Excerpt
In central Montana, farmer Sam Green faces a farming crisis and a personal dilemma. He is using the latest technologies in dryland cropping, following the farming community standards in producing wheat and barley, managing his finances efficiently, and working long hours, yet his farming enterprise is failing. And if the threat of bankruptcy isn't enough, he and fellow farmers are being accused of contaminating local groundwater with farm chemicals. He is upset and his family is upset. What can he do other than continue to agonize over what he perceives as an unjust situation?
Social, economic, and environmental problems associated with modern agriculture pose threats to the quality of human existence and sustained crop production in many regions of the world. Groundwater pollution, soil erosion, increasing disease and pest problems, and failure of small farms and rural communities are symptoms suggesting dysfunction of the present agricultural system (Heffernan).
Current agricultural problems reveal how far humans have removed themselves from the basic natural processes that sustain life, such as the flow of solar energy, cycling of water and nutrients, and succession of plants and animals which transform and use energy. Limited attention has been given to the complexity of interactions …
Footnotes
Brian W. Sindelar is with Rangehands, Inc., Belgrade, MT 59714, and was formerly assistant professor of range science, Montana State University, Bozeman 59717. Clifford Montagne is associate professor of soil and land resources, Montana State University, Bozeman 59717. Roland R. H. Kroos is with Crossroads and Company, Belgrade, MT 59714, and was formerly associate director, Center for Holistic Resource Management, Albuquerque, NM 87102. The initial version of this paper was compiled under contract with the U. S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment in support of the assessment of Beneath the Bottom Line: Agricultural Approaches to Reduce Agrichemical Contamination of Groundwater OTA-F-417, Washington DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, August 1990.
- Copyright 1995 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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