Global Industrial Agriculture

Savior of people & the planet, or catastrophe in the making?

No human being questions the importance of agriculture. A hazier discussion is how to maintain the wholeness of Earth’s natural habitats while providing quality food for humanity into perpetuity.

Civilization has spent millennia perfecting monoculture farming, by killing competing weeds, tilling the ground, mechanical seeding, applying irrigation, and so on. The Green Revolution of the mid 20^th century went further, by pioneering new varieties of corn, wheat, and other crops that could convert high levels of nitrogen fertilizer into more yield per acre, among other advances. The Green Revolution, advocates claimed, was essential to feed a growing global population.

Monoculture of corn in Oakdale, Nebraska. Photo by John H. Giordanengo

In a recent lecture in Madison, WI on Systems Thinking for Sustainable Economies I asked the class if this statement was true: Modern monoculture farms are good for habitat conservation because they can feed more people per acre. In other words, the global agricultural system as we know it—following the Green Revolution—grows more food per acre, so fewer of Earth’s limited ecosystems will be converted into monocultures of corn, wheat, and so forth. Most students shook their head no, or furrowed their brows.

Modern monocultures require a reduction in biological and economic diversity, and require substantial input of chemicals, fossil fuels, nitrogen, and more. How, then, could a Harvard sustainability study claim that monocultures are good for conservation?¹

Abiding by the Unity of Knowledge (from cells to economies)

Thomas Paine, a founding father of the United States of America, wrote extensively on natural rights and the power of nature to understand social issues. Paine and his colleagues steeped themselves in systems thinking before it was vogue—two centuries later. One of my favorite Paine quotes, passed on from my brother Rich, is that “He who takes nature for his guide is not easily beaten out of his argument...”²

To help understand Paine’s thinking, we also covered the concept of consilience in Madison. Consilience is an ancient word revived by E.O. Wilson in his 1998 book of the same name. Early Greek philosophers used consilience to test the validity of universal principles, logic, and reasoning. Every principle and rule must align with properties and phenomena at all “lower” and “higher” levels of complexity. In short, if someone designs an airplane under the assumption that gravity does not exist, I recommend you don’t hop aboard.

The School of Athens, by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, in Vatican City, Rome. Photo by John H. Giordanengo.

An abundance of feedback loops are constantly at work to keep the system in balance. For instance, every human cell must consume oxygen, and it must emit carbon dioxide to survive. If we hold our breath, and try convincing ourselves that we are not self-regulating beings, the brain will send a signal to the diaphragm to contract, forcing fresh air into our lungs. The lungs, heart, and other organs interact predictably to maintain a healthy body, capable of acquiring food and water, building shelter, starting families and communities, and building economies—without which we cannot survive. The more complex the system, the more feedback loops exist to keep it in balance.

Studies claiming global-scale industrial monocultures are needed to protect ecosystems and feed the world lack consilience on several accounts—they are misaligned with the unity of natural and social laws governing planet Earth. Such studies often use approaches like mass balancing (accounting for materials entering and leaving a system), to identify solutions to environmental pollution challenges, or to track recycled materials flowing into and out of an economy.

In the case of monocultures, mass balancing might consider the raw calories produced by the global farm system, and the calories ingested by the global population in a year, and draw the conclusions posed above. Those conclusions—which can direct global and national policies—do not account for the following:

1. The degradation of system components, which require maintenance. Thirty-three million acres of the Corn Belt has lost its topsoil entirely.³ Soils without organic matter (they lack topsoil) require more water, fertilizer, and other inputs to maintain productivity. About 29 million more have moderate to high topsoil loss. Hence, the efficiency of the system has been lowered. Maintaining a degraded system in a financially viable state requires a continual supply of cheap energy, fertilizers, and water.

2. The food waste of long supply chains, and the behavioral responses to cheap food. About 35% of food is wasted before it reaches the consumer.⁴ More food is wasted after reaching the consumer, due to basic psychology. The cheaper a product is, the more a consumer will waste.

3. The energy inefficiency of long supply chains for food. Global food supply chains (1,500 miles on average) consume more than twice as much energy than local supply chains (less than 50 miles).⁵

4. The nutrient diversity and nutrient density of many modern crops are lower today than before the Green Revolution.⁶ Humans may receive more empty calories, but fewer of the essential nutrients needed for a healthy body.

5. Many countries experiencing food security are net exporters of food.⁷ The basic tenet of industrial farming is the same as any large scale factory: to concentrate resources (energy, nitrogen, water, financial subsidies) into production areas, so that cheap food can be shipped to locations where people will pay more. In the process, money is made by intermediaries along the supply chain.

6. Two billion humans suffer from moderate to severe food insecurity today.⁸ For perspective, two billion was the global population one generation before the Green Revolution.

Portion of Corn Belt in Nebraska with minimal to no remaining topsoil. Photo by John H. Giordanengo.

Growing more cheap food and shipping it around the globe does not resolve food insecurity. Rather, basic biological principles imply that continual exogenous food inputs simply stimulate population growth. In many countries, the global agricultural system has increased human populations to the point they are unbalanced with a region’s or nation’s domestic (endogenous) resources. The resulting population cannot sustain itself without continual inputs. In ecological terms, the carrying capacity becomes exceeded.

The Business and Economic Insight

Our economy’s foundational components—diversity, energy, and trade—affect farmers in predictable yet unfortunate ways. In Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies, I dedicate a few sections to Oakdale, a small Nebraska town that is a poster child of the Green Revolution. Tremendous agricultural diversity built this small town and the surrounding region into a thriving and inspirational economy, and a seamless monoculture of corn destroyed it. Today, churches are boarded up for those who yearn to worship. The stately red brick school diversity built is closed to those who yearn for education. This is no fault of hard-working Nebraskans. Globally oriented trade policies, cheap (abundant) fossil fuels, and other national acts conspired in killing Oakdale.

Oakdale, Nebraska, USA in 2020. Photos by John H. Giordanengo

Counter to intuition, American farmers are poorer today than they were before the Green Revolution, largely due to the high cost of fertilizer and other inputs.⁹ This scenario pressures small farmers to sell their farmland to larger corporations, or to farm larger areas, to gain the economies of scale necessary to make financial ends meet.

Agricultural subsidies, bailouts, and other efforts also helped push America’s agricultural industry into a low-diversity, low-profit system. Similar efforts are waged globally, stimulating overproduction of crops that cause commodity prices to fall. This pressures farmers to further expand their monocultures to maintain economies of scale—to survive amidst a system of global farms from hundreds of different contexts: regions with cheaper land, low-cost labor, and few if any regulatory constraints. Alternatively, farmers can move operations to organic rich soils (areas with native topsoil), which requires tilling up natural habitats that have accumulated organic matter for millennia. The result is habitat destruction, not protection.

Restoring the most degraded soils in the Corn Belt is estimated to cost well over US $1.1 trillion dollars, an expense not accounted for in the years when farm outputs contributed to GDP.¹⁰ That is, GDP ignores the degradation of system components. The moment a nation or industry accounts for maintenance costs, a harsh reality sets in. The current agricultural system has lowered net productivity and productive capacity,¹¹ due to the loss of topsoil. Furthermore, a low diversity agricultural system is more susceptible to volatility: climate change, shifting global labor markets, supply chain disruptions, ever-shifting tariff policies, rising costs of fertilizer and energy, and so on.

It’s not a matter of if a natural feedback loop will force America and other nations to rebalance their agricultural and economic systems (to breathe again), but when.

Policy and Program Insights (Natural Philosophy, Sovereignty, and War)

Thomas Paine believed that in times of crisis it is our moral imperative to chastise those who promote fundamentally flawed systems, or whose actions destroy the sovereignty and freedom of a nation and its people. His publications during the American Revolutionary War, Common Sense and The American Crisis, inspired the small oppressed colonies to gain independence from the reigning global superpower—Great Britain. In describing Great Britain, Paine wrote “Never did a nation invite destruction upon itself with the eagerness and the ignorance with which Britain has done.”¹²

If acts of war are de facto attacks on humanity’s natural freedoms or on a nation’s sovereignty, we might apply the same reasoning to modern agriculture. Green Revolution-style agriculture appears an act of war on the free interactions of a great diversity of species and businesses, producing homogenized ecological and economic landscapes that are far from self-regulating. Those systems are grossly out of balance, incapable of sustaining themselves without continual inputs. It’s like being on artificial life support.

Considering the state of our economy at large, has America’s eager promotion of global market capitalism invited destruction upon itself? If so, we might agree that America’s unstable trade balloon, unprecedented concentrations of wealth into few hands, the great economic extinction event in agriculture and manufacturing, and rising social and environmental crises have put the U.S. in a thin, weak, and tenuous position in the face of a turbulent 21^st century.

U.S. Trade Balloon. Percentages are relative to total GDP. About 82% of GDP is comprised of “unproductive” industries, sustained more by the productive capacity of other nations than by the productive capacity of the U.S. Graphic from Giordanengo.(2025) Balloon image courtesy of Rocky Mountain Balloon Rides.

It is our moral imperative to not simply question the current global market system, but to spend our limited energy, creativity, and good will building a better model. That rebuilding is the process of restoration. We cannot simply add diversity to our state and regional economies without first deflating our global trade policies. We cannot simply hold our breathe, waiting for the world to run out of cheap energy, or for the World Bank, UN, and other transnational entities to change trade rules in favor of local and regional economic health. Stimulating economic diversity—and its key benefits—requires we work with our local, regional, and state policymakers to reorient trade and energy policies away from global markets and toward regional and state markets.

Benefits of ecological and economic diversity. Table from Giordanengo (2025).

Tariffs are one policy means. However, a more thoughtful strategy is needed to rebalance a severely unbalanced global trade model. Rather than use tariffs as a threat, they must be used as a restorative tool, with tariff revenues allocated to states to rebuild industries at the base of a balanced (sustainable) trade pyramid. This includes restoring the capacity of regional manufacturing, investing in a thriving waste-to-resources sector, building a renewable energy industry capable of meeting a region’s economic needs, and restoring other industries at the base of the trade pyramid. A diversity of policy and program tools are available for local, state, and federal planners to restore their economies, and abundant organizational and technological means exist for industry and business to enact restorative solutions.

Balanced (Sustainable) Trade Pyramid. GDP of a nation or state is in blue, with the bulk of productivity supported by industries in the bottom two tiers of the pyramid.

In the U.S. and many other nations, agricultural subsidies must be eliminated. In their place, agricultural policies and programs must shift toward restoring every nation’s capacity to feed its citizenry—to ensure food security around the globe. Abundant alternatives exist, including regenerative agriculture, sustainable agriculture, biodynamic farming, regional food security and food sovereignty programs, and others summarized in Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a Sustainable State).

In a consilient manner, economic restoration may provide a means not simply to sustain our needs in a turbulent 21^st century but, in the process, a means to re-mending the wholeness of our communities.

Biodynamic farm at Ridgewood Ranch, Mendocino California. Photo by John H. Giordanengo

Books Now Available

For a deeper dive on restoring our economies, you can purchase a copy of the 2^nd edition of Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a Sustainable State), available at Anthem Press and just about anywhere else you shop for books.

Attend a Talk on Economic Restoration this Spring

If you’re interested in attending a spring talk on this subject: the full schedule is here. In-person and virtual attendance options are available.

Notes

1. Paarlberg, R. 2021. ‘The Environmental Upside of Modern Agriculture’. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-environmental-upside-of-modern-farming-11612534962

2. Paine, T. 1776. Common Sense. https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1776ThomasPaine.pdf

3. Thaler, E.A., I.J. Larsena, and Q. Yua. 2021. The extent of soil loss across the US Corn Belt. PNAS, 118(8), 1-8. https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1922375118

4. Recycle Track Systems. 2023. ‘Food Waste in America in 2021: Statistics and Facts’. Recycle Track Systems. Accessed on 08 April, 2023. https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/

5. Giordanengo, J.H. 2025. Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a Sustainable State), 2^nd Edition. Anthem Press.

6. Murphy, K.M., P.G. Reeves, and S.S. Jones. 2008. Relationship between yield and mineral nutrient concentrations is historical and modern spring wheat cultivars. Euphytica, 163(3), 381-390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-008-9681-x

Brown, G. 2020. ‘Regenerative Agriculture: Details of a Profitable Journey’. McHenry County College. https://www.mchenry.edu/cal/flyers/Forefront-Regenerative.pdf

7. Capra, F. and P.L. Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge University Press.

8. FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2019. ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019. ‘Safeguarding against economic slowdowns and downturns’. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’. https://www.wfp.org/publications/2019-state-food-security-and-nutrition-world-sofi-safeguarding-against-economic

9. Dreibus, T. 2019. ‘Farmers got Older, Income Fell, Ag Census Shows’. Successful Farming. Accessed on 03 January, 2020. https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/farmers-got-older-income-fell-ag-census-data-shows

10. Giordanengo, J.H. 2025. Ecosystems as Models for Restoring our Economies (To a Sustainable State), 2^nd Edition. Anthem Press.

11. Net Domestic Product, True: Productivity of an economy or industry after accounting for the depreciation of capital assets, social assets, and ecological assets. At a given level of gross domestic productivity, NDP increases with the efficient use of resources. NDP decreases with the inefficient use of resources.

Productive Capacity: The ability of an entity (e.g., nation, region, industry, or business) to produce goods and services now and in the future. An entity can raise or lower its productive capacity by manipulating factors such as the quantity and skill of workers, entrepreneurship, natural and economic resources, and technology. Productive capacity increases with the efficient use of resources.

12. Paine, T. 1778. ‘The American Crisis: LANCASTER, March 21, 1778.’ US History.org. https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-05.htm?srsltid=AfmBOopq0ADDBxgDW_CE-n_lUY8Gi7jbfRgwILiyzvzyj-FUd69WsV3e