4 ms·

There problem is if there’s any more politically powerful force than “the children” it’s “the farmers,” despite the fact almost all farming is done by large cor

There problem is if there’s any more politically powerful force than “the children” it’s “the farmers,” despite the fact almost all farming is done by large corporations exploiting migrant labor and blasting the earth with chemicals to induce low quality substances that resemble vegetables and grains but lack almost all the nutrition. If we stopped today it would take a generation to make the soil independently viable again.

HumblyTossed 3y ago
> it’s “the farmers,” No, it's "the shareholders". Large corporations don't care about farming, only making money. They just happen to also farm.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Yes. But the political force is “the farmers.” Guess who is behind “the children?” Yes, the shareholders as well.
hombre_fatal 3y ago
Most agri land is also used to grow crops for animals for a tiny return on the calories fed to them (tropic levels). We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.
- pard68 3y ago
  Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species. The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes). We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
  - hgomersall 3y ago
    Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).
    - pard68 3y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies. My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
  - myshpa 3y ago
    > massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume 80% of all agricultural land for 18% of calories. It's an area the size of both Americas. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land-Use-01.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land... If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets Given that we're in the sixth mass extinction, and animal species have seen 70% decline in last 50 years, we have to reverse the trend. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction That "marginal land" should be reforested instead and nature restored. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 Humans are driving one million species to extinction - with agriculture https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption > My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity Your business might be. Animal agriculture isn't. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.
mschuster91 3y ago
Large scale mass farming as a consequence of consolidation is also responsible for the massive reduction in insects and birdlife biodiversity. Basically, miles upon miles of monoculture, that's a food desert for the insects, and the birds don't have any habitat as there are no bushes, no shade, nothing. And on top of that come the issues with deadly pesticides that kill off bees and other pollinators and leach into groundwater. People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.
- jinkiesScoob 3y ago
  There are 8B of us homie. Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory. Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise) GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    First of all, your account seems to be shadowbanned, you might want to email the mods. > The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago. The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains. > GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide. You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful! [1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> it’s “the farmers,” No, it's "the shareholders". Large corporations don't care about farming, only making money. They just happen to also farm.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Yes. But the political force is “the farmers.” Guess who is behind “the children?” Yes, the shareholders as well.

hombre_fatal 3y ago

Most agri land is also used to grow crops for animals for a tiny return on the calories fed to them (tropic levels). We could get serious about that if we decide to get serious about agri land use, deforestation, soil depletion, etc.

pard68 3y ago
Totally possible to raise animals without this though. There is a massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume, leaving more biologically diverse land available for other species. The issue is that animals raised on pasture need more land and more time, which equals more money. It's cheaper to raise animals on what amounts to junk food (soy, corn, legumes). We raise and sell pork, chicken, eggs, and dairy products that never eat anything that our own land doesn't produce (grass/nuts/native fruit). But my hogs grow over a year not six months, my chickens don't lay in the winter, and my cows don't produce 10+ gallons per day. My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Without meaning to suggest that there's no much better ways to raise animals for meat, it's still a fundamental truth that the land area needed to support animals is much higher than crops. If we were to only eat meat from animals that were raised in a biodiversity sustainable fashion, we'd all have to eat far less meat (which I totally support as a flexitarian).
  - pard68 3y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. There is no possible way to raise animals the way we do at a scale that can sustain the current demand for meat. But at my small scale, I can make a profit while matching the sales price of mass-produced animal products, and I do that with no government subsidies. My point was merely, there is a middle way, that makes better products, cheaply, and more ethically.
- myshpa 3y ago
  > massive percentage of the land that cannot grow much other than grasses and shrubs. Animals can convert that to calories we can consume 80% of all agricultural land for 18% of calories. It's an area the size of both Americas. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land-Use-01.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-Land... If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets Given that we're in the sixth mass extinction, and animal species have seen 70% decline in last 50 years, we have to reverse the trend. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-70-of-animal-populations-wiped-out-since-1970-report-reveals-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction That "marginal land" should be reforested instead and nature restored. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4 The carbon opportunity cost of animal-sourced food production on land https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4 Humans are driving one million species to extinction - with agriculture https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/ Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat consumption > My business is only sustainable because of people who care for quality of cheaper quantity Your business might be. Animal agriculture isn't. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471 Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits may be achievable A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming practices and technologies are required to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds.

mschuster91 3y ago

Large scale mass farming as a consequence of consolidation is also responsible for the massive reduction in insects and birdlife biodiversity. Basically, miles upon miles of monoculture, that's a food desert for the insects, and the birds don't have any habitat as there are no bushes, no shade, nothing. And on top of that come the issues with deadly pesticides that kill off bees and other pollinators and leach into groundwater. People keep asking me why I'm so strongly opposed to GMO in food, outside of stuff like Golden Rice. The reason is that we can't trust Big Ag to not do the wrong thing: for one, there are serious questions on monopolies and dependence of farmers, even entire nations in the end upon suppliers, and it's almost exclusively about introducing resistence against pesticides, with the aforementioned effects on biodiversity.

jinkiesScoob 3y ago
There are 8B of us homie. Big Ag, mono culture, pesticides all come with the territory. Have you ever kept a garden? Did you do it on natural soil, with no pesticides? The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. (Consider crickets if you think otherwise) GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  First of all, your account seems to be shadowbanned, you might want to email the mods. > The food problem is hard, especially because food isn't very fungible. Indeed it is, and modern agriculture has drastically improved human life from the situation of just a century ago. The thing is, we've gone too far - in our quest for more and more and more food production, we have endangered nature itself. Soils are degrading because the crops use too much nutrients and because the wildlife - particularly small burrowing animals - get killed off by pesticides directly or because their food got killed off by pesticides. On top of that, heavy farm machines compress the soil... and so it can't soak up water any more, leading to flood and drought issues (it can't retain water because the soil is too compacted for the water to seep through, so no buffer for drought times, and when rain falls it just washes the topsoil with it and is gone). And that doesn't even mention insects and their role in food chains. > GMO's should be regulated so that pesticide restiance is mitigated. Personally I think GMOs should have multiple pesticide restistances for each class of pest so that resistant pest mutations can be treated with a seperate pesticide. You didn't get my point: pesticides kill everything but the GMO plants that are designed to be resistant, thus impacting the food chain of nature as an ecosystem. We've engineered places that are literally inhospitable to wildlife, with serious and far-reaching consequences. We barely understand food chains and anchor species as a concept, we only discovered just how huge a role wolves and beavers play in nature a few decades ago [1]. And yet, despite the warning signs (such as insect free car windshields despite driving through the countryside for hours), we keep on and on doing what we know is likely harmful! [1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/ https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...