Empty Pastures: Confined Animals and the Transformation of the Rural Landscape (review)

This concise, hard-hitting book addresses the effect of industrial agriculture on the American rural landscape. But unlike Ingeborg Boyens, who documents the agricultural malaise in Canada in Another Season's Promise (2001), Terence Centner is more concerned with those changes in agricultural production that influence public issues such as water and air quality and soil fertility.

Centner argues that agricultural specialization, especially monoculture and the intensive confinement of animals, creates serious socioeconomic and environmental problems. Vertically integrated corporate structures, with their emphasis on specialization, are undermining the traditional rural order and exacerbating environmental concerns. Animal waste disposal and practices associated with concentrated animal feeding operations are contributing to water, air, and soil pollution. Interestingly, Centner does not lay the entire blame on corporate agriculture. The privileged position occupied by agriculture has obscured the fact that farmers have not always been the best stewards of the land. Centner sees a worsening situation, as individual farmers are forced to sacrifice environmental considerations for financial reasons.

Though not a primary focus, technology figures prominently in Empty Pastures. For example, in his lengthy discussion of regulatory issues, Centner sees change in an individual farmer's technology usage as having implications for right-to-farm laws. The paradox of American leadership in agricultural technology is that it has worked against the very individual it was designed to assist. The individual farmer simply cannot afford cutting-edge technology. Only the big corporate operators are able to capitalize on the productive advantages afforded by new technology. Centner is skeptical about biotechnology. He raises familiar concerns over the threat of engineered plant varieties to native species and their potential to produce new pathogens, and sees "terminator" genes as more threatening than beneficial. "'Terminator,'" he writes on page 86, "may become the new byword for failure among impoverished farmers." Centner is also critical of growth-enhancing antibiotic drugs in livestock. He believes their value in lowering feed costs and in building disease resistance is more than offset by their expense and their role in fostering drug-resistant bacteria—a threat to humans as well as their farm animals.

Centner has favorable things to say about the role of technology and science in the new agricultural order as well. Precision farming with remote sensing, variable-rate technology, and global positioning satellite imagery will allow farmers to accurately map field conditions and optimize fertilizer, pesticide, and water applications. By enabling regulators to identify pollution sources, new technologies will facilitate management of ongoing pollution. Other environmental innovations discussed by Centner include the development of predictive modeling systems for pollution control and index guides to the application of chemicals to the soil.

Given his strong focus on regulatory changes, it is surprising that Centner did not consider enforcement regimes in terms of cost, manpower, and, most of all, effectiveness. The effectiveness of environmental legislation depends on the will and wherewithal to enforce it. Centner seems to think that one will automatically follow the other. I wonder. Centner might also have discussed the potential of anaerobic digestion, or the conversion of waste to energy, as part of his guidelines for the future. Very popular in Eu-rope, this technology has immense implications for environmental sustainability and is very appropriate for intensive feedlot operations in partnership with other enterprises. Detractors argue that low energy costs in North America preclude its application. Given his other arguments, Centner might not consider that a viable reason. Finally, I thought the text did not make enough use of illustrations, especially with respect to the inhumane treatment of animals. The lack of a bibliography was also a surprising omission.

Empty Pastures will appeal to readers interested in the vanishing traditional rural landscape and concerned about the environmental price we may be paying for our "cheap" food.