Food Production 101

Challenges in the Industrial Production of Food

Food production—including livestock, seafood, fruits, and vegetables—faces persistent threats from commercialization, monopolization, and market concentration. The U.S. food supply is dominated by an industrial system built on 19th-century principles of mechanization, efficiency, speed, uniformity, and standardization to maximize productivity.

Industrial farms rely heavily on chemical inputs, which can pollute our soil, water, and air. Machine-driven, profit-maximizing management favors monocultures—vast, single-crop fields—and densely confined animals, leading to biodiversity loss, soil depletion, and higher disease risk. Consumers may benefit from cheaper, abundant food, but it is often less nutrient-dense due to factors such as soil depletion and long-distance transport.

Seafood is a vital source of protein, yet 80–90% of U.S. seafood consumption is imported. Global aquaculture is led by China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Egypt; the U.S. accounts for less than 1% of production, with shrimp and salmon among the most commonly farmed species domestically.

Mercury from fossil fuels, coal-fired power plants, smelting, waste incineration, and natural sources enters marine food webs and bioaccumulates in larger predators, making some large fish riskier to eat. Additional challenges include overfishing, destructive fishing gear (e.g., bottom trawling), bycatch, and the need to manage fisheries for abundance while protecting ocean ecosystems.

Fossil fuel emissions, coal-fired electricity generation, smelting and the incineration of waste, and the natural release of mercury in volcanoes carry mercury into the atmosphere that eventually enters the water. (2). Once this mercury gets into the marine food chain via plankton, which are then eaten by bigger fish, the mercury thus moves up the food chain and “bioaccumulates” in the larger predators, making eating larger fish riskier to eat than smaller ones. Other challenges to a healthy and resilient seafood industry are managing our fisheries for abundance and mitigating the environmental impacts of fishing equipment, which significantly affects the seas. For instance, in bottom trawling, big weighted nets drag across the bottom of the ocean, similar to clear-cutting a forest. Besides destroying what grows on the ocean floor, the nets catch other seafood we do not intend to eat. We need to work on all these challenges to figure out how to ensure a healthy ocean ecosystem so we can continue to benefit from the ocean.

Food Production in Southeastern Massachusetts

The 2021 Southcoast Food System Assessment, which covers Bristol, Plymouth, and Norfolk Counties, identifies cranberries, fruits, nuts, American lobster, bluefin tuna, northern quahog, and sea scallops as top production categories. Yet regional agriculture faces significant challenges: from 2012 to 2017, the number of farms decreased by 8.1% to 1,643, while the amount of farmland decreased by 8.0% to 99,688 acres, outpacing statewide declines in both instances.

The average age of farmers continues to rise and is now 59.8 years, while the number of young farmers entering the industry remains low. Women make up 40% of farmers, while 98% are White, highlighting the need to make farming and fishing more racially diverse occupations. Profitability, labor costs, skilled labor shortages, land access, rising land costs, and increasingly unpredictable weather compound these challenges.

The Port of New Bedford remains the nation’s most valuable and active commercial fishing port. However, an estimated 78% of the seafood passing through the port is exported, and local restaurants report that it is often easier and less expensive to purchase Icelandic seafood than local seafood.