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Greening of Agriculture for Long-Term Sustainability

Agron. and Hortic. Dep., Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68583-0915

^* Corresponding author (cfrancis2{at}unl.edu)

Received for publication January 9, 2004. Consolidation and growth of large corporations in U.S. agriculture are facing increasing scrutiny from a consumer public with growing awareness of environment issues. More people in society now question not only where food is grown and what types of practices impact the environment, but how the benefits are distributed. Although driven by short-term economics in many purchasing decisions, consumers are asking whether we could continue our standard of living while maintaining the natural resource base and not polluting the environment. Agricultural corporations are responding to this consumer concern by greening some of their operations and especially greening their images. Is this a real conversion in methods and products or merely a "greenwashing" of the corporate image? Large corporations face economic, environmental, and social challenges in their quest for an improved image. Examples in five major areas illustrate the impacts of corporate agriculture: industrial organic food production, consolidation of farms, genetically modified organisms, global food systems, and unregulated capitalism and limited-liability corporations. Each is related to structural conditions in agriculture, and each must be addressed by corporations that are serious about improving their images with consumers. To deal with these issues that impact both farmers and consumers, positive alternatives to conventional mainstream business approaches are discussed.