A Picture Book for Socialist Warriors

Published March 1, 2003

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture
by Andrew Kimbrell, editor
Island Press, July 2002
396 pages cloth


So in conclusion, the intent of this coffee table picture book containing fraudulent essays by socialist pseudo-scientists is to starve the developing world so as to slow or eliminate global population growth by defeating the only effective engine of human progress man has ever developed, namely capitalism. Or am I getting ahead of myself?

Random Lies

“Our conversion from agrarian, local, fully integrated food systems to industrialized, monocultured agricultural production has brought a staggering number of negative side effects, many of them unanticipated. Throughout the entire food system, we can trace this crisis as it manifests itself in soil erosion, poisoned ground waters, food-borne illnesses, loss of biodiversity, inequitable social consequences, toxic chemicals in foods and fiber, loss of beauty, loss of species and wildlife habitat, and myriad other environmental and social problems. To make the crisis even worse, we continue to export this destructive industrial system of food production around the Earth.”
Douglas Tompkins, Foundation for Deep Ecology (p. xi)

“We happily munch on hamburgers without a thought to the forest and prairie being destroyed for cattle grazing or the immense cruelty in the raising and slaughtering of the animals. Mothers continue to prod their youngsters to eat their vegetables, unaware of the pesticide poisoning of our waters, farm workers, and wildlife that is involved in their production, not to mention the new human health and ecological risks of genetic engineering.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 1)

“Biotechnology introduces a tremendous new danger; biological pollution, a hazard on a scale with nuclear power.”
Jerry Mander, Public Media Center (p. 18)

“Chemical poisons, biological attacks, air raids, pillage, and destruction … it’s agricultural warfare, and nature is the enemy. For decades agribusiness in its ads and propaganda has used war as the central metaphor for successful farming. In recent years the weapons used by industrial agriculture have grown ever more sophisticated, from genetic engineering to satellite communications. Meanwhile the casualties among nature, animals and people continue to mount. It’s time to declare a ‘cease-fire’ and transform modern food production from war against the land to a marriage of ecology and agriculture.”
Ron Kroese, Land Stewardship Project (p. 21)

“About half of the world’s tropical forests have already been destroyed.”
Hugh H. Iltis, University of Wisconsin (p. 36)

“The answer to the demographic dilemma is clear enough; we must abandon the fallacies of agricultural hope, for it is not a question of raising more food, but of raising fewer people.”
Hugh H. Iltis, University of Wisconsin (p. 39)

“For 10,000 years till agriculture has been a disaster for the natural world. Topsoil and biodiversity have been agriculture’s most frequent casualties. Current ‘techno-fixes’ like fertilizers and pesticides only make things worse.”
Wes Jackson, The Land Institute (p. 41)

“Industrial agriculture actually increases hunger by raising the cost of farming, by forcing tens of millions of farmers off the land, and by growing primarily high-profit export and luxury crops.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 50)

“A central component of the industrialized food system is the large-scale introduction of toxic chemicals.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 52)

“Contrary to our government’s pronouncement, industrial food is not safe.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 53)

“If you added the real cost of industrialized food–its health, environmental and social costs–to the current supermarket price, not even our wealthiest citizens could afford to buy it.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 54)

“Small farms produce more agricultural output per unit area than large farms.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 56)

“Clearly the way to create real choice for food consumers is to promote local, small-scale organic farming.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 59)

“Fence-row to-fence-row plowing, planting, and harvesting techniques decimate wildlife habitats, while massive chemical use poisons the soil and water, and kills off countless plant and animal communities.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 60)

“Biotechnology will destroy biodiversity and food security, and drive self-sufficient farmers off their land.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 62)

“Over the centuries, a wide diversity of maize–with varying leaves, heights, colors, and kernels–was selected and protected to perform different purposes. Today, modern corn is little more than a sad remnant of its forebears.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 77)

“The ‘agri-monopoly’ has no use for any farm that isn’t gargantuan enough to furnish it with an endless supply of a single commodity.”
Frederick Kirshenmann, Farm Verified Organic (p. 95)

“Increasingly, vegetables born of genetically engineered seeds, nurtured by chemical fertilizers, and doused with poisons threaten the health of consumers and the integrity of the environment.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 111)

“Modern fruit production is rooted in exploitative labor practices and the massive use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 123)

“From satellite communications to complex computer programming, precision farming usurps the traditional role of farmers. It replaces local and personal knowledge of farming with high-cost computer-generated data. Ultimately, it leads farmers to become computerized ‘sharecroppers’ for major agribusiness corporations, and ever more reliant on chemicals and technology.”
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety (p. 261)

“Soon more than 90 percent of the average American’s diet could be eligible for irradiation. As a result, the consumer has been made a guinea pig, testing these foods and facing potential health risks. Meanwhile leaks from irradiation facilities pose significant risks to public health and to the environment.”
Michael Colby, Food and Water, Inc. (p. 271)

“Worldwide we are currently facing a pollination crisis, in which pollinators are disappearing at alarming rates as a result of habitat loss, pesticide poisoning, diseases, and pests.”
Mrill Ingram et al, University of Wisconsin (p. 295)

“Globalized agriculture has devastated the environment, farm communities, and farmers. Corporations and international trade agreements continue to foist this dysfunctional agriculture on third world countries.”
Debi Barker, International Forum on Globalization (p. 313)

Fatal Harvest is in fact a beautifully illustrated communist manifesto aimed at mobilizing anti-capitalist socialist warriors around the globe to destroy all efforts to feed the less fortunate citizens of planet Earth, and thus to mercilessly starve them to death at the behest of their false Goddess “Gaia” whom they believe to be the soul of our planet.

This well crafted, often poetic false description of life as we are told exists today hides some of the most evil anti-human sentiments this writer has ever read. A thorough and objective review of this mountain of misrepresentation is nearly impossible by a trained scientist with knowledge of man’s technological progress and a clear understanding of the scientific methodology necessary to reach sound conclusions.

In spite of the book’s breathtakingly beautiful color photos of our fruited plains, there is a limit to one’s ability to read page after page of lies, distortions, misrepresentations and libelous accusations intended to mobilize a devil’s army intent on destroying all progress achieved in man’s most recent century. Perhaps the only positive value of this terrifying treatise is a warning to freedom-loving people, just how determined our evil opponents are to destroy civilization as we know it.

I’ll now end my personal rant and let the book speak for itself. In the accompanying sidebar I quote a random selection of two dozen of the book’s hundreds of false and inflammatory statements and provide the names and affiliations of the authors who contributed those shameful comments.


Jay Lehr Ph.D. is science director for The Heartland Institute.


For more information …

Free Market Environmentalism, by Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, offers an effective counter to radical environmentalism. The 241-page paperback (Palgrave, 2001) is available for $15.00 from the online store at http://www.heartland.org.