6 ms·

Seriously? The author says you're better off eating only food you grow yourself or that you can verify the origins of. I don't think that's an industry lobby'

Seriously? The author says you're better off eating only food you grow yourself or that you can verify the origins of. I don't think that's an industry lobby's viewpoint.

sorbus 15y ago
Does the fertilizer industry have a lobby?
Jach 15y ago
As others have pointed out, there are a bunch of food processing companies around like the Magic Bullet. They don't really care where you get your food from, but if they can convince you to buy/grow more whole food instead of juice or apple sauce or whatever it is you normally buy from the store, they stand to profit because people still want their juice. There are also knife companies, garden care, etc. Edit: The author has posted here and claims only selling ad space, so it may not necessarily be this author, but it's still aimed at getting viewers and ad revenue. Follow the money trail is indeed good advice, of course just because money's involved doesn't mean there's a problem.
crikli 15y ago
With respect, it is an industry lobby's viewpoint, and it belongs to the organic food industry. Organic farming is not financially sustainable at scale because the costs of production are far too high. There is a very low ceiling, relatively speaking, to the amount of crops that can be produced. Therefore in order to stay profitable organic food has to be sold at very significant premium. Buyers will not pay this premium unless they're convinced that the cheaper, non-organic alternative is an inferior product regardless of whether it actually is or not. Technically speaking, the author is right: we're better off only eating foods for which we can establish provenance. But for most folks that idea is completely unrealistic...unless you subscribe to the organic concept, where food has a pedigree of sorts, or is at least marketed as such. Full disclosure: I live in Nebraska and grew up surrounded by agriculture. I worked farming corn/soybeans/milo from the age of thirteen through college. My wife's family is a fifth-generation farm family.
- watmough 15y ago
  Industrial farming based on huge amounts of cheap oil is not sustainable either. Think about all the oil/gas used in fertilizer production, pesticides, mechanization, harvesting, processing, storage, trucking, packaging. Every step of the industrial food production process involves fossil fuels, which have a limited production flow, more or less flat since 2005. Large and growing countries like China and India will demand and are receiving increasing amounts of global oil production. This forces prices to rise, and smaller, poorer players are priced out, reducing demand. Google for Export Land Model, to read about this and other topics. An example of this predicament is the UK who fairly transparently did a deal with Libya in return for securing gas supplies. Odious, but they had very little choice in order to secure energy. And as the oil price rises, food costs rise too.
  - Tsagadai 15y ago
    Come now, mechanized farming isn't all bad. Small engines have brought /billions/ of people out of poverty. My late grandfather switched from a dozen horses to one quadbike, tripling output and halving the amount of work he had to do. This 'third world' you are thinking of has been buying small, efficient engines for tractors and pumps for most of the last century. The spike in oil use for that was in the early 60s. Yes, there are some countries where every single farmer doesn't have access or purchasing power to buy a small tractor but they are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't know why you want to damn billions of people to a life of manual toil when you yourself have access to labour saving machines (you are on a computer). The problem isn't mechanization, the problem is scale. As for sustainability, I've seen farmers in Papua New Guinea running tractors on coconut oil before biofuels were in vogue. Fuel prices are high, fuel is a significant cost to agriculture. No one in their right mind wants to use more fuel than they must.
    - yesbabyyes 15y ago
      Producing the nitrogen for fertilizer is very energy intensive. Thus, food prices will follow the oil price.

Seriously? The author says you're better off eating only food you grow yourself or that you can verify the origins of. I don't think that's an industry lobby's viewpoint.

sorbus 15y ago

Does the fertilizer industry have a lobby?

Jach 15y ago

As others have pointed out, there are a bunch of food processing companies around like the Magic Bullet. They don't really care where you get your food from, but if they can convince you to buy/grow more whole food instead of juice or apple sauce or whatever it is you normally buy from the store, they stand to profit because people still want their juice. There are also knife companies, garden care, etc. Edit: The author has posted here and claims only selling ad space, so it may not necessarily be this author, but it's still aimed at getting viewers and ad revenue. Follow the money trail is indeed good advice, of course just because money's involved doesn't mean there's a problem.

crikli 15y ago

With respect, it is an industry lobby's viewpoint, and it belongs to the organic food industry. Organic farming is not financially sustainable at scale because the costs of production are far too high. There is a very low ceiling, relatively speaking, to the amount of crops that can be produced. Therefore in order to stay profitable organic food has to be sold at very significant premium. Buyers will not pay this premium unless they're convinced that the cheaper, non-organic alternative is an inferior product regardless of whether it actually is or not. Technically speaking, the author is right: we're better off only eating foods for which we can establish provenance. But for most folks that idea is completely unrealistic...unless you subscribe to the organic concept, where food has a pedigree of sorts, or is at least marketed as such. Full disclosure: I live in Nebraska and grew up surrounded by agriculture. I worked farming corn/soybeans/milo from the age of thirteen through college. My wife's family is a fifth-generation farm family.

watmough 15y ago
Industrial farming based on huge amounts of cheap oil is not sustainable either. Think about all the oil/gas used in fertilizer production, pesticides, mechanization, harvesting, processing, storage, trucking, packaging. Every step of the industrial food production process involves fossil fuels, which have a limited production flow, more or less flat since 2005. Large and growing countries like China and India will demand and are receiving increasing amounts of global oil production. This forces prices to rise, and smaller, poorer players are priced out, reducing demand. Google for Export Land Model, to read about this and other topics. An example of this predicament is the UK who fairly transparently did a deal with Libya in return for securing gas supplies. Odious, but they had very little choice in order to secure energy. And as the oil price rises, food costs rise too.
- Tsagadai 15y ago
  Come now, mechanized farming isn't all bad. Small engines have brought /billions/ of people out of poverty. My late grandfather switched from a dozen horses to one quadbike, tripling output and halving the amount of work he had to do. This 'third world' you are thinking of has been buying small, efficient engines for tractors and pumps for most of the last century. The spike in oil use for that was in the early 60s. Yes, there are some countries where every single farmer doesn't have access or purchasing power to buy a small tractor but they are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't know why you want to damn billions of people to a life of manual toil when you yourself have access to labour saving machines (you are on a computer). The problem isn't mechanization, the problem is scale. As for sustainability, I've seen farmers in Papua New Guinea running tractors on coconut oil before biofuels were in vogue. Fuel prices are high, fuel is a significant cost to agriculture. No one in their right mind wants to use more fuel than they must.
  - yesbabyyes 15y ago
    Producing the nitrogen for fertilizer is very energy intensive. Thus, food prices will follow the oil price.