Green Eats

When I talk to people about buying local and organic the number one argument I come up against is cost – it costs more to buy local or to buy organic. Industrial agriculture proponents like to point out that conventional farming is a "cheaper" venture than traditional (read: sustainable) farming. They posit that growing one crop means you have a smaller number of variables to deal with (variety of pests, growing conditions for different crops, etc) as well as single known entity to concentrate on (corn for instance) that will provide a fairly certain profit (hence the idea of commodity crops). By growing only one thing you can focus on that one thing, grow big, and maximize profit.

Well I call bull on that argument. Let's say you inherit $500,000 from your grandmother. How do you invest that? Do you go out and buy $500,000 worth of Microsoft stock? Do you buy a $500,000 piece of property and wait for it to rise in value? As the saying goes, do you put all your eggs in one basket? Any investment adviser worth her weight will tell you that you need to diversify. What happens when all your money is tied up in the housing market and housing starts plummet?

That, my friends, is one of the basic principles behind sustainable (and smart) agriculture. By growing a variety of crops or raising a variety of livestock you are diversifying your investment – spreading the risk. That way, when an outbreak of late blight  hits (as it did up and down the East coast this summer) you don't go broke when you lose your tomato crop. You still have squash, onions, beets, eggs, and pork.

Industrial agriculture necessitates a monoculture crop – an inherently risky investment. No amount of agricultural science and know-how can prevent crop decimation from a novel fungus or chemical-resistant pest. Sustainable (diversified) agriculture gives you some insurance. Barring a catastrophe you will have a crop to bring to market.

So when people ask you why go sustainable all you need to do is tell them that its the better investment, period.