Silent Earth

The truth: Industrial agriculture is the largest single threat to the earth’s biodiversity. Massive chemical use and row-to-row ploughing, planting and harvesting techniques poison the soil and water and kill off countless plant and animal communities.

Industrial agriculture’s myth-makers have been so successful in their efforts to shape opinion that they must believe we’ll swallow just about anything. They now assure us that intensive farming methods that rely on chemicals and biotechnology somehow protect the environment. This myth, as illogical as it may sound to an informed reader, is increasingly widespread today and is increasingly accepted as valid. What’s worse, agribusiness is saturating the media with misleading reports of the purported ecological risks of organic and other environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.

A typical claim of the industrial apologists is that the industrial style of agriculture has prevented some 15 million square miles of wildlands from being ploughed under for ‘low-yield’ food production. They continuously assert that the biggest challenge of the 21st century is to increase food yields through modern advances...

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