Agriculture is political. I think about it often, and I’m thinking about it especially as I visit family and friends back home in Iowa, one of the many chemical-intensive agriculture “bellies of the beast.”
In Bet the Farm, author and beginning farmer Beth Hoffman describes the harsh reality of the economics of farming in the United States. The summary? The math on making a living farming often just doesn’t add up.
This month, Corteva announced it would stop making chlorpyrifos, a brain-harming pesticide. Though this is generally welcome news — to me, this win feels complicated. Why?
I went home to Iowa back in July, and many fields were still bare from last fall’s post-harvest tilling. Normally, field corn would have been at least knee high. Though the saying goes “knee high by the fourth of July…”, Iowans know that field corn is often head high — or taller — by the 4th. And I’m 6’ 2”!
To address climate change, we’ve got to end chemical-intensive agriculture. Why?
Because globally, today’s food and agriculture systems are responsible for more climate-change contributing emissions than the world’s cars, trucks, planes, and trains combined. At the same time, we’re confronted with evidence that climate change is unravelling the systems of the natural world that have evolved over millennia to create a habitable planet.
This is the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. With no federal food safety inspections, limited access to USDA loan programs for farmers, and climate and environmental research at a standstill, our food system — and all of us — are at risk.
Meanwhile, over 800,000 federal workers are expecting a second missed paycheck this week, and the president’s State of the Union address has been cancelled because, well . . . the state of the union is shut down.
