An accelerating treadmill and an overlooked contradiction in industrial agriculture: Climate change and nitrogen fertilizer

Abstract

In this article, we explore if and why farmers are responding to the impacts of climate change with practices that increase greenhouse gas emissions. Our examination focuses on heavy rainfall events and Midwestern corn farmers' nitrogen fertilizer management. Due to climate change, the frequency and intensity of heavy rain events is increasing across the Midwest. These events increase nitrogen loss to the environment and introduces economic risks to farmers. Drawing from a theoretical framework that merges O'Connor's second contradiction of capitalism and Schnaiberg's treadmill of production, we argue farmers' responses to these events reflect the second contradiction, increasing contributions to climate change, and are shaped by treadmill‐like political‐economic pressures. We examine this using a qualitative sample of 154 farmers across Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan. Given profit imperatives, adapting farmers in our sample primarily used increased nitrogen application rates to reduce their vulnerability to heavy rains. As nitrogen rate is directly associated with nitrous oxide emissions, this adaptive strategy is effective but increases agricultural contributions to climate change. This preliminarily suggests that the political‐economic structure encourages farmers to respond to climate change in ways that accelerate the environmental contradictions of industrial agriculture.

Foreign Direct Investment Dependence and the Neglected Greenhouse Gas: A Cross-National Analysis of Nitrous Oxide Emissions in Developing Countries, 1990–2014

“…In a slightly related vein, future research could also test propositions from ecological unequal exchange. Given the transnational organization of agricultural production and increasingly recognized “fertilizer” treadmill (Houser and Stuart 2019; McMichael 2012), future cross-national research should test propositions from the treadmill of production theory and ecological modernization theory in a global sample of countries, developed countries, and developing countries in addition to specific macro-regions. The urgency of the climate crisis also mandates the incorporation of other comparative international research agendas such as the world society tradition (e.g.…”

Soil nitrate leaching under grazed cool‐season grass pastures of the North Central US

“…Background levels of N deposition are significant and grazing accelerates the N cycle, which can result in more opportunities for N loss 70 so the addition of N amendments to grazed perennial grasslands should be discouraged via policy mechanisms that reward N conservation and retention and penalize N loss 54 . Given the prevailing productivist ideology and policies, 71 reducing N amendments runs counter to current wisdom and policy that promotes increased production over all other agroecosystem functions 2,72,73 …”

“…Background levels of N deposition are significant and grazing accelerates the N cycle, which can result in more opportunities for N loss 70 so the addition of N amendments to grazed perennial grasslands should be discouraged via policy mechanisms that reward N conservation and retention and penalize N loss. 54 Given the prevailing productivist ideology and policies, 71 reducing N amendments runs counter to current wisdom and policy that promotes increased production over all other agroecosystem functions. 2, 72,73 When attempting to boost cool-season grass pasture yields, N addition should occur via the introduction and maintenance of legumes in the species mix, which provide atmospheric N to plants and microbes and help maintain a healthy, productive, Nretaining sward.…”

Product Diversification, Adaptive Management, and Climate Change: Farming and Family in the U.S. Corn Belt

“…In response to these risks, farmers can pursue adaptation strategies that include both practices and operational-level shifts that reduce vulnerability to climate change (Smit and Skinner, 2002;Howden et al, 2007). Given the important role farmers play in driving adaptation of agricultural systems (Ostrom, 2014;Jurt et al, 2015), researchers are increasingly focusing on US farmers' adaptation decision making, revealing that a variety of factors shape farmers' use of adaptation strategies and views of climate change risks (Arbuckle et al, 2013a;Schattman et al, 2016;Roesch-McNally et al, 2018;Houser and Stuart, 2019;Fletcher et al, 2020;Yoder et al, 2021).…”

“…Most research on farmers' adaptive responses to climate change has considered adaptation at the level of practice adoption, for example planting cover crops (e.g., Roesch-McNally et al, 2018;Houser and Stuart, 2019;Yoder et al, 2021). Much less has focused on what is sometimes called operational-level shifts (Smit et al, 1996) or "transformational" adaptation, where system shifts surpass the incremental adoption of a practice (Blesh and Wolf, 2014;Robertson and Murray-Prior, 2016;Panda, 2018;Roesch-McNally et al, 2018;Chenyang et al, 2021).…”