{"id":35073,"date":"2022-05-24T19:51:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T23:51:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=35073"},"modified":"2022-07-05T18:16:10","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T22:16:10","slug":"setting-the-benchmark-for-sustainable-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/setting-the-benchmark-for-sustainable-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting the Benchmark for Sustainable Agriculture"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to June 2022 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

\"CraigLike many Americans, I\u2019ve started travelling again. Flying over the Midwest recently on my way to a conference in New York, it was hard not to be awed by the sight of mile after mile of cropland – around 180 million acres – growing just two crops, corn and soy.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s less visible from 30,000 feet but very evident on the ground, however, is the immense cost of growing these two crops year after year \u2013 topsoil loss, chemical residue in the soil from pesticides like 2-4-D and atrazine, a loss of pollinators, and vast water pollution. This type of agriculture is also at the center of a system responsible for about a third of the planet\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

U.S. agriculture has a concentration problem. It started 50 years ago, when the head of the USDA told farmers to plant for maximum production – from \u201cfence row to fence row\u201d and \u201cget big or get out.\u201d It worked. Today, 56 percent of American cropland acres are growing just corn and soy.<\/p>\n

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\"Lack<\/p>\n

Crop diversity and crop rotation, once the hallmarks of land stewardship and productivity, are vanishing. Only one-third of America\u2019s corn acres are planted sustainably, defined as planted once out of four years. Roughly 62.5 percent of corn acreage rotates only minimally, alternating between soy and corn. And of these, about 10 million acres have practically no crop rotation at all, planting corn in ten or more years of a 12-year period, according to USDA data. That\u2019s a large-scale problem, as those continuous-corn acres comprise three times more than all the organic cropland in the U.S. combined.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more troubling is that some industry players now want to classify their damaging practices as \u201csustainable\u201d agriculture. They\u2019re seeking to paper over destructive practices to make their products more appealing to consumers and meet investor demand for ESG accountability. Sadly, greenwashing has come to agriculture, with some trying to put green lipstick on their pig.<\/p>\n

Misleading people about \u201csustainable\u201d agriculture is possible because there are neither legal nor science-based standards for it. The Certified Organic standard, on the other hand, is grounded in Federal Law, managed by the National Organic Standards Board, which is an independent body appointed by the US Department of Agriculture.<\/p>\n

Yet even without a formal standard, nearly everyone agrees that certain farming practices are harmful, and clearly not sustainable, such as growing corn year-after-year on the same farmland. This practice is entirely dependent on genetically modified crops and requires increasing amounts of toxic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers to try to overcome the damage it causes to the soil and ecosystem.<\/p>\n

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\"Certified<\/p>\n

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In our view, any self-proclaimed standard for sustainable agriculture should meet a three-part test:<\/h2>\n

1) Independence.<\/strong> It should have an independent board with full transparency of membership, affiliations and decisions.<\/p>\n

2) Materials and Practices<\/strong>. It should identify specific materials and practices that are prohibited, as well as those that are required. For example it would bar the use of chemicals like 2-4-d (Agent Orange) or soil fumigants (nerve gas) and prohibit practices such as continuous corn, or even a corn-soy rotation, which is a below-average practice in the U.S. It should require crop rotation of 3 or 4 crops, or set aside 1-5 percent of land as pollinator habitat or ecosystem reserve, or mandate use of cover crops.<\/p>\n

3) Impact and Outcomes. <\/strong>It should produce specific, measurable on-farm changes and outcomes, ideally affecting regional or global goals. Examples might include clean water, improved ecosystem function or habitat improvement, carbon sequestration, or food production (vs producing ethanol as a fuel additive).<\/p>\n

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