7 ms·

A great place to start would be to seriously limit or eliminate pesticides like Roundup. Don't believe the alarmists in Big Ag who will say the world will starv

A great place to start would be to seriously limit or eliminate pesticides like Roundup. Don't believe the alarmists in Big Ag who will say the world will starve. We overproduce food now, and organic farming techniques, if widely adopted, wouldn't make it impossible to continue to produce enough. The loss of diversity in insects and "weeds" has had a huge impact up the chain.

bamboozled 8y ago
I once saw a great quote which was, "maybe food is too cheap". This is probably true, we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. On the flip side, it would be more valued so we'd have less waste. I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  What about people who can't afford it now, though? There are literally billions of them.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    But for those people the food needs to be free, not cheaper - feeding them shit quality food just so they can afford it is the wrong solution as well. We need to be growing good quality food and those who can't afford it need to be given support to get it. Canned pasta and corn is not a solution just because it's cheap.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      What if we instead gave them means (technology) to grow it themselves and encouraged them to group in small communities that grow together? Aquaponics is getting more and more popular and can be very cheap. I imagine that a good "how to" guide and a small monetary donation could help a lot of people.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        The people who can't afford food are embedded in a corrupt society that stops anything structural from happening. Food is number one million on their list of needs, along with law and order.
      - Retra 8y ago
        You're not thinking like a poor person, you're thinking like a comfortably wealthy person. Poor people often don't have the time, energy, or mental well being to run organizations or take on another line of work. Money is a tool for overcoming barriers to cooperation. People who can't self-organize to cheaply produce food for survival will continue to not be able unless enough money is available.
        sologoub 8y ago
        That’s not true - most of the time they just don’t know about alternatives. It’s not that they are not thinking about them, it’s that they literally don’t know what’s possible. In terms of growing your own food, poverty of post USSR Russia is an interesting case study. The concept of a “dacha” became hugely important in subsistence. In last years of USSR shops became empty in most regions. You literally could not buy food even if you had money. Limited rations were provided so people didn’t die of starvation. A lot of families turned to weekend farming. Usually not any kind of livestock, just vegetables. Potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers and such. Pesticides were expensive, so not an option. Composting and dun from the villages who had livestock were primarily used. My grandparents weekend farm produced enough to feed several families and we often gave away or bartered extra sacks of potatos. In all, the land used for this was less than .2 acre. Worked by 2 adults part time with rudimentary tools more reminiscent of 18/19th century than a modern operation.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Same in the Czech Republic with my grandparents and basically the whole village where they lived.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      >But for those people the food needs to be free, not cheaper I wonder if anyone has ever starved when some government came in to make the food free? Edit: I wonder if I’m the only on that has seen HN move exponentially faster towards reddit in the last year?
    - strken 8y ago
      Famines and food insecurity are usually caused by sudden unavailability rather than slowly rising costs, aren't they? The ongoing famine in Yemen seems to be the result of blockaded ports and disrupted agricultural infrastructure, and the most recent famines in Africa were the result of drought.
  - bordercases 8y ago
    Population inflated. Do a steady "deleveraging" where you couple a decrease in food production with a decrease in population from birth control. I would also say "urbanization" but that generates other externalities and costs which interact closely with the biodiversity problem.
- jules 8y ago
  That's easy to say if you are rich because your food is only a small fraction of your income.
- mchannon 8y ago
  Everybody here is ignoring yield per acre. RoundUp, for all its faults, drives the yield number up. More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides. If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? I agree that glyphosate (RoundUp now makes up less than half the market, which is largely Chinese-made and Chinese-consumed now) should probably be far more heavily regulated, but be aware that humans are not going to happily grow less food on the same land when yields drop. Taste the rainforest.
  - bad_user 8y ago
    Modern agricultural practices that focus on yield per acre are also decreasing the quality of the soil. It’s a short term gain. Long term sustainability is more important. Given how much food we throw away, I really don’t think the yield per acre is a problem. It’s a race to the bottom anyway.
  - alehul 8y ago
    > If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? The argument above, if I'm not mistaken, is that we should produce less food, and so if that is the objective, we can farm the same acreage with a lower yield per acre just fine. Less supply is a fundamental part of the idea, in fact, to inflate food prices and reduce waste.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      What about the humans who eat that food ? Should we kill them now or just let them starve ? (there's only a few percent more food than needed, so ...)
      - alehul 8y ago
        I'm not commenting on the soundness of the above argument, merely trying to make sure its premises are correctly interpreted. :) I think other comments, however, did address the discussion of people who struggle to afford food at current prices-- additionally, in the U.S. specifically, 40% of food is wasted [1]. Maybe just a decrease in U.S. food supply would be in order? Or specifically countries where food waste is that high? [1] https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf
- Hoasi 8y ago
  > we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. Better quality combined with eating less, both would be good and producing less waste.
zeroname 8y ago
> We overproduce food now... The alternatives to Roundup tend to be worse than Roundup. That's why people use Roundup. That's not to say Roundup per se is absolutely necessary, but farming without pesticides doesn't work at the scale necessary to feed the human population. There's no choice between "overproduction" and "appropriate production" by getting rid of pesticides. Despite all the overproduction, we still have spikes in food prices caused by bad harvests. Limiting production even more would be risky. > ... and organic farming techniques, of widely adopted, wouldn't make it impossible to continue to produce enough. First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. It doesn't have any properly defined meaning, it also uses pesticides (just not those deemed "not organic") which aren't harmless either, it is vastly more expensive even at scale (which by now it has, due to high demand in rich countries). It's wishful thinking that it could replace modern farming.
- ramblenode 8y ago
  > First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. At least in the US, there is a "certified organic" label regulated by the USDA. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national...
  - mrmanner 8y ago
    EU has its own label as well[1], and most (or all?) EU states protect the word "organic" on the food market so it can only be used for foods certified by a few approved organizations. 1: https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/splash_en https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/splash_en
  - strainer 8y ago
    Its not just a label, its a regulated labeling term. Practically all food labelled as organic in US, EU and other regions has to be certified organic. This "marketing BS" idea is pure meme. https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-standards https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...
chr1 8y ago
Using gene drives to eliminate the few insect species that cause most of the harm to agriculture, will allow to drastically reduce the amount of pesticide we have to use now.
- msiyer 8y ago
  A myopic solution. We have no idea what role these problematic insects and weeds play in the grand scheme of things. Killing them is one thing. Elimination of species is a totally different game.
  - titzer 8y ago
    I agree. We pretend we know what we are doing, but we have no clue. It really sucks that insects eat our crops, but insects need to eat something, or they die. If they die, then whatever eats them will also die. No matter how you slice it, humans need to consume every ounce of available resources to fuel not only just our population growth, but our economic growth too. We do this by vast ecosystem destruction, replacing complex food webs with our own industrialized agriculture and production needs. Whether we use chemical pesticides or turn their homes asunder and starve them to death, or "snipe" them to death with gene drive fantasies, the result is the same: we're eliminating everything that does not participate in the cartoon food web of our own creation. This will not end well.
    - chr1 8y ago
      While i agree that loss of biodiversity especially in tropical forests, is a catastrophe, i don't think that keeping a few more insects and birds in our fields helps. In fact it forces us to use more space for agriculture and destroy more of valuable forests. Also most of the plants we cultivate are invasive species, and their main pests are invasive as well, so we have plenty of opportunities to experiment on this invasive species before before we kill native species in their original habitats.

bamboozled 8y ago

I once saw a great quote which was, "maybe food is too cheap". This is probably true, we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. On the flip side, it would be more valued so we'd have less waste. I can't imagine the amount of "non-valued" food, fruit vegetables etc which end up in the bin.

TomMarius 8y ago
What about people who can't afford it now, though? There are literally billions of them.
- gambiting 8y ago
  But for those people the food needs to be free, not cheaper - feeding them shit quality food just so they can afford it is the wrong solution as well. We need to be growing good quality food and those who can't afford it need to be given support to get it. Canned pasta and corn is not a solution just because it's cheap.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    What if we instead gave them means (technology) to grow it themselves and encouraged them to group in small communities that grow together? Aquaponics is getting more and more popular and can be very cheap. I imagine that a good "how to" guide and a small monetary donation could help a lot of people.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      The people who can't afford food are embedded in a corrupt society that stops anything structural from happening. Food is number one million on their list of needs, along with law and order.
    - Retra 8y ago
      You're not thinking like a poor person, you're thinking like a comfortably wealthy person. Poor people often don't have the time, energy, or mental well being to run organizations or take on another line of work. Money is a tool for overcoming barriers to cooperation. People who can't self-organize to cheaply produce food for survival will continue to not be able unless enough money is available.
      - sologoub 8y ago
        That’s not true - most of the time they just don’t know about alternatives. It’s not that they are not thinking about them, it’s that they literally don’t know what’s possible. In terms of growing your own food, poverty of post USSR Russia is an interesting case study. The concept of a “dacha” became hugely important in subsistence. In last years of USSR shops became empty in most regions. You literally could not buy food even if you had money. Limited rations were provided so people didn’t die of starvation. A lot of families turned to weekend farming. Usually not any kind of livestock, just vegetables. Potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers and such. Pesticides were expensive, so not an option. Composting and dun from the villages who had livestock were primarily used. My grandparents weekend farm produced enough to feed several families and we often gave away or bartered extra sacks of potatos. In all, the land used for this was less than .2 acre. Worked by 2 adults part time with rudimentary tools more reminiscent of 18/19th century than a modern operation.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Same in the Czech Republic with my grandparents and basically the whole village where they lived.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    >But for those people the food needs to be free, not cheaper I wonder if anyone has ever starved when some government came in to make the food free? Edit: I wonder if I’m the only on that has seen HN move exponentially faster towards reddit in the last year?
  - strken 8y ago
    Famines and food insecurity are usually caused by sudden unavailability rather than slowly rising costs, aren't they? The ongoing famine in Yemen seems to be the result of blockaded ports and disrupted agricultural infrastructure, and the most recent famines in Africa were the result of drought.
- bordercases 8y ago
  Population inflated. Do a steady "deleveraging" where you couple a decrease in food production with a decrease in population from birth control. I would also say "urbanization" but that generates other externalities and costs which interact closely with the biodiversity problem.
jules 8y ago
That's easy to say if you are rich because your food is only a small fraction of your income.
mchannon 8y ago
Everybody here is ignoring yield per acre. RoundUp, for all its faults, drives the yield number up. More people (and particularly more cattle) are fed per acre when you use pesticides. If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? I agree that glyphosate (RoundUp now makes up less than half the market, which is largely Chinese-made and Chinese-consumed now) should probably be far more heavily regulated, but be aware that humans are not going to happily grow less food on the same land when yields drop. Taste the rainforest.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Modern agricultural practices that focus on yield per acre are also decreasing the quality of the soil. It’s a short term gain. Long term sustainability is more important. Given how much food we throw away, I really don’t think the yield per acre is a problem. It’s a race to the bottom anyway.
- alehul 8y ago
  > If you banned the pesticides, it would do a lot of good, but now consider how many more acres would need to be farmed in order to keep the overall yields the same. How many acres would be cleared that would not otherwise be cleared? The argument above, if I'm not mistaken, is that we should produce less food, and so if that is the objective, we can farm the same acreage with a lower yield per acre just fine. Less supply is a fundamental part of the idea, in fact, to inflate food prices and reduce waste.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    What about the humans who eat that food ? Should we kill them now or just let them starve ? (there's only a few percent more food than needed, so ...)
    - alehul 8y ago
      I'm not commenting on the soundness of the above argument, merely trying to make sure its premises are correctly interpreted. :) I think other comments, however, did address the discussion of people who struggle to afford food at current prices-- additionally, in the U.S. specifically, 40% of food is wasted [1]. Maybe just a decrease in U.S. food supply would be in order? Or specifically countries where food waste is that high? [1] https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf
Hoasi 8y ago
> we could probably eat better quality, organic food grown in a more diverse way, it would just cost more. Better quality combined with eating less, both would be good and producing less waste.

zeroname 8y ago

> We overproduce food now... The alternatives to Roundup tend to be worse than Roundup. That's why people use Roundup. That's not to say Roundup per se is absolutely necessary, but farming without pesticides doesn't work at the scale necessary to feed the human population. There's no choice between "overproduction" and "appropriate production" by getting rid of pesticides. Despite all the overproduction, we still have spikes in food prices caused by bad harvests. Limiting production even more would be risky. > ... and organic farming techniques, of widely adopted, wouldn't make it impossible to continue to produce enough. First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. It doesn't have any properly defined meaning, it also uses pesticides (just not those deemed "not organic") which aren't harmless either, it is vastly more expensive even at scale (which by now it has, due to high demand in rich countries). It's wishful thinking that it could replace modern farming.

ramblenode 8y ago
> First of all, "organic farming" is marketing BS. At least in the US, there is a "certified organic" label regulated by the USDA. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national...
- mrmanner 8y ago
  EU has its own label as well[1], and most (or all?) EU states protect the word "organic" on the food market so it can only be used for foods certified by a few approved organizations. 1: https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/splash_en https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/splash_en
- strainer 8y ago
  Its not just a label, its a regulated labeling term. Practically all food labelled as organic in US, EU and other regions has to be certified organic. This "marketing BS" idea is pure meme. https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-standards https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-s...

chr1 8y ago

Using gene drives to eliminate the few insect species that cause most of the harm to agriculture, will allow to drastically reduce the amount of pesticide we have to use now.

msiyer 8y ago
A myopic solution. We have no idea what role these problematic insects and weeds play in the grand scheme of things. Killing them is one thing. Elimination of species is a totally different game.
- titzer 8y ago
  I agree. We pretend we know what we are doing, but we have no clue. It really sucks that insects eat our crops, but insects need to eat something, or they die. If they die, then whatever eats them will also die. No matter how you slice it, humans need to consume every ounce of available resources to fuel not only just our population growth, but our economic growth too. We do this by vast ecosystem destruction, replacing complex food webs with our own industrialized agriculture and production needs. Whether we use chemical pesticides or turn their homes asunder and starve them to death, or "snipe" them to death with gene drive fantasies, the result is the same: we're eliminating everything that does not participate in the cartoon food web of our own creation. This will not end well.
  - chr1 8y ago
    While i agree that loss of biodiversity especially in tropical forests, is a catastrophe, i don't think that keeping a few more insects and birds in our fields helps. In fact it forces us to use more space for agriculture and destroy more of valuable forests. Also most of the plants we cultivate are invasive species, and their main pests are invasive as well, so we have plenty of opportunities to experiment on this invasive species before before we kill native species in their original habitats.