4 ms·

Against a Dystopian Farm-Free Future

13 points by 23B1 3y ago

23B1 3y ago
In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations. EDIT: Would love to know why this article got flagged since its a response to this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236
paulkrush 3y ago
I am not so sure "a farm-free future with food primarily manufactured via precision fermentation and other scientific processes" is going to feed the hungry masses.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Why not? We already do a lot of processing even just to turn wheat into bread, all beer is fermented, and “other scientific processes” is what let us feed more than 790 million people worldwide. Feeding the masses this way seems at least plausible to me, even if it might turn out too expensive to bother. (Of course, for something this important it makes a lot of sense to be slow to change so you can spot any mistakes before they’re important; doing it fast and only then finding out you made a huge mistake will make all the pandemic deaths seem like “the good old days” in comparison).
  - 23B1 3y ago
    Like nearly all social engineering/behavioral economics theories, they fail the moment they're exposed to reality. So while Monibot et. al. can make a fine caloric calculation, they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat. So you and I agree in that it'd be too expensive to bother – namely that you'd be attempting to erase some of the most important cultural traditions 'for the greater good'.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat. McDonalds exists and is popular, so traditions are not why I think it might be expensive. Also traditional food is mostly much younger than it seems. Old World dishes involving tomatoes or potatoes or maize or chillies or chocolate, not possible before trade with the Americas.
      - 23B1 3y ago
        I'm not talking about expensive in terms of currency, I'm talking about it in terms of human cost. Many, many wars have been fought over attempts to control food, and the lives lost can be counted in the hundreds of millions.
- 23B1 3y ago
  ...and history has shown that the hungry masses don't take too kindly to 'let them eat cake'.
  - jacknews 3y ago
    Yet this is exactly what the article's argument amounts to. There is simply no way to feed 8B with cozy 'holistic regenerative' approaches to farming. We're barely capable of doing it with the current rapacious mega-conglomerate chemical-soaked system. To go beyond it, and scale back the damage, we're going to need fermented foods, indoor fish races, synthetic juices/pulps/flours, proteins/meats, etc, etc. There's still a place for 'premium' food from local farms, etc. 'Cake' as you put it.
    - 23B1 3y ago
      > There is simply no way to feed 8B with cozy 'holistic regenerative' approaches to farming This is exactly wrong. I highly recommend you dig deeper, start with Wendell Berry and then into the authors and scientists in his orbit.
hotnfresh 3y ago
Ugh. Gross article. I hate SV dystopia-food dorks as much as anyone, but this sucks. > The holistic approach, typified by Savory, sees human beings as stewards of the Earth, a force for good when guided by the right principles. Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. Any plans for dealing with the resulting higher costs for staple foods, using these approaches? What's the rate of voluntary adoption look like? On track to account for a majority of food production within the next couple decades, say? Yeah, that's what I thought. > Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. In argument with advocates of holistic agriculture, this leads to all sorts of name-calling—“pseudoscience,” “greenwash,” “climate denial” OMG. Waste of ink/pixels.
- 23B1 3y ago
  > Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. You seem to have seen the word 'conservative' in the URL and somehow drawn some conclusion that the author – having followed her work for some years now – actually has a wildly different perspective on. > Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption. To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
  - darkwraithcov 3y ago
    c)water scarcity makes it a guarantee that the beef production business is no longer possible on an industrial scale. Don’t forget option 3.
Analemma_ 3y ago
> In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations. A general irritation I have with conservatives, and this article is a perfect example, is when they don't know-- or pretend not to know-- who actually pulls the levers of power. American agricultural policy is set first by mega-agribusinesses, and second by politicians in Midwestern states cynically pandering to the dwindling number of family farms that still remain. The sorts of vegan activists this author is panicking about are concentrated in coastal states who have little to no ability to influence the Farm Bill. They simply don't matter. > Chief among these “farm-free” advocates is George Monbiot, a vegan activist and, naturally, a Guardian columnist. Come the fuck on. A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.
- 23B1 3y ago
  Sorry, I'm trying to understand your comment. The author's position is that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy, and then refute her position by pointing out that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy? > A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat. Same with a HN commentator, yet here we are.
ruiisnwn 3y ago
Fantastic article.
23B1 3y ago
Would love to know why this article got flagged since it's a response to this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236

13 points by 23B1 3y ago

23B1 3y ago

In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations. EDIT: Would love to know why this article got flagged since its a response to this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236

paulkrush 3y ago

I am not so sure "a farm-free future with food primarily manufactured via precision fermentation and other scientific processes" is going to feed the hungry masses.

ben_w 3y ago
Why not? We already do a lot of processing even just to turn wheat into bread, all beer is fermented, and “other scientific processes” is what let us feed more than 790 million people worldwide. Feeding the masses this way seems at least plausible to me, even if it might turn out too expensive to bother. (Of course, for something this important it makes a lot of sense to be slow to change so you can spot any mistakes before they’re important; doing it fast and only then finding out you made a huge mistake will make all the pandemic deaths seem like “the good old days” in comparison).
- 23B1 3y ago
  Like nearly all social engineering/behavioral economics theories, they fail the moment they're exposed to reality. So while Monibot et. al. can make a fine caloric calculation, they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat. So you and I agree in that it'd be too expensive to bother – namely that you'd be attempting to erase some of the most important cultural traditions 'for the greater good'.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat. McDonalds exists and is popular, so traditions are not why I think it might be expensive. Also traditional food is mostly much younger than it seems. Old World dishes involving tomatoes or potatoes or maize or chillies or chocolate, not possible before trade with the Americas.
    - 23B1 3y ago
      I'm not talking about expensive in terms of currency, I'm talking about it in terms of human cost. Many, many wars have been fought over attempts to control food, and the lives lost can be counted in the hundreds of millions.
23B1 3y ago
...and history has shown that the hungry masses don't take too kindly to 'let them eat cake'.
- jacknews 3y ago
  Yet this is exactly what the article's argument amounts to. There is simply no way to feed 8B with cozy 'holistic regenerative' approaches to farming. We're barely capable of doing it with the current rapacious mega-conglomerate chemical-soaked system. To go beyond it, and scale back the damage, we're going to need fermented foods, indoor fish races, synthetic juices/pulps/flours, proteins/meats, etc, etc. There's still a place for 'premium' food from local farms, etc. 'Cake' as you put it.
  - 23B1 3y ago
    > There is simply no way to feed 8B with cozy 'holistic regenerative' approaches to farming This is exactly wrong. I highly recommend you dig deeper, start with Wendell Berry and then into the authors and scientists in his orbit.

hotnfresh 3y ago

Ugh. Gross article. I hate SV dystopia-food dorks as much as anyone, but this sucks. > The holistic approach, typified by Savory, sees human beings as stewards of the Earth, a force for good when guided by the right principles. Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. Any plans for dealing with the resulting higher costs for staple foods, using these approaches? What's the rate of voluntary adoption look like? On track to account for a majority of food production within the next couple decades, say? Yeah, that's what I thought. > Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. In argument with advocates of holistic agriculture, this leads to all sorts of name-calling—“pseudoscience,” “greenwash,” “climate denial” OMG. Waste of ink/pixels.

23B1 3y ago
> Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. You seem to have seen the word 'conservative' in the URL and somehow drawn some conclusion that the author – having followed her work for some years now – actually has a wildly different perspective on. > Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption. To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
- darkwraithcov 3y ago
  c)water scarcity makes it a guarantee that the beef production business is no longer possible on an industrial scale. Don’t forget option 3.

Analemma_ 3y ago

> In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations. A general irritation I have with conservatives, and this article is a perfect example, is when they don't know-- or pretend not to know-- who actually pulls the levers of power. American agricultural policy is set first by mega-agribusinesses, and second by politicians in Midwestern states cynically pandering to the dwindling number of family farms that still remain. The sorts of vegan activists this author is panicking about are concentrated in coastal states who have little to no ability to influence the Farm Bill. They simply don't matter. > Chief among these “farm-free” advocates is George Monbiot, a vegan activist and, naturally, a Guardian columnist. Come the fuck on. A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.

23B1 3y ago
Sorry, I'm trying to understand your comment. The author's position is that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy, and then refute her position by pointing out that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy? > A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat. Same with a HN commentator, yet here we are.

ruiisnwn 3y ago

Fantastic article.

23B1 3y ago

Would love to know why this article got flagged since it's a response to this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236