During the past two centuries, the so-called “western world” has set the stage of a chain reaction of dramatic changes in science, technology, industrialization, social transformation, urbanization, rural development, etc.. As far as farming is concerned, technological innovations during that period have been a game changer, and Conventional Farming – aka industrial or intensive – has become the new dominating paradigm. Looking retrospectively, and even though it too is based mainly on science and technology, conventional farming has been lagging in self-awareness and assertiveness. Conventional Farming is basically a “practical” activity mainly focused on producing foodstuffs at maximum quantities, with no questions asked as to whether this entails exhaustive use of available resources (soil, aquatic and gaseous environment, raw materials, fossil fuels, etc.). The Conventional Farming line of reasoning is mainly focused on productivity and justified in terms of it. Its exponents defend it on the grounds that, without the conventional practices of industrial farming and the use of compound chemicals for plant nourishment and protection, food sufficiency can not be guaranteed for the nearly 8 billion inhabitants of this planet. This fact alone is accepted as adequate reason to forgive all residual environmental damage, such sacrifices considered to be necessary for our ultimate survival.
In principle, the term “conventional” farming is somewhat misleading, if it is perceived as a reference term irrespective of time constraints. What we now call “conventional” has emerged alongside the evolution of science and technology only in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, and rapidly swept the so-called Western world. It is not a historical coincidence that, in the wake of the extensive urbanization and subsequent explosion of the population of the then-developing western societies, the response to the acute need for food sufficiency came in the form and practices of what we now call Conventional Farming of crops and livestock. In this sense conventional farming is at the same time a cause and effect of the modern Western way of life, and of relatively recent vintage. In the context of the intense social transformations of the time, the main concern was farming efficient enough to feed the ever-growing urban populations, and any possible objections about emerging environmental issues were not considered to be top priority and were tolerated as inevitable collateral losses.
In the following decades, alongside a gradually increasing dependency of agricultural practices alongside the so-called industrial or intensive farming model, the world progressively came to witness an ever-growing exhaustive exploitation of available environmental as well as man-made assets, resulting in overall unsustainable agricultural practices. The downgrading of rural life standards became evident via diminishing biodiversity, abuse and contamination of water resources, gradually decreasing productivity in farming activities, in spite of ever-increasing use of chemical substances, which in turn led to soil degradation and finally – contrary to the original ambitions – progressive failure to achieve adequate crop yields that could sustain the socio-economic structure and stability of local rural communities.