4 ms·

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

by 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.
    - jff 15y ago
      Appropriate use of crop rotation and natural fertilizer (cow manure is quite effective) can significantly reduce the amount of fertilizer needed. I don't think we ever put artificial fertilizer on our fields, just spread on some cow dung. In any sort of farming operation, soil nutrients MUST be replenished. A huge industrial farm can practice crop rotation at least as well as a small farmer, if not better, and of course can afford to have employees devoted specifically to managing and planning fertilizer application when needed. Farming can be an expensive proposition--it is not cost-effective to apply pesticides/herbicides/fertilizer when not needed!
  - watmough 15y ago
    If nothing else, you've made me think about my position.
- crikli 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." Believe me, farmers think about that subject far more than you can imagine. They do everything they can to reduce the number of passes they have to make through each row of crops. Farms like my in-laws leverage technology to the maximum. For example, they have GPS units on their tractors that are integrated with meters that track how much fertilizer is being distributed and they've been tracking this for almost a decade. When they harvest, they have GPS units on the combines and sensors that are tracking yields. At the end of every season they use 2D and sometimes 3D modeling to determine the optimum distribution of fertilizer down to a few feet. The off-season is dedicated to crunching these numbers, plus a mountain of other data that is collected. The goal is to absolutely maximize the efficiency of resource use: fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. When it comes to the question of sustainability you've got to remember that many if not most farms are generational. Fathers passed the farm to the current generation, they hope to pass it to their sons or daughters. They are far more invested in the economic and environmental sustainability of their operations than the folks that have made sustainability a trendy buzzword. And understand that I am talking about industrial farms. There is no true distinction between the "industrial farm" and the "family farm." They are one and the same, but there is a lobby out there that has it out for agriculture. You sound like a real jerkoff if you're attacking the "family" farm, but if you use the word "industrial", you conjure images of smokestacks belching pollution and fat white guys in suits lighting Cubans with the money they stole from the pocket of the janitor. It's totally cool to attack those guys. Think about it this way. Where I live it takes about 1,500 acres to support a family. Let's say you have three families working a farm, a father and his two married sons and their kids. That's three families that need about 4,500 acres to make a living. That is a lot of land and it requires an industrial, in the dictionary sense of the word, operation to farm.

by crikli 15y ago

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.
  - jff 15y ago
    Appropriate use of crop rotation and natural fertilizer (cow manure is quite effective) can significantly reduce the amount of fertilizer needed. I don't think we ever put artificial fertilizer on our fields, just spread on some cow dung. In any sort of farming operation, soil nutrients MUST be replenished. A huge industrial farm can practice crop rotation at least as well as a small farmer, if not better, and of course can afford to have employees devoted specifically to managing and planning fertilizer application when needed. Farming can be an expensive proposition--it is not cost-effective to apply pesticides/herbicides/fertilizer when not needed!
- watmough 15y ago
  If nothing else, you've made me think about my position.
crikli 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." Believe me, farmers think about that subject far more than you can imagine. They do everything they can to reduce the number of passes they have to make through each row of crops. Farms like my in-laws leverage technology to the maximum. For example, they have GPS units on their tractors that are integrated with meters that track how much fertilizer is being distributed and they've been tracking this for almost a decade. When they harvest, they have GPS units on the combines and sensors that are tracking yields. At the end of every season they use 2D and sometimes 3D modeling to determine the optimum distribution of fertilizer down to a few feet. The off-season is dedicated to crunching these numbers, plus a mountain of other data that is collected. The goal is to absolutely maximize the efficiency of resource use: fuel, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. When it comes to the question of sustainability you've got to remember that many if not most farms are generational. Fathers passed the farm to the current generation, they hope to pass it to their sons or daughters. They are far more invested in the economic and environmental sustainability of their operations than the folks that have made sustainability a trendy buzzword. And understand that I am talking about industrial farms. There is no true distinction between the "industrial farm" and the "family farm." They are one and the same, but there is a lobby out there that has it out for agriculture. You sound like a real jerkoff if you're attacking the "family" farm, but if you use the word "industrial", you conjure images of smokestacks belching pollution and fat white guys in suits lighting Cubans with the money they stole from the pocket of the janitor. It's totally cool to attack those guys. Think about it this way. Where I live it takes about 1,500 acres to support a family. Let's say you have three families working a farm, a father and his two married sons and their kids. That's three families that need about 4,500 acres to make a living. That is a lot of land and it requires an industrial, in the dictionary sense of the word, operation to farm.