Isn Industrial Agriculture Necessary to Feed the World Population?
• Big agribusiness says its goal is to “feed a growing world.” But its actions prioritize profit over even the basic right to food. • Industrial agriculture is actually a cause of world hunger. It has made farmers dependent on expensive inputs like pesticides, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified seeds. • Millions of formerly self-reliant farming families have been driven off their land, unable to compete as the world’s farmland is consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. • Export agriculture uses huge inputs of petroleum to fuel its massive global transportation infrastructure and often requires farmers to grow non-food crops like coffee and tea. • Small, diverse farms actually grow more food per unit area than large single-crop plantations. But industrial agriculture is more profitable per unit area, which is why we often hear that large farms are “more efficient.” Are High-Tech Solutions the Answer to Climate Change? • Many corporations, foundations and governments are prom
