Industrial Agriculture's Vicious Cycle

When it comes to climate change, the United States is the single largest emitter on earth as a result of industrialization through non-renewable resource use. Our current agricultural system is a product of these practices, and began during the period referred to as the Green Revolution. A call for increased production was answered with massive fossil fuel inputs and technology, including machinery, pesticides and fertilizers, and genetic modification.
Monocultures (like corn and wheat) are a field of a single crop that could now be planted more efficiently, withstand pests, and have a higher yield. Producing food industrially had severe consequences for the environment including water contamination, soil degradation, and a reduction in biodiversity.
Most relevant to this discussion, however, are the contributions to climate change through land-use changes and an increase in greenhouse gases. Forests and open prairie were converted to monoculture farmland, altering the natural photosynthesis-driven process of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. The fossil fuel needed to drive industrial agriculture (machinery operation, pesticide formation etc) released a high amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
*It is important to also note the immense greenhouse gas contributions of livestock farming. Confined Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFOs) release methane into the atmosphere that impacts global warming immensely.

The issue of agriculture and climate is the epitome of a positive-feedback loop; increasing instability and exacerbating changes (see original figure below). As industrial agriculture grew, climate change was exacerbated by these changes to the atmosphere. Temperature changes (warming and cooling), precipitation changes, an increase in carbon dioxide, and an increase in extreme weather events are all consequences of industrial agriculture production, as part of its assertive role in the U.S.'s larger climate change contributions.

As we face these changes, more fossil-fuel intensive practices are required. Here are just a few of many examples:

• More fertilizer and pesticides to produce high yields
• Increased land conversion to crop acreage in order to counter-balance yield loss
• Genetic modification to withstand drought
• Long-distance shipping of crops to areas unable to grow food successfully from changing conditions

Source: Original Figure

A further increase in fossil fuels to overcome climate changes will exacerbate the already high greenhouse gas emissions, thus accelerating the cycle. We become addicted to the resources that caused agriculture's climate change contributions originally.

Corn and wheat are two human 'managed' plants that are likely to experience biological impacts from climate change, a product itself of human agricultural mismanagement. Only by lessening our dependence on industrial systems (pesticides, fossil fuels, and monocultures) can vital crops be protected by reducing climate change contributions.