High Rise Agriculture

After having studied Kimbrell's '7 Deadly Sins of Agriculture', there are truth, lies, and alternatives to be understood, sifted through, and organized. It is possible to make industrial food cheap, efficient and include the benefits of bio-tech. With the institution of education to the public on the dangers and hazards of industrial agriculture a better approach may be conceived. However, due to the large conglomerates monopolizing the industrial agriculture it is difficult for a small farmer to even make their own cheese legally because the kitchen that is required has strict constituents and is costly. By simply walking through your local supermarket it easy to see how many different food items include the same items (lots of corn syrup). Therefore education and attempts to manipulate biotech would prove futile and the cost of organic, locally grown food is high. Not only is industrial agriculture and GMO products 'killing' our children, but our landscape.

It has already been suggested by nature writers, conservationists and nature lovers everywhere that the best thing for the environment may be for everyone to go live in a selection of high rise, metropolitan areas; by concentrating all the pollution, and land degradation to one are it allows the rest of the natural world to flourish.  So hey! why don't we just move all agriculture there as well?

Actually, attempts at "Urban Farms" have already been attempted. David Ferris from the Sierra Club writes about Ben Flanners, a New York local, who already sells to local markets, high end restaurants, and a third to customers who have subscribed to a local community supported agriculture club. If Flanners can do it and supply an adequate amount of people with food that is more healthy, readily accessible, and grown as naturally as possible, then why can't large scale agricultural projects be moved closer to the urban environment? Perhaps that's where the future of agriculture lies, maybe not, but it is one of the many possible alternatives - both for the land and our health.

Is There Good Biotech?

We recently read Andrew Kimbrell’s “Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture.”  His seventh myth is that “biotechnology will solve the problems of industrial agriculture.”  According to Kimbrell, “New biotech crops will not solve industrial agriculture’s problems, but will compound them.”  He says, “Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security.”  At the end of the essay, he claims, “Biotechnology increases environmental degradation, causes new food safety risks, and threatens to increase world hunger.  It is not the solution, but a major part of the problem.”

I feel that Kimbrell is overly critical of biotechnology.  He makes a blanket condemnation of all biotechnology without exploring (or even considering) the possibility that biotechnology could help the world in some ways.  While biotechnology does pose some dangers, which Kimbrell points out, it also has the potential to benefit society.  Not all biotechnology is aimed at consolidating the power and increasing the profit of multinational corporations.  Some biotechnology could do good for humanity, but it seems that Kimbrell wants to throw all of it out the window.  He rules out any possibility that biotechnology could be beneficial.  He comes across as being extreme and antitechnological.

Biotechnology, for example, could be used to make certain foods more nutritious and better for human consumption.  Vitamin A deficiency, for instance, causes hundreds of thousands of malnourished children to die and go blind every year.  Scientists, through genetic engineering, have produced a new food known as golden rice, which contains beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A.  If grown and consumed in developing countries where vitamin A deficiency is widespread, golden rice, a genetically modified food, could put an end to many deaths and cases of blindness among children.  Golden rice, the development of which has been supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, might go on the market as early as next year.  This is just one example of how biotechnology could serve humanitarian purposes.

To my objection, Kimbrell likely would reply that biotechnology can have unintended consequences.  For example, he might argue that golden rice indirectly would lead to the destruction of other kinds of rice or that golden rice might be harmful to nonhuman organisms.  Golden rice, which is intended to end vitamin A deficiency, could cause other problems.  It may, for example, lead to vitamin A overdoses if people consume too much of it.  An overabundance of vitamin A in an individual’s system can lead to skin discoloration, hair loss, reduced bone density, intracranial hypertension, liver damage, birth defects, and even death.  By trying to solve one problem with biotechnology, humans unintentionally could create a whole new problem and basically could end up poisoning the people whom they were trying to help.  Kimbrell might suggest that we try to solve problems of hunger and malnutrition through nontechnological means because they are less risky.  He might consider biotechnology to be immoral and probably would recommend against playing eugenics with our food.

 

Efficiency Issues

      Kimbrell is completely against everything to do with industrial agriculture as we know it today. A major myth that Kimbrell addresses is the notion that industrial agriculture is the most efficient way to grow food. Kimbrell argues that industrial agriculture is in fact the opposite of efficient, but rather is completely inefficient. During the course of the reading, Kimbrell presents statistical data showing that smaller farms with less acres of land for growing crops can be from 2 up to 10 times more productive. Also presented is the fact that these so-called efficient farms leave a devastating effect on the environment. These bigger farms need more input as far as mechanically speaking as well as biochemically such as pesticides, etc. Through these two facts alone, industrial agriculture's efficient cover is blown.

      However, a rebuttal to this view might be in what someone calls efficiency. Maybe the yield, or gain per crop is not the kind of efficiency we should be gauging. For example, while these larger farms may not be as efficient in the crops per plant, etc. but they are more efficient at bringing more food to the markets. The fact of the matter is that farming has become an expensive operation today, and less and less people are venturing  into agriculture. If these large-scale corporate agricultural entities have the resources to bring in more crops than the average independent farmer due to more funding for machinery and chemicals, then why not let them? Perhaps the problem is not the efficiency, but the the major issue is the degradation to the environment. Perhaps new scientific discoveries can fix the loss of animal habitats and environmental degradation. Kimbrell would probably argue against this point of view to say that perhaps if the business was not so expensive to start up, then perhaps there would be far more independent farmers. Kimbrell would say that the industry politics today are heavily influenced by the major corporations. He would argue that more independent farmers would lead to the same amount of acres being planted with more yield.

Is Agrariansim the Best Answer?

               In Wendell Berry’s “The Whole Horse” he illustrates the stark differences between agrarianism and industrialism and describes his perceived advantages of an agrarian economy. Many of these aspects sound really desirable such as the benefits of a close and personal local community and the extreme preservation of nearly all forests and its inhabitants. The opposed economic system of industrialism is stated as being one that is only concerned with “monetary capital” and that it only generates “efforts to sell products for more than they are worth.” Given these chosen descriptive characteristics it immediately becomes clear that one should favor the former economic system to the latter. But when focusing on sound economics, would a drastic overthrowing of the current economy into a farming centered simplistic nineteenth century type system really be beneficial to all people who compose our economy? There are, undoubtedly, some flaws in the current “industrialist” system, there is another approach that could be taken to reduce the negative impact of this system (particularly on the environment) that would also achieve the agrarian principles of a more locally centered society with an economy made up of many smaller businesses instead of a few major corporations. The system I am referring to is free market capitalism.
               Contrary to current popular belief, this proposed system is one that is far different from industrialism, in which large corporations lobby government to pass highly regulative legislation whose compliance costs and fees act to bar smaller firms from entering into the market. This atmosphere allows large corporations to go unchecked in the market and results in the monopolizing of many industries, particularly those whose products are more inelastic in demand. This setting of “crony capitalism” creates a ceiling above which no upcoming smaller firm can compete for market share with these massive favored corporations. This unholy alliance between government and corporations allows these large corporations to defy what would be the natural understood laws of the free market and behave irresponsibly in their operations with the understanding that they are indeed “too big to fail” and that any bankruptcy on the part of mismanagement will be covered through bailouts by the government. What consumers get as a result of this corrupt system are higher prices and lower quality in the goods bought, due to the absence competition among firms in the marketplace.

               With the onset of market competition there would be more incentive for each individual firm to control its own impact on the environment. Businesses are competitive by nature and would welcome any opportunity to point out any shortcomings in a competitor’s improper disposal of environmentally harmful waste and would certainly make an effort to advertise their own unrivaled efforts of careful ecological management, all in an effort to maximize market share and maintain an attractive identity to customers.

               The end result may not offer the radical agrarian their ideal end, but a free market economy that is unaltered by the influence of crony capitalism and large corporate monopolies will produce a balanced effect that will allow for locally driven economies to rely more on small and upcoming businesses instead of large irresponsible corporations. The environment will not be relentlessly burdened by the corporations who previously answered to no one. On the other hand, technology will certainly become innovated at a higher rate and prices will gradually decline. With the resulting lower market prices made possible through a competitive market, households will have more disposable income. This additional income will allow these families the agrarian opportunities of developing their own desired means of sustenance and greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

The Fat Man Problem

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue lately. The question is if you would push one fat man off a bridge to stop a train that was going to kill five people otherwise. Originally I said yes, because even though every life has value, the numbers do matter. But then I changed my mind when I heard about the wandering drifter problem. This is if you are a doctor trying to save five people from dying. You need healthy organs in order to perform surgery on them. Some drifter walks up and you have the opportunity to kill him and use his organs. The situations seem different at first, but what it comes down to is the fact that you are murdering that person rather than letting the other five die.

                The only question I still ask myself though is if it is murder to let someone die if you could stop it from happening. The best way to go about figuring this out is to rearrange the situation. If you saw someone being held at gunpoint and you had a button that would cause the attacker to pass out, would it be considered murder to not press the button? Some say yes, but in reality, the man with the gun is still committing the murder. Obviously, you feel morally obligated to press the button to save that man, but you should never be alright with saving someone at the expense of any number of people.

                There is also the question of what you should do and what you would do. These things are far from being the same. For instance, if it was my relatives in place of the five people on the tracks, then I would push the fat man off of the bridge. I would do it, but I would feel horrible about it, because I know that it is not what I should have done. Some people feel the opposite way. They feel that if there were five random people on the tracks then they would feel obligated to push the fat man. However, actually being in the moment is different, and they would most likely end up not doing it.

                One more situation you can use is the trolley situation. This is where you have two sets of tracks, one containing five random people, and the other containing one person. The tracks are set for the train to hit the five people. You can pull a lever that switches which track the trolley will take. When it comes down to it, all you would be doing is manipulating the objects around you, and it wouldn’t seem like you are actually murdering someone. But, when you think about it, the Fat Man problem is the same exact concept, only you have to deal with the fact that you are murdering the person up close. This is why I think that I would not push the fat man onto the tracks. Even though I feel that five lives are more valuable than one, I still think that you should not murder even though it would save others.

Hunger and Industrial Agriculture

Andrew Kimbrell argues in “Seven Myths of Industrial Agriculture” that industrial agriculture will not feed the world. He points out that the mass enclosure of farms, wrought by the domineering and ubiquitous food corporations, is a major reason why hundreds of millions of people go hungry every day. Over the last century in poor countries, first world corporations have fallen into the practice of ejecting traditional peasants from their farmland in order to reap expensive, luxury crops from the land. These crops, including cotton, coffee, and soybeans, are immediately exported to rich countries. Nothing is left to feed the local poor. The peasants, now without land on which to farm and sustain their families, have no other choice but to move to urban areas to find menial labor. Forced out of prosperous rural life, the growing class of urban poor is, as Kimbrell puts it, “doomed to long-term hunger or starvation” because they have no means with which to grow food for themselves.

Kimbrell continues to argue that industrial agriculture is also afflicting current farmers with hunger. As giant food conglomerates gain more and more control over small farmers, they come to own the rights to everything that the farmers use, including chemicals, seeds, and technology. This causes the farmers’ profits to drop dramatically, forcing them into poverty.

Supporters of industrial agriculture maintain that the people go hungry because not enough food is produced to feed everyone in the world. They argue that the answer to solving this problem is industrial agriculture, because industrial farms produce a higher yield than low-tech farms. Increased industrial agriculture would therefore increase the amount of food in the word, which would go toward feeding the hungry. The only way to solve the problem of hunger, according to some, is to increase industrialization in order to produce enough food to feed the world’s bustling population.

Kimbrell argues that this argument is flawed. He brings up evidence that proves that the problem with hunger is not in the amount of food in the world. He states, “Every year, enough wheat, rice, and other grains are produced to provide every human with 3,500 calories a day.” The real problem, then, is clearly not with the amount of food in the world. The most prevalent causes of hunger reside within industrial agriculture itself, through the enclosure of farmland and the oppression of small farmers.

Kimbrell states, “hunger can only be solved by an agricultural system that promotes food independence.” In pursuit of ending hunger, our generation must act quickly to encourage food independence rather than sit by as disinterested food corporations continue to increase hunger in the name of industrial agriculture.

The trolley problem

The trolley problem is set forth to inquire about peoples ethical values when it comes to the life and death of others. The trolley problem goes something like this; there is a runaway trolley careening down the track. In its path there are four men, unaware of the trolley, working on the track, if the trolley gets to them all will surly die. However on the track before the four workers is a switch that will divert the trolley on to another set of tracks where only one man works in its path. The question is; do you pull the switch or do you just let the trolley run its course? Which is better or less bad, one person to die or four people to die?  In the eyes of Mill the death of one person is the answer because it entails the overall good for more people, or limits the overall pain and suffering to just one person. For him it essentially is a numbers game. When people are asked what they would do in this situation they almost always say that they would pull the switch and cause only one person to die, however with a slight variation to the scenario the answer changes.

In the new scenario there is still a runaway trolley and four men in its path, however this time the one person on the other track is not just some random stranger but your own mother. Now what do you do? Do you pull the switch and kill your own mother or do you just let the trolley run its course? When presented with this scenario almost everyone would not pull the switch and save their own mother. So is it ethical for us to value our mother’s life over someone else’s? That random stranger in scenario one most likely has a family as well, so why is your loss more important than theirs? In Mill’s opinion it shouldn’t matter who the one person is on the other track, the right thing should still be to save four people and let only one die because it limits the overall pain and suffering to less people. However most people don’t have that same viewpoint and this is why ethics can be such a difficult question to answer.

The Organ Transplant Problem

In “The Survival Lottery,” John Harris puts forth the following scenario:

Suppose that organ transplant procedures have been perfected; that is to say the only obstacle between a sick patient being saved and a doctor saving them is the availability of the proper organs. Therefore, if the doctors are in possession of the necessary organs required to save two dying patients, then we can hold these doctors responsible for the lives of the patients. This means that if the doctors allow the patients to die, we can say they died because their doctors refused to treat them. However, if the doctors don’t possess the necessary organs to save the two patients, then we would not be inclined to say the doctors caused the patients’ deaths.

Further supposed that these two patients, A and B, are quite unhappy about being left to die. A requires a new heart and B needs a new pair of lungs, so they propose that if organs were harvested only from one healthy person, D,  then two lives could be saved. The doctors quickly jump to the obvious objection that it would be worse to kill one person than to allow two to die. They would like to hold that we have an obligation not to kill, but only a lesser duty of sorts to save life. A and B are not satisfied with this response. While agreeing that an innocent life should never be taken, they do not see how they are any less innocent than D; not one of the three has done anything deserving of death. From here, A and B argue that if a doctor refusing to treat a patient results in the patients’ death, then “he has killed that patient as sure as shooting.” In this sense, A and B wish to equate their own deaths with the forced death of D. If their premises hold true, then I would be obliged to agree with them. A and B seem to think they’ve done a splendid job thus far and move on to further objections and their proposal of a Survival Lottery. I, however, do not think their argument thus far holds up.

First, if A and B needs organs urgent enough to consider the killing of another person to save themselves, then surely one of them will be dead soon, the organs from whom can be used to save the other. A and B would argue that this creates a special group out of the sick, saying that we somehow discriminate against them by only selecting donors from the sick. I, on the other hand, think of it as a group of those that supports the notion that it is ok to kill in order to preserve life. This form of their proposal lies rather close to suicide, which I find much easier to justify than killing. A and B could also object by saying that we are only saving one life in this manner instead of the under their proposal. This would be rather sloppy of them, however, as it forgets about D, who will be left alive.

There is also a problem with how A and B play with the notion and treatment of innocents. They propose two premises in tandem that really only work separately: that killing an innocent is universally wrong, and that if a doctoring refusing to treat an innocent patient results in the patient’s death, then the doctor killed the patient. The second premise can only come about if the first premise isn’t present. If there truly were no other organs, not even from other people, surely A and B would not blame death on the doctor. So in the presence of other people, where are these organs supposed to come from if killing innocent people is always wrong? A and B’s objections to killing innocent civilians (those not in need of transplants) revolve around accusing those making objections of avoiding the question. This is hardly fair as it neglects the fact that there’s something wrong with their primary premises.

Perhaps, then, we should investigate their argument as if they had not insisted that killing innocents is always wrong? This unfortunately leaves without any solid motivation for treating A and B at all, with or without the organs. Sure sometimes the doctors will use D’s organs to save A and B, but other times they won’t. Something tells me A and B wouldn’t quite be satisfied with this.

Harris, John. "The Survival Lottery." Pub. in Reason and Responsibility: Readings in Some Basic Problems of Philosophy. 637-641.