Why Does USDA Talk Sustainability While directing Our Tax $ to Unsustainable Systems?

Answer from a USDA scientist

That’s a very good question. It seems to me that there is a diligent undercurrent of sustainable agriculture, and that SARE and other USDA initiatives are doing their share to help to assist and lead sustainable agricultural development in the United States. But I think that sustainable agriculture is too often seen by the larger agricultural community, be if researchers or farmers or feds, as a niche market (which is also what they say about organics). I think that the USDA-ARS does better than most in trying to orient all research toward sustainability of food and fiber production. But they don’t seem to moralize beyond that, and we would need a congress interested in changing the food system to truly create a mandate, similar to what was done in forming the soil conservation service, and is currently being forwarded through the USDA-NRCS in terms of cleaning up agricultural effects. But that is not a fundamental change in the systems of production away from petroleum-based management any more than there is a true change toward reducing petroleum consumption. The world population keeps growing, and that creates the excuse for letting agri-industry supply it with food – sometimes good food, all too often careless manufactured food. And of course that has to do with capitalism and global agri-food systems and crop subsidies and the fact that chemical agriculture produces massive yields. Change needs to come from the citizens, and science needs to provide the tools for changing.