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This article starts on a fundamentally flawed premise, and it made it quite difficult for me to continue. I cannot direct quote because I’m on mobile, but he s

This article starts on a fundamentally flawed premise, and it made it quite difficult for me to continue. I cannot direct quote because I’m on mobile, but he says “in my country we grew all these grains together, in varying thicknesses, and we left trees essentially in the middle of the fields for reasons x, y, and z” Does anyone want to take a guess as to why modern farming is largely swaths of monoculture? Because we can HIGHLY optimize the amount of food we get by a) scientifically calculated fertilization, b) preventing undesirable cross pollination, and c) using pesticides that are specific to the pests that will be on a single type of plant. I’m no agricultural scientist, but I would wager that monoculture farming is likely 5-20x more efficient than what this individual is describing. Why am I so confident? The one thing that capitalism has proven to be WILDLY good at is the ability to turn a larger profit despite the downsides/costs. So what if it kills the environment a bit more? If there was a higher profit way to farm, we would be doing it.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
That quoted statement isnt really a premise, though it could be inaccurate. You make the obvious point of how we ended up where we are. The non obvious point is that this is not a desirable end point. Food is increasingly lower on nutritional value, some estimate 50-60% over the last ~50 years. Discount that from your yields of 5-20x. More bushels doesn't mean anything other than profit. Depleting soils and agricultural run-off have very difficult costs to quantify, so we largely don't even try. Soil condition is awful in monoculture farms. Nothing grows without synthetic fertilizer and pesticide. Glyphosate is being phased out because it's likely the largest driver of chronic disease the world has ever seen. Yes, blah blah, 'no evidence' - a point predicated on the fact there are no studies. We are barely coming to accept the reality of the gut biome/health connection, much less the gut/brain connection.. What is the cost of these failures? Certainly the corporations don't bare the brunt. Perhaps the situation would be different if they did. Or perhaps it would be different if you purchased products from producers with these costs in mind

upsidesinclude 4y ago

That quoted statement isnt really a premise, though it could be inaccurate. You make the obvious point of how we ended up where we are. The non obvious point is that this is not a desirable end point. Food is increasingly lower on nutritional value, some estimate 50-60% over the last ~50 years. Discount that from your yields of 5-20x. More bushels doesn't mean anything other than profit. Depleting soils and agricultural run-off have very difficult costs to quantify, so we largely don't even try. Soil condition is awful in monoculture farms. Nothing grows without synthetic fertilizer and pesticide. Glyphosate is being phased out because it's likely the largest driver of chronic disease the world has ever seen. Yes, blah blah, 'no evidence' - a point predicated on the fact there are no studies. We are barely coming to accept the reality of the gut biome/health connection, much less the gut/brain connection.. What is the cost of these failures? Certainly the corporations don't bare the brunt. Perhaps the situation would be different if they did. Or perhaps it would be different if you purchased products from producers with these costs in mind