Industrial-based agriculture has been both a blessing and burden to human society. It has allowed, if not driven, rapid population growth in many parts of the world, the development of specialized occupations other than food procurement, and the creation of complex and amazing human civilizations. At the same time industrial agriculture has been accompanied by human overpopulation and caused localized and global environmental degradation.
The current predicament facing modern industrial agriculture resides in the fact that resource- and energy-intensive food production methods developed in recent decades bring with them more than higher yields. The external costs have included contamination of ground and surface waters with nutrients and pesticides, ecosystem and wildlife destruction, human exposure to carcinogens, soil loss to erosion, and renewable and non-renewable resource depletion. At the same time, the exponentially growing human population will require still greater rates of food production. Can methods be developed and utilized to meet the growing human food demand without wreaking havoc on our global life support system?
The goal of this project is to contribute to the development of ecologically-based food production methods. The primary differences between industrial and ecological approaches to food production are that the former is based upon the idea that problems in agriculture can be solved with various types of manufactured inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizers, while the later is based upon the idea that problems can be solved through an understanding of ecological systems, through resource conservation, and by living within reasonable limits.
Although the primary goal is still to produce food, other important goals include the replacement of purchased, off-farm inputs with knowledge of farm ecology, systems integration for holistic resource management, and minimization of waste and environmental degradation and pollution.
| The location of the farms and the experimental study area at the Kellogg Biological Station. |
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