General Discussion

Unfortunately, aside from burning fossil fuels, agriculture is the most environmentally destructive thing humans do.

We ought to do our best to minimize it.

It should be possible to be an ethical and environmentally responsible farmer in the United States but that's not the norm for a lot of reasons.

Frankly, U.S. farmers, miners, ranchers, and other rural voters are pandered to in the United States because their votes have more political clout than urban voters (which is a deep flaw in our Constitution), but even worse, most consumers don't think too much about where their food or biofuels come from.

Cheap factory farm meat and dairy products are not necessities. Fuel ethanol and biodiesel are not necessities. HFCS and sugar soft drinks are not necessities. We could re-wild land that currently supports these agricultural industries and nobody would starve.

I'm most familiar with California's Central Valley. Large portions of that should never have been converted to farmland and really ought to be converted back to something resembling a natural state. Currently the big industrial farmers of that region enjoy too much political power largely because people are conditioned to believe without question that farming is good and farmers can't be bad people.

That question may become moot however as California's population density approaches that of Japan in the coming century. Nobody wants to live near a factory farm dairy operation or chicken producer and the price of a gallon of milk, a pound of hamburger, or a Costco broiled chicken really isn't going to stop further urbanization. Nor will it matter if the cost of water is higher than farmers can pay.

Farming isn't a sacred occupation any more than coal mining is.