In 2007, Food and Drug Administration officials advised consumers to discard toothpaste manufactured in China after discovering it contained ethyleneglycol, a chemical agent used in antifreeze.In China, the toxic ingredient melamine found its way into milk, infant formula, and pet food, sickening 294,000 children and causing at least 6 deaths.Ingredients are entering the United States from more than 100 countries with the dollar value doubling over the past decade to $80 billion in 2006. Once these ingredients are incorporated into processed foods, it is difficult and often impossible to trace them back to their source.As American food policies encourage the production of few crops and rely heavily on global imports for the rest, more cases of contamination are likely without aggressive policing and controls.Farm policies encouraging mass production have resulted in highly centralized farm practices that are more likely to result in environmental degradation. For example, fossil fuels are used to manufacture and transport fertilizer and pesticides over long distances; the raw and then finished products are then further transported, often back to their original locations; source water is also transported for agriculture use; and used water is commonly contaminated by chemical fertilizers and pesticides with resulting downstream “dead zones.” Ground and surface waters can also be polluted by antibiotics from CAFOs and by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and soil is depleted through overuse and lack of crop rotation. CAFOs generate enormous amounts of waste and air pollution, and they are perhaps the most egregious example of environmental degradation exacerbated by US farm policies. The savings to large livestock producers feeding their animals cheap subsidized grains have driven down the price of meats,growing blueberries in pots resulting in consolidation of livestock operations. Diversified farmers, using their own farm products and labor to raise livestock, are unable to compete with concentrated livestock industries that benefit from cheap inputs and economies of scale without regard to resulting environmental damage.
CAFOs lack sewage treatment plants, yet, because a pig produces about 4 times as much solid waste as a human, a typical CAFO of 5000 swine produces waste equivalent to a city of 20,000 people.This waste is expensive to transport, store, and dispose. Storage pits for livestock or poultry manure can leak into groundwater and streams; such pits become even more problematic if sited in a flood plain or below the water table. CAFOs generally produce more waste than can be used on nearby fields as fertilizer.Levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in the waste often exceed what the crops can utilize or the soil can retain. Correspondingly, excess nutrients contaminate surface waters and streams, causing algal overgrowth in nearby water bodies that devastate underwater ecological systems. Many feed ingredients used in CAFOs pass directly through the animal into manure,including carcinogenic heavy metals , antibiotics, nitrogen, and phosphorus. The manure also contains dust, mold, pathogenic bacteria, and bacterial endotoxins that contaminate air and water. Generally accepted livestock waste management practices do not adequately or effectively protect water resources from contamination with excessive nutrients, microbial pathogens, and pharmaceuticals present in the waste.Additionally, toxic gases, vapors, and particles are emitted from CAFOs into the environment, including ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, malodorous vapors, and particles contaminated with a wide range of microorganisms.The negative impact of CAFOs on nearby communities is a frequently voiced concern and is being increasingly documented. Finally, CAFOs contribute to the health threat of antibiotic resistance. Because large numbers of animals are kept in crowded conditions, microbes spread easily. Though physicians receive negative attention for contributing to antibiotic resistance by over prescribing antibiotics, antibiotics used to produce livestock account for the largest portion of antibiotic usage in the United States—between 60% and 80% of total non–therapeutic antimicrobials produced in the United States are used in US livestock operations.
The World Health Organization recently called for phasing out the use of antimicrobial growth stimulants for livestock and fish production.WHO recommended that therapeutic antimicrobial agents be available only by prescription for human and veterinary use. Additionally, concern about the risk of an influenza pandemic led WHO to recommend that regulations be promulgated to restrict the colocation of swine and poultry CAFOs on the same site and to set substantial separation distances. Aware that CAFOs present significant environmental and health risks, legislators have addressed them in recent Farm Bills. But rather than discouraging their practices, the Farm Bill directed hundreds of millions of dollars to CAFOs through the conservation title and rejected amendments, such as the Farm Ranch Equity Stewardship and Health Act, that would increase support for farmer’s using environmentally friendly practices. Under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, CAFOs are eligible for up to $450,000 to build storage facilities for animal sewage.Though 3 out of 4 farmers interested in Farm Bill conservation programs are rejected for lack of funds, it is antithetical to the protection of the environment and health to provide funds that enable the current operation of CAFOs rather than providing incentives for them to shift toward sustainable practices.The price of food to consumers does not contain the true costs of its production. The true costs include the cost of environmental cleanup, the costs to human health of toxic exposure and a lack of clean water sources, the costs of overusing fossil fuels, as well as the cost to future generations of growing food with the loss of severely depleted agricultural land.Population experts anticipate the addition of another roughly 3 billion people to the planet’s population by the mid-21st century. However, the amount of arable land has not changed appreciably in more than half a century. It is unlikely to increase much in the future because we are losing it to urbanization, salinization, and desertification as fast as or faster than we are adding it . Water scarcity is already a critical concern in parts of the world . Climate change also has important implications for agriculture.
The European heat wave of 2003 killed some 30,000 to 50,000 people . The average temperature that summer was only about 3.5°C above the average for the last century. The 20 to 36% decrease in the yields of grains and fruits that summer drew little attention. But if the climate scientists are right, summers will be that hot on average by midcentury, and by 2090 much of the world will be experiencing summers hotter than the hottest summer now on record. The yields of our most important food, feed, and fiber crops decline precipitously at temperatures much above 30°C . Among other reasons, this is because photosynthesis has a temperature optimum in the range of 20° to 25°C for our major temperate crops, and plants develop faster as temperature increases, leaving less time to accumulate the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins that constitute the bulk of fruits and grains . Widespread adoption of more effective and sustainable agronomic practices can help buffer crops against warmer and drier environments , but it will be increasingly difficult to maintain, much less increase, yields of our current major crops as temperatures rise and drylands expand . Climate change will further affect agriculture as the sea level rises, submerging low-lying cropland,drainage gutter and as glaciers melt, causing river systems to experience shorter and more intense seasonal flows, as well as more flooding . Recent reports on food security emphasize the gains that can be made by bringing existing agronomic and food science technology and knowhow to people who do not yet have it , as well as by exploring the genetic variability in our existing food crops and developing more ecologically sound farming practices . This requires building local educational, technical, and research capacity, food processing capability, storage capacity, and other aspects of agribusiness, as well as rural transportation and water and communications infrastructure. It also necessitates addressing the many trade, subsidy, intellectual property, and regulatory issues that interfere with trade and inhibit the use of technology. What people are talking about today, both in the private and public research sectors, is the use and improvement of conventional and molecular breeding, as well as molecular genetic modification , to adapt our existing food crops to increasing temperatures, decreased water availability in some places and flooding in others, rising salinity , and changing pathogen and insect threats . Another important goal of such research is increasing crops’ nitrogen uptake and use efficiency, because nitrogenous compounds in fertilizers are major contributors to waterway eutrophication and greenhouse gas emissions. There is a critical need to get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology and develop forward-looking regulatory frameworks based on scientific evidence. In 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, GM crops were grown on almost 300 million acres in 25 countries, of which 15 were developing countries . The world has consumed GM crops for 13 years without incident. The first few GM crops that have been grown very widely, including insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant corn, cotton, canola, and soybeans, have increased agricultural productivity and farmers’ incomes. They have also had environmental and health benefits, such as decreased use of pesticides and herbicides and increased use of no-till farming .
Despite the excellent safety and efficacy record of GM crops, regulatory policies remain almost as restrictive as they were when GM crops were first introduced. In the United States, case by-case review by at least two and sometimes three regulatory agencies is still commonly the rule rather than the exception. Perhaps the most detrimental effect of this complex, costly, and time-intensive regulatory apparatus is the virtual exclusion of public-sector researchers from the use of molecular methods to improve crops for farmers. As a result, there are still only a few GM crops, primarily those for which there is a large seed market , and the benefits of biotechnology have not been realized for the vast majority of food crops. What is needed is a serious reevaluation of the existing regulatory framework in the light of accumulated evidence and experience. An authoritative assessment of existing data on GM crop safety is timely and should encompass protein safety, gene stability, acute toxicity, composition, nutritional value, allergenicity, gene flow, and effects on non–target organisms. This would establish a foundation for reducing the complexity of the regulatory process without affecting the integrity of the safety assessment. Such an evolution of the regulatory process in the United States would be a welcome precedent globally. It is also critically important to develop a public facility within the USDA with the mission of conducting the requisite safety testing of GM crops developed in the public sector. This would make it possible for university and other public-sector researchers to use contemporary molecular knowledge and techniques to improve local crops for farmers. However, it is not at all a foregone conclusion that our current crops can be pushed to perform as well as they do now at much higher temperatures and with much less water and other agricultural inputs. It will take new approaches, new methods,new technology—indeed, perhaps even new crops and new agricultural systems. Aquaculture is part of the answer. A kilogram of fish can be produced in as little as 50 liters of water , although the total water requirements depend on the feed source. Feed is now commonly derived from wild-caught fish, increasing pressure on marine fisheries. As well, much of the growing aquaculture industry is a source of nutrient pollution of coastal waters, but self contained and isolated systems are increasingly used to buffer aquaculture from pathogens and minimize its impact on the environment . Another part of the answer is in the scale-up of dryland and saline agriculture . Among the research leaders are several centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture, and the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Systems that integrate agriculture and aquaculture are rapidly developing in scope and sophistication. A 2001 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report describes the development of such systems in many Asian countries. Today, such systems increasingly integrate organisms from multiple trophic levels . An approach particularly well suited for coastal deserts includes inland seawater ponds that support aquaculture, the nutrient efflux from which fertilizes the growth of halophytes, seaweed, salt-tolerant grasses, and mangroves useful for animal feed, human food, and bio–fuels, and as carbon sinks .If done on a sufficient scale, inland seawater systems could also compensate for rising sea levels.