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Maybe that’s just setting a low bar. Dutch agriculture is anything but a bucolic idyl, instead consisting of very large industrial operations owned by an ever
by mtts 4y ago
Maybe that’s just setting a low bar.
Dutch agriculture is anything but a bucolic idyl, instead consisting of very large industrial operations owned by an ever decreasing number of companies that produce vast amounts of food for export using imported feed and plowing the manure that remains, truly stupendous amounts, into the soil thereby rendering it effectively dead.
Large tracts of the province of Drente, formerly poor and backward and hence, in a way, pretty, have been taken over by lily plantations (yes, the flower) that are absolutely drenched in pesticides.
Most food crops are grown in enormous greenhouses that take monstrous amounts of energy to heat and that are lit up 24 hours a day to increase yields, making it difficult for people in surrounding villages to sleep. They are automated as much as possible and the work that can not be automated is done by underpaid immigrant workers living in horrible conditions.
So, yes, Dutch agriculture has “as good or better yields”, but it’s still ecologically disastrous.
- spiderfarmer 4y agoIt would be a lot more ecologically disastrous to move operations to less suitable areas.
- shjake 4y agoWouldn’t most other places in Europe be much more suitable though just because of lower population density (and energy prices in some cases)?
- spiderfarmer 4y agoI meant that agriculture in our fertile delta is way more efficient than trying to do the same in other countries with less suitable areas.
- mtts 4y agoThe agricultural lobby puts this out a lot, but it’s not true. The pig farmers and the dairy farmers that are causing the most problems require vast imports of fodder grown elsewhere. The efficiency of a lot of greenhouse agriculture is questionable as well (which was made obvious when a not insignificant chunk of its production was wound down when supplies of cheap Russian gas dried up.
- spiderfarmer 4y agoSo energy prices increasing by 300%, eating away profits, on top of record inflation is proof that the whole business is inefficient? Lol, no. Even if a financial shockwave told you anything about the efficiency of green houses (it does not) you can’t base your argument on a war induced fluke.
- mtts 4y agoIf a business can only exist if energy prices are unrealistically low, then, yes, it is inefficient.
- spiderfarmer 4y agoSo the only time energy is priced realistically is during wartime. Noted.
- shjake 4y agoWere they unrealistically low though? Wind/solar/hydro are supposed to be much cheaper than fossil fuels longterm.. And gas prices are more or less back to where they were before the invasion.
- Thiez 4y agoSo we're sacrificing the Dutch nature out of altruistic motives? And the rest of the Dutch people don't get a say about the biodiversity in their country, the farmers should make this noble sacrifice on their behalf, for the good of the world? Or is it perhaps just a transparent excuse to keep polluting until only grass, stinging nettles, and blackberries remain?
- spiderfarmer 4y agoYou’re not sacrificing Dutch nature. Your argument is based on what you hear from doomsayers who make a lot of noise based on incomplete research. The grass, stinging nettles and blackberries you saw on TV only went a couple of meters deep at the edge of forests. It’s not like it takes over entire forests. They are now researching how nitrogen from farms actually deposits, because everything we know until now has been modelled as a dome, while it’s much more likely it’s a low hanging mist.
- em-bee 4y agocan the excess heat of the datacenter be used to heat up the greenhouses?
- mtts 4y agoThis was the promise originally but it turned out to be impossible. As it turns out, data center waste water is nowhere near warm enough to use for heating.
- cornholio 4y agoIt would work if you would put the server directly into the greenhouses, 25°C is cool enough for servers and warm enough for plants. But the expense of having moisture, bug and dirt resistant servers and technicians would far outweigh the energy efficiency.
- mtts 4y agoHahaha - never thought of it that way. Given how dirt free a lot of modern greenhouse agriculture is, it could conceivably be done.
- em-bee 4y agoif that works, why doesn't it work to put them next to each other and pump the warm air from the server into the greenhouse? would that already have to much loss?