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the agriculture shills keep pushing this notion that their way of growing with chemicals is the the most productive way when I've yet to see a study that indica

the agriculture shills keep pushing this notion that their way of growing with chemicals is the the most productive way when I've yet to see a study that indicates that any of what they've done has increased crop yields.

whatshisface 7y ago
If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.
- matt_kantor 7y ago
  The article claims this at the end: > Farms using neonics had 10 times the insect pressure and half the profits compared to those who use regenerative farming methods instead of insecticides according a 2018 study. Like agroecological farming, regenerative agricultural uses cover crops, no-till and other methods to increase on-farm biodiversity and soil health. The regenerative corn-soy operations in the study didn’t have to worry about insect problems, said co-author Jonathan Lundgren, an agroecologist and Director of the ECDYSIS Foundation. > Farmers who are dependent on chemicals are going out of business, said Lundgren, who is also a grain farmer in South Dakota. “It’s painful to see when we have tested, scientifically sound solutions. Working with nature is a good business decision,” he says. It links to this study as a source: https://peerj.com/articles/4428/ https://peerj.com/articles/4428/
  - gravelc 7y ago
    Quoting the abstract: >Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems. Lower yield and much more expensive for consumers is a difficult sell IMO. There's some comments here on this study: http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinary-claims/ http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinary...
    - easybee 7y ago
      Thank you for this. It is absolutely frustrating to hear so many comments that isolate one factor to the exclusions of others. Profit is income minus expenses, so if you spend very very little, you can make a profit with little revenue. Revenue is a function of price per unit times yield,so if your prices are comparatively high your revenue is low because your yield is very low. Low yield has important and detrimental environmental consequences in that far, far more land is being used to feed the same number of people. The loss of natural habitats is an important negative consequence of our need to produce food, so efficient land use is very important to protect biological diversity. Now, land use efficiency has a number of factors to consider. The use of the crop is one, such as are we growing crops to feed animals that we eat? This is always inefficient from slightly (say, chicken) to massively (such as beef). So if you are championing permaculture to solve the ills of chemical pesticides and mineral salt fertilizers, you really should focus on eating crickets and plants, as this would have a far greater impact. On the matter of chemical versus alternative pest controls, this is again often subject to selective comparisons. For instance, there if insects are ravaging your grapes you could spray a chemical pesticide that selectively targets insects with piercing-sucking mouthparts that will plug their feeding tube and stop damage, eventually killing the insect, or you could spray kaolin clay and create a deterrent that may suppress enough damage to protect your crop. Sounds ideal, right? The clay has no detrimental effect on insects, is completely non-toxic, etc. However the chemical insecticide is applied at say 500ml per hectare, where as the kaolin requires say 25 kg per hectare and requires two sprays to establish adequate coverage, and needs to be reapplied after every rain, while the insecticide is systemic and residual, persisting inside the tissue of the plant for a few weeks before being metabolized. That means the clay is a lot more water and fuel intensive, increasing the footprint of your operation. The 500ml of insecticide costs say $30, while the kaolin costs around $160 for the first application and $80 each time it rains. Before you assume the evil chemical giants are manipulating the market to favor of their product, remember that that clay was 25kg (as compared to 500g) -- that's a LOT more gas to transport from the quarry to your farm. So when you look at the whole picture, that ideal seemingly zero-impact alternative actually greatly increases water use, gasoline use, CO2 emissions, the amount of farmland required for a similar yield, and ultimately raises food prices. My point is that while the way we grow our food has to change, the answers are complex. Returning to "older ways" by rejecting scientific advances will not help us unless we are also prepared to accept a vastly lower population and the human misery that would entail. If you really want to help, get involved in the doing of agriculture, either in the growing, researching, or distribution of food and help create real answers. If that is not in the cards, then look at how you can change your use of food to create the change you want to see. Stop eating meat, eat insects. Make sure you don't waste food. Stop driving to the store and get your groceries delivered (a full half of CO2 emissions comes from getting the groceries home from the store and delivery reduces that significantly). Most importantly, do not champion solutions as a cure-all, or denounce methods as deadly mistakes without putting in the time and effort to justify your position. Until then participate, learn, push the values of lower impact and sustainability, but trust that there are many many people all through the agricultural sector that are of the same mind and working hard to advance those values.
- zapita 7y ago
  Maybe there are network effects at play which make it difficult to do what you suggest?
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    There's something like a network effect at play insofar as it has a "rich get richer" effect. Farming practices that get more use get more research, which means that the orthodoxy is going to be closer to its local maximum than fringe methods. That means that a fringe method could have more potential efficacy than the orthodoxy while still being worse.
- whenanother 7y ago
  one of running theme about growing misanto’s products was that your yields never goes up. they’ve never could honestly show that gmo products could increase yields. they kept implying it all the time but they never could prove it. gmo never ever increased crop yields. and by gmo i don’t mean cross breeding plants.
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  >If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing. You can farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, there are people doing it right now. https://brownsranch.us/ https://brownsranch.us/ That doesn't mean everyone can rush out and buy a few thousand acres of land and start doing it, as very few people have the capital to do so. And even if you could get the loan, agriculture isn't a very good investment, you'd be better off being a venture capitalist rather than investing in farming. This is why there are virtually no new farmers, and of the tiny number there are almost all of them are small scale vegetable growers selling produce at farmer's markets. And you wouldn't make a killing, you would drive the price down and make a minimal return on your investment, just like what has happened with every single advance in farming yield per dollar spent.
rayiner 7y ago
Modern science has increased yield for corn by a factor of 8: https://images.app.goo.gl/QfcFrk4nvu7uw6M67 https://images.app.goo.gl/QfcFrk4nvu7uw6M67. I’m only 35 and it’s doubled in my lifetime.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Except you're not accounting for the nutritional density [0] per yield being reduced and also the fact that the majority of cash crop goes to feeding livestock. [0] https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-priorities/nutrient-density/ https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-prioritie...
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Your other argument isn't especially persuasive, either. Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Whatever "protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C" reduction there has been in corn over the last 50 years, it's extremely unlikely to have offset a factor of 8 increase in productivity.
    - windexh8er 7y ago
      [3> Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Actually it does. 90 million acres of corn were planted for livestock in 2018 [0] and we know that the nutritional density of corn has declined [1]. So the long term is we just keep yielding higher with lower nutritional value? The main reason we're after higher yields is livestock and mass produced "junk" food which provides what positive value? The sustainability problem aside, how does this benefit us globally and long term? > Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Is it a problem? Yes. [2] In America? Past studies [3] have shown this and I don't think it's a stretch to just look at the health epidemic here which is, generally, systemic from poor overall nutrition. [4] Sure, the productivity factor is in our "favor", at least by the numbers. But it's very clear that there is negative impact that extends beyond just the yielded nutritional value. It flows down into additional consumption and requirements to fortify nutritionally sparse natural ingredients. [0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgrains/feedgrains-sector-at-a-glance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgra... [1] https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1... [2] https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/396/353/489122 https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/396/353/489122 [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4Page_%202nd%20Nutrition%20Report_508_032912.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4Page_%202nd%20Nutri... [4] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/15/too-fat-to-fight-military-threatened-by-childhood-obesity.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/15/too-fat-to-fi...
carapace 7y ago
Steady on my friend. I'm an ecology nut but you have to give credit where credit is due: e.g. artificial nitrogen fertilizer really has been an incredible advance, to the point where we have literally been turning oil into people ever since it was invented. The "Green Revolution", pesticides, and even GMOs work, it has to be admitted. Here is the rub though: For how long? The final verdict on agriculture is yet to be determined, the story isn't finished yet. We know ecological food production works long-term because it has, for millions upon millions of years. Every single one of your ancestors got enough to eat to reproduce at least once, going back all the way... Farming, on the other hand, only works so far (approx 10k-12k years), and in terms of life and ecology and such, "so far" is nothing. The evidence shows that our systems of food production are more akin to a disease or infestation than any sort of sane harmonious interaction. You can see it on satellite photos: our cities are like scabs or crusts, our farm lands are vast tracts of monocultures, our forests are riddles with clear cuts, our rivers are disappearing where they are not eroding the land, etc... If you integrate productivity over the long-term then applied ecology beats farming despite all the arguable advances. That's the argument to use, eh?
- Elrac 7y ago
  I mostly agree with what you said but I'd like to point out a glitch in your argument about halfway through: where you say "because it has, for millions ... of years." I'd say that's not valid, because what happened for millions of years is a far cry from what modern agriculture is (mostly) accomplishing: (a) actually establishing food security, and (b) for a freakishly large number of one particular species. When you say "every single one of your ancestors got enough to eat" you fall victim to survivor bias; we know that many, many of our ancestors' siblings didn't get enough to eat. In fact, humanity nearly died out on one or two occasions, though I'm not sure it was for lack of nutrition. I also feel that natural, historic ecologic agriculture isn't readily analogous to a model of agriculture that would be feasible today. Consider that part of the historic model was a pyramid of natural predation, i.e. animals that lived off the land and each other, fertilizing the "agriculture" both with their droppings and often their corpses, with humanity skimming off parts of that food chain. Again, I don't think a faithful replication of that model could effectively nourish anything near the world's current population of humans. I could be wrong, but I suspect that a model of agriculture strongly similar to "historic ecological food production" might only work for a significantly smaller human population.
TylerE 7y ago
What are you talking about? Agricultural productivity has increased IMMENSELY. In 1870, over 50% of the US workforce worked in agriculture. Today, despite exporting much of what we grow, that number is well under 2%.
- ShlomoS 7y ago
  That has nothing to do with chemicals and everything to do with machinery. Modern tractors and air drills can easily plant well over 1000 acres a day. A modern combine will harvest 300+ acres a day. In 1870 it took a man with a scythe and a woman following bundling sheafs to harvest an acre a day. That's a 600x increase in LABOR productivity due to machinery. None of this has anything to do with chemicals or land productivity.

whatshisface 7y ago

If farmers couldn't increase yields they wouldn't buy all of that expensive chemical stuff. If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing.

matt_kantor 7y ago
The article claims this at the end: > Farms using neonics had 10 times the insect pressure and half the profits compared to those who use regenerative farming methods instead of insecticides according a 2018 study. Like agroecological farming, regenerative agricultural uses cover crops, no-till and other methods to increase on-farm biodiversity and soil health. The regenerative corn-soy operations in the study didn’t have to worry about insect problems, said co-author Jonathan Lundgren, an agroecologist and Director of the ECDYSIS Foundation. > Farmers who are dependent on chemicals are going out of business, said Lundgren, who is also a grain farmer in South Dakota. “It’s painful to see when we have tested, scientifically sound solutions. Working with nature is a good business decision,” he says. It links to this study as a source: https://peerj.com/articles/4428/ https://peerj.com/articles/4428/
- gravelc 7y ago
  Quoting the abstract: >Regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over traditional corn production systems. Lower yield and much more expensive for consumers is a difficult sell IMO. There's some comments here on this study: http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinary-claims/ http://csanr.wsu.edu/regen-ag-solid-principles-extraordinary...
  - easybee 7y ago
    Thank you for this. It is absolutely frustrating to hear so many comments that isolate one factor to the exclusions of others. Profit is income minus expenses, so if you spend very very little, you can make a profit with little revenue. Revenue is a function of price per unit times yield,so if your prices are comparatively high your revenue is low because your yield is very low. Low yield has important and detrimental environmental consequences in that far, far more land is being used to feed the same number of people. The loss of natural habitats is an important negative consequence of our need to produce food, so efficient land use is very important to protect biological diversity. Now, land use efficiency has a number of factors to consider. The use of the crop is one, such as are we growing crops to feed animals that we eat? This is always inefficient from slightly (say, chicken) to massively (such as beef). So if you are championing permaculture to solve the ills of chemical pesticides and mineral salt fertilizers, you really should focus on eating crickets and plants, as this would have a far greater impact. On the matter of chemical versus alternative pest controls, this is again often subject to selective comparisons. For instance, there if insects are ravaging your grapes you could spray a chemical pesticide that selectively targets insects with piercing-sucking mouthparts that will plug their feeding tube and stop damage, eventually killing the insect, or you could spray kaolin clay and create a deterrent that may suppress enough damage to protect your crop. Sounds ideal, right? The clay has no detrimental effect on insects, is completely non-toxic, etc. However the chemical insecticide is applied at say 500ml per hectare, where as the kaolin requires say 25 kg per hectare and requires two sprays to establish adequate coverage, and needs to be reapplied after every rain, while the insecticide is systemic and residual, persisting inside the tissue of the plant for a few weeks before being metabolized. That means the clay is a lot more water and fuel intensive, increasing the footprint of your operation. The 500ml of insecticide costs say $30, while the kaolin costs around $160 for the first application and $80 each time it rains. Before you assume the evil chemical giants are manipulating the market to favor of their product, remember that that clay was 25kg (as compared to 500g) -- that's a LOT more gas to transport from the quarry to your farm. So when you look at the whole picture, that ideal seemingly zero-impact alternative actually greatly increases water use, gasoline use, CO2 emissions, the amount of farmland required for a similar yield, and ultimately raises food prices. My point is that while the way we grow our food has to change, the answers are complex. Returning to "older ways" by rejecting scientific advances will not help us unless we are also prepared to accept a vastly lower population and the human misery that would entail. If you really want to help, get involved in the doing of agriculture, either in the growing, researching, or distribution of food and help create real answers. If that is not in the cards, then look at how you can change your use of food to create the change you want to see. Stop eating meat, eat insects. Make sure you don't waste food. Stop driving to the store and get your groceries delivered (a full half of CO2 emissions comes from getting the groceries home from the store and delivery reduces that significantly). Most importantly, do not champion solutions as a cure-all, or denounce methods as deadly mistakes without putting in the time and effort to justify your position. Until then participate, learn, push the values of lower impact and sustainability, but trust that there are many many people all through the agricultural sector that are of the same mind and working hard to advance those values.
zapita 7y ago
Maybe there are network effects at play which make it difficult to do what you suggest?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  There's something like a network effect at play insofar as it has a "rich get richer" effect. Farming practices that get more use get more research, which means that the orthodoxy is going to be closer to its local maximum than fringe methods. That means that a fringe method could have more potential efficacy than the orthodoxy while still being worse.
whenanother 7y ago
one of running theme about growing misanto’s products was that your yields never goes up. they’ve never could honestly show that gmo products could increase yields. they kept implying it all the time but they never could prove it. gmo never ever increased crop yields. and by gmo i don’t mean cross breeding plants.
ShlomoS 7y ago
>If you could farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, you should go out and do it, you would put everyone else out of business and make a killing. You can farm without buying chemicals or reducing yields, there are people doing it right now. https://brownsranch.us/ https://brownsranch.us/ That doesn't mean everyone can rush out and buy a few thousand acres of land and start doing it, as very few people have the capital to do so. And even if you could get the loan, agriculture isn't a very good investment, you'd be better off being a venture capitalist rather than investing in farming. This is why there are virtually no new farmers, and of the tiny number there are almost all of them are small scale vegetable growers selling produce at farmer's markets. And you wouldn't make a killing, you would drive the price down and make a minimal return on your investment, just like what has happened with every single advance in farming yield per dollar spent.

rayiner 7y ago

Modern science has increased yield for corn by a factor of 8: https://images.app.goo.gl/QfcFrk4nvu7uw6M67 https://images.app.goo.gl/QfcFrk4nvu7uw6M67. I’m only 35 and it’s doubled in my lifetime.

windexh8er 7y ago
Except you're not accounting for the nutritional density [0] per yield being reduced and also the fact that the majority of cash crop goes to feeding livestock. [0] https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-priorities/nutrient-density/ https://rodaleinstitute.org/why-organic/issues-and-prioritie...
- tptacek 7y ago
  Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Your other argument isn't especially persuasive, either. Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Whatever "protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C" reduction there has been in corn over the last 50 years, it's extremely unlikely to have offset a factor of 8 increase in productivity.
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    [3> Why does he have to account for livestock? That has nothing to do with the argument he's responding to. Actually it does. 90 million acres of corn were planted for livestock in 2018 [0] and we know that the nutritional density of corn has declined [1]. So the long term is we just keep yielding higher with lower nutritional value? The main reason we're after higher yields is livestock and mass produced "junk" food which provides what positive value? The sustainability problem aside, how does this benefit us globally and long term? > Statistically, is vitamin deficiency a serious public health problem in America? Is it a problem? Yes. [2] In America? Past studies [3] have shown this and I don't think it's a stretch to just look at the health epidemic here which is, generally, systemic from poor overall nutrition. [4] Sure, the productivity factor is in our "favor", at least by the numbers. But it's very clear that there is negative impact that extends beyond just the yielded nutritional value. It flows down into additional consumption and requirements to fortify nutritionally sparse natural ingredients. [0] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgrains/feedgrains-sector-at-a-glance/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feedgra... [1] https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1... [2] https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/396/353/489122 https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/396/353/489122 [3] https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4Page_%202nd%20Nutrition%20Report_508_032912.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nutritionreport/pdf/4Page_%202nd%20Nutri... [4] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/15/too-fat-to-fight-military-threatened-by-childhood-obesity.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/10/15/too-fat-to-fi...

carapace 7y ago

Steady on my friend. I'm an ecology nut but you have to give credit where credit is due: e.g. artificial nitrogen fertilizer really has been an incredible advance, to the point where we have literally been turning oil into people ever since it was invented. The "Green Revolution", pesticides, and even GMOs work, it has to be admitted. Here is the rub though: For how long? The final verdict on agriculture is yet to be determined, the story isn't finished yet. We know ecological food production works long-term because it has, for millions upon millions of years. Every single one of your ancestors got enough to eat to reproduce at least once, going back all the way... Farming, on the other hand, only works so far (approx 10k-12k years), and in terms of life and ecology and such, "so far" is nothing. The evidence shows that our systems of food production are more akin to a disease or infestation than any sort of sane harmonious interaction. You can see it on satellite photos: our cities are like scabs or crusts, our farm lands are vast tracts of monocultures, our forests are riddles with clear cuts, our rivers are disappearing where they are not eroding the land, etc... If you integrate productivity over the long-term then applied ecology beats farming despite all the arguable advances. That's the argument to use, eh?

Elrac 7y ago
I mostly agree with what you said but I'd like to point out a glitch in your argument about halfway through: where you say "because it has, for millions ... of years." I'd say that's not valid, because what happened for millions of years is a far cry from what modern agriculture is (mostly) accomplishing: (a) actually establishing food security, and (b) for a freakishly large number of one particular species. When you say "every single one of your ancestors got enough to eat" you fall victim to survivor bias; we know that many, many of our ancestors' siblings didn't get enough to eat. In fact, humanity nearly died out on one or two occasions, though I'm not sure it was for lack of nutrition. I also feel that natural, historic ecologic agriculture isn't readily analogous to a model of agriculture that would be feasible today. Consider that part of the historic model was a pyramid of natural predation, i.e. animals that lived off the land and each other, fertilizing the "agriculture" both with their droppings and often their corpses, with humanity skimming off parts of that food chain. Again, I don't think a faithful replication of that model could effectively nourish anything near the world's current population of humans. I could be wrong, but I suspect that a model of agriculture strongly similar to "historic ecological food production" might only work for a significantly smaller human population.

TylerE 7y ago

What are you talking about? Agricultural productivity has increased IMMENSELY. In 1870, over 50% of the US workforce worked in agriculture. Today, despite exporting much of what we grow, that number is well under 2%.

ShlomoS 7y ago
That has nothing to do with chemicals and everything to do with machinery. Modern tractors and air drills can easily plant well over 1000 acres a day. A modern combine will harvest 300+ acres a day. In 1870 it took a man with a scythe and a woman following bundling sheafs to harvest an acre a day. That's a 600x increase in LABOR productivity due to machinery. None of this has anything to do with chemicals or land productivity.