It is true that chems do bring in higher yields. Higher yeilds equals a lower price/bushel. Farmers see no real increase in wealth because it costs more to plant/harvest the next season. If the price of supples doesn't take the farmers 'wealth' the manipulation of the selling price of their final product does.
That formula also kills off the organic farmer as their income actually goes down even though their yield stays the same. Giving the land a year of rest is out of the question when finances are introduced. In doing that you then need the chems because the soil is nothing more than a holder for the roots.
Get a list of the owners and shareholders for the pot-ash operations on the Prairies, the money they take out of the pot used to belong to the farmers.
Farming these days could still be organic and supply the same amount at the same price. Growing cost should be a shared resource of a 'community' Not every farm in a township needs duplicate equipment. 1 very large expensive combine could do 36 sq mi / season and last many years via good maintenance schedules. With 36 people being responsible for the 36 sq mi some rather exotic machinery could be implemented. (ie a sprayer that now sprays just the weed could be modified to do the same thing but using organic friendly means (roundup types of sprays can be replaced by steaming hot water, the computer and IR hardware remain as originally used. Spot and identify different plants and open a valve when a weed is spotted.)
Not every farm has the money for pieces like that yet when used over a very large area the savings just get higher and higher.
MHZ - You're not going to win any friends with the fertilizer giants talking good sense like that! However, I suspect you'd win a bunch of new friends from the population at large, if they understood what is going on out there.
This whole business of industrial farming has gotten more than a little carried away with all this "progress." Of course, "progress" has many definitions.
The spin-off benefits of what you're talking about in your post are huge. The first one of course is better quality food. Not necessarily organic, but better quality in that it is pure, chemical-free. But, a move back toward family farms (or co-ops) is one of the big payoffs, in my opinion. Treating the land with some respect (summer fallow, etc.) would result in cleaner ground water over time. It's a long list.
The trend toward bigger, more "profitable" farms is a poor argument these days. Farmers have been losing their farms for years because they tried to keep up with these emerging, high-volume trends and many were forced out of business by the need to buy bigger equipment and more land to produce higher volumes of cheap crops. A vicious cycle. Now we see large corporations buying up land and further compounding the problems surrounding food quality, pollution, etc. and slowly creating a stranglehold on our food supply.
The general populace is pretty much unaware of this growing problem. I think one of the keys to turning it around is education of the public. I have no idea how that could be done in a short period of time...but I think we're running out of time. I guess it's going to be a one-step-at-a-time process. And it's a good thing that the good farmers out there are taking some of those steps. My hat is off to them and I support them every chance I get.
