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The reality is a bit more complicated than that. >Farming has to scale down. Then how are you going to feed everyone? By the time I left the farm for college
by wglb 8y ago
The reality is a bit more complicated than that.
>Farming has to scale down.
Then how are you going to feed everyone?
By the time I left the farm for college, the productivity of the American farmer had increased by almost two orders of magnitude for the 50 years beginning when my grandfather homesteaded in 1911. Improvements in technology, from using tractors instead of horses, modern cultivating techniques (strip farming, idle land cultivating), fertilizer increased yields and cut prices substantially.
When I was 3, my dad and uncle, who were partners in the farm, purchased a tractor for the equivalent of 1200 bushels of wheat. 15 years later, that same tractor would have cost 9500 bushels of wheat.
It isn't so simple that giant companies, whether it be oil, big ag, energy want to make profits. Clearly they do. But when we all insist on buying and driving cars and complain when gasoline prices are too high, there are overall economic forces at work that tend to create opportunities of scale, resulting in Big Ag and Big Energy. The consumer and the hungry mouths are all part of the equation.
- jelliclesfarm 8y agoI see it as a sign that we are way past our carrying capacity. Automating Ag would help secure food supply but when automation takes over, economies of scale don’t matter. Most of the commodity crop isn’t food but feed and fodder. Shifting to a predominantly vegetarian diet would also help. We have a myth of abundance due to economies of scale. It is very costly and is really not working out. Ditto with subsidies. All this is possible because of other enormous powers working invisibly. When goods reflect true cost of production, then consumption will come down as will wastage. Time for a reality check. Your parents and grandparents probably could make a living out of land and farming. But most farmers today need credit to buy high tech equipment and likely hold second jobs. What’s wrong with this picture?
- tptacek 8y agoIt is really hard to follow this argument. Smaller-scale crop farming doesn't just feed fewer people; it may also make poorer use of the land. It's hard to see how going backwards would help anyone.
- jelliclesfarm 8y agoIt will make people pay more for food. Is that such a bad thing? There is no such thing as a free lunch.
- tptacek 8y agoYes, it will do that (which is bad) and also it will probably make poorer use of the land itself. What exactly is the goal of doing this? Immiseration for its own sake?
- jelliclesfarm 8y ago1. Why is paying more for food a bad thing?...the true cost of growing food..a bad thing? 2. Soil gets depleted. Water is wasted. Inputs and tillage destroy soil structure. Pesticides and herbicides destroy habitat and bio diversity. These are the other costs of cheap food. 3. Please explain to me what you mean by ‘poorer use of soil’? What is your metric for best use of soil and sub optimal use of soil? 4. The goal is regenerative ag so that we can keep growing food for a long time and presence habitat and biodiversity. When you kill the golden goose, you can have roast goose for one day. And that’s that. What’s the use of that?
- tptacek 8y agoGiven fixed inputs of soil and water, extracting more usable crops is strictly better than extracting fewer. I think you may be stuck in the naturalist fallacy.
- jelliclesfarm 8y agoSmall scale Ag is the opposite of Factory Farming. The latter relies on economies of scale and a long supply chain. The former has a shorter supply chain and tries to grow on demand. Factory farming grows commodities, not food. It exploits labor, soil and destroys habitat. It keeps farmers in debt and they have to keep running faster to stay in the same place. While more can be grown in the same acre and with the same water(presumably), it includes inputs like pesticides, herbicides and large machinery. It concentrates power in a few hands. It reduces plant varieties and is tied to speculative markets. It requires subsidies and keeps farmers on knife’s edge. Maybe the spoon fed notion of abundance that comes from the lab and through chemical means..through mining and reliance on fossil fuels...through long supply chains, labour exploitation, subsidies and massive carbon foot print is a fallacy. Might it be that you are mistaken? Please reconsider your POV.