7 ms·
The myths we tell ourselves about American farming
- burner111 3y ago[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- burner111 3y agoSo, you'd be ok with me posting an article from Breitbart.com or zerohedge.com etc.? I'm sure I can find something there that meets that loose definition. Edit: this is a legitimate question. Why is is being downvoted?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIf it’s factual and interesting, certainly, and I can always click hide or skip past if not of interest to me. Why can’t you? Why the emotion about something so inconsequential? Not rhetorical questions, genuinely curious.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoYou can post it and then see if it gets upvoted, or flagged. But once the link is up, it is considered poor form on HN to post a comment critical of the publication from which the article comes, instead of the claims in the article itself. This has been HN’s culture for many years now.
- burner111 3y ago[flagged]
- hnbad 3y agoIt's called consensus. If HN in aggregate were a person, it would be somewhere slightly to the left of a right-wing libertarian. In practice the community also includes plenty of outliers like far-left anarchists and far-right nationalists. It's very much not an echo chamber. Not that "echo chamber" is a very useful criticism or notion given that it's so poorly defined and even when you can define it, you still need to demonstrate why the thing meeting your definition is bad.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI'm pretty sure at least one of those is on an autoban list of some sort and probably both are. HN is what it is and I can't say I disagree with that particular decision. There are certainly other forums where those types of sites are more welcome.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoYes, and you put that very well. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- shilgapira 3y agoThe site rules are what they are. Besides, I'm not sure your search will be as fruitful as you imagine, mostly because reality has a well known liberal bias.
- burner111 3y ago"Factual". Ok.
- dang 3y agoPredominantly political or ideological sites tend to be banned, regardless of which flavor they favor. Major media sites and journal sites that have a mix of political/ideological content, current affairs, and the occasionally intellectually interesting article, are downweighted but not banned—precisely because we want that occasionally interesting article. Beyond that, the answer to your question is just plain "randomness". The answer to most questions.
- AlbertCory 3y agosince we're quoting: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. " Farming == BAD is a political topic. As one of the sources in this article says: “We’ve been studying some of this stuff for decades,” she said. “We already know what needs to be done.”
- pintxo 3y agoIt’s the same problem in Europe. Although regulation seems to be coming here. For example, there are /have been big farmer protests in the Netherlands because of new regulation on nitrates.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y agoThe Russians didn't starve enough people in the '20s. The Chinese didn't starve enough people in the '50s. The Cambodians in the '70s. The Ethiopians in the '80s. Zimbabweans in the '00s. Now they want to try again in Europe. We might not starve soon but look at the complaints caused by Ukraine not exporting grain the past 2 years.
- phillipcarter 3y ago> the EPA said in its recent decision that it will set up a committee next year to further study the issue for 12 to 18 months. Ugh, groan. As an example, they all know that feed lots are dumping poop directly into water sources that feed into adjacent fields, which is one of the major causes of foodborne illnesses.
- legitster 3y ago> To get there, she said, farmland owners need to be taxed at a higher rate, and we need to do away with the American notion that people can do whatever they want on their private property: Keep in mind that a lot of the history/explanation is flat out wrong or trying to take inspiration from the 1619 Project - farms get all sorts of regulatory carve-outs because a) they still control huge swaths of land and huge parts of the economy of most of the states b) and increases in food prices would be a political disaster for everyone else. Yes, it's kind of a myth that farmers are numerous, poor, destitute, etc. But the article is literally begging the question of why don't we just impose more cost on farming, and the answer is so obvious without needing to delve into a fraught debunking.
- nitwit005 3y agoExcept the government intervenes to deliberately raise food prices all the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Price_Support_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Price_Support_Program
- bequanna 3y agoThis is price support in extremely volatile commodity price periods to reduce the number of farms that going under. We want to maintain a high supply of food and need producers to do that without thinking they could go bankrupt next year. Seems reasonable to me.
- nitwit005 3y agoNo one said anything negative about the policy.
- Barracoon 3y agoRather than just claiming that the history is “flat out wrong”, it’d sure be neat if you provided some sources the back that up.
- mcpackieh 3y ago[flagged]
- rcpt 3y agoSwing states + aggressive lobbying and any industry could get their own yearly Farm Bill. In New Zealand there are zero farm subsidies and people eat just fine. But without major structural changes to the US federal government I don't think anything will change here.
- kolanos 3y agoNew Zealand imports most of its grain and feed. A good chunk of those imports come from the United States. > New Zealand grain and feed import volumes in 2022 rose to the highest level ever, importing 3.7 million metric tons (MMT), up 13 percent from the previous year. National grain and feed demand continues to outstrip domestic supply by nearly double, with New Zealand producing 2.1 MMT in 2022, but consuming an estimated 5.8 MMT. Dairy farming continues to dominate as the largest consumer, accounting for about 75 percent, followed by poultry (12 percent) and then human consumption (nine percent). Strong recent record milk prices have stimulated demand from the dairy industry in order to boost production. For human consumption, and processing, New Zealand produces milling wheat, oats, and malting barley, but also still imports milling wheat sourced from Australia, its closest neighbor. > Palm Kernel Extract (PKE) continues to be the largest imported feed (54 percent of imports), sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia, destined specifically for the dairy sector. In addition, Distiller's Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) is a high growth import market from the United States, as well as soybean meal from South America. [0]: https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=New%20Zealand%20Grain%20and%20Feed%20Market%20Situation_Wellington_New%20Zealand_NZ2023-0003.pdf https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadRepo...
- akira2501 3y ago> “These factory farms operate like sewerless cities,” Does anyone want to tell them how septic systems work? > generate nearly 2.5 billion pounds of waste every day [...] or spread onto crop fields as fertilizer Vox is mad that they're essentially recycling? > “a comprehensive evaluation is essential before determining whether any regulatory revisions are necessary or appropriate.” I guess reason is no longer a virtue, at least to Vox, who would prefer a fully reactionary government that operates from the same level of ignorance as their writing pool.
- CuriouslyC 3y agoThe problem is that you have uncomposted manure in large quantities that can runoff leading to water supply contamination. Feedlots are destructive to the environment in a way that rotational grazing is not. Grass fed beef with rotational grazing is good for the environment, reducing fertilizer requirements without causing food contamination or wasting resources trucking cows and grain around. It's not good for big-ag, because they need a market for their subsidized corn/soybeans and it's not good for national beef producers because they want to co-locate and integrate everything for cost savings, but it'd be good for the cows, the environment and local businesses that are being undercut by the national players.
- myshpa 3y ago> Grass fed beef with rotational grazing is good for the environment Grass-fed beef isn't necessarily better for the environment than beef from CAFOs. While grass-fed systems offer benefits like soil health, they often require more land, potentially leading to deforestation. They can also be less efficient in terms of resource use and have variable effects on carbon sequestration. A comprehensive assessment considering land use efficiency, resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions is essential to fully understand the environmental impact of different beef production methods. https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-confused/ https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-and-co... "About 75% to 80% of grass-fed beef sold in the U.S. is grown abroad, from Australia, New Zealand and parts of South America ..." "Many U.S. customers who want to support local food are likely unaware of the foreign origin of most grass-fed beef. By law, if meat is "processed," or passes through a USDA-inspected plant (a requirement for all imported beef), it can be labeled as a product of the U.S. " https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is-grass-fed-beef-really-better-for-the-planet-heres-the-science https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/13/746576239/is... "This report concludes that grass-fed livestock are not a climate solution. Grazing livestock are net contributors to the climate problem, as are all livestock. Rising animal production and consumption, whatever the farming system and animal type, is causing damaging greenhouse gas release and contributing to changes in land use. 'Ultimately, if high consuming individuals and countries want to do something positive for the climate, maintaining their current consumption levels but simply switching to grass-fed beef is not a solution. Eating less meat, of all types, is.’" https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-bad-climate https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-03-grass-fed-beef-good-or-...
- jqpabc123 3y agoSummary: American farming is highly productive and highly unsustainable. It consumes large amounts of resources that can't be sustained. It dumps large amount of chemical and animal waste into the environment in a manner that can't be sustained. Modern farming is kinda like plastics --- everybody wants cheap stuff but it's only cheap if you ignore the long term costs --- like when it starts polluting human breast milk and gets fed to your babies. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/microplastics-human-breast-milk-first-time https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/07/micropla...
- voakbasda 3y agoThese statements are only true about big farms and rarely apply to small operations. The food produced by my small farm is not cheap. We barely use chemicals when absolutely required, and our animal "waste" fertilizes our pastures and reduces our external inputs even further. One consequence of such good stewardship is that our pork sells for 3-4x the cost of supermarket meat. I find it very frustrating to see all farms demonized like this, because small farms already face scale-based discrimination. Most existing regulations were written to favor Big Ag, and they do indeed produce cheap food (in every sense of the word). Small farms already face nearly impossible odds bringing our food to market, so please don't conflate our practices and products with those of Big Ag.
- jqpabc123 3y agoso please don't conflate our practices and products with those of Big Ag. Fair enough --- as long a you don't do the opposite. It is my understanding that small farms like yours account for less than 10% of total food production in the USA. So in the overall, big picture view of things, Big Ag effectively is "American farming".
- neuralRiot 3y agoOne thing that no one wants admit and much less industries and investors is that there’s no additive solution for the environmental problem. The way small farms operate might be sustainable but it’s impossible to keep consuming animal products at the current rate in sustainable manner. Consuming animal products 3 times a day 7 days a week is just egregious.
- bhewes 3y agoOklahoma did sue and win again Tyson - https://apnews.com/article/politics-oklahoma-state-government-illinois-tulsa-aaa56f6e60d16a9205bc3730ad1d26ed https://apnews.com/article/politics-oklahoma-state-governmen...
- voakbasda 3y agoSmall farmer here. Big farms are the problem. If regulations under discussion were applied equally to all farms, then most small farms would cease to exist, because our neighbors would sue us into oblivion. Not because we are doing anything as egregiously wrong as CAFOs, but because we cannot afford to defend against spurious lawsuits from city folks that have moved to the country.
- tb_technical 3y agoEveryone's voting you down, because nuance on the internet is difficult - as is admitting you're wrong about something. Everything this comment above says is also detailed in the book Sacred Cow. Large corporations are, again, the problem. But people come out of the woodwork to defend them under an article that vilifies them.
- dang 3y agoEveryone's not voting voakbasda down—the comment has been heavily upvoted. You may have run into the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- tb_technical 3y agoEarlier yesterday, the comment was heavily voted down before myself and another voted it up. It's why there were two comments talking about it being voted down. Did you notice they were both posted within a minute of each other? It's deleted now, but this did happen
- dang 3y agoIt got one downvote before you voted it back up 7 minutes later. That's not "everyone", that's literally "a single downvote showed up for a few minutes before 12 upvotes in a row came in". What I mean by the contrarian dynamic is that often, negative feedback shows up first, only to produce a flood of objections by people saying some variant of "I can't believe this place is so negative". This happens so frequently that I think it must be a product of something hard-wired in the medium* and something hard-wired in humans. Like any predictable mechanism, this one tends to be bad for discussion quality. * I mean the medium of the internet forum
- metalcrow 3y agoDoes anyone have any idea on what we can do about this, personally? I already have contacted my state and federal reps about this multiple times, and donate to animal welfare charities regularly. What's the next step, going weather underground and destroying large farms?