4 ms·

Yours is a valid critique. I'm not a fan of woo language either. At the same time, it's hard to ignore the results I've seen first-hand. Let's ignore the woo

Yours is a valid critique. I'm not a fan of woo language either. At the same time, it's hard to ignore the results I've seen first-hand. Let's ignore the woo language and ignore the book and ignore my suggested misunderstanding of how any of it is supposed to work. What is the long-range systems outlook of current ag practices? Is it sustainable? If not, what scale of economic policy change will we have to undertake to make it work sustainably? We are of course talking about the entire system and not a few oddball smallhold farmers.

colechristensen 5y ago
>sustainable This is a bit of a weasel word overloaded by usage without much understanding of what is meant. Agriculture is not one thing. A whole lot of modern practices are indeed quite sustainable over very long periods, some others... less surely so, some, like burning down rain forests to farm for a few years and then moving on, obviously not. A whole lot of people get a little bit of information and just keep repeating "modern practices are unsustainable, we need to do X!" but this is vague and involves almost no understanding. What you need is actual scientists studying particular practices in particular areas commenting on the long term viability of certain behaviors and how they might be changed. But like many things the popular narrative is a good vs. evil where one vague thing is seen as bad and another good without really getting into what they're talking about. It's a complex field, I'm no expert but I know more than enough to see when somebody doesn't know anything, and unfortunately most of the conversations are by people who don't know anything. There are a lot of things which could be better and are indeed getting better. Automation needs to get better for non-grain farming so that the ratio of grains vs. other foods is altered in production and consumption. Automation could get better so you could have large fields growing multiple species at the same time without intensive human labor. Automation could get better so that weeds could be mechanically picked instead of whole fields getting sprayed with herbicides, so individual weeds could be sprayed with herbicides instead of crop plants. Understanding of soil fungi interactions with minerals and plants and how to grow and maintain this fungi and how to select for species of fungi which result in higher yields. There's a lot, it involves knowing and understanding specifics with an interest towards long term and not attaching broad labels to vague terms.
- kiliantics 5y ago
  You just have to look at the wikipedia page for the green revolution to see how it's unsustainable: it relies on fertilisers derived from fossil and mineral resources that are now limited and cannot be replenished. Alternative methods like permaculture are trying to avoid reliance on such non-renewable inputs. The wealth of society that allows us to have food so cheap right now is all thanks to a whole lot of 20th century infrastructure that was developed using fossil fuels and other mineral resources which can't last forever and are furthermore destroying our life support ecosystems. I believe that, aside from the potential for automation that you mention, we are likely going to end up shifting to a standard of living where our food just costs a lot more. This will happen either because we shift to more sustainable methods that are less efficient, or because we don't and society collapses.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    The biggest fertilizer input is nitrogen, usually as ammonia or a derivative, produced by reacting atmospheric hydrogen with fossil derived methane. It would be entirely possible to acquire this methane from renewable resources (cows, landfill, compost) but isn’t economical and not a huge source of fossil usage anyway. The rest of the mineral fertilizers still have to come from somewhere, when you take them away with the harvested food you have to find them somewhere to put them back. “Permaculture” isn’t magic that produces potassium from good feelings. There are plenty of cycles for each resource and as a farmer you have to participate in them, which usually means regularly adding things to your soil.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      Hmm. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertilizer-shortage-north-america-farmers-food-prices https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertiliz... [2] https://www.agriculture.com/crops/fertilizers/high-cost-short-supply-of-fertilizer-to-alter-2022-planting https://www.agriculture.com/crops/fertilizers/high-cost-shor... [3] https://fortune.com/2021/11/04/energy-crisis-food-shortage-security-fertilizer-prices-yara-ceo-madagascar-cop26/ https://fortune.com/2021/11/04/energy-crisis-food-shortage-s... ?
Retric 5y ago
US ag practices are in general very sustainable. Water management is arguably a major issue, but the US receives plenty of rainfall. It’s a distribution problem where mining water is currently cheaper than piping it across the country. Soil is currently a major focus in modern farming. PH, drainage, aeration, etc etc are how farmers achieve extreme yields, but it’s all part of a large cost benefit analysis spending 10$ to make 9$ is simply wasted effort.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  The next generation of farming progress will be maturing the science of interactions between fungal species and multiple plants in a soil ecosystem and commoditizing them into concrete things which can be measured and manipulated on an industrial scale. Think “planting” fungus and fertilizing it to optimize specific species interactions and possibly multiple cropping to take advantage of plant-fungi-plant interactions.

colechristensen 5y ago

>sustainable This is a bit of a weasel word overloaded by usage without much understanding of what is meant. Agriculture is not one thing. A whole lot of modern practices are indeed quite sustainable over very long periods, some others... less surely so, some, like burning down rain forests to farm for a few years and then moving on, obviously not. A whole lot of people get a little bit of information and just keep repeating "modern practices are unsustainable, we need to do X!" but this is vague and involves almost no understanding. What you need is actual scientists studying particular practices in particular areas commenting on the long term viability of certain behaviors and how they might be changed. But like many things the popular narrative is a good vs. evil where one vague thing is seen as bad and another good without really getting into what they're talking about. It's a complex field, I'm no expert but I know more than enough to see when somebody doesn't know anything, and unfortunately most of the conversations are by people who don't know anything. There are a lot of things which could be better and are indeed getting better. Automation needs to get better for non-grain farming so that the ratio of grains vs. other foods is altered in production and consumption. Automation could get better so you could have large fields growing multiple species at the same time without intensive human labor. Automation could get better so that weeds could be mechanically picked instead of whole fields getting sprayed with herbicides, so individual weeds could be sprayed with herbicides instead of crop plants. Understanding of soil fungi interactions with minerals and plants and how to grow and maintain this fungi and how to select for species of fungi which result in higher yields. There's a lot, it involves knowing and understanding specifics with an interest towards long term and not attaching broad labels to vague terms.

kiliantics 5y ago
You just have to look at the wikipedia page for the green revolution to see how it's unsustainable: it relies on fertilisers derived from fossil and mineral resources that are now limited and cannot be replenished. Alternative methods like permaculture are trying to avoid reliance on such non-renewable inputs. The wealth of society that allows us to have food so cheap right now is all thanks to a whole lot of 20th century infrastructure that was developed using fossil fuels and other mineral resources which can't last forever and are furthermore destroying our life support ecosystems. I believe that, aside from the potential for automation that you mention, we are likely going to end up shifting to a standard of living where our food just costs a lot more. This will happen either because we shift to more sustainable methods that are less efficient, or because we don't and society collapses.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  The biggest fertilizer input is nitrogen, usually as ammonia or a derivative, produced by reacting atmospheric hydrogen with fossil derived methane. It would be entirely possible to acquire this methane from renewable resources (cows, landfill, compost) but isn’t economical and not a huge source of fossil usage anyway. The rest of the mineral fertilizers still have to come from somewhere, when you take them away with the harvested food you have to find them somewhere to put them back. “Permaculture” isn’t magic that produces potassium from good feelings. There are plenty of cycles for each resource and as a farmer you have to participate in them, which usually means regularly adding things to your soil.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    Hmm. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertilizer-shortage-north-america-farmers-food-prices https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/25/fertiliz... [2] https://www.agriculture.com/crops/fertilizers/high-cost-short-supply-of-fertilizer-to-alter-2022-planting https://www.agriculture.com/crops/fertilizers/high-cost-shor... [3] https://fortune.com/2021/11/04/energy-crisis-food-shortage-security-fertilizer-prices-yara-ceo-madagascar-cop26/ https://fortune.com/2021/11/04/energy-crisis-food-shortage-s... ?

Retric 5y ago

US ag practices are in general very sustainable. Water management is arguably a major issue, but the US receives plenty of rainfall. It’s a distribution problem where mining water is currently cheaper than piping it across the country. Soil is currently a major focus in modern farming. PH, drainage, aeration, etc etc are how farmers achieve extreme yields, but it’s all part of a large cost benefit analysis spending 10$ to make 9$ is simply wasted effort.

colechristensen 5y ago
The next generation of farming progress will be maturing the science of interactions between fungal species and multiple plants in a soil ecosystem and commoditizing them into concrete things which can be measured and manipulated on an industrial scale. Think “planting” fungus and fertilizing it to optimize specific species interactions and possibly multiple cropping to take advantage of plant-fungi-plant interactions.