5 ms·

How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Making agr

How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. And we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Making agriculture unproductive will just push the demand outwards like a beaker of toxic reactants boiling over. We can't impose more trade restrictions on foreign agricultural goods either, for fear of a trade war. This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. The only solution I see is huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism.

b112 4y ago
We don't have enough land as it is. Only discussing the land statement here, but we have loads and loads and loads of unused farmland. At least, that is true in Canada, and I suspect the US, and I know in the EU some are paid not to farm. In Canada, we have quotas on some things, to prevent over production. There are two real issues: * drought, or summers with few sunny days, reducing yields * random new diseases So we need that fallow land, just in case, which is why people are given inventives to have farm land, but not use it. Yet we still have so much farm land, that we sell the best of it to developers, who then create housing. We have loads of unused farmland. One last thing. China's population is going to almost halve, over the next 15 years, Russia will have a major population decline, and the most industrialized nations are the same. Canada has solved this top heavy, old age die off, with immigration. More than 30% of Canadian citizens, for example, we not born in Canada. But for those with lower immigration numbers, and low birth rates (basically the entire industrialized world), populations will plummet by 30% to 50% in the next 25 years. China had the one child program, and the birth rate in Canada is less than 1 for every 2 adults, for Canadians boen here. The rest of the West is the same. So worldwide, our population will plummet very soon.
- rmah 4y ago
  Yes, especially on the east coast, vast swaths of what was once farmland and pasture is now forest again. For example, most of Connecticut's forests were cut down for not very productive farms before good transportation infrastructure allowed that activity to be moved to more suitable areas. It's now forest again and atlantic salmon are back for the first time in a century.
_0w8t 4y ago
The current agricultural land in US alone can easily feed by various estimates at least 2 billions people. The trouble is that most of it is used to grow corn etc. to feed animals in the industrial meat production.
- skrbjc 4y ago
  One third is used for animal feed, a third for ethanol to blend into gasoline and a third for food consumption directly. To me it seems like the ethanol production part would be the easiest to put towards human consumption.
SuoDuanDao 4y ago
>we don't have enough land as it is Small farms are more productive per acre [1] even before considering the increased fossil footprint of 'efficient' farms. >we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Additional unskilled jobs might well be worth the tradeoff, particularly for the most vulnerable members of society. >This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. Russia's Dacha model produces something like 60% of the country's food through hobby 'farms' that regular people mostly go to on the weekends. It's not a hard model to replicate, I'm planting a food shrubland in my suburban home. It won't produce a large part of my food budget but it'll certainly be resource-positive as opposed to a lawn. My labour inputs I'd spend at a gym otherwise. As work-from-home becomes more normalized, the average garden size will probably increase. The problem isn't economic but cultural. >huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism. There seems to be a correlation between belief in factory farming and veganism. Those stances align on pathos but diverge on logos and ethos. [1]1https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304387896004129 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...
- mantas 4y ago
  > Russia's Dacha model Well, the hard part to replicate is destroying economy to force people to use those collective gardens. Shops were next to empty. Commercial variety was non existent. The rigid command economy didn't allow enterprise to address needs. Thus you had 2 ways to have good food - relatives in countryside or your own collective garden lot. It's both economy in culture. Here in Lithuania those gardens survived well into 90s. During the transition, many people went on to do substance farming in addition to day job. Or, if they were unemployed, in exchange of it. But now people work cushy jobs and less and less people do that. It's down to gardening enthusiasts in the young generation. And even then the pattern is completely different. More about trying out exotic stuff for shit and giggles. Rather than aiming for good amount of food and then conserving it for the winter. Energy costs probably make it cheaper to buy jam rather than cook it too...
- rmah 4y ago
  The linked study uses data from peasant farms in developing economies (Madagascar, India, etc.) from half a century ago or earlier. From the point of view of the west, that it would be measuring the productivity of very very small farms vs very small farms where the vast majority of labor is done by hand. Skimming over the article it seems that it concludes that under pre-mechanized conditions, larger farms have less available labor per unit land area. And that labor per unit land area is an important factor in agricultural productivity. This is hardly a surprise. This is very much not like how farming is done in developed nations or even most developing nations today. And unless you want to force people to live like dirt poor peasants of the past, hopefully won't ever be done again.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. With capitalism there can never be enough of any natural resource. When there is enough, it will be put to more extravagant and wastefull purposes. The original purpose of a lawn was to show that you are so rich and have so much land that you can dedicate some of it to just grass. The purpose of a tough guy wearing a massive golden chain in a bad neighbourhood is to show that noone dares touch him And the purpose of a yaht is to show off - the yahts dont even cross the ocean, billionaires hire special ships to lift the whole yaht and move it across atlantic. So whether its yahts or aingle use plastic cups, or bitcoin mining, there is never enough.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
anon84873628 4y ago
There is plenty of land under cultivation. We already produce enough calories to feed every person on earth, they just aren't distributed sufficiently. Currently you have most of the California central valley planted in high margin crops like almonds and pistachios because they maximize farmer profits (despite their unsustainable demands on the water supply). If the goal was to maximize human nutrition the land use would look very different.
newsclues 4y ago
Same way it did before we had industrialized (petrochemical) agriculture. More people working on farms. More people living close to farms. More animals on farms. Should lead to healthier lifestyles and diets. Better environment for people and the planet (and all the creatures including BUGS). Time to make the old new again, and stop building suburbs on farm land. All of this is possible and logical, but there is a massive propaganda machine that is convincing people otherwise.

b112 4y ago

We don't have enough land as it is. Only discussing the land statement here, but we have loads and loads and loads of unused farmland. At least, that is true in Canada, and I suspect the US, and I know in the EU some are paid not to farm. In Canada, we have quotas on some things, to prevent over production. There are two real issues: * drought, or summers with few sunny days, reducing yields * random new diseases So we need that fallow land, just in case, which is why people are given inventives to have farm land, but not use it. Yet we still have so much farm land, that we sell the best of it to developers, who then create housing. We have loads of unused farmland. One last thing. China's population is going to almost halve, over the next 15 years, Russia will have a major population decline, and the most industrialized nations are the same. Canada has solved this top heavy, old age die off, with immigration. More than 30% of Canadian citizens, for example, we not born in Canada. But for those with lower immigration numbers, and low birth rates (basically the entire industrialized world), populations will plummet by 30% to 50% in the next 25 years. China had the one child program, and the birth rate in Canada is less than 1 for every 2 adults, for Canadians boen here. The rest of the West is the same. So worldwide, our population will plummet very soon.

rmah 4y ago
Yes, especially on the east coast, vast swaths of what was once farmland and pasture is now forest again. For example, most of Connecticut's forests were cut down for not very productive farms before good transportation infrastructure allowed that activity to be moved to more suitable areas. It's now forest again and atlantic salmon are back for the first time in a century.

_0w8t 4y ago

The current agricultural land in US alone can easily feed by various estimates at least 2 billions people. The trouble is that most of it is used to grow corn etc. to feed animals in the industrial meat production.

skrbjc 4y ago
One third is used for animal feed, a third for ethanol to blend into gasoline and a third for food consumption directly. To me it seems like the ethanol production part would be the easiest to put towards human consumption.

SuoDuanDao 4y ago

>we don't have enough land as it is Small farms are more productive per acre [1] even before considering the increased fossil footprint of 'efficient' farms. >we can't pay for the additional labor small farms need, or food inflation will explode. Additional unskilled jobs might well be worth the tradeoff, particularly for the most vulnerable members of society. >This hopeless romanticism of small organic mom-and-pop farming is misguided. Russia's Dacha model produces something like 60% of the country's food through hobby 'farms' that regular people mostly go to on the weekends. It's not a hard model to replicate, I'm planting a food shrubland in my suburban home. It won't produce a large part of my food budget but it'll certainly be resource-positive as opposed to a lawn. My labour inputs I'd spend at a gym otherwise. As work-from-home becomes more normalized, the average garden size will probably increase. The problem isn't economic but cultural. >huge, highly efficient, automated, but also highly regulated farms. That, and veganism. There seems to be a correlation between belief in factory farming and veganism. Those stances align on pathos but diverge on logos and ethos. [1]1https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304387896004129 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

mantas 4y ago
> Russia's Dacha model Well, the hard part to replicate is destroying economy to force people to use those collective gardens. Shops were next to empty. Commercial variety was non existent. The rigid command economy didn't allow enterprise to address needs. Thus you had 2 ways to have good food - relatives in countryside or your own collective garden lot. It's both economy in culture. Here in Lithuania those gardens survived well into 90s. During the transition, many people went on to do substance farming in addition to day job. Or, if they were unemployed, in exchange of it. But now people work cushy jobs and less and less people do that. It's down to gardening enthusiasts in the young generation. And even then the pattern is completely different. More about trying out exotic stuff for shit and giggles. Rather than aiming for good amount of food and then conserving it for the winter. Energy costs probably make it cheaper to buy jam rather than cook it too...
rmah 4y ago
The linked study uses data from peasant farms in developing economies (Madagascar, India, etc.) from half a century ago or earlier. From the point of view of the west, that it would be measuring the productivity of very very small farms vs very small farms where the vast majority of labor is done by hand. Skimming over the article it seems that it concludes that under pre-mechanized conditions, larger farms have less available labor per unit land area. And that labor per unit land area is an important factor in agricultural productivity. This is hardly a surprise. This is very much not like how farming is done in developed nations or even most developing nations today. And unless you want to force people to live like dirt poor peasants of the past, hopefully won't ever be done again.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> How would that work? We don't have enough land as it is. With capitalism there can never be enough of any natural resource. When there is enough, it will be put to more extravagant and wastefull purposes. The original purpose of a lawn was to show that you are so rich and have so much land that you can dedicate some of it to just grass. The purpose of a tough guy wearing a massive golden chain in a bad neighbourhood is to show that noone dares touch him And the purpose of a yaht is to show off - the yahts dont even cross the ocean, billionaires hire special ships to lift the whole yaht and move it across atlantic. So whether its yahts or aingle use plastic cups, or bitcoin mining, there is never enough.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

anon84873628 4y ago

There is plenty of land under cultivation. We already produce enough calories to feed every person on earth, they just aren't distributed sufficiently. Currently you have most of the California central valley planted in high margin crops like almonds and pistachios because they maximize farmer profits (despite their unsustainable demands on the water supply). If the goal was to maximize human nutrition the land use would look very different.

newsclues 4y ago

Same way it did before we had industrialized (petrochemical) agriculture. More people working on farms. More people living close to farms. More animals on farms. Should lead to healthier lifestyles and diets. Better environment for people and the planet (and all the creatures including BUGS). Time to make the old new again, and stop building suburbs on farm land. All of this is possible and logical, but there is a massive propaganda machine that is convincing people otherwise.