Farm with a view

About Post-scarcity notes: As the staff of The Public Interest Network advocate for a cleaner, greener, healthier world, from time to time we’ll share observations on the larger challenge facing our network and our society: How do we shift the dominant paradigm — the very way in which we see and make sense of the world — from disposable to sustainable, from “never enough” to “enough,” from “making a living” to “living.” The views expressed in this space relate to our work, but do not necessarily represent the position of the network or its organizations.

The other day I read an interesting post on a data visualization blog describing how to make better area charts. The post shared some good design tips, but the most interesting piece to me was its illustration of the impact of agriculture on land use.

That might sound like a dry topic to some. But here in South Dakota, where I live with my family on what was once my grandparents’ and parents’ farm, it couldn’t be more relevant. Here’s the story.

Agriculture now uses about half of all habitable land, driving deforestation and loss of wild spaces around the globe for the past few centuries.

As this graph shows, population growth corresponded with the growth in agricultural land use until about 1960. Since then, while population continued to climb rapidly, agricultural land use leveled off.

Progress has come at a cost

That’s a good thing — wheat yield doubled and corn yield tripled between 1961 and 2000, with only a 30% increase in cultivated land area. The post didn’t even mention that in that same period, the number of people in the world living in hunger went from 1 in 3 to less than 1 in 6, a number that has continued to improve.

But this progress is coming at a cost. Improvements in crop yield from new selective plant breeding have also required more intensive irrigation, fertilization and mechanization.

That means more pesticide residue in our food, killing bees and drifting from fields; more fertilizers running off into waterways; shrinking crop diversity and decline in food quality; and sacrifices to the well being of factory-farm raised livestock.

How much is enough?

Still, many in the agricultural industry continue to focus on increasing crop yields year over year. Yet as Mark Twain supposedly pointed out, they ain’t making any more land. Soil nutrients, fresh water, healthy air and a stable climate are also precious resources. If population growth slows as much as some experts predict (or fear), the only way to sell more food to a stable or declining population is if we eat more than we should, (Ozempic!), find another way to sell it (the amount of U.S. corn used for ethanol rose almost 800% from 2000-2010) or just let it go to waste.

Growing up and living in my corner of South Dakota, you can’t help but share in farmers’ pride in feeding America. But I often drive past corn and soybean fields — squarely laid out units bound by mile line roads — and wonder, what’s the limit to how much these fields can produce? How much more land will we take from the wild before the wild is gone? Can we shift from endless growth — literally — to sustain and preserve? How much is enough?