rant.

I heard a clip on NPR this week that made me pretty disgusted with the state of our food system in America (not that I need more fodder for this topic), and less hopeful about sustainable farming having a chance.
The conversation was about the widespread lack of nitrogen in the soil, a crucial element for plants to grow. How to solve this? Spread petroleum-based fertilizer that's heavy on nitrogen. This happens to cause the excess nitrogen (lots of it) to run off into streams and rivers, down to the Gulf of Mexico eventually, where algae forests are now blooming and polluting the ocean like crazy. Many scientific studies have been written about this; it's not really a controversial or debated issue. (Nice Washington Post transcript of a 2002 panel about it, for anyone who's feeling like a lot of details.)
NPR kept talking: some high-powered interviewee was getting excited about their genetically-modified plant (I think it was corn) that soaks up nitrogen faster and more than normal plants, as a solution to this problem.
At the end, they tossed in as an afterthought another option, that growers take care of the soil: planting cover crops in the off-season, rotating, and generally using sustainable methods that don't deplete the soil of its natural resources, like nitrogen. If the soil is treated well, growers can minimize inputs, especially artificial and petroleum-based inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides.
Why is the first instinct to use untested, sketchy science and wreak environmental havoc? Our default thinking and actions seem to be at odds with anything like stewardship of the land, let alone with health, or even taste. These are the foods we're putting into our bodies, and we seem to like them dependent on oil, genetically iffy, and covered in chemicals. Bleaaah.