When God created the idyllic Garden of Eden, He designed it to require careful management—intelligent human effort—to achieve its full potential. He placed Adam and Eve there and instructed them “to dress it and to keep it”—to work it, serve it and take care of it. He gave them dominion over the plants and animals and instructed them how to care for them and to use them for food. Having created all these things for man’s use, God intended them to provide invaluable lessons in responsible, humane stewardship.

God also gave several laws governing agriculture and animal husbandry, laws later spelled out in detail to His nation Israel. Among them were several laws enjoining kind treatment of animals. God expected livestock to receive proper care and attention so as to be in good health. He commanded that the land be rested every seven years, to allow animals to roam on it and fertilize it in order to rebuild the nutrients of the soil.

Clearly, in this agricultural system efficiency takes a backseat to other, higher goals. But when God’s laws are respected, things naturally work as they were designed to; and on top of that, God also promises extra blessings such as favorable weather and more abundant harvests (e.g. Deuteronomy 28:4-5, 8, 12). With benevolent providence, even with supposed inefficiencies everyone is amply taken care of.

In modern industrial agriculture, however, God is no longer king—efficiency is. The system is built to produce as much food on as little land for as little money as possible. There is nothing inherently wrong with that goal—but it has been aggressively pursued in near-total ignorance of, if not contempt for, these laws of God. Breaking God’s laws always brings trouble. Thus, even as agriculture has succeeded in boosting raw productivity it suffers from a growing litany of plagues. Let’s quickly survey a few of them.

Conventional farming as God meticulously designed it is powered by the sun. All work is done by people and animals, which are fueled by other animals and by plants, which get their energy from soils fertilized by the animals and from sunlight via photosynthesis.

Industrial farming, by stark contrast, is powered by fossil fuels. The fertilizer comes from natural gas and petroleum-powered mining operations. The pesticides are products of industrial chemical manufacturing. The tractors and other equipment needed to sow, harvest and process the plants run on diesel fuel. All told, it takes at least 75 gallons of oil to grow an acre of corn, or to bring a steer to slaughter, for example. On top of that, the trucks and trains that transport the food from farm to processing plant to supermarket also require petroleum-based fuel. And the typical item of food in the industrial food chain travels 1,500 miles before being consumed. Besides producing far more pollution, this means that any disruptions in oil, coal or gas supplies will directly affect our food supplies.

Fertilizers are a classic study in the law of unintended consequences. They have been one of the biggest drivers of increased agricultural efficiency. They are chief among the innovations that have enabled today’s farmers to squeeze, for example, 200 bushels of corn or more out of every acre, rather than the mere 20 bushels their great-grandparents could have gotten. “It has been estimated that more than 2 billion people would not be alive today were it not for the invention of the industrial process for making nitrogen fertilizer,” wrote author Julian Cribb in his book The Coming Famine. “Indeed, fertilizers have been branded the principle cause of the human population explosion.”

In the singular pursuit of profit, however, food producers have used these artificial soil stimulants to get everything they possibly can without respecting the command to dress and keep the land. The soil never, ever rests: As it gets sucked dry of nutrients, more chemicals are added to ensure that bumper crops keep coming, no matter how nutritionally depleted. Farmers use the fertilizer in enormous quantities, far more than they need—as “insurance” to guarantee the yields they need in order to make ends meet.

These chemicals can acidify farm soils and may have harmful health reactions in consumers. The excess fertilizer has quite a ripple effect: It ends up evaporating and polluting the skies; seeping into the soil and polluting ground water; and running into the rivers, traveling downstream and polluting the oceans. The excess nitrogen encourages algae growth in the seas, sucking up oxygen and “smothering” other marine life. Nitrogen runoff out of the Mississippi River has created a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey.

Beyond that, our dependence on fertilizer means we really cannot afford any major interference in its supply if we are to sustain current food production. The fact that it requires enormous amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture doesn’t bode well for its remaining indefinitely in cheap, continuous supply.

Genetic engineering is another example of efficiency-oriented science with inadvertent aftereffects. Seed companies in the 1930s increased yields by breeding corn seed, for example, to grow thicker, stronger and faster. Today, companies go even further by genetically modifying corn with genes from bacteria or other organisms. This practice apparently contravenes the law by which God intended to preserve the natural state in which He created such elements: “[T]hou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed” (Leviticus 19:19). Interestingly, most genetic modifications are intended to circumvent problems caused by breaking God’s law in the first place: They help plants better survive drought, flooding, heat, disease and pests—all curses that God promises to inflict us with when we disobey Him (e.g. Deuteronomy 28:23-24, 38-39).

As a result of artificial bioengineering, not only do we have higher crop yields, but also fewer but larger farms, growing enormous amounts of only a few types of crops, controlled by fewer and larger multinational corporations. Such streamlining makes the system increasingly precarious. To take one concrete example: For thousands of years, farmers have planted their crops with seeds saved from the previous year’s harvest. Today, in order to stay competitive (and because of corporate bullying), farmers largely have no choice but to buy new, high-producing but non-replicating, genetically modified seed direct from the seed companies each year. Thus a natural, functional, self-perpetuating process is broken and made susceptible to breakdowns.

As diversity has been sacrificed on the altar of efficiency, the crop that has emerged the biggest winner is corn. Corn is cheap to grow in great abundance, and never cheaper than it is today, thanks to farm industrialization, bioengineering, fertilizers and pesticides. Additionally, the government has weighted the scales in its favor by subsidizing corn production—paying farmers to grow more of it. Thus, believe it or not, corn usually costs less to buy than to grow. To stay afloat financially, farmers must then grow still more of it (it doesn’t pay to use land for anything else), which drives the price down even further.

Food scientists have found a virtually unlimited number of uses for this plentiful cash crop: oil for frying; wax coating on fruits and vegetables; flour; modified starches; food coloring; preservatives; sweeteners; and so on. You’ll find it in most processed foods, often in a number of forms (maltodextrin, ascorbic acid, xanthan gum, monosodium glutamate, et cetera ad nauseam). High-fructose corn syrup—now the number one source of sweetness in the American diet, at 58 pounds per person per year—is used in most soft drinks and condiments.

Thanks to government subsidies, a lot of processed and fast food is artificially cheap. These foods tend to be very sweet and high in unhealthy fats, pleasing to the palate but with little nutritive value. Healthier foods are pricier. Unsurprisingly, people are consuming more of the cheap stuff than ever before. For people with lower incomes, there can be little alternative but to fuel up on the processed foods that end up exacerbating health problems like obesity and heart disease, which are becoming epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control now estimates that Type ii diabetes (what used to be called “adult onset” diabetes) will affect a staggering one third of American children born in the year 2000. This is just one example of the enormous costs of “cheap” processed food.

It would be a mistake to applaud the abundance of food that our industrialized system is able to generate without considering these chilling effects. As Jesus said in Matthew 7:16-17, “Ye shall know them by their fruits. … [E]very good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.”