5 ms·

Food is artificially cheap in the U.S., by a lot. U.S. factory farming is heavily subsidized--to the point that those farmers basically live off the subsidies.

Food is artificially cheap in the U.S., by a lot. U.S. factory farming is heavily subsidized--to the point that those farmers basically live off the subsidies. That podcast guest is shit--food from ecological systems is absolutely better tasting. Ask any decent chef (myself included). The idea that "organic food theory is bunk" is really hand-wavy. The importance of organic is the emphasis on ecology and soil health. Basically, life is made of carbon. So farms that are rich in life hold onto carbon. Whereas factory farm systems rely on monocrops, pesticides, and fertilizers, which sterilize life. These practices get an initial productivity bump, but end up depleting carrying capacity over several seasons. Subsidies are the crutch that keeps all that going.

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
There is nothing that says a farmer can't use sustainable crop rotation practices with fertilizer and pesticide use. In fact, that is what farmers do regularly ... in many places. They aren't idiots that just pump fertilizer and pesticide in their fields to destroy them. If you actually spend some time on a regular commercial farm, you'll find that is the case in this day and age ... even in the US. Organic food theory is bunk. The double blind taste tests prove, scientifically that your better taste theory is wrong. You know you can grow heirloom varieties and perishable varieties with pesticide and fertilizer too right? Just because people grow perishable and heirloom varieties with organic methods, because rich people like organic, and rich people pay for these lower yielding varieties also, doesn't make these factors inherently confounded. You can separate them if consumer tastes at the top of the market change. My family grows very delicious fruit and vegetable by using a judicious amount of pesticide and fertilizer, in a sustainable way, in central california. We practice crop rotation in our vegetable gardens (but our primary crop is walnuts which does not allow for crop rotation ... but we are exploring mixed use ... but harvesting constraints and other issues dominate the calculation on whether crop mixing is feasible there). I am a programmer in San Francisco, and my father would probably have been one in 1970 if such a career was available to him then. He is a really smart guy. You think he is an idiot who doesn't examine all the issues when choosing to use pesticide and fertilizer? Our land has been in our family for almost a century. It is still yielding well. We know very well how to farm sustainably. Edit: as for subsidies, we don't want them. But we live in a market where prices are determined by them. Subsidies are bad. But, we cannot remove subsidies as individuals. And I disagree that low prices are a result of subsidies in the aggregate. They are certainly for specific crops ... and certainly for meat. But unless you consider water use a subsidy, I don't think food would get 50% more expensive without subsidies. Total US Ag subsidies is around $20 Billion while the size of the Ag sector is like $900Billion. 20 Billion removal will not effect an almost 1 Trillion dollar market in such a drastic way. Specific crops will be more expensive, but on the whole, agriculture will migrate to better, unconventional crops. We will actually meet market demand BETTER once subsidies don't distort our crop choices.
- rojobuffalo 10y ago
  We should acknowledge that there's a problem with terminology and lumping too many things together. There are fertilizers and pesticides that come from a chemical plant, and there are those that come from recycled biomass. I've worked on both kinds of farms and alongside chefs. I've done blind taste tests, and the trend is that the richer ecological systems produce better flavor, especially with meat. What that study you linked to shows is that people interpret flavor with high suggestibility for the food's origin. They were misrepresenting origin to tasters--not just blindly tasting things. Plus, they were only looking at tomatoes. I guarantee if you run a completely blind experiment (with no suggestion bias) with peaches, gourds, or any meat product--factory system loses. But the main point is that farmers have to make choices. To the extent that subsidies make factory-model decisions more viable--this leads to more food that is artificially cheap. And unpriced negative externalities are a form of subsidy. You can exploit a farm's ecological endowment or invest in it. If prices were perfect--investing in ecological richness would be more heavily rewarded.
  - TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
    But the fundamental issue with taste is that of varieties and of soil quality. It is completely false that the use of fertilizer and pesticide (even from a factory) when judiciously used, will affect the soil quality more adversely than organic cultivation. I would argue, that using some pesticide and fertilizer is BETTER than pure organic methods, because you will not only grow delicious crops, you will have the luxury of trying some varieties which, while delicious, are too sensitive to disease to exploit commercially otherwise. Edit: There are many methods championed by organic farmers that do produce tastier food. But those methods are not tied to not using fertilizers and pesticides from factories. And while I credit them with introducing those methods. Those methods can be hybridized with the use of fertilizer and pesticide to get both yield and taste up. In the case of meat, its clear that factory farmed chicken is garbage. Free range chicken tastes much better. We can use some scientific methods to discover what makes the free range chicken taste better, rather than accepting like religion that just putting them in a free roam yard is the reason for the flavor.
dogma1138 10y ago
The US spends 20 bln $ per year on farm subsidies, the EU spends 59 bln Euros.
terravion 10y ago
You can find organic pesticides on label look-up services. Personally, the general toxicity, great frequency of application, marginally lower safety, and greater environmental impacts of organic lead me to choose conventional whenever I have a choice (in California you don't always). http://agrian.com/labelcenter/results.cfm http://agrian.com/labelcenter/results.cfm?
- dogma1138 10y ago
  You also need to take in account the considerably higher energy cost, water cost and overall negative environmental impact of "organic" crops. Organic crops are bad, sorry they are awful.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
>food from ecological systems is absolutely better tasting. Ask any decent chef (myself included). Have you done any (double blind) A/B testing to conclude this? Argument from authority (even if they are decent chefs) doesn't count.
- rojobuffalo 10y ago
  I have. I've designed and participated in blind A/B tests for coffee, wheat, fish, chicken, eggs, mushrooms, peaches, squash, watermelon, and others I'm forgetting. Not for a research paper, but for sourcing decisions at a restaurant and on farms testing different cultivation methods.
  - maverick_iceman 10y ago
    Why don't you publish your revolutionary findings in a peer-reviewed journal? You will be hailed as the father of a completely new field of scientific inquiry. (Since current science cannot explain how the same food can taste different just because it was raised organically.)

TheMagicHorsey 10y ago

There is nothing that says a farmer can't use sustainable crop rotation practices with fertilizer and pesticide use. In fact, that is what farmers do regularly ... in many places. They aren't idiots that just pump fertilizer and pesticide in their fields to destroy them. If you actually spend some time on a regular commercial farm, you'll find that is the case in this day and age ... even in the US. Organic food theory is bunk. The double blind taste tests prove, scientifically that your better taste theory is wrong. You know you can grow heirloom varieties and perishable varieties with pesticide and fertilizer too right? Just because people grow perishable and heirloom varieties with organic methods, because rich people like organic, and rich people pay for these lower yielding varieties also, doesn't make these factors inherently confounded. You can separate them if consumer tastes at the top of the market change. My family grows very delicious fruit and vegetable by using a judicious amount of pesticide and fertilizer, in a sustainable way, in central california. We practice crop rotation in our vegetable gardens (but our primary crop is walnuts which does not allow for crop rotation ... but we are exploring mixed use ... but harvesting constraints and other issues dominate the calculation on whether crop mixing is feasible there). I am a programmer in San Francisco, and my father would probably have been one in 1970 if such a career was available to him then. He is a really smart guy. You think he is an idiot who doesn't examine all the issues when choosing to use pesticide and fertilizer? Our land has been in our family for almost a century. It is still yielding well. We know very well how to farm sustainably. Edit: as for subsidies, we don't want them. But we live in a market where prices are determined by them. Subsidies are bad. But, we cannot remove subsidies as individuals. And I disagree that low prices are a result of subsidies in the aggregate. They are certainly for specific crops ... and certainly for meat. But unless you consider water use a subsidy, I don't think food would get 50% more expensive without subsidies. Total US Ag subsidies is around $20 Billion while the size of the Ag sector is like $900Billion. 20 Billion removal will not effect an almost 1 Trillion dollar market in such a drastic way. Specific crops will be more expensive, but on the whole, agriculture will migrate to better, unconventional crops. We will actually meet market demand BETTER once subsidies don't distort our crop choices.

rojobuffalo 10y ago
We should acknowledge that there's a problem with terminology and lumping too many things together. There are fertilizers and pesticides that come from a chemical plant, and there are those that come from recycled biomass. I've worked on both kinds of farms and alongside chefs. I've done blind taste tests, and the trend is that the richer ecological systems produce better flavor, especially with meat. What that study you linked to shows is that people interpret flavor with high suggestibility for the food's origin. They were misrepresenting origin to tasters--not just blindly tasting things. Plus, they were only looking at tomatoes. I guarantee if you run a completely blind experiment (with no suggestion bias) with peaches, gourds, or any meat product--factory system loses. But the main point is that farmers have to make choices. To the extent that subsidies make factory-model decisions more viable--this leads to more food that is artificially cheap. And unpriced negative externalities are a form of subsidy. You can exploit a farm's ecological endowment or invest in it. If prices were perfect--investing in ecological richness would be more heavily rewarded.
- TheMagicHorsey 10y ago
  But the fundamental issue with taste is that of varieties and of soil quality. It is completely false that the use of fertilizer and pesticide (even from a factory) when judiciously used, will affect the soil quality more adversely than organic cultivation. I would argue, that using some pesticide and fertilizer is BETTER than pure organic methods, because you will not only grow delicious crops, you will have the luxury of trying some varieties which, while delicious, are too sensitive to disease to exploit commercially otherwise. Edit: There are many methods championed by organic farmers that do produce tastier food. But those methods are not tied to not using fertilizers and pesticides from factories. And while I credit them with introducing those methods. Those methods can be hybridized with the use of fertilizer and pesticide to get both yield and taste up. In the case of meat, its clear that factory farmed chicken is garbage. Free range chicken tastes much better. We can use some scientific methods to discover what makes the free range chicken taste better, rather than accepting like religion that just putting them in a free roam yard is the reason for the flavor.

dogma1138 10y ago

The US spends 20 bln $ per year on farm subsidies, the EU spends 59 bln Euros.

terravion 10y ago

You can find organic pesticides on label look-up services. Personally, the general toxicity, great frequency of application, marginally lower safety, and greater environmental impacts of organic lead me to choose conventional whenever I have a choice (in California you don't always). http://agrian.com/labelcenter/results.cfm http://agrian.com/labelcenter/results.cfm?

dogma1138 10y ago
You also need to take in account the considerably higher energy cost, water cost and overall negative environmental impact of "organic" crops. Organic crops are bad, sorry they are awful.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

>food from ecological systems is absolutely better tasting. Ask any decent chef (myself included). Have you done any (double blind) A/B testing to conclude this? Argument from authority (even if they are decent chefs) doesn't count.

rojobuffalo 10y ago
I have. I've designed and participated in blind A/B tests for coffee, wheat, fish, chicken, eggs, mushrooms, peaches, squash, watermelon, and others I'm forgetting. Not for a research paper, but for sourcing decisions at a restaurant and on farms testing different cultivation methods.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Why don't you publish your revolutionary findings in a peer-reviewed journal? You will be hailed as the father of a completely new field of scientific inquiry. (Since current science cannot explain how the same food can taste different just because it was raised organically.)