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A brief history of American farming
The USDA, reform agent
By Culinate staff
December 15, 2009
It can be easy to dismiss big governmental agencies as lumbering bureaucracies, slow to change. But a recent New Yorker article shines a different light on the USDA, highlighting its innovative role a century ago in encouraging America’s farmers to be, well, better farmers. What’s the news hook? That the health-care reform plans currently being debated in Congress might work in the same way — fostering more efficient, cheaper, and effective health care. So maybe wheat cultivation is like brain surgery.
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There are 2 comments on this item
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1. by Heather Christensen on Dec 15, 2009 at 1:45 PM PST
There are some flaws in the basic metaphor in this article. Most importantly, it ignores the fact that farmers were encouraged to replace dependence on cheap labor and cheap land with dependence on cheap oil.
2. by Caroline Cummins on Dec 19, 2009 at 6:01 PM PST
Heather -- This idea was also written up recently on Civil Eats:
http://civileats.com/2009/12/17/memo-to-atul-gawande-the-agricultural-revolution-failed/
Gawande only talks about traditional methods of improving agriculture: crop rotation, soil amendments, and the like. Sure, maybe much of the cheapness and efficiency of modern agriculture is due to petroleum. But his point is that agriculture can be improved with simple methods and, more to the point, by farmers simply talking to one another about new ideas.
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