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> The only good food is done by local farmers. That's never made any sense to me. Why does the food become bad just because I'm farther from the farmer? The en
by ars 6y ago
> The only good food is done by local farmers.
That's never made any sense to me. Why does the food become bad just because I'm farther from the farmer? The environmental emissions from transport are minimal, so that can't be it.
Are you trying to say eat from grown by a small farmer?
But that's no good either, small farmers are less efficient. Or maybe you are valuing something else over environmental efficiency?
Can you explain?
- beaconstudios 6y agoGlobal scale agricultural monocropping using industrial processes and chemicals. Local sourcing implicitly means small scale farms as well.
- mijamo 6y agoI don't know about the US but in Europe small farmers are often passionate, and you have to be because you are a business owner earning little money while having a lot to handle and nearly no holiday and leaving far away from everything. Many of them care deeply about their products and try to do things properly and sustainably even if it means less profit. The big farmers are more like regular business owner employing cheap labour and trying to maximize profit while caring much less about the impact. Note that small farmer can be very small indeed, many of them don't even have separate employees. It is not an exact rule of course. There are many irresponsible small farmers who just inherited a small farm and run it poorly, and there's some big farms that do things very properly.
- ganafagol 6y agoA farmer with 20-30 cows tends to have a quite close connection with their animals. They often have a small plot of land they can use as pasture and the barn is not super-optimized to squeeze out the last square centimeter for effiency since there are no scale effects where it would have any noticeable effect. Each animal is a being they have often times have a connection with, and empathy for. Most small farmers I know can describe to me quite vividly the personality of each individual of their animals. They care. Big dairy industry looks different. A big farm with 1000 milking cows is hyper-optimized for maximum profit. There is not enough pasture to go round, so depending on regulations of the country, the animals may never go outside ever. If you can save 1% on buying in cheaper food, even if it comes from half a continent away, you do it since that's easily a six-figure savings. If you can increase stocking density withing law limits, you do it. If you need to use less sand or can get away with cleaning their water bins less often, you do it. Each animal is a number that turns food expenses into milk profits, that's it.
- ganafagol 6y agoAlso, check out the article this thread is about. It discusses a few reasons.
- Spooky23 6y agoAgriculture at extreme scale is less efficient. It’s basically a mining operation with food as an output. Where I live, we buy summer crops from local farms about 30 miles away. The farmers sell for half of retail, and make about double. They are fairly large operations with a diverse set of products and have a sustainable, smart approach to farming — most have been in business for hundreds of years and plan to remain. The monocropping of the Midwest is creating a desert, period. We’ll be importing corn in my lifetime. Vegetable crops in the Colorado irrigation corridor are vulnerable to climate change.
- jefftk 6y ago> We’ll be importing corn in my lifetime. Want to bet on whether the US will become a net corn importer?
- refurb 6y agoThis just seems like it’s fetishizing “hands on, small farms where you can taste the passion in their products”. Basically marketing.
- Spooky23 6y agoWhat happens to grain crop production when the Ogallala Aquifer is depleted? What happens to the “miracle in the desert” in California and Arizona if climate changes significantly reduces snowfall in the Colorado River watershed? IMO, we face risks that are real, and short term economic forces and incentives will affect our ability to adapt. I live in the Northeast, and it’s important that on a regional basis agriculture is an industry that is vital and can grow.
- coliveira 6y agoBig farm operations create damage in so many fronts. First, they extract a large portion of the profits from farming, making Wall Street very rich and leaving the rural population poor (this is true if the farming is done in America or in other countries). As a result, this takes land from the population to the hands big companies, with bad political results. Finally, the methods are bad for the environment too, because Wall Street fat cats don't have to live in the devastated environment.
- newsclues 6y agoTransportation is a huge component. There are many advantages but not shipping, flying or excessive trucking makes it much greener. Add in regenerative organic farming processes, and you pay farmers to improve the land.