A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

Escaping Agricultural Sacrifice Zones: Destructive vs. Regenerative Agriculture

From Steven Disla, T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies
March 2023

Industrialized agriculture’s ever-expanding economies of scale require large-scale monocultures to stay relevant on the world stage. These monocultures lack biodiversity and leave soils in a weakened state, creating a reliance on artificial fertilizers. In turn, monocultures built on weakened soils are more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and therefore they require poisonous pesticides that further weaken the soil food web.

The term sacrifice zone was coined during the Cold War to articulate the impact of nuclear testing. These were areas so damaged and devastated by nuclear radiation that they were deemed unfit for life. As time progressed, the term began to take on new meanings; by and large, it has referred to areas cataclysmically altered by human actions, including the production of nuclear weapons, fossil fuels, mining operations, and other industrial processes with high pollution rates.

Though we do not see or discuss them as often, the outsized environmental impacts of industrialized agriculture belong in the same category, producing sacrifice zones at such a large scale that they dwarf all other industries. That is because of industrialized agriculture’s ever-expanding economies of scale, which require large-scale monocultures to stay relevant on the world stage. These monocultures lack biodiversity and leave soils in a weakened state, creating a reliance on artificial fertilizers. In turn, monocultures built on weakened soils are more vulnerable to pests and diseases, and therefore they require poisonous pesticides that further weaken the soil food web.

This is a self-reinforcing loop of death: agricultural zones (and those downstream and downwind) become sacrifice zones.

....

Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

---

Return to Meat and Dairy Articles
Read more at Environment Articles