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It's also using less farm land and keeping people fed. It's not obvious that small homesteads would be a viable way to feed the world, much less a sustainable
by jopsen 8y ago
It's also using less farm land and keeping people fed.
It's not obvious that small homesteads would be a viable way to feed the world, much less a sustainable way to do it.
I'm not claiming that industrial scale farming doesn't have environmental issues. But growing more food on less land might be a good thing.
- mandelbrotwurst 8y agoIt's not using less land than a small homestead, it's using less labor. A small homestead farming with smaller tools can get far more yield per acre than a huge mono-crop farm does.
- Pfhreak 8y ago> But growing more food on less land might be a good thing. Not if it costs us our humanity. The mistreatment of animals we eat/farm is astonishing. Maximizing efficiency isn't always the best metric to try and optimize for, it leads to some really warped places. (Interesting side note, Tolkien wrote about this a bunch -- Sauron was originally a forge/craftsman god who just really wanted to make things more efficient. His downfall was that he overly liked coordination and disliked wasteful friction.)
- Ntrails 8y ago> Not if it costs us our humanity. The mistreatment of animals we eat/farm is astonishing. "Humanity" not a universally accepted constant. Being "Humane" means largely arbitrary things depending on culture. I'm not sure I accept that your apparent definition of humanity meaningfully exists on a global scale so I'm far from worried about losing it.
- Pfhreak 8y agoGood call. Ethics and morality are pursuits for chumps. rolls eyes
- specialist 8y agoHow about we defend American norms on American soil?
- gerbilly 8y agoYeah, so let's race to the bottom and make sure we treat each other, animals and nature as bad as we can because it's all just relative...
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoSo productivity....leads to evil. I'm going to let my boss know about this right now. And I'm turning off SLACK!
- supermatt 8y agoWhether you have one hundred hectares or a million hectares, your animal density should be the same. This isn't a case of more food on less land. The problem is that those with "more" are receiving substantial subsidies to sustain a business that would otherwise lose money. They are then able to invest that money into buying more land to get more animals and larger subsidies, resulting in overproduction and reduced margins, forcing the smaller farms out of the market. Even if you don't drink milk, if you pay your taxes, you are paying for it. Like I said, it's disgusting.
- honkycat 8y agoYES. THIS. I always wonder why this argument is not more popular. The animal welfare argument IS valid but is not going to land with a lot of people. Pointing out these industries are getting a free ride, however... It's the subsidies that tick me off. We should be a civilization of mostly plant-eaters with the occasional dairy and meat meal. Instead, we are a civilization of carnivores because we subsidize the meat industrial complex so heavily. We should internalize the cost of pollution these industries create, not give them free money to continue destroying the planet.
- marricks 8y agoYeah... larger operations are more efficient. It’s one thing I try to remind people who think humane meat could be a thing. Our planet is already getting destroyed by CAFOs imagine feeding people cows who each had an acre to themselves? (My solution is just stop eating animals, better for them, us, and our dying planet)
- sampo 8y ago> larger operations are more efficient The amount of animal feed grown per acre of land should stay pretty much constant. Also the amount of feed a single cow eats, is constant. So in this kind of energetic respect, small and large operations can be equally efficient. But larger operations can mechanize and automatize more work, and thus need less human labor, and can save on salaries. In this kind of monetary respect, they are more efficient.
- projektfu 8y agoIf you keep making more and more food, the population keeps growing, and more and more land needs to be turned into farmland. Increases in efficiency only produce more food. This is not fixed by diverting farmland from animal protein to grains.
- StreamBright 8y agoThis article about milk production. If you stop eating meat and still drink milk it wouldn't stop.