Environmental degradation is a worldwide phenomenon. It is manifested in the clearing of forests, polluted waterways, soil erosion, the loss of biodiversity, the presence of chemicals in the ecosystem and a host of other concerns. Modern agricultural practices have been implicated in much of this degradation. This chapter explores the connections between the form of agricultural production undertaken in advanced nations – so-called ‘productivist’ or ‘high-tech’ farming – and environmental degradation. It is argued that the entrenchment of productivist agriculture has placed considerable, and continuing, pressures on the environment and, second, that while no new options for a more sustainable agriculture and new policies are being proposed to tackle the existing problem, the underlying basis of productivist agriculture remains largely unchallenged. The prediction is that environmental degradation will continue unabated until more dramatic (and possibly less palatable) measures are taken to alter the behaviour of producers and the trajectory of farming and grazing industries throughout the world.

The ‘ecological question’ we pose is straightforward: is it possible for modern agriculture – one currently wedded to a regime of petrochemicals, pesticides, weedicides, insecticides, artificial fertilisers, crop monocultures and intensive animal production – to become sustainable?

BACKGROUND TO THE ISSUES

Environmental issues have been recognised throughout recent history. Soil fertility depletion was a major concern, for example, in Europe and North America during the forty years of the mid-1800s, prompting social thinkers like Karl Marx to theorise the role of capitalism in environmental decline (Foster & Magdoff 1998).