Big AG ...

Big AG, an absolutely huge enterprise, impacts earth in ways truly astounding, both on how much land is required to feed us along with the negative environmental impact said industry has.

To whit ...

There is little more important than food and in the US, after housing and transportation, the biggest expense most households incurred was on food, with 13% of income being spent on food. 

Today, the world population uses approximately 50 percent of total habitable land for agriculture.

Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories (as shown in the visualization above). 

If everyone were to adopt the average diet of the United States, we would need to convert all of our habitable land to agriculture, and we’d still be 38 percent short. For a New Zealand diet, we’d need almost twice as much habitable land as we have.

The pollution factor

• Food accounts for over a quarter (26%) of global greenhouse gas emissions1;
• Half of the world’s habitable (ice- and desert-free) land is used for agriculture;
• 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture2;
• 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication (the pollution of waterways with nutrient-rich pollutants) is caused by agriculture3;
• 94% of mammal biomass (excluding humans) is livestock. This means livestock outweigh wild mammals by a factor of 15-to-1.4 Of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture and aquaculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them.5
• Food, therefore, lies at the heart of trying to tackle climate change, reducing water stress, pollution, restoring lands back to forests or grasslands, and protecting the world’s wildlife. 

The biggest polluters by product

The biggest players

Tyson revenues 43.1

The question to ask is, how sustainable is this model?

According to the Evans School of Public Affairs ... questionable.

• Section One describes the impacts of intensive cropping practices, including monoculture, continuous cropping, conventional tillage, intensive livestock systems, and cultivation in fragile hillside areas.
• Section Two covers the impacts of using inputs associated with intensification, such as inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation systems, and new seed varieties.
• Section Three exemplifies the impacts of intensive cropping practices and inputs by examining intensive rice systems.
• Section Four extends the discussion from farming practices to examine the impacts of industrial crop processing.

Something to think about, especially in light of Global Warming, right?