Farmer's Dillema

After reading the first section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma I found much to think about in the section in which Pollan goes to speak with and learn from George Naylor in Greene County, Iowa. He learns of how his farm has gone from needing to carefully rotate corn and legumes so as to not use up all the nutrients in a given field to being able to plant corn whenever and on as much acreage as he wants, thanks to synthetic nitrogen/fertilizer.
I did not realize how much we are altering our environment by using Franz Haber’s process of “fixing” nitrogen. One effect already able to be seen in the population boom that would otherwise been impossible. It seems that we looked at earth’s limit on the amount of humans it could keep alive and only wanted to find a way around it. It seems that to keep a healthy, natural cycle, the earth could only have so much of its nutrients taken from the soil, but thanks to our ability to rip nitrogen from the air we can now run the earth to its agricultural limit.
It’s scary just how much oil and fossil fuels go into the farming process. What is promoted as good, natural food is no less synthetic than the detergent we use to clean our clothes. 1-calorie of fossil fuels for every 1-calorie of food produced is incredibly disconcerting. It would be, as Pollan says, more efficient to just be able to drink the oil directly.
The irresponsible use of farmers with their fertilizers is something needing to be addressed as well. It is understandable that they want to use more than enough synthetics to insure high yields; many of them are barely hanging on as it is. Unfortunately all that excess fertilizer has to go somewhere and it hurts natural systems as well as humans. Perhaps the government can offer incentives for farmers that use cleaner methods and have less effect on the surrounding ecosystems and water supply with no regard for their yield.
Again, as will almost all of the issues brought up, money is the main driver as to why these problems have not been fixed. If we can somehow look past the importance of the dollar we will finally be able to take positive steps, but as long we succumb to greed (and it’s hard not to) we will not better our natural state.