Quote:I think what you're calling a farming system is more like widespread bad practices/techniques and probably more prevelant in some developing countries rather than here.


If I made my soil unusable then I'd quickly be out of a job. So that is definitely not part of our "farming system" out this way. I can't speak for other places but all of the stuff you're talking about is very carefully tracked and monitored in the Central Valley, and I'd wager we're probably the most industrialized agricultural region in the world.

"Using USDA data, he found that broccoli, for example, had 130 mg of calcium in 1950. Today, that number is only 48 mg. What's going on? Davis believes it's due to the farming industry's desire to grow bigger vegetables faster. The very things that speed growth — selective breeding and synthetic fertilizers — decrease produce's ability to synthesize nutrients or absorb them from the soil.

 

"A different story is playing out with organic produce. "By avoiding synthetic fertilizers, organic farmers put more stress on plants, and when plants experience stress, they protect themselves by producing phytochemicals," explains Alyson Mitchell, PhD, a professor of nutrition science at the University of California, Davis. Her 10-year study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that organic tomatoes can have as much as 30 percent more phytochemicals than conventional ones."

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37396355/ns/he...NsFQqK1tPY

 

"Soil erosion from farmland threatens the productivity of agricultural fields and causes a number of problems elsewhere in the environment. An average of 10 times as much soil erodes from American agricultural fields as is replaced by natural soil formation processes. Because it takes up to 300 years for 1 inch of agricultural topsoil to form, soil that is lost is essentially irreplaceable." http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/facts-slides...grw85.aspx

 

"Over the past 50 years, the negative effects of soil erosion on farm productivity have been masked by improved technology and increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides. Ironically, many of these measures used to increase the short-term productivity of American farms are also causing excessive erosion, which threatens productivity over the long term."

 

"Even when soil erosion is not excessive, intensive agriculture can impair soil quality by depleting the natural supplies of trace elements and organic matter. In natural ecosystems, soil fertility is maintained by the diverse contributions and recycling of nutrients by a wide range of plant and animal species. When this diversity is replaced by a single species grown year after year, some trace elements are depleted if not replaced by fertilization. The organic content of the soil also diminishes unless crop residues or other organic materials are supplied in sufficient quantities to replace that consumed over time." http://psep.cce.cornell.edu/facts-slides...grw85.aspx

 

So nutritional density is going down, top soil is being depleted at rates 10 times faster than it can be remade and fertilizer with mono-cultures is destroying the soil that's left. And all of that is here, in the US. I am in no way an 'environmentalist' but the problem is fairly obvious.

You probably don't engage in these practices (I hope), but there is no doubt that a majority do (although that's certainly changing/will change).

 

Actually rereading your comment, I don't think we actually disagree on anything other than whether this is occurring in US.

 

 

Edit: didn't like a source so I removed quote.

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