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Don’t we already know how to do this? For example, the concept of companion planting — growing plants which behave symbiotically together — is a centuries old i

• blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  I am not an agronomist, but my instinct is that companion planting interferes with large-scale farming, where machines or poorly paid humans in a hurry need to easy access to a single crop to harvest, and often destroy the field as they work. I'd like to think if the yields were worth it we'd have worked around that, but possibly robotic harvesters can take us there.
  • maerF0x0 8y ago
    And that is the crux of the entire question. You get what you incentivize. Current US Farming practices are extremely incentivized towards singular homogenous products using an absolute minimum of human labor.
    • saalweachter 8y ago
      Eh, grains are never the problem. Essentially none of the problems you hear about in agriculture apply to grains. We can produce just staggering amounts of grain on a per-acre basis, and we can ship them without refrigeration and store them for long periods of time without any significant loss of nutritional value. The carbon, energy and monetary cost of shipping huge quantities of grain from the center of the US to the coasts where people live is negligible. You don't have the complex social issues of migrant and immigrant labor with grain production; I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if there's some, but it's definitely not a necessary component the way it is in current vegetable production and in meat processing. There's some potential problems in water usage in some places grains are produced, you can have some good conversations about fertilizer and pesticide production, and about soil maintenance, and we continually want to be working to improve the resiliency and productivity of the crop varieties, but grains are in pretty good shape and there's a clear road map for future work, with lots of incremental progress being made every day. Produce and meat production is where the big gains are to be had, for the environment, food security, and improving the conditions of working people. Just bank on having half our calories coming from massive grain farms located at great distance from the population centers and try to figure out how to fix the rest, and then maybe it will be time to revisit grains.
      • CompelTechnic 8y ago
        Well said. I would also argue that concerns over crops taking up too much land are somewhat misplaced until we reach a point where we at risk of not having enough farmland to feed the population. When we reach that point, only food that can be grown in ultra-dense (calories per acre) ways will be affordable, and other foods will be luxuries with a high premium. Until then we are enjoying our relative luxury of plentiful land, and can enjoy luxury crops and meat for cheap. Although this harms the environment, nobody starves to death because of this current practice- all those who currently starve to death do so because of distribution problems /abject poverty.
        • liveoneggs 8y ago
          water will run out far sooner than land :)
      • doctorpangloss 8y ago
        Yeah, but aren’t you worried you’re going to really eat crow when you find out that the industrial features of grains are decisively harmful for the environment? Like obviously meat production is too. But did you consider that wiping out insects might have as much to do with grain pesticides as produce pesticides? It would be smarter if you just said the truth, which is “It’s hard to tell if the economic costs of grain production (like environmental damage) line up with the accounting costs (what shows up in a price per metric ton), because our framework for accounting for environmental damage has basically never slowed down production in a single market before lower prices has.” Really, even nuclear power plants still make money right? Name one market where accounting for environmental damage reduces supply before a decline in prices did. It should be obvious that what I’m saying isn’t an oxymoron. Organic produce is supposed to “account” for environmental costs, and it’s oftentimes more profitable to make. So the same land will be induced into making whatever is most profitable per acre. Obviously the problem is that people are incentivized to make the accounting costs of environmental impact as small as possible, even when selling organic produce. And that’s the problem.
        • saalweachter 8y ago
  • sampo 8y ago
    > companion planting interferes with large-scale farming, where machines or poorly paid humans in a hurry need to easy access to a single crop to harvest The current world population of 7.7 billion is projected to grow to at least 10 billion, before it might turn and start decreasing. The availability of human labor is one thing there should be no shortage of in the future.
• avip 8y ago
  To clarify: you suggest we could grow more food using fewer resources if we used the centuries-old idea of companion planting? That sounds highly unlikely. The problems we know companion planting could solve (=pests) are solved way more effectively in modern monoculture.