The American agriculture system needs a serious overhaul as the world’s population rises and viable land becomes more limited. There is a false perception that the resources needed to support humanity are scarce and fixed. It is certainly possible to support a growing population, but we must embrace novel technologies and new methods of resource allocation, moving beyond antiquated approaches that are inefficient and harmful to those working in the industry and environment. Major players in the industry intentionally reject opportunities for innovation, preferring to continuously profit off of commodity crops, sold not to consumers but to other food producers for further processing. In order to publicly legitimize these practices, they leverage contrived images of traditional American agriculture that are not reflective of their actual processes, aligning themselves with conservatism and pragmatism. They refuse to risk their profits and their mythological place in the American traditional psyche instead of making practical, productive, and socially responsible advancements.
The industry’s alignment with traditional American values, as well as the fact that it is a major and essential component of the American economy, allow it to slide under the radar when it comes to issues of subsidization. There’s no doubt that the current federal administration is majorly concerned with government size and spending, but the farming industry is seemingly exempt from concerns about waste and bloat. Trump and his administration members charged with cutting costs have designated certain demographics and sectors as especially expensive or wasteful. For example, immigrant or refugee populations, and essential research institutions that once relied on federal funding. Like other sectors, in the wake of Trump’s increased tariffs, American farmers reckoned with the growing volatility of the global economy, as well as increased operation costs. Unlike other industries, though, farmers are not only exempt from major funding cuts unlike food stamps and higher education, but in fact offered reprieve in the form of increased subsidies.
These benefits were not distributed equitably. Corporate farms — especially ones that grow commodity crops such as corn and wheat — received a disproportionately large amount of relief in comparison to orchards and smaller farms that grow uncovered crops. Commodity crops are generally easy and fast to produce, have lower calorie-to-landmass ratios, and are grown for sale to commodity markets rather than directly to consumers (that is, turned into processed food products or feed for livestock). They are less nutritious than “specialty crops” that are primarily sold for direct consumption, and dominate the American agriculture industry. Aside from crops that are diverted for animal consumption, animal agriculture uses more than 75% of all agricultural land worldwide. Two of every five acres on Earth are agricultural, and many forests — important carbon sinks — have been converted for agricultural use.
I don’t say all of this to imply this is a purely Trumpian issue. Democrats and Republicans alike have faced backlash for pandering to commercial farmers, especially those represented in major lobbying groups that wield huge political influence. This is a bipartisan and time-tested tradition which falsely contributes to public perception of the farming industry as humble, clean, traditional, and uniquely American. In fact, many Americans don’t think much about where their food comes from at all, partially because food production is often isolated to very rural places, leaving few witnesses in an increasingly urban nation. Misunderstandings of what our food systems look like are pernicious and pervasive, and prevent serious conversations about labor rights, pollution, and more from occurring.
We do, in fact, produce enough food to feed every human alive right now, we just aren’t distributing these calories equitably or efficiently. We choose to use them as food for livestock instead of humans. Further incentivization of the growth of commodity crops is dangerous not only because the food we end up producing is worse for us, but also because huge amounts of calories are lost during the production process. This is an issue of feed conversion ratios and landmass efficiency. It takes millions more calories, for example, to raise a single beef cattle for slaughter than they will provide in meat. This is also an issue of farmland; while cropland is increasing, the proportion of the crops grown for direct human consumption is decreasing significantly. America specifically relies largely on imported produce due to the overprioritization of commodity crops, despite the fact that we are entirely capable of producing these specialty crops domestically.
American agriculture is under extreme stress, not only as a result of tariffs or preference for commodity crops with higher profit margins, but also because of Trump’s attack on immigration. The sector is propped up massively by migrant labor, with almost three in four farmworkers being immigrants. Immigrants too rely on these jobs, as they most often do not have other employment options. Attacks on work visas that fill the need for labor by the Trump administration are doubly concerning. This is work that must be done, and the industry has a fundamental issue with worker’s rights: migrants will do these jobs regardless of their immigration status in order to survive, but those without proper documentation are at a major disadvantage in terms of their labor protections. As Swarthmore Assistant Professor Salvador Rangel put it in a lecture on migrant labor in the meatpacking industry last spring, “Immigration status is directly indicative of the level of labor abuse that the individual is allowed to be subjected to.” On a fundamental level, these attacks are indicative of vehemently hateful and dehumanizing views of immigrants — particularly those hailing from the Global South.
Poor standards of worker care are typical throughout the American agricultural industry, and bias exacerbates subpar treatment for workers who are minorities or don’t speak fluent English, cultivating cultures of fear in the very communities that prop up our food system. The farmworkers in question not only suffer from normalized poor treatment but also poor pay. They are at the mercy of the same corporations that benefit from subsidies dolled out by the federal government for efficiently churning out massive amounts of commodity crops.
The stress the industry is under is exacerbated by more inherent and less avoidable issues. Of chief importance is the fact that agriculture both contributes to and suffers from climate change. Multiple majorly polluting practices in the industry are exceedingly difficult to avoid, some of the biggest of which are overtilling, excessive fertilizer use, and the amount of methane released by cattle. This pollution contributes to climate change, making extreme weather events more common and more severe, impacting farmers and their farms in various ways. Climate change increases global temperatures and therefore soil aridity; it has also caused significant increases in insurance premiums due to increased risk, especially for farms that raise specialty crops rather than commodities.
The actions of the agriculture industry — particularly in wealthy, landmass-rich nations like the United States — have real implications worldwide, especially as the global population grows towards a projected 10 billion around 2050. We must be smarter about the ways in which we use the calories we produce and the land we have, especially in the face of decreasing yields and other adverse effects of climate change.
American agriculture is, currently, an industry reliant on exceedingly unethical labor practices; engaged in a self-destructive pollutant loop, which does not produce enough calories to feed the population; and does not have the best interests of consumers in mind, despite the obvious and essential fact that almost every single person in America is fatally reliant on this system. The future of food, I am inclined to say, has a lot to do with managing the expectations of consumers by walking back on the excessive abundance and diversity of foods available to the average American; our animal-rich diets are not sustainable long-term. Disproportionate distribution of calories leads to both hunger and waste. Wealthy nations that produce large shares of global food products need to prioritize equitable distribution and disincentivize the conversion of huge amounts of valuable crops into animal products and processed foods. Embracing innovative technologies will enable farmers to produce more food, use less land, and lower their environmental impact. It is also essential to create protections for farmworkers that transcend legal immigration status and prioritize the financial wellbeing of farms that are smaller and that do not produce commodity crops. In order for all of this to happen, we must let go of fairytale ideas of America as the heartland of traditional agriculture and excessive abundance.
