Sustainable Development and Agriculture in the United States

May 2002
Citation:
32
ELR 10543
Issue
5
Author
John H. Davidson

Introduction

Agriculture in the United States eludes easy categorization and description. The system is diverse in climate, geography, crops, and agronomic practices. For example, it includes the truly vast midwestern dryland grain belt as well as some 46 million acres of land in organized irrigation systems. Because this system is built upon the energies of successive waves of immigration, it also reflects a healthy diversity in its cultural approaches to farm production.

Agriculture has received support of one kind or another from the federal government throughout the nation's history. Land, railroads, farm-to-market transportation, scientific research, technology, education, rural infrastructure, electricity, and irrigation water have been provided. It was the Dust Bowl and economic depression of the 1930s, however, that made the federal government the financial partner of "commodity" agriculture which it is today. A significant part of that pattern of subsidy has been in the form of "conservation" practices. Some of these practices, such as terracing, land retirement, and improved forage crops have made important contributions to protection of the natural and human environment. Others, particularly land drainage, have damaged seriously the natural hydrologic environment.

[Editors' Note: In June 1992, at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, the nations of the world formally endorsed the concept of sustainable development and agreed to a plan of action for achieving it. One of those nations was the United States. In August 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, these nations will gather in Johannesburg to review progress in the 10-year period since UNCED and to identify steps that need to be taken next. In anticipation of the Rio + 10 summit conference, Prof. John C. Dernbach is editing a book that assesses progress that the United States has made on sustainable development in the past 10 years and recommends next steps. The book, which is scheduled to be published by the Environmental Law Institute in June 2002, is comprised of chapters on various subjects by experts from around the country. This Article will appear as a chapter in that book. Further information on the book will be available at www.eli.org or by calling 1-800-433-5120 or 202-939-3844.]

John Davidson is a Professor of Law at the University of South Dakota School of Law.

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