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.