The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture

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 [these essays] is to conceptually 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.

We identify the seven central myths of industrial agriculture, note their assumptions and dangers, and provide direct and clear refutations. This myth-busting section is specifically designed to provide consumers, activists, and policy makers with clear, compact, and concise answers to counter the industry's well-funded misinformation campaigns about the benefits of industrial agriculture. We encourage you to utilize these seven short essays whenever you are faced with the "big lies" being used by corporate agribusiness to hide the true effects of their fatal harvest.

Myth One - Industrial Agriculture Will Feed the World
The Truth - World hunger is not created by lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which deny people access to food. Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops. More

Myth Two - Industrial Food is Safe, Healthy and Nutritious
The Truth - Industrial agriculture contaminates our vegetables and fruits with pesticides, slips dangerous bacteria into our lettuce, and puts genetically engineered growth hormones into our milk. It is not surprising that cancer, food-borne illnesses, and obesity are at an all-time high. More

Myth Three - Industrial Food is Cheap
The Truth - If you added the real cost of industrial food-its health, environmental, and social costs-to the current supermarket price, not even our wealthiest citizens could afford to buy it. More

Myth Four - Industrial Agriculture is Efficient
The Truth - Small farms produce more agricultural output per unit area than large farms. Moreover, larger, less diverse farms require far more mechanical and chemical inputs. These ever increasing inputs are devastating to the environment and make these farms far less efficient than smaller, more sustainable farms. More

Myth Five - Industrial Food Offers More Choices
The Truth - What the consumer actually gets in the supermarket is an illusion of choice. Food labeling does not even tell us what pesticides are on our food or what products have been genetically engineered. Most importantly, the myth of choice masks the tragic loss of tens of thousands of crop varieties caused by industrial agriculture. More

Myth Six - Industrial Agriculture Benefits the Environment and Wildlife
The Truth - Industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth's biodiversity. Fence-row-to-fence-row plowing, planting, and harvesting techniques decimate wildlife habitats, while massive chemical use poisons the soil and water, and kills off countless plant and animal communities. More

Myth Seven - Biotechnology Will Solve the Problems of Industrial Agriculture
The Truth - New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture's problems, but will compound them and consolidate control of the world's food supply in the hands of a few large corporations. Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security, and drive self-sufficient farmers off their land. More

Excerpted with permission from
Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture,
edited by Andrew Kimbrell, distributed by Island Press.
Available at local bookstores or at the Island Press web site,
www.islandpress.org.