The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth One

Editor's Note: "The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture" is excerpted from Fatal Harvest, a new book that chronicles the disasters of industrial farming.

Introduction

Industrial agriculture is devastating our land, water, and air, and is now threatening the sustainability of the biosphere. Its massive chemical and biological inputs cause widespread environmental havoc as well as human disease and death. Its monoculturing reduces the diversity of our plants and animals. Its habitat destruction endangers wildlife. Its factory farming practices cause untold animal suffering. Its centralized corporate ownership destroys farm communities around the world, leading to mass poverty and hunger. The industrial agriculture system is clearly unsustainable. It has truly become a fatal harvest.

However, despite these devastating impacts, the industrial paradigm in agriculture still gets a free ride from our media and policy makers. It is rare to hear questioning, much less a call for the overthrow, of this increasingly catastrophic food production system. This troubling quiescence can be attributed, in part, to the enormous success that agribusiness has had in utilizing the "big lie," a technique familiar to all purveyors of propaganda. Corporate agriculture has flooded, and continues to inundate, the public with self-serving myths about modern food production. For decades, the industry has effectively countered virtually every critique of industrial agriculture with the "big lie" strategy.

These agribusiness myths have become all too familiar. Most farmers, activists, and policy makers who question the industrial food paradigm know the litany of lies by heart: industrial agriculture is necessary to feed the world, to provide us with safe, nutritious, cheap food, to produce food more efficiently, to offer us more choices, and, of all things, to save the environment. Additionally, when confronted with the indisputable environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture, the industry immediately points to technological advances, especially recent achievements in biotechnology, as the panacea that will solve all problems. These claims are broadcast far and wide by way of industry lobbying efforts, product promotions, and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns, including television, newspaper, magazine, farm journal, and radio ads. Moreover, as the industry becomes more consolidated -- with biotech companies owning the seed and chemical businesses and a handful of companies controlling a majority of seeds and food brands -- the strategies for promulgating these myths become ever more concerted and the messages ever more honed. Archer Daniels Midland is now known to us all as the "supermarket to the world," while Monsanto offers us "Food, Health, Hope."

These myths about industrial agriculture have been, and are being, repeated so often that they are taken as virtually unassailable. A central goal of this book is to debunk the myths that have for too long been used to promote and defend industrial agriculture. This myth-busting is an essential step in exposing the impacts of current agriculture practices and educating the public about the realities of the food they are consuming.

Many people in the sustainable agriculture community have been instrumental in publishing and disseminating factual information to counter these myths. In particular, Peter Rosset and Frances Moore Lappé of the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First have taken the lead on dispelling myths about hunger by publishing numerous reports and the latest edition of their groundbreaking book, "World Hunger: Twelve Myths;" Pat Mooney, Hope Shand, and others at the Rural Advancement Foundation International have played an essential role in cataloging the loss of genetic diversity in agriculture; David Pimentel has conducted unprecedented research on the true ecological costs of industrial agriculture; and Margaret Mellon and Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as Miguel Altieri at the University of California, Berkeley, have been invaluable in dispelling many of the myths currently being spread by the biotech industry.