The state of agriculture in the industrialized world promotes a vicious patchwork of unsustainable policies and practices which threaten the health of consumers, the available arable land and the global environment.
Multinational agribusiness corporations, blinded by the potential of windfall profits each fiscal quarter, consistently suborn members of parliament and congress in their furtive efforts to subvert governmental legislation toward their corporate favor. Pursuing goals of increased yields and dependably pretty products, their genetically engineered frankenfoods contain wholly foreign and heritable DNA artificially affixed to their full complement of genetic information. Negative results of such practices include the cross-pollination contamination of the crops' natural gene pool, unintended illness and death of vital insect pollinators, dependence of farmers on purchasing viable seed every year in lieu of storing and planting their own saved seed, and longterm risks to human health.
Agribusiness manufactures and global agriculture applies increasingly deadlier petrochemicals designed to kill the weeds, fungi, molds, bacteria, viruses and insects which plague the unsustainably intensive monoculture so pervasive in modern agriculture. Target organisms evolve tolerances to each new generation of chemicals until more lethal substances are developed and broadcast on fields. These substances bioaccumulate in the natural terrestrial and aquatic environments until the ecosystems upon which human beings depend are irreparably damaged.
These legislative, genetic and chemical practices must change. The intersecting vicious circles feed on themselves and are spiraling out of control. Illegal lobbying for legislation allowing agribusinesses to use highly toxic petroleum-based chemicals and genomes every time the prior generation of chemicals and frankenfoods becomes obsolete should, in itself, become obsolete. In their stead should be installed more organic, polycultural practices which require greatly reduced chemical inputs, no genetically modified plant species and, most notably, no dishonest legislative lobbying.
Polyculture involves the raising of multiple marketable crop species simultaneously on the same land. The different plant species provide habitat for a ready supply of pollinators and carnivorous insects which target and destroy all manner of agricultural insect pests, thus eliminating or tremendously reducing the need for dangerous chemicals.
The multiple plant species reduce the space available for weeds to take root, assure high value harvests throughout the growing season, and the nonmarketable vegetative parts of crop species can be turned back into the soil, reducing the application of petrochemical fertilizers. Soil health is maintained with this annual addition of organic matter, reducing the need for soil fungicides and other biocides designed to control yield-reducing soil pathogens.
