Bigger is always better, isn’t it? Big cars, big houses, big businesses, big farms. If you were big, you made more money. Clearly, that is the way of the world. When Europeans colonized the Americas, they wanted more land — not some of it; all of it. Napoleon wanted more land. Nothing stopped him until Waterloo.

So, do you think that the human race, has reached its Waterloo? Have we finally hit the wall with our never-ending desire for “bigness”? I decided years ago that I didn’t want my farming operation to get bigger. I liked milking 45 cows, raising their feed and doing a little direct marketing.

I liked being small.

“Hopelessly behind the times,” I was told. Local cheese makers were giving up; local meat processing was a thing of the past. Small farming was dead. The developing world couldn’t feed itself and needed industrial farming systems.

Who could argue with the Green Revolution? Until the current food crisis. Not so much a shortage of food but a shortage of cheap food.

The poor can’t afford to eat, and the middle class feels the pinch. Why wasn’t industrial agriculture, farming fence row to fence row, feeding the world?

And there’s the rub, feeding the world was never the intention. In the ’70s, well-meaning researchers and eager graduate students, myself included, were convinced we could eliminate hunger in our lifetime. We had good intentions, but the big picture was always about making a profit.

Farmers with cheap fuel, fertilizer, and plenty of chemicals, could plant more acres, produce enough volume, and generally make a profit.

This, of course, benefited the seed and chemical companies that long ago figured out small farmers saving their own seed and tending small acreages didn’t spend much money.

Full Story: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/5/20157/28555?source=food