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We purchased a farm many years ago that had become eroded after many years of conventional farming. In our quest to transition to regenerative practices, and th

by gdubs 3y ago

We purchased a farm many years ago that had become eroded after many years of conventional farming. In our quest to transition to regenerative practices, and things like organic, we've definitely had the realization that most people have no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it does. The margins in most farming are razor thin. Our neighbors who grow conventionally spend tons on inputs like fertilizer, for a shockingly small amount of money [in return per acre]. A year of extreme weather – more and more common – throws the whole thing out the window. People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not just spraying to control weeds (or, more shockingly, to stop growth on your food crop at just the right time). All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from a conventional mindset. There are alternative approaches. A few great books are "Permaculture" by Mollison, "One Straw Revolution" by Fukuoka, "Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing – you can start with some perennial herbs on your balcony. Larger scale, I'm an advocate for things like agroforestry practices, becoming more and more interested in agrivoltaics. You can go a very long way with a few dwarf fruit and nut trees, an understory of berries, and a few raised beds managed with no-dig methods. If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed.

ch4s3 3y ago
To your point, you're talking about processes that while impressive in many respects are HIGHLY labor intensive. The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. Not only that, but as recently as like 100 years ago, 30% of people in the US were farmers (ish).
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    For that matter, it hasn't been all that long since around 90% of the people were agricultural laborers -- pretty much world-wide before the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and in many areas of the planet, well into the 20th Century. Generally unfree laborers at that (i.e., slaves or serfs).
- gdubs 3y ago
  I think modern agriculture is miraculous, don't get me wrong. But we ignore the negative externalities – the cost to our health, and to ecosystems, and to the sustainability of civilization long-term. Even conventionally-minded farmers know that things like soil loss are a huge looming problem. And the labor issue is also complex – while big corn fields may be farmable via GPS-enabled, air-conditioned tractors, there's still a ton of migrant labor without which the system would cease to function. The idea behind a lot of the regenerative methods is to work with nature to reduce the need for inputs. I am a pragmatist and will tell you that, it's really hard! On this I agree. But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into the mainstream. I just think we need to accelerate that, and put a lot more research into alternative methods like agroforestry – because I think we all rely on a food system that's way more brittle and tenuous than people realize. One with a lot of negative externalities that we can't paper over forever.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    > the cost to our health This seems highly debatable. Sure cheap calories and cheap corn based sugars make it easy to develop so called lifestyle diseases, but on the other hand we've essentially eliminated famine and in most parts of the world malnutrition. In terms of ecosystem loss, it seems to me that concentrating most calorie production onto the smallest amount of land makes sense. > And the labor issue is also complex You're right of course, but I don't see how the manually intense process of regenerative and/or organic ag makes this better. Every small farm like this that I'm aware of makes heavy use of children, unpaid interns, and extremely low wage workers. It's not exactly comparable to migrant workers picking strawberries en-masse, but that's more of an issue of sacle and where these boutique farms find their labor IMO. I say this as someone whose parents and grandparents were all farmers, and my sister-in-law worked for a few years on a regenerative/organic farm. > But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into the mainstream This is the part that's actually really interesting to me. Finding ways to scale up and integrate ideas about soil health, water use, etc into mechanized, large scale agriculture is really great. People seem to be doing cool things with no-till and drip irrigation right now. > alternative methods like agroforestry My concern with this is that it definitely require LOADS of labor, and isn't likely to produce that much food. It also may put pressure on forest land may not be sustainable long term. On a small scale on you your own farm, it's probably great. But I have trouble imagining how it could ever make up a significant portion of overall fruit and nut consumption.
- m463 3y ago
  What if cheap food gets you sick in some way, or gives you cancer?
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    I'm not sure what your point is.
    - m463 3y ago
      My point is that labor saving efficiency may take a hit producing healthy food. For example, if instead of fighting insects directly, everything is soaked in glyphosate, it might be too much of a compromise. In fact there are lots of these compromises that end up killing fiber, or favoring starches or processing away nutrients that makes eating a faustian bargain. I would think labor-saving solutions should try to get whole foods to the table quickly and cheaply, rather than say maximizing shelf life or storage convenience.
- RangerScience 3y ago
  > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. I mean - I think I understand the motivation behind that but I am pretty convinced that the value of "low-carb" / "no-carb" diets has less to do with the impact of carbs (after all, wheat literally was the symbol of European civilization for a really long time) and more to do with how they're used as cheap caloric filler (looking at you, Panda Express). Pretty much a "get what you pay for" kind of situation, in my eyes - so maybe spending that much on food isn't as bad as was thought. also, on the gripping hand, looks at cost of housing - so maybe if it's not one thing it's another.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    Even high quality food is far cheaper than it was only a generation or two ago.
    - bbojan 3y ago
      What quality are you talking about? In my 8 years in Canada I wasn't able to by decent blackberries or tomatoes. At any price.
      - hotnfresh 3y ago
        30 years ago (within that generation-or-two span), at least here in the parts of the US I was in around that time, blackberries and lots of other stuff were both expensive, and only available seasonally. You could get canned year-round, not fresh.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ilyt 3y ago
    I think it's mostly that this kind of food is also easily and quickly digestible which just means getting hungry earlier.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
- bbojan 3y ago
  > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food And now they spend 30% of their income on medical costs.
- Phenomenit 3y ago
  I wouldn’t mind spending a couple of hours a day doing physical labor instead of working in the office to guarantee that my food was made in a sustainable and safe way, heck I even think it would be good for my health.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    That is a lot harder to say after the age of 35 or 40. My social circle includes many alternative people in organic farming where I have occasionally pitched in to help, and I have also volunteered with WWOOF for food and accommodation when traveling. This kind of work, even if a mere couple of hours a day, really, really starts to suck after your knees and back begin to age. And it is not that I have given up and settled into a sedentary lifestyle – nowadays my travels are bikepacking/bicycle-touring where I do 100 km+ day after day, but that exercise is a lot easier on one’s body than the repetitive motions of farming.
  - digging 3y ago
    My dream: we give up on bullshit jobs. We implement UBI. We localize the majority of our agriculture. Humans, largely freed from fake labor, work communally on their local farms, splitting up the labor so nobody has to wreck their health and finances gambling on a lettuce crop.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      > We localize the majority of our agriculture That means continental-scale famine. I'm not kidding - loads of countries only have the populations they have today because they can import cheap food from Europe and the Americas. Without that trade, billions starve.
      - digging 3y ago
        I'm not talking about cutting off trade overnight, though. I'm talking about building up community resources to reduce the need. But this is all very abstract anyway.
    - 3y ago
- Kerrick 3y ago
  2022 median household income after taxes [0] was $64,240, or $5,353/mo. According to the USDA [1], a moderate cost of food prepared at home for a family of four (with, say, a 16 year old daughter and 14 year old son) is $1,378.90/mo. So, the median family on a moderate food plan (never eating from restaurants) ALREADY spends 25% on food. People who make less money, dine out, have more children, eat more food, buy fancier food, or have food waste spend proportionally even more. A lot of people who read and comment here don't realize that there's no "return to" that world -- lots of the U.S. already lives there. [0]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-household-income.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-househ... [1]: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJul2023LowModLib.pdf https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/media/file... via https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-monthly-reports https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-mont...
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    The USDA[1] shows Americans spending 11.3% of disposable income on food. To quote them: >U.S. consumers spent an average of 11.3 percent of their disposable personal income on food in 2022 [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
    - Scoundreller 3y ago
      The median income is a lot lower than the average income. Not even sure how food falls under disposable income. Sounds like a cute way of saying "after-tax income" as if "things to buy otherwise you die" is a luxury"? From the chart after the one you quoted: "In 2021, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,875 on food (representing 30.6 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,973 on food (representing 7.6 percent of income)." Pretty cool/sad to see the top 20% spending almost 3x/household on food.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways. Right now we have a dichotomy with on one hand industrial methods that overuse chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the other hand organic methods that are excessively labor-intensive. Why is it not possible to use the organic methods, but automate the labor-intensive parts? I understand that we don't currently have the technology to do this, but is there some reason it isn't possible? Wouldn't it be a productive thing to fund the development of?
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways. Sure, that's entirely possible. Build lots of nuclear power plants and run everything off electricity. I do not expect the "organic" people to accept this, of course.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      My understanding is that the availability of electricity is not the issue, but rather e.g. that manual weeding instead of using herbicides is labor intensive, and we don't currently have machines that can do this. But this is a problem of robotics and computer vision etc., not of powering the equipment.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Then why they are still getting subsidies ? We're essentially taking a part of the tax, give it to farmers, so instead of paying less tax we pay less for foods, except wasting a ton of it along the way for bureaucracy
  - randomdata 3y ago
    The subsidy is a reduction in insurance premiums. Or, if you want to look at it another way, when insurance payouts are required, the public pays a portion of the cost. The math is the same either way, so take your pick. This is considered a social good as it compels farmers to carry insurance instead of rolling the dice, the latter of which they would be more apt to do if they had to pay the full premium cost. Even with the subsidies, some farmers still opt to roll the dice. But perfect need not be the enemy of good. The split gets enough farmers interested in carrying insurance. Farmers having insurance is considered a social good as it maintains some stability in food production. If experienced farmers are going bankrupt every time Mother Nature decides to throw a bit of a curve ball, you are at the mercy of the newbies who swoop in to replace them. Indeed, you always need some inflow of newbies to ensure that there are future farmers, and some farmers making mistakes can be absorbed, but when they are all newbies at the same time because everyone else went bankrupt, that is a big risk to the food supply. There is a lot of generational knowledge and experience required to make good management decisions in farming, so it is valuable to have some experienced people remaining in the business.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Well it aint working coz more and more people are moving away from farming, and the only way to start is to start big as small size farms are just not profitable.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > and the only way to start is to start big as small size farms are just not profitable. Why do you say that? My small farm – just a traditional grain farm, nothing fancy – is quite profitable. The big farm is a different business model. They are focused on wealth building, leveraging large amounts of debt to keep growing as much as possible, using most of the farm income to cover the debt requirements. In this model you need to be large to survive as the remaining profit margin after paying off the debt is tiny. I have kept the debt to a minimum. That means growth happens at a snail's pace, but it also means that all the money that would have went to the bank ends up in my pocket instead. I'll no doubt have a lot less wealth at retirement, taking the profitability now instead of later, but maybe that's okay? How much do you really need? I don't feel like I'm short of my retirement goals. I just might not be crazy rich in the end. Tradeoffs, as always.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  I think spending 30+% of income on food is perfectly sensible, while spending more than 10% on shelter is complete madness. A house is built and stays there for decades without any extra work to speak of, yet even the most primitive house in industrialized nations is more expensive than an extremely advanced motorcycle that can go 200mph without breaking apart. Anybody can build a house by himself with primitive tools, trees and stones, given some time. Almost nobody can build a motorcycle by himself, even with advanced precision tools and all instructions given. Not to mention computers, cars and cell phones, which are tremendously advanced. Considering the labour and resources needed to grow food, compared to the labour and resources needed to build houses, food should be much more of our expenses while housing should be much less.
- imtringued 3y ago
  Yeah sure permaculture is ridiculous, but something like no till? There is nothing that prevents mechanization of it and it has seen significant success compared to conventional agriculture. The thing is, tilling resets your soil, so once you start tilling, there is not much you can do about soil health. In fact, tillage backs you into a corner where the only option is to spray back what you have destroyed through industrially produced synthetics. That also includes all the artificial fertilizer you're spraying. Once you till it, all the money you spent on the fertilizer is wasted. Once you stop tilling, there are actually ways to improve soil health that shouldn't be impossible to scale up. The biggest problem is that every soil is different and you need a complex "cocktail" of two dozen cover crops and another set of mycorrhizal fungi that is uniquely suited for your soil. Yes this does reduce yields, especially in the short term when you are building up soil health but conventional agriculture tends to reduce yields over the long term. This is ultimately a battle between "farm - regenerate - repeat" vs "farm until exhaustion - regenerate". It's not implausible that conventional agriculture is worse in the long run but we might not know it until it is too late, because it takes 20 to 30 years for soil to become useless.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
alex_lav 3y ago
I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but I feel like we're living in the wrong time to be shaming the common person for A.) Wanting food that won't kill them, and B.) They can afford. > People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price Everything in life is getting more expensive and wages stay mostly the same.
spelunker 3y ago
I have a vegetable garden at home, and there is nothing quite like eating food you have grown yourself! And as an extra benefit, it usually tastes better than the stuff you get at the grocery store anyway. Even a small garden takes work, though, not to mention if you keep it "organic" like I do, you have to deal with pests, weeds, etc. So many weeds.
WalterBright 3y ago
A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad years in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad ones and make an overall profit. The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled.
- kolanos 3y ago
  This is very true, a late frost can wipe you out for the year.
- selectodude 3y ago
  Apples are unusual insofar as they can be stored for 12+ months. Most produce isn’t so resilient.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Yeah it's crazy. My late dad's old farm just had basically a big room that had concrete crating above a hole in soil (I believe it was to just keep it cool in the warmer months) and they could be stored from autumn to spring. No AC of any sort, just a small furnace to give off a bit of heat when winter gets really cold and some big fans for forced ventilation.
- digging 3y ago
  > The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled. This is what's extremely concerning - weather is getting less predictable every year. In a decade, who's going to want to start a farm when they have no idea what their local climate is?
- ilyt 3y ago
  > A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad years in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad ones and make an overall profit. The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled. From my memory the years where crops were unusually high were also ones where price was shit... because everyone else nearby also had a good crop
tuatoru 3y ago
> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price Yes; it's just virtue signaling. I tune out people who say this stuff. If I'm sufficiently motivated I point out:- It's not a value unless you're prepared for it to cost you money.
- pastage 3y ago
  If you believe it it is not virtue signaling, and if you balk at the price it is not virtue signaling. So not sure where that idea comes from.
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    It is merely virtue signaling if you are not prepared to live by it.
- coldpie 3y ago
  Eh, I don't think that's it. I think it's just good old misinformation caused by skillful marketing. People think organic is healthier or better for the environment, so they prefer it, even though it's actually neither[1]. But it's real tough to get past the huge marketing push conveying that message for the past couple decades. [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-evidence-organic-farming-is-bad/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-evidence-...
- fragmede 3y ago
  Who am I signaling to when I buy organic cucumbers and bring them home and eat them by myself? The clerk at the checkout counter?
  - tuatoru 3y ago
    If you buy them; that's fine. I'm talking about the people who say they want organic food, but then buy on price and price alone. They go on about the horrible conditions laying hens are kept in, but then refuse to buy the eggs from free-range chickens because they cost two dollars more per dozen. Or they claim to care about climate change, but fly somewhere for a holiday.
matwood 3y ago
People may like/not like Jeremy Clarkson, but his show on Amazon about him buying a farm was fun and informative. He's rich (so has a lot of startup capital) and struggled the whole show trying to make the economics work. He also spoke with other local farmers so you got to hear their struggles with the economics.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Jeremy Clarkson plays an arsehole in the media (or is he really such an arsehole?) but I agree about his farming show. It's funny, instructive and touching at times. However, I also found him funny on Top Gear - maybe it's because I assume he was being ironic.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    He got fired from Top Gear because he punched a waiter for bringing him a steak that wasn't hot enough. The asshole thing is probably not just an act.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      History suggests it’s never just an act.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        Trust the history! It suggests. What more do you want?
      - skilled 3y ago
        Going to have to correct you. Life is a grand theater and everything is an act. History has never suggested otherwise.
    - solumunus 3y ago
      You’re exaggerating a bit. He punched a producer for the show who was responsible for organising catering, it wasn’t a random waiter. A random waiter would be much worse. Who knows what relationship he had with that producer previous to the incident… He is (probably) an arsehole but let’s be accurate.
pj_mukh 3y ago
Is the cost mostly driven by labor? How much can autonomous pickers and “sharp shooting” spray robots/weeders help here? I personally don’t find gardening that attractive and don’t see how that is a scalable solution anyway, but have been curious what larger farms can do to become more efficiently organic.
moralestapia 3y ago
>"Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard +1 to that book. I don't have a farm (wish to, but life is very busy atm) and is still a book I enjoyed quite a lot. Anyone could get a lot of knowledge out of it.
tennisflyi 3y ago
People balk at "organic" furniture, too. The cost of things has just been abstracted too much.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
That's the trouble with capitalism: basic needs are underpriced, because income rates have no floor. If people are allowed to be too poor to afford food, then the system has failed. Our solution is not to pay people enough to live: our solution is to make food cheap enough for the desperately poor to continue living in squalor. It's no wonder to me that the very people invested in perpetuating this system are constantly struggling to "solve" homelessness and healthcare by "creating more jobs".
- fallingknife 3y ago
  In the USSR they ran Grapes of Wrath, which focuses on the plight of the poor in America, in theaters as an attempt at anti US propaganda. It backfired spectacularly because the mostly poor audience mainly came out of it saying "in America even poor people have cars!" The Soviet bureaucrats who came up with the plan were of course all from the upper class, and they cared so little for the poor in their anti-capitalist command economy that they didn't even realize how much poorer they were than the poor people in the movie. In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people can get fat. If we put anti-capitalists like you in charge they will starve.
  - digging 3y ago
    > In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people can get fat My dude, this is not a good thing.
    - fallingknife 3y ago
      For almost all of human history almost all humans spent almost all of their income/labor on feeding themselves. Not only is cheap food a good thing, it's one of the best.
      - thomastjeffery 3y ago
        But now that we have it, what are we trying to optimize?
Waterluvian 3y ago
This is what surprised and humbled me about farming. Imagine if my software dev laptop at home cost $5M and every year if my compiled code crop doesn’t come in I have to deal with a ton of insurance paperwork to hopefully not go bankrupt. It’s like a high stakes career for low stakes payouts.
WatchDog 3y ago
Tangent: Is there such a thing as "organic" for people that don't mind GMO, or fertilizer, but don't want their food sprayed with pesticides?
- belinder 3y ago
  Farmers market?
  - vkou 3y ago
    Nearly all of whom use pesticides.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Well if you want your fruits without worms in it, you have to. I remember from my life at farm that even just spraying it few days too late basically "ruined" a lot of fruit
- kornhole 3y ago
  Pesticide free
- atdrummond 3y ago
  Most organic certification programs allow (or even require) the use of pesticides; they simply use those which are considered “natural”. Some of these allowed pesticides, like copper sulfate, are far more carcinogenic than even the compounds (glyphosate, for example) that are considered dangerous enough to warrant public concern campaigns.[1] [1] https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-fungicide-copper-sulfate-poses-dangers-to-humans-animals-insects-how-does-it-compare-to-conventional-pesticides/ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-fungic...
  - mrob 3y ago
    It's possible that copper sulfate is more dangerous than the alternatives, but there's no evidence that it's carcinogenic. Your linked article claims copper sulfate "has not been associated with cancer".
hmmokidk 3y ago
What do you think of hydroponic? Like simple kratky + grow light, indoors you generally don’t have to worry about pests.
- gdubs 3y ago
  I think it's fascinating and looks like something an engineer / designer could have a lot of fun with. And on a larger scale, it seems like a really interesting idea that could bring food production closer to where people are – like cities. That said, I haven't had time to personally mess around with it much yet. I do think after watching how unpredictable the weather is getting, that greenhouses and indoor growing will be a very important part of the puzzle in the mid to later parts of this century. I worry about the grain crops and things that are still very much an outdoor proposition. Genetic modification and experiments with different perennials may get us to a place of resiliency, but we're not there yet. FWIW, I'm not anti-GMO. But I think an issue with GMOs is that a lot of what it gets used for is making crops tolerant of tons of chemical spraying.
- ilyt 3y ago
  It's land efficient. And only land efficient. If we get a lot of cheap energy it might make sense if it would allow to basically free up the land for farming. But as long as land is not "expensive", it's just too expensive in comparison. Sun is free and land is cheap, tons of plastic, bulbs and infrastructure is not.
talkingtab 3y ago
Food prices seem irrational. And I mean that - they are not reasonable. People buy bags of potato chips for almost $5.00. How much does the potato cost? It seems like the potato has nothing to do with the cost - especially if we reflect on the idea that "less than have of the produce ... makes a profit". What that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production. And we may be underestimating that cost. Perhaps most cost of the potato cost is in the gas, fertilizer, equipment that go into growing the potato. My question is, of the $5.00 for a bag of potato chips, where does that money go? Cui bono?
- sokoloff 3y ago
  People buy hot water poured over roasted and ground up beans for $5+. People buy tap water in plastic bottles at a ballgame for $5+. I do not conclude from those facts that "that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production". People are willing to pay for convenience and comfort. A bag of chips, a cup of Starbucks, or a bottle of cold water at a ballgame represents comfort and convenience.
- Tycho 3y ago
  Food is the one thing on which the average citizen regularly spends 10x or even 100x more than they need to spend.
- ilyt 3y ago
  The making of a potato is subsidized from taxes so it can be sold for "cheap". There is no subsidies for making chips, and it is "a treat" so there is not all that much reason to make it cheap aside from competition
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > There is no subsidies for making chips Except for the subsidies for growing the potato.
    - ilyt 3y ago
mortureb 3y ago
I tried organic just for the family. It’s next to impossible to keep plants alive and weeds out. How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate? It’s probably climate dependent and contingent on not having cross continental pests. The first year Japanese beetles pretty much ate my whole crop over the span of 3 weeks.
- nightfly 3y ago
  > How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate Compost/manure and lots of manual labor
  - mortureb 3y ago
    Yeah, I still think not having every pest and weed from Asia helped as well. Most of the weeds and pests on my property are some combination of Japanese/Chinese/Asian ____.
    - nightfly 3y ago
      Yeah, I've got a Tree of Heaven problem that sucks hardcore
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate? Slaves or serfs with hoes and rakes, mostly.
crazygringo 3y ago
> we've definitely had the realization that most people have no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it does. I think most people think it comes from big factory farms? And that it costs what it does because of supply and demand like any industry, but that subsidies make certain things like corn cheaper, and there's tremendous fluctuations in certain prices (like berries) because there are wildly different levels of supply coming from different countries at different times. Are you suggesting it's not that?
jononomo 3y ago
Doesn't it make more sense just to ditch plant-based calories altogether and just focus on animal-based calories, which are so much more nutrient dense while also being dramatically better for the environment?
- hfsh 3y ago
  > while also being dramatically better for the environment? [citation very fucking much needed]
ilyt 3y ago
> All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from a conventional mindset. The most I saw was mostly "well fuck you mister rich guy that can not only afford a house but enough space to do so and have the job to pay for that hobby"... not anything related to farming methods > If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed. I've lived on a "farm" (it had a bit of everything, grain, fruit trees, cucumbers etc) that was around 10 hectares. It went from "good living" (actually affordin new-if-cheap car etc.) to "going by" to my father basically selling land for development and getting "normal" job because it just wasn't paying. Frankly I think current subsidies structure just made it worse and worse because farming on low scale is near-impossible to make profitable and even bigger ones live on small profit margins as stuff from subsidies just immediately gets burn on fertilizer and other stuff. But yeah if average person did a year of farming and a year of designing and making something difficult we'd live in far less annoying stuf
fuzztester 3y ago
Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" on YouTube https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A?feature=shared https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A?feature=shared
Someone 3y ago
> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it I think the way out for this is won’t be to make people grow their own food at small scale, but to make big farms use less labor for organic pharming. Farming robots are getting better and cheaper, electricity from solar is getting cheaper, so chances are those robots will compete with manual labor at some time, probably already now in some cases. You can buy robots that zap weeds with lasers, for example. https://carbonrobotics.com/ https://carbonrobotics.com/ claims a 1-3 year payback.
gumby 3y ago
> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not just spraying to control weeds... My hope is that robots will not just save but boost organics, for the same reason solar and wind ultimately defeat fossil fuels for most use cases: they swap an op ex for a cap ex. Actually it's not just "same" reason: farming already requires mastery of cap ex, and the US tax code (at least) grossly favors cap ex. So the tax system is already biased to replace pesticides and labor when robots catches up.

by gdubs 3y ago

ch4s3 3y ago

To your point, you're talking about processes that while impressive in many respects are HIGHLY labor intensive. The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to.

dmoy 3y ago
> In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. Not only that, but as recently as like 100 years ago, 30% of people in the US were farmers (ish).
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  For that matter, it hasn't been all that long since around 90% of the people were agricultural laborers -- pretty much world-wide before the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and in many areas of the planet, well into the 20th Century. Generally unfree laborers at that (i.e., slaves or serfs).
gdubs 3y ago
I think modern agriculture is miraculous, don't get me wrong. But we ignore the negative externalities – the cost to our health, and to ecosystems, and to the sustainability of civilization long-term. Even conventionally-minded farmers know that things like soil loss are a huge looming problem. And the labor issue is also complex – while big corn fields may be farmable via GPS-enabled, air-conditioned tractors, there's still a ton of migrant labor without which the system would cease to function. The idea behind a lot of the regenerative methods is to work with nature to reduce the need for inputs. I am a pragmatist and will tell you that, it's really hard! On this I agree. But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into the mainstream. I just think we need to accelerate that, and put a lot more research into alternative methods like agroforestry – because I think we all rely on a food system that's way more brittle and tenuous than people realize. One with a lot of negative externalities that we can't paper over forever.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  > the cost to our health This seems highly debatable. Sure cheap calories and cheap corn based sugars make it easy to develop so called lifestyle diseases, but on the other hand we've essentially eliminated famine and in most parts of the world malnutrition. In terms of ecosystem loss, it seems to me that concentrating most calorie production onto the smallest amount of land makes sense. > And the labor issue is also complex You're right of course, but I don't see how the manually intense process of regenerative and/or organic ag makes this better. Every small farm like this that I'm aware of makes heavy use of children, unpaid interns, and extremely low wage workers. It's not exactly comparable to migrant workers picking strawberries en-masse, but that's more of an issue of sacle and where these boutique farms find their labor IMO. I say this as someone whose parents and grandparents were all farmers, and my sister-in-law worked for a few years on a regenerative/organic farm. > But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into the mainstream This is the part that's actually really interesting to me. Finding ways to scale up and integrate ideas about soil health, water use, etc into mechanized, large scale agriculture is really great. People seem to be doing cool things with no-till and drip irrigation right now. > alternative methods like agroforestry My concern with this is that it definitely require LOADS of labor, and isn't likely to produce that much food. It also may put pressure on forest land may not be sustainable long term. On a small scale on you your own farm, it's probably great. But I have trouble imagining how it could ever make up a significant portion of overall fruit and nut consumption.
m463 3y ago
What if cheap food gets you sick in some way, or gives you cancer?
- ch4s3 3y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is.
  - m463 3y ago
    My point is that labor saving efficiency may take a hit producing healthy food. For example, if instead of fighting insects directly, everything is soaked in glyphosate, it might be too much of a compromise. In fact there are lots of these compromises that end up killing fiber, or favoring starches or processing away nutrients that makes eating a faustian bargain. I would think labor-saving solutions should try to get whole foods to the table quickly and cheaply, rather than say maximizing shelf life or storage convenience.
RangerScience 3y ago
> In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. I mean - I think I understand the motivation behind that but I am pretty convinced that the value of "low-carb" / "no-carb" diets has less to do with the impact of carbs (after all, wheat literally was the symbol of European civilization for a really long time) and more to do with how they're used as cheap caloric filler (looking at you, Panda Express). Pretty much a "get what you pay for" kind of situation, in my eyes - so maybe spending that much on food isn't as bad as was thought. also, on the gripping hand, looks at cost of housing - so maybe if it's not one thing it's another.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  Even high quality food is far cheaper than it was only a generation or two ago.
  - bbojan 3y ago
    What quality are you talking about? In my 8 years in Canada I wasn't able to by decent blackberries or tomatoes. At any price.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      30 years ago (within that generation-or-two span), at least here in the parts of the US I was in around that time, blackberries and lots of other stuff were both expensive, and only available seasonally. You could get canned year-round, not fresh.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ilyt 3y ago
  I think it's mostly that this kind of food is also easily and quickly digestible which just means getting hungry earlier.
- Aerroon 3y ago
bbojan 3y ago
> In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food And now they spend 30% of their income on medical costs.
Phenomenit 3y ago
I wouldn’t mind spending a couple of hours a day doing physical labor instead of working in the office to guarantee that my food was made in a sustainable and safe way, heck I even think it would be good for my health.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  That is a lot harder to say after the age of 35 or 40. My social circle includes many alternative people in organic farming where I have occasionally pitched in to help, and I have also volunteered with WWOOF for food and accommodation when traveling. This kind of work, even if a mere couple of hours a day, really, really starts to suck after your knees and back begin to age. And it is not that I have given up and settled into a sedentary lifestyle – nowadays my travels are bikepacking/bicycle-touring where I do 100 km+ day after day, but that exercise is a lot easier on one’s body than the repetitive motions of farming.
- digging 3y ago
  My dream: we give up on bullshit jobs. We implement UBI. We localize the majority of our agriculture. Humans, largely freed from fake labor, work communally on their local farms, splitting up the labor so nobody has to wreck their health and finances gambling on a lettuce crop.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    > We localize the majority of our agriculture That means continental-scale famine. I'm not kidding - loads of countries only have the populations they have today because they can import cheap food from Europe and the Americas. Without that trade, billions starve.
    - digging 3y ago
      I'm not talking about cutting off trade overnight, though. I'm talking about building up community resources to reduce the need. But this is all very abstract anyway.
  - 3y ago
Kerrick 3y ago
2022 median household income after taxes [0] was $64,240, or $5,353/mo. According to the USDA [1], a moderate cost of food prepared at home for a family of four (with, say, a 16 year old daughter and 14 year old son) is $1,378.90/mo. So, the median family on a moderate food plan (never eating from restaurants) ALREADY spends 25% on food. People who make less money, dine out, have more children, eat more food, buy fancier food, or have food waste spend proportionally even more. A lot of people who read and comment here don't realize that there's no "return to" that world -- lots of the U.S. already lives there. [0]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-household-income.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-househ... [1]: https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJul2023LowModLib.pdf https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/media/file... via https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-monthly-reports https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-mont...
- ch4s3 3y ago
  The USDA[1] shows Americans spending 11.3% of disposable income on food. To quote them: >U.S. consumers spent an average of 11.3 percent of their disposable personal income on food in 2022 [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic...
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    The median income is a lot lower than the average income. Not even sure how food falls under disposable income. Sounds like a cute way of saying "after-tax income" as if "things to buy otherwise you die" is a luxury"? From the chart after the one you quoted: "In 2021, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,875 on food (representing 30.6 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,973 on food (representing 7.6 percent of income)." Pretty cool/sad to see the top 20% spending almost 3x/household on food.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways. Right now we have a dichotomy with on one hand industrial methods that overuse chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the other hand organic methods that are excessively labor-intensive. Why is it not possible to use the organic methods, but automate the labor-intensive parts? I understand that we don't currently have the technology to do this, but is there some reason it isn't possible? Wouldn't it be a productive thing to fund the development of?
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways. Sure, that's entirely possible. Build lots of nuclear power plants and run everything off electricity. I do not expect the "organic" people to accept this, of course.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    My understanding is that the availability of electricity is not the issue, but rather e.g. that manual weeding instead of using herbicides is labor intensive, and we don't currently have machines that can do this. But this is a problem of robotics and computer vision etc., not of powering the equipment.
ilyt 3y ago
Then why they are still getting subsidies ? We're essentially taking a part of the tax, give it to farmers, so instead of paying less tax we pay less for foods, except wasting a ton of it along the way for bureaucracy
- randomdata 3y ago
  The subsidy is a reduction in insurance premiums. Or, if you want to look at it another way, when insurance payouts are required, the public pays a portion of the cost. The math is the same either way, so take your pick. This is considered a social good as it compels farmers to carry insurance instead of rolling the dice, the latter of which they would be more apt to do if they had to pay the full premium cost. Even with the subsidies, some farmers still opt to roll the dice. But perfect need not be the enemy of good. The split gets enough farmers interested in carrying insurance. Farmers having insurance is considered a social good as it maintains some stability in food production. If experienced farmers are going bankrupt every time Mother Nature decides to throw a bit of a curve ball, you are at the mercy of the newbies who swoop in to replace them. Indeed, you always need some inflow of newbies to ensure that there are future farmers, and some farmers making mistakes can be absorbed, but when they are all newbies at the same time because everyone else went bankrupt, that is a big risk to the food supply. There is a lot of generational knowledge and experience required to make good management decisions in farming, so it is valuable to have some experienced people remaining in the business.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Well it aint working coz more and more people are moving away from farming, and the only way to start is to start big as small size farms are just not profitable.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > and the only way to start is to start big as small size farms are just not profitable. Why do you say that? My small farm – just a traditional grain farm, nothing fancy – is quite profitable. The big farm is a different business model. They are focused on wealth building, leveraging large amounts of debt to keep growing as much as possible, using most of the farm income to cover the debt requirements. In this model you need to be large to survive as the remaining profit margin after paying off the debt is tiny. I have kept the debt to a minimum. That means growth happens at a snail's pace, but it also means that all the money that would have went to the bank ends up in my pocket instead. I'll no doubt have a lot less wealth at retirement, taking the profitability now instead of later, but maybe that's okay? How much do you really need? I don't feel like I'm short of my retirement goals. I just might not be crazy rich in the end. Tradeoffs, as always.
carlosjobim 3y ago
I think spending 30+% of income on food is perfectly sensible, while spending more than 10% on shelter is complete madness. A house is built and stays there for decades without any extra work to speak of, yet even the most primitive house in industrialized nations is more expensive than an extremely advanced motorcycle that can go 200mph without breaking apart. Anybody can build a house by himself with primitive tools, trees and stones, given some time. Almost nobody can build a motorcycle by himself, even with advanced precision tools and all instructions given. Not to mention computers, cars and cell phones, which are tremendously advanced. Considering the labour and resources needed to grow food, compared to the labour and resources needed to build houses, food should be much more of our expenses while housing should be much less.
imtringued 3y ago
Yeah sure permaculture is ridiculous, but something like no till? There is nothing that prevents mechanization of it and it has seen significant success compared to conventional agriculture. The thing is, tilling resets your soil, so once you start tilling, there is not much you can do about soil health. In fact, tillage backs you into a corner where the only option is to spray back what you have destroyed through industrially produced synthetics. That also includes all the artificial fertilizer you're spraying. Once you till it, all the money you spent on the fertilizer is wasted. Once you stop tilling, there are actually ways to improve soil health that shouldn't be impossible to scale up. The biggest problem is that every soil is different and you need a complex "cocktail" of two dozen cover crops and another set of mycorrhizal fungi that is uniquely suited for your soil. Yes this does reduce yields, especially in the short term when you are building up soil health but conventional agriculture tends to reduce yields over the long term. This is ultimately a battle between "farm - regenerate - repeat" vs "farm until exhaustion - regenerate". It's not implausible that conventional agriculture is worse in the long run but we might not know it until it is too late, because it takes 20 to 30 years for soil to become useless.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

alex_lav 3y ago

I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but I feel like we're living in the wrong time to be shaming the common person for A.) Wanting food that won't kill them, and B.) They can afford. > People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price Everything in life is getting more expensive and wages stay mostly the same.

spelunker 3y ago

I have a vegetable garden at home, and there is nothing quite like eating food you have grown yourself! And as an extra benefit, it usually tastes better than the stuff you get at the grocery store anyway. Even a small garden takes work, though, not to mention if you keep it "organic" like I do, you have to deal with pests, weeds, etc. So many weeds.

WalterBright 3y ago

A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad years in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad ones and make an overall profit. The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled.

kolanos 3y ago
This is very true, a late frost can wipe you out for the year.
selectodude 3y ago
Apples are unusual insofar as they can be stored for 12+ months. Most produce isn’t so resilient.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Yeah it's crazy. My late dad's old farm just had basically a big room that had concrete crating above a hole in soil (I believe it was to just keep it cool in the warmer months) and they could be stored from autumn to spring. No AC of any sort, just a small furnace to give off a bit of heat when winter gets really cold and some big fans for forced ventilation.
digging 3y ago
> The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled. This is what's extremely concerning - weather is getting less predictable every year. In a decade, who's going to want to start a farm when they have no idea what their local climate is?
ilyt 3y ago
> A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad years in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad ones and make an overall profit. The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled. From my memory the years where crops were unusually high were also ones where price was shit... because everyone else nearby also had a good crop

tuatoru 3y ago

> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price Yes; it's just virtue signaling. I tune out people who say this stuff. If I'm sufficiently motivated I point out:- It's not a value unless you're prepared for it to cost you money.

pastage 3y ago
If you believe it it is not virtue signaling, and if you balk at the price it is not virtue signaling. So not sure where that idea comes from.
- tuatoru 3y ago
  It is merely virtue signaling if you are not prepared to live by it.
coldpie 3y ago
Eh, I don't think that's it. I think it's just good old misinformation caused by skillful marketing. People think organic is healthier or better for the environment, so they prefer it, even though it's actually neither[1]. But it's real tough to get past the huge marketing push conveying that message for the past couple decades. [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-evidence-organic-farming-is-bad/ https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-evidence-...
fragmede 3y ago
Who am I signaling to when I buy organic cucumbers and bring them home and eat them by myself? The clerk at the checkout counter?
- tuatoru 3y ago
  If you buy them; that's fine. I'm talking about the people who say they want organic food, but then buy on price and price alone. They go on about the horrible conditions laying hens are kept in, but then refuse to buy the eggs from free-range chickens because they cost two dollars more per dozen. Or they claim to care about climate change, but fly somewhere for a holiday.

matwood 3y ago

People may like/not like Jeremy Clarkson, but his show on Amazon about him buying a farm was fun and informative. He's rich (so has a lot of startup capital) and struggled the whole show trying to make the economics work. He also spoke with other local farmers so you got to hear their struggles with the economics.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Jeremy Clarkson plays an arsehole in the media (or is he really such an arsehole?) but I agree about his farming show. It's funny, instructive and touching at times. However, I also found him funny on Top Gear - maybe it's because I assume he was being ironic.
- notatoad 3y ago
  He got fired from Top Gear because he punched a waiter for bringing him a steak that wasn't hot enough. The asshole thing is probably not just an act.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    History suggests it’s never just an act.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Trust the history! It suggests. What more do you want?
    - skilled 3y ago
      Going to have to correct you. Life is a grand theater and everything is an act. History has never suggested otherwise.
  - solumunus 3y ago
    You’re exaggerating a bit. He punched a producer for the show who was responsible for organising catering, it wasn’t a random waiter. A random waiter would be much worse. Who knows what relationship he had with that producer previous to the incident… He is (probably) an arsehole but let’s be accurate.

pj_mukh 3y ago

Is the cost mostly driven by labor? How much can autonomous pickers and “sharp shooting” spray robots/weeders help here? I personally don’t find gardening that attractive and don’t see how that is a scalable solution anyway, but have been curious what larger farms can do to become more efficiently organic.

moralestapia 3y ago

>"Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard +1 to that book. I don't have a farm (wish to, but life is very busy atm) and is still a book I enjoyed quite a lot. Anyone could get a lot of knowledge out of it.

tennisflyi 3y ago

People balk at "organic" furniture, too. The cost of things has just been abstracted too much.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

That's the trouble with capitalism: basic needs are underpriced, because income rates have no floor. If people are allowed to be too poor to afford food, then the system has failed. Our solution is not to pay people enough to live: our solution is to make food cheap enough for the desperately poor to continue living in squalor. It's no wonder to me that the very people invested in perpetuating this system are constantly struggling to "solve" homelessness and healthcare by "creating more jobs".

fallingknife 3y ago
In the USSR they ran Grapes of Wrath, which focuses on the plight of the poor in America, in theaters as an attempt at anti US propaganda. It backfired spectacularly because the mostly poor audience mainly came out of it saying "in America even poor people have cars!" The Soviet bureaucrats who came up with the plan were of course all from the upper class, and they cared so little for the poor in their anti-capitalist command economy that they didn't even realize how much poorer they were than the poor people in the movie. In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people can get fat. If we put anti-capitalists like you in charge they will starve.
- digging 3y ago
  > In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people can get fat My dude, this is not a good thing.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    For almost all of human history almost all humans spent almost all of their income/labor on feeding themselves. Not only is cheap food a good thing, it's one of the best.
    - thomastjeffery 3y ago
      But now that we have it, what are we trying to optimize?

Waterluvian 3y ago

This is what surprised and humbled me about farming. Imagine if my software dev laptop at home cost $5M and every year if my compiled code crop doesn’t come in I have to deal with a ton of insurance paperwork to hopefully not go bankrupt. It’s like a high stakes career for low stakes payouts.

WatchDog 3y ago

Tangent: Is there such a thing as "organic" for people that don't mind GMO, or fertilizer, but don't want their food sprayed with pesticides?

belinder 3y ago
Farmers market?
- vkou 3y ago
  Nearly all of whom use pesticides.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Well if you want your fruits without worms in it, you have to. I remember from my life at farm that even just spraying it few days too late basically "ruined" a lot of fruit
kornhole 3y ago
Pesticide free
atdrummond 3y ago
Most organic certification programs allow (or even require) the use of pesticides; they simply use those which are considered “natural”. Some of these allowed pesticides, like copper sulfate, are far more carcinogenic than even the compounds (glyphosate, for example) that are considered dangerous enough to warrant public concern campaigns.[1] [1] https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-fungicide-copper-sulfate-poses-dangers-to-humans-animals-insects-how-does-it-compare-to-conventional-pesticides/ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-fungic...
- mrob 3y ago
  It's possible that copper sulfate is more dangerous than the alternatives, but there's no evidence that it's carcinogenic. Your linked article claims copper sulfate "has not been associated with cancer".

hmmokidk 3y ago

What do you think of hydroponic? Like simple kratky + grow light, indoors you generally don’t have to worry about pests.

gdubs 3y ago
I think it's fascinating and looks like something an engineer / designer could have a lot of fun with. And on a larger scale, it seems like a really interesting idea that could bring food production closer to where people are – like cities. That said, I haven't had time to personally mess around with it much yet. I do think after watching how unpredictable the weather is getting, that greenhouses and indoor growing will be a very important part of the puzzle in the mid to later parts of this century. I worry about the grain crops and things that are still very much an outdoor proposition. Genetic modification and experiments with different perennials may get us to a place of resiliency, but we're not there yet. FWIW, I'm not anti-GMO. But I think an issue with GMOs is that a lot of what it gets used for is making crops tolerant of tons of chemical spraying.
ilyt 3y ago
It's land efficient. And only land efficient. If we get a lot of cheap energy it might make sense if it would allow to basically free up the land for farming. But as long as land is not "expensive", it's just too expensive in comparison. Sun is free and land is cheap, tons of plastic, bulbs and infrastructure is not.

talkingtab 3y ago

Food prices seem irrational. And I mean that - they are not reasonable. People buy bags of potato chips for almost $5.00. How much does the potato cost? It seems like the potato has nothing to do with the cost - especially if we reflect on the idea that "less than have of the produce ... makes a profit". What that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production. And we may be underestimating that cost. Perhaps most cost of the potato cost is in the gas, fertilizer, equipment that go into growing the potato. My question is, of the $5.00 for a bag of potato chips, where does that money go? Cui bono?

sokoloff 3y ago
People buy hot water poured over roasted and ground up beans for $5+. People buy tap water in plastic bottles at a ballgame for $5+. I do not conclude from those facts that "that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production". People are willing to pay for convenience and comfort. A bag of chips, a cup of Starbucks, or a bottle of cold water at a ballgame represents comfort and convenience.
Tycho 3y ago
Food is the one thing on which the average citizen regularly spends 10x or even 100x more than they need to spend.
ilyt 3y ago
The making of a potato is subsidized from taxes so it can be sold for "cheap". There is no subsidies for making chips, and it is "a treat" so there is not all that much reason to make it cheap aside from competition
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  > There is no subsidies for making chips Except for the subsidies for growing the potato.
  - ilyt 3y ago

mortureb 3y ago

I tried organic just for the family. It’s next to impossible to keep plants alive and weeds out. How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate? It’s probably climate dependent and contingent on not having cross continental pests. The first year Japanese beetles pretty much ate my whole crop over the span of 3 weeks.

nightfly 3y ago
> How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate Compost/manure and lots of manual labor
- mortureb 3y ago
  Yeah, I still think not having every pest and weed from Asia helped as well. Most of the weeds and pests on my property are some combination of Japanese/Chinese/Asian ____.
  - nightfly 3y ago
    Yeah, I've got a Tree of Heaven problem that sucks hardcore
Turing_Machine 3y ago
> How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate? Slaves or serfs with hoes and rakes, mostly.

crazygringo 3y ago

> we've definitely had the realization that most people have no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it does. I think most people think it comes from big factory farms? And that it costs what it does because of supply and demand like any industry, but that subsidies make certain things like corn cheaper, and there's tremendous fluctuations in certain prices (like berries) because there are wildly different levels of supply coming from different countries at different times. Are you suggesting it's not that?

jononomo 3y ago

Doesn't it make more sense just to ditch plant-based calories altogether and just focus on animal-based calories, which are so much more nutrient dense while also being dramatically better for the environment?

hfsh 3y ago
> while also being dramatically better for the environment? [citation very fucking much needed]

ilyt 3y ago

> All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from a conventional mindset. The most I saw was mostly "well fuck you mister rich guy that can not only afford a house but enough space to do so and have the job to pay for that hobby"... not anything related to farming methods > If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed. I've lived on a "farm" (it had a bit of everything, grain, fruit trees, cucumbers etc) that was around 10 hectares. It went from "good living" (actually affordin new-if-cheap car etc.) to "going by" to my father basically selling land for development and getting "normal" job because it just wasn't paying. Frankly I think current subsidies structure just made it worse and worse because farming on low scale is near-impossible to make profitable and even bigger ones live on small profit margins as stuff from subsidies just immediately gets burn on fertilizer and other stuff. But yeah if average person did a year of farming and a year of designing and making something difficult we'd live in far less annoying stuf

fuzztester 3y ago

Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" on YouTube https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A?feature=shared https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A?feature=shared

Someone 3y ago

> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it I think the way out for this is won’t be to make people grow their own food at small scale, but to make big farms use less labor for organic pharming. Farming robots are getting better and cheaper, electricity from solar is getting cheaper, so chances are those robots will compete with manual labor at some time, probably already now in some cases. You can buy robots that zap weeds with lasers, for example. https://carbonrobotics.com/ https://carbonrobotics.com/ claims a 1-3 year payback.

gumby 3y ago

> People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not just spraying to control weeds... My hope is that robots will not just save but boost organics, for the same reason solar and wind ultimately defeat fossil fuels for most use cases: they swap an op ex for a cap ex. Actually it's not just "same" reason: farming already requires mastery of cap ex, and the US tax code (at least) grossly favors cap ex. So the tax system is already biased to replace pesticides and labor when robots catches up.