Big MACC Attack

Spying On Residue

The USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) is working with NASA to help develop a system of estimating crop residue from satellite imagery. The current boots on the ground system is very labor intensive (details in the article) and so a satellite based system would be great time and cost saver. Every since the launch failure of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, I have been following remote sensing schemes a little more closely, because we need data to make good decisions, whether about cropping schemes, or carbon valuation, or even as in the case of another NASA project, the amount of turf in the USA.

Crop residue is important both to the health of the soil, and for the function is plays in carbon sequestration, which is one of the primarly ways in which agriculture can help arrest climate change...sustainable agriculture, that is, which is results in net carbon capture (via the buildup of organic matter in the soil) while no-till merely reduces the carbon footprint of conventional ag,

I wish I could say that this study was done to provide the data to quantify these carbon balances and move us toward a carbon credit program to reward farmers (on a cash basis) for conservation tillage, but alas, the reason for the study is to "identify farm fields that can sustain more residue removal for ethanol production."

It used to be that one of the signs of a bad farmer was that he sold off his manure and hay -- which meant his land was exporting fertility and would deteriorate over time. Nowadays, with synthetic fertilizers and CAFOs, that whole system is a thing of the past...or at least for a while longer until we are forced back to some sort of rudimentary husbandry at least, but the rising cost of energy. There was a time when we grew our energy, and that time will return.

Big Numbers Add Up Both Ways

The inescapable connection between scale and technology, between industrial methods and commodification of food pops up frequently. One example contained in the February 2009 USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) report released this morning shows it in high relief.

The newly formed Egg Safety and Quality Research Unit and Quality and Safety Assessment Research Unit (ESQRU and QSARU -- gotta love those acronyms!) has developed a prototype pressure chamber and camera system that is more accurate than human egg graders (99.4% vs 85.8%). That's all to the good, and helps speed up the egg processing plants, some of which are capable of handling 180,000 eggs an hour.

If that seems astounding to you -- it does to me -- keep in mind that in 2007, more than 90 billion eggs -- that's billion -- were produced in the United States, according to the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture.

I did not call and ask the researchers what this machine is going to cost, but a quick glance at it shows it is not going to be cheap, and so only the largest producers will be able to put it to work. Again, we do need this kind of thing if we are going to keep New York City in eggs (15 million people times 250 eggs, and no close-in farms...you do the math) but we also need research on small scale, local and regional production issues -- including organic and pasture based production -- and that has long been lacking in the USDA research program.

After all, that 250 eggs per year is only slightly better than what a single chicken can do under ideal conditions, with what we already know (egg laying ducks do even better, laying larger eggs, with less cholesterol, but need access to water to thrive, holding down industrial production of duck eggs...) and with some dedicated research we might be able to vastly improve small scale egg production.

Why do this? Well for one thing, it's public money. And yes, the public benefits if there are fewer problems with the industrial food supply: less pathogens, less waste, lower prices...but the economic benefits are going to a relatively small number of large producers and processors who might well be able to fund their own research. And while the specific benefits to tens or hundreds of thousands of small producers might not be as easy to quanitfy it is nonetheless real. Just as 250 eggs per person adds up pretty quickly when you have a lot of people, so does a couple of hundred dollars a year, or an increase of 15 eggs a year per chicken when multiplied time thousands and thousands of small producers.

Unfortunately agricultural research over the years has tended to concentrate on engineering solutions to problems at the expense of cultural problems (on a cash weighted basis) and this has skewed the system toward large (and increasing) scale enterprises, with higher capital needs, and that has affected both the farm population and the communities in which those farms are located.

I certainly doubt we will ever go back to a widely decentralized agriculture (especially in commodity grains) but if we are going to have a two tier system -- large production units to mass produce food for urban areas, and a smaller, more regional agriculture to produce fresh and artisan crops -- then we need to fund both of those. Otherwise the only farms left soon will be the factory farms, and farmers will end up wearing lab coats and just operating computers instead of actually growing food.

Here is a link to the full online magazine article on the USDA-ARS website.