Despite headlines by activists, agricultural sector shows strong productivity growth.
January 8, 2025
I guess because I’ve clicked on them in the past, those pesky articles about the perils of agriculture regularly appear in my news feed. And they seem to be especially prevalent around New Year’s. Apparently, the activists (like sports fans) decide this’ll be the year for real change to occur – and they want to let us know about it.
That brings me to CleanTechnica. The organization seems primarily committed to promoting the benefits of electric vehicles. But there’s a broader agenda that spills over to agriculture. Their vision includes, among other things, “a global economy based on … cellular agriculture [and] smallholder organic farms with smart technology.”
Accordingly, CleanTechnica’s New Year’s declaration for agriculture goes like this: “Is 2025 the Year of Food Consumption Patterns that ‘Break the Rules?’" The essence of the column can be wrapped up in this sentence: “Industrial agriculture is a bad combination of hazards: methane from cow burps, inhumanely caged animals, toxic insecticides, crops that deplete the soil and smothering of the small farms.”
Meanwhile, this snippet in the article by author Dr. Carolyn Fortuna also caught my attention: “Did you know that many of history’s famous folks haven’t been meat eaters? The list includes Pythagoras, Leonardo da Vinci, Mary Shelley and Mahatma Gandhi … and me, your intrepid correspondent.”
So, what about Dr. Fortuna? Her CleanTechnica bio portrays her as an “educator with a lifelong dedication to ecojustice.” I’m left wondering why an “educator” is writing about food and/or agriculture in the first place. Per LinkedIn, our author holds an MA in English and a PhD in education – zero training in agriculture (or science or policy or business).
I worked in higher ed for 19 years. My home department (agriculture) was in the science college. However, during the last 10 years I maintained a split appointment with administrative responsibilities in a multidisciplinary college. That allowed me to regularly work with educators outside my formal training, including serving on several EdD committees. The point being, it reinforced knowing what I don’t know; you won’t catch me writing about educational science. Fortuna would be well served to follow that principle and stick with her expertise.
Now, let’s shift to the broader issue. The column fails to provide any data or evidence to substantiate its claims. So, we’re left wondering what “rules” need to be broken.
In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture tells a very different story that counters CleanTechnica’s claims about agriculture. The agency consistently documents farm sector productivity performance, and the most recent update, from November 2024, notes (emphasis mine):
“Increased productivity is the main contributor to the growth of U.S. farm output. The level of U.S. farm output was nearly three times its 1948 level in 2021, growing at an average annual rate of 1.46 percent over the period. Aggregate input use declined slightly at a rate of -0.03 percent annually. Therefore, the growth in farm sector output was primarily attributed to productivity growth, which increased at an average 1.49 percent per year over the full period” (see Figure).
But wait, it gets even better.
USDA’s summary also correctly points out agriculture’s favorable position compared to other industries: “Typically, input growth is the dominant source of economic growth for the aggregate economy and for each of its producing sectors. Agriculture turns out to be one of the few exceptions, where productivity growth dominates input growth.”
In the meantime, though, once – just once, because it’s true – it would be nice to see a story with a headline that reads something like this: “Agriculture 2025: Another Year of Doing More with Less.”
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