PHOTO BY BRYAN WELCH
This is no chicken-little scenario. Agribusiness is not destroying the human habitat (although it probably could, given time). We need to give due credit to the architects of the first “green revolution.” The benefits of agricultural productivity are real. We have fed a lot more people than would have been possible without technology. But a lot of people believe that the world would be a better place if we re-focused agricultural priorities on local food, environmental preservation and healthy farmers.
Agriculture’s green revolution underlines in a powerful way this basic biological fact: We live at the expense of other creatures. Every living thing does. We can, through symbiotic relationships or good husbandry, cooperate with other creatures to increase biological productivity overall, but at the end of the day if we disappeared, other living things would take advantage of the resources we no longer consumed.
And because I am alive — because you are alive — a lot of other creatures never get the chance to live.
