Traditional, or Modern, Agriculture

The other day I was listening to NPR in Michigan and they had a piece on the 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone is a large area of water that is unable to support life due to extremely low levels of oxygen. Every year the area gets larger, and scientists believe that the oil spill will contribute to it. The point of the piece was to mention how the problem of the dead zone is being overshadowed by the spill in the Gulf, despite the latter's contribution to it.

The dead zone they believe is caused by chemical run-off from farms in the midwest. The fertilizers and chemicals from these farms all flow into the enormous watersheds that contribute to the Mississippi river. The Mississippi river then flows out into the Gulf of Mexico and causes reactions within the ecosystem, creating lots of dead organic matter, which when decomposing uses oxygen in the water, creating a dead zone.

This dead zone has been known about for years and has been monitored by various groups. The part of the broadcast that stuck out for me though was the word they used to describe the farms. The person being interviewed said that 'traditional agricultural' farms were contributing to the fertilizers and chemicals and runoff. I mainly found this interesting because if someone tells me something about 'traditional agriculture' I tend to think back to the days before large mono-cultured farms with hundreds, or even thousands of acres of one product. I think back to a small farmer with a homestead and maybe a few hundred acres to plant.

My question is more of a sociological one. When did modern agriculture become traditional? And if it never was, wouldn't the new 'organic' and poly-cultured farms count more as traditional, than the new stuff? Take for instance the beatniks. Would one say that they are a traditional culture? The use of the word would more or less imply something much older.

Modern agriculture in the form we know it now, has really been around for about 40-50 years. Slowly over the decades, the small farmer lost against large industrial agriculture that could afford to buy the latest seed, and all the chemicals needed to intensify and increase yield. Slowly but surely during the industrial revolution and beyond, people began to forget about utilizing nature's own devices to create a balance on the farm. Modern agriculture is really the exception rather than the rule in the course of human history. Everything that is happening now, would suggest almost a circling back to the older ways of doing things. Smaller production, fewer chemicals, etc.

The purpose of this post is just to ask the question and hopefully create discussion on this matter. What is traditional agriculture, and has modern agriculture turned into the tradition, or in other words the 'norm'?