7 ms·
What they don't seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil qualit
by ilostmyshoes 4y ago
What they don't seem to be talking about is learning from indigenous farming communities who use things like diversity in crops and rotation to keep soil quality high. These problems were solved decades ago, just not by the industrial farming community
- peteradio 4y agoCrop rotation is a standard practice. Sugar beats cannot be grown year after year on the same plot.
- tnel77 4y agoCrop rotation seems to be pretty widespread. I remember as a kid learning about it and knowing I’d see different crops each year to help the soil for future harvests.
- hedgehog 4y agoLike the rest of industrial age development, farm automation has historically been built around treating everything uniformly (even distribution of seeds bred for easy harvest in evenly spaced rows evenly fertilizied with no rocks etc etc). Moving away from that introduces all kinds of complexity, mechanical problems, data problems, etc, which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of potentially better ways to do things. It's happening though.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIt introduces trying to sell your crops for 5x what your competitor is and no buyer is going to pay 5x for “sustainable” produce.
- hedgehog 4y agoWhat I'm getting at is things like applying fertilizer based on estimated need from imaging data, using robots with lasers to kill weeds, mechanized intercropping, etc. Not something consumers will necessarily see any direct impact from but that improve the quality and economics of production.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> which are not easy to solve even when you have historical existence proofs of potentially better ways to do things. It's happening though. What I am getting at is if these “proofs” existed, they would already be proven by lower priced goods at the market.
- hedgehog 4y agoA historical existence proof of a system or technology working has essentially nothing to do with whether it's being practiced in industry today, and whether it's being practiced today has very little to do with the product or pricing you see when you for example stop by KFC to eat a piece of chicken that's largely created out of corn, soy, and methane. That's the beauty of capitalism and commodity markets, John Deere can roll out technology for say computer-controlled planting that improves efficiency and the dividends get spread across the value chain without everyone having to know about it or change what they're doing.
- sleton38234234 4y agoCrop diversity is great. And you also need lots of organic matter to go on top of the soil: to build life in the soil. that's much better than trying to duct tape the matter with fertilizer.
- mattpallissard 4y ago> Crop diversity is great. Crop rotation has been standard practice my entire life. One of the many kickers though is soybeans are the fallback crop for really wet springs. Many crops need to be planted by a certain date or the growing season will be too short. Soybeans can "make up for lost time", so to speak. If your first planting gets flooded, or if it's too wet to get any crop in, you can wait until it's dry and toss in some soy to recoup some of the cost. Thing is soybeans use a lot of nitrogen. > And you also need lots of organic matter Manure spreaders are still a thing.
- randomdata 4y agoMany years ago one of my neighbours tried not rotating is crops. It worked out okay the first couple of years, but it wasn't long before his yields nosedived and within the five years he was bankrupt.
- eru 4y agoWhy did your neighbour try?
- randomdata 4y agoSoy on soy (on soy, on soy...). Disease soon sets in if not regularly rotated.
- ilostmyshoes 4y agoBut why did they try it
- tengbretson 4y agoIt's like everyone who's ever watched a YouTube video about planting a 3 sisters garden has an opinion for the people actually staking their livelihood on this now.
- algoatecorn 4y agoNo kidding, and furthermore it's as if they don't take a second to consider scalability, yield, commodity-market efficiency, and labor-force.
- codingdave 4y agoIt is more about that fact that people talking about sustainable food production do not share many goals with commodity farmers exchanging corn and soybeans for as much cash as possible.
- tengbretson 4y agoAt least farmers have the humility to not go on the internet and smear you based on their opinion of your use of a document database over a relational database.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ilostmyshoes 4y agoOr they've read up on anthropology, this is common knowledge in the field
- refurb 4y ago"I've never farmed in my life, but I'm pretty sure I know more than the guy who has been doing it for decades and whose entire livelihood is based on it."
- randomdata 4y agoWe do. Perhaps you may not recognize our lingo. For example, around here we humorously refer to wheat as 'poverty grass' because there is no money in growing it but recognize it as a necessity to keep in the rotation for the ecological health benefits it provides.
- Scoundreller 4y agoThere’s money in growing it, but usually where nothing else profitably grows, which is a lot of places. Hugely mechanized though which makes it work when you have enough crop land. But yeah, $/hectare yield is going to be low.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 4y agoPretending indigenous communities “solved” this is a farce. If we switched to their methods 90% of the population would need to die because they don’t scale.
- willcipriano 4y agoWhat percentage of indigenous people were involved in farming? 100%? It's less than 3% today.
- throwaway4aday 4y agoSo your solution is to give up your job and return to subsistence farming? Let us know how that works out.
- willcipriano 4y agoNo, my point is everyone would to do it that way.
- LarryMullins 4y agoWithout experience, land, and modern industrial farming techniques? No, "everybody" would not start subsistence farming. There would be massive famines, billions would starve and die.
- midasuni 4y agoI think everyone’s on the same page. But if you ignore the labour demands per mouth fed, the education needed, the amount of land to feed current western population to sustainable replacement level, the requirement to maintain advanced defence systems to prevent land being taken or otherwise destroyed, the issues with the global climate affecting whatever you do in this agrarian society, could it be done?
- HDThoreaun 4y ago