improvement and creativity in people and policy
3. Greatly improved education on sustainability principles.
4. A higher level of spiritual awareness for recognizing and resolving divergent problems

Sustainability is rooted in Traditional Resource Management but overlooked in intensive agricultural production. Sustainability focuses on having a relationship with the environment that allows for natural resources for current and later generations. To work towards a better world today requires help restoring the knowledge of all indigenous ecosystems (Lepofsky, 2011). 

Structurally, policy change is needed. Small farm workers aren’t getting the compensation they need, thus resulting in the disparities of large-scale farms. Large-scale farms make up 3% of farms and nearly 52 percent of the value of production (USDA 2024). One way to support small-scale farms is to eat local and organic.

On an individual level, eating organic can not only improve health significantly than eating processed foods but also supports organic farms to combat the growing numbers of pesticide usage among large-scale manufacturers. These large-scale scale manufacturers who keep up with the demands of our excess processed diet require a large amount of energy to produce, which negatively affects health due to soil erosion and water contamination (University of Michigan, 2023). Structurally, the U.S. food cycle creates more room for large agricultural manufacturers which can negatively impact the environment and people directly through unstable farming practices. Reducing food waste with moderate and mindful eating to limit excess food production and combat the waste production runoff of intensive agriculture.

Above all, the call for a new framework towards an inclusive solution to address ecological disruptions such as the climate change issue should work to stop the intensive agricultural practice of increasing fossil fuel usage for higher economic profit and place more focus on sustainability for all. TREM methods like Regenerative farming allow the ecosystem to rebalance when compared to Intensive agriculture. The indigenous clam practices were sustainable and in balance with nature, something that newer farming practices are years behind (Lepofsky, 2024).

To build resilience within the ecosystem, and to maintain and preserve it for generations to come takes constant change and work, is multifaceted, and changes across different communities across the world. The approach that is taken towards sustainability includes local traditional knowledge and sustainability while recognizing and working to undo the harmful effects of Intensive Agriculture is vital.

References: 

Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. 2023. “U.S. Food System Factsheet.” Pub. No. CSS01-06. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet

Fowler, C., & Lepofsky, D. (2011). Traditional Resource and Environmental Management. In E. N. Anderson, D. Pearsall, E. Hunn, & N. Turner (Eds.), Ethnobiology (pp. 285-304). John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Orr, D. W. (2002). Four Challenges of Sustainability. Conservation Biology, 16(6), 1457-1460.

Sutton, M. Q., & Anderson, S. J. (2004). The Origins of Food Production. An Introduction to Cultural Ecology (p. 183)

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. (2024, February 29). Farming and Farm Income. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/#:~:text=Small%20family%20farms%20(less%20than,of%20the%20value%20of%20production.