Stephen Budiansky lives on a farm in north Virginia, and is the author of four books dealing with the dynamics of the animal kingdom, including the widely acclaimed The Nature of Horses (1997). This article first appeared in The Washington Post on Apr. 15, 2001, and is reproduced here with the author's permission.

They're Serving Up a Pastoral Fantasy; But Small Farms Aren't the Answer to Every Agricultural Crisis

By Stephen Budiansky

ROUGHLY tidinessA MILLION ANIMALS have been slaughtered so far in the foot-and-mouth epidemic that is ravaging Britain's farms. And, in what has become an increasingly familiar pattern whenever a problem appears in the business of raising food, the seemingly uncontrollable spread of the disease is seen by many as proof of the dangers inherent in large-scale, high-technology, globally interdependent agriculture.

Like outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease"), the E. coli contamination of meat, the discovery of pesticide residues in fruits and the presence of genetically engineered corn in tortilla chips, the foot-and-mouth epidemic has been cited by environmental and animal-rights activists as evidence of the need to return to small-scale farming based on organic practices and traditional, supposedly natural methods of raising food. In part by playing on consumers' fears and environmental consciences, organic grocery chains such as Fresh Fields have become a booming business in upscale markets in the last few years.
There is some truth to the notion that the demands of globally oriented agriculture have hastened the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. One major, early vector of the disease in Britain was the transport of thousands of live sheep over long distances to markets that feed a large export industry. But in the larger picture, the attempt to use the epidemic as a rallying point against modern agricultural practices is simply false.

When I began raising sheep 20 years ago, I quickly learned that decisions about modern technology are never black and white. There are many things that bother me about the intensive, large-scale raising of livestock, including the potential environmental impact of the huge manure lagoons that are a fixture of large pig facilities, for example, and more generally the loss of personal contact between farmer and the livestock under his care that inevitably occurs in huge operations.

Local, small-scale production can help preserve farmland and open space, and rebuild personal connections between farmers and consumers. My wife and many fellow small-flock sheep producers in Loudoun County have been working hard to help build local markets for our lambs and wool: My family's 30-ewe flock supplies local hand spinners with natural colored fleeces, and we sell many of our lambs through the Loudoun Valley Sheep Producers, which runs a successful cooperative marketing venture selling lamb sausage.

Yet I cannot deny that some modern, high-tech farming practices are much better for the safety of the food supply, the well-being of livestock and the health of the environment than the traditional practices they have replaced. Remember, the recent foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain - which has since spread elsewhere in Europe - began not on any large "factory" operation with multinational connections, but rather on a small pig farm in the north of England run by two brothers who were feeding their animals swill recycled from local restaurants.

By contrast, the farms that epitomize high-tech excess and corporate control of agriculture - such as the high-intensity pig farms in North Carolina and elsewhere - are far and away the most safe from foot-and-mouth or other disease outbreaks. The animals are raised indoors where workers can control the unwanted intrusion of microbes by requiring employees and visitors to pass through disinfection procedures and don special protective clothing when entering. The pigs are fed processed, commercially manufactured feeds that are much safer from microbial contamination than swill.

On my farm, I can't count the number of lambs and ewes that simply would have dropped dead - and the many more that would have endured much needless suffering - were it not for antibiotics, vaccinations and worming medications, all of which are taboo to organic producers.

We just finished lambing a few weeks ago, and it's always an exhilarating and exhausting time of year - and a reminder that nature is both beautiful and terrible. When the lambs are a few days old they get turned out from their pens with their mothers, and I doubt any shepherd ever really tires of watching them charge about the field in their own little playful herds, stopping every once in a while to baa and run back to the placid ewes. Yet there's always a dark cloud hovering. Even in a small flock like ours, where the ewes have access to pasture year round and give birth to their lambs on clean straw, the risk of disease around lambing time is a constant nemesis. The many internal parasites that afflict sheep explode in number at just that point - when ewes and their offspring are most vulnerable. A whole family of bacteria, including tetanus and its many relatives, is ready to invade the newborns and their mothers. A lamb can be gamboling one day and drop dead the next from these infections. So I for one am ever grateful to those large multinational chemical companies that make dewormers and antibiotics.

Even issues like the use of agro-chemicals are not cut and dried. It is obviously better to reduce the use of chemicals. But on the other hand, the farmers in our area who practice no-till farming of their field crops - which requires the use of chemical herbicides to control weeds - have, for example, made a major contribution to the health of the Chesapeake Bay by reducing soil erosion. By disturbing the soil only minimally to plant a crop, and leaving a cover of plant stubble and other crop residues, no-till methods reduce soil erosion practically to zero - a far cry from traditional tillage, which repeatedly exposes soil to wind and water erosion by turning the ground over and repeatedly cultivating with mechanical hoes to control weeds.

And in the bigger picture, scientist Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station has shown that high-tech, high-yield farming in general - made possible by the panoply of modern technologies such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, hybrid seeds, growth hormones and improved strains of livestock - has already preserved for wildlife millions of acres of land that would otherwise have come under the plow to feed people.

In the past two generations, the amount of cropland cultivated per person in America has fallen by half, even as Americans eat better and export more. According to Waggoner's calculations, as a result of more efficient methods of raising feed grains as well as in the use of that feed by livestock, 50 million acres have been spared in the United States alone, an area equal to one and a half times the entire state of Iowa - or 24 Yellowstone National Parks. The adoption of intensive technologies by wheat growers in India has spared 100 million acres of land since the 1960s that otherwise would have been needed for new production. Much the same argument can be made about genetically modified crops, which have provoked a wave of almost hysterical opposition in Europe and growing concerns here, but have the potential to reduce the need for chemical pesticides and to spare more land by increasing yields.

The traditional and supposedly "sustainable" methods of farming many consumers think they should encourage are in fact often terribly wasteful of nature and natural resources.

No doubt, things can and should be improved in the way food is commercially produced, but there is nothing inherent in modern agricultural systems and technology that makes such problems inevitable or uncorrectable once discovered. Given the standards of sanitation that prevailed in the good old days, I am skeptical that the effects on human health are worse today than, say, 100 years ago, when diarrhea from food poisoning was one of the leading causes of death.

The idea that whatever is "natural" is also automatically healthy for people and the environment is a seductive one. Faith in the goodness of nature has its roots in the 19th-century romantic reaction against industrialization and the loss of the bucolic way of life. But farmers have always known that nature is both good and bad. There are undeniable reasons to be careful and judicious about the adoption of new technologies. But a purely natural alternative would not have prevented the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain, nor will it achieve the utopia that is claimed for it.

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