The era of centralised, industrialised, corporatised, monocultural food systems is over, it is a failed experiment. This article will show why, then point to ways of creating an abundance of food that simultaneously build vibrant, diverse ecosystems, and a promise of healthy society.
The industrial agriculture model
At first glance the green revolution experiment was a great success, if the measure was simply how much food can be grown by only a few people armed with machinery and chemicals.
But Industrial agriculture, with its focus on maximising yields through mechanisation, monoculture, and chemical inputs, disregards the long-term health of ecosystems and human communities. By prioritising scale over sustainability, it disrupts natural processes, depleting soil health through erosion and over-farming. The reliance on synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides further strips the land of its biodiversity, leading to imbalances in local ecosystems, which in turn creates a dependency on external inputs to maintain productivity. Industrial practices essentially exhaust the very resources they exploit.
The system also marginalises small-scale farmers by fostering a model that benefits large corporations over individuals or local communities. With economies of scale as the main driver, this model forces smaller farms to either conform to industrial standards or be edged out of the market. This results in the consolidation of land and resources into fewer hands, amplifying socioeconomic disparities. Industrial agriculture’s focus on profits over people disrupts traditional agricultural practices aligned with their local environments and cultures.
Furthermore, industrial agriculture poses a significant threat to global food security and climate resilience. The dependence on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and limited crop varieties reduces genetic diversity, making food systems more vulnerable to pests, diseases, and extreme weather conditions. The heavy carbon footprint of industrial farming, with its reliance on fossil energy to fuel machinery and transport, exacerbates climate change, thereby threatening the very conditions necessary for agricultural productivity. In short, the principles of industrial agriculture are not just unsustainable; they are incompatible with the future of a healthy planet.
In the long arc of history this industrial approach would show up as a barely perceptible (albeit hugely impactful) blip. Dinosaurs roamed the Earth for 165 million years, Australian Aboriginals have been living in Australia for 65,000 years, the Roman Empire lasted 1,500 years, and Industrial Agriculture has been around for a mere 150 years, but it is largely responsible for the:
24 billion tonnes of topsoil we lose annually
60 million acres of ocean dead zones caused by chemical runoff
75% decline in total flying insect biomass over 27 years
Indus, Yellow, and Colorado rivers no longer reaching the sea
Water scarcity due to 70% of global freshwater being used by agriculture
Reduced crop yields as 33% of arable land is now measurably degraded
15 million hectares of forests lost annually
Reduction in food minerals across many of the staple food crops
And here we stand, with a conglomeration of agri-industries turning over between $1.5 and $2 trillion annually, perpetuating a destructive power-over relationship to nature.
There are other ways
It’s time to experiment with new approaches, pay attention to what nature shows us, and grow up to embrace a responsible relationship to all life on this planet.
Fortunately the next generation of innovators have been hard at work over the past few decades. Now the results are coming in, and they are frankly outstanding.
The impact of regenerative grazing and syntropic agroforestry experiments are now being measured. What they are finding offers a strong counter argument to the persistent (but false) claims from agri-business industries, that we need large-scale industrial farming in order to feed the world’s growing population.
Animals – Adaptive Multi-Paddock grazing
Filmmaker Peter Byck has led a $10 million research project comparing Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing with conventional grazing; collaborating with 20 scientists and 10 farm families over nearly ten years. He is an extraordinary bridge builder, weaving his magic across the typically siloed scientific community, and between AMP farmers and conventional farmers in the rural community.
This four part series at rootssodeep.org had tears rolling down my face, as I felt the contrast between what is and what could be. I felt joy to see how, after a few short years of regenerative grazing, entire ecosystems have been stewarded to let nature spring back and flourish. The data shows significant improvements in soil health and soil carbon storage, diversity of microbes, insects and birds, water cycling, human health, and more.
You can read the extensive research papers, but here’s a small sampling of the science from this multi-farm research project:
33% more insect diversity
25% more microbes
13% more Carbon
9% more Nitrogen (without adding synthetic Nitrogen)
2 times the rainfall penetration
If all grazing farms converted to a regenerative approach like AMP grazing and the many other names it’s been called, the carbon sequestration would be equal to one-third of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Plants – Syntropic Agroforestry
Entropy is often quoted by engineers as the second law of thermodynamics, which states that everything in the world is in a state of decline and decay. Syntropy on the other hand rarely gets airtime, but is defined as the tendency towards complexity, structure, order, organisation of ever more advantageous and orderly patterns.
Syntropic Agroforestry starts with the process of going from simple systems (like a field of grass), to a complex multi-layered systems of mostly perennial plants (like a forest) that maximise photosynthesis to produce an abundance and diversity of food, fibre, medicines and habitat for a multitude of life forms, while building soil and capturing carbon.
Enrst Gotsch, is one of those extraordinarily inventive humans, who has been discovering principles in nature that if intentionally and actively embraced, can transition degraded desert-like landscapes to abundant, dense and diverse forest-like landscapes in a remarkably short amount of time. One of his systems is a forest that in a diverse forest plantation produces three times as much Cacao as the countrywide average, and without external inputs such as fertilisers or chemicals.
Scott Hall at syntropia.com.au is a fifth generation farmer who has been experimenting with Syntropic Agroforestry and tracking the changes. Here’s what he recorded three years after establishing and actively managing a Syntropic Agroforestry installation:
60% increase in effective Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC)
200% increase in total Carbon (including life)
1275% increase in Nitrogen
470% increase in Phosphorus
314% increase in Potassium
It’s time
Adaptive grazing and Syntropic Agroforestry both:
- Maximise photosynthesis through plant density and diversity
- Return biomass to the soil to feed microbes
- Pay attention to the growth cycle and senescence
- Benefit from the principle of disturbance, managed by humans
The main difference is the source of disturbance: Adaptive grazing uses animals in animal-dominated systems, while Syntropic agroforestry uses humans in plant-based systems.
While we’ve made some mighty blunders, I don’t agree that the world would “be better off without us”. But it will require that we update our thoughtware and start relating differently to each other and the natural world.
It’s time to embrace our role as stewards in living systems, and acknowledge that yes we can inflict phenomenal damage to ecosystems, and acknowledge that we can also make great, big, fat, juicy, regenerative footprints by taking risks and trying new things, while also paying attention to the impact of our interventions and continuing to learn from and adapt to nature.
If ever there was a time to have a significant beneficial impact on life and this world, leaving it a better state than it was when you arrived, it is now.
If ever there was a field of endeavour worthy of your time, attention and genius, it is changing how we ‘do’ food.
James Samuel has spent decades raising awareness of the challenges and opportunities of our time, from facilitating the Transition Towns movement, to education in organic and small-scale local food production and distribution. He has negotiated with the filmmakers of Roots So Deep, for permission to screen this landmark film around the country.
See event schedule at: growingradicles.org/rootssodeep