Somehow the myth has gotten started that the local farm is better than the large agribusiness in environmental terms. When, in fact, the exact opposite is true. The same efficiencies of scale that allow a farm to produce cheaper peaches also allow it to produce less energy-intensive peaches. Perhaps your next column could detail the real 'green' benefits of large farms over small.

Not true. Monoculture is very bad for the environment. Large scale operations require the heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilization.

I'll provide a link to back up this post when you provide a link to back up yours.

Small farms could do better with environmental issues (including animal cruelty, pollution, and use of pesticides etc) and even employment practices if that individual farmer or family cares about those things, but you have no guarantee that is the case.

The key is organic farming methods. It just so happens that most organic farms are pretty small-scale operations.

BritBailey:

Not true. Monoculture is very bad for the environment. Large scale operations require the heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilization.

I'll provide a link to back up this post when you provide a link to back up yours.

Ouch. My leg is sore from being pulled.

The key is organic farming methods. It just so happens that most organic farms are pretty small-scale operations. You might want to double check that one, muchacho.

Certainly organic farming has its benefits, but it is not a matter of conventional farming being "bad" and organic farming being good.

So you reduce the use of certain pesticides and herbicides in organic production. In many cases that means increased need for tillage, which can mean more soil erosion and with it, nutrients escaping into our waters. One of the biggest changes in commodity crop farming over the last 50 years has been the massive adoption of no till and minimal till farming, which means no more plowing and heavy disking every year to kill weeds, which can also damage soil structure and of course lead to wind and water erosion. This was a big part of what led to the dustbowl. While there are some solid organic methods for weed control, like using nurse crops, in many cases, organic production means more mechanical means of weed control, which means more passes over the field with a tractor, and more soil disturbance, and more chances for erosion. Sediment, and the nutrients it carries with it are major problems for many local watersheds.

By the same token this doesn't mean that chemical controls are GOOD and mechanical controls are bad, it just means its a trade off, and to ignore one side of the story and say one is GREEN and one isn't is disingenuous.

The problem is obviously the scale on which we grow our produce--and, I would argue, the mentality of the American consumer.

I don't argue that there is any one perfect approach to agriculture. I certainly won't dismiss large-scale farming out of hand, as it has clearly been an important part of our prosperity (though significant subsidization has been an important part of that). But the heavy use of such chemicals has negative consequences beyond agriculture. Take, for example, the Dead Zone in the Northwestern corner of the Gulf of Mexico, which often ravages the commercial fishing industry there. Agricultural run-off from the Mississippi, Trinity, and Sabine Rivers are partly to blame for that problem. Some of us joke that it's what gives Gulf shrimp that unique, gamey, instantly-recognizable flavor that we love, but you're talking about one industry working against another. That's the environmental problem. It all flows downstream.

Here is a good article on large agribusiness and its effect domestically and globally:

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