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Small farms aren’t great for the environment per kg food, and suffer the last mile delivery problem where the lion’s share of of the delivery pollution occurs j

Small farms aren’t great for the environment per kg food, and suffer the last mile delivery problem where the lion’s share of of the delivery pollution occurs just as badly if not worse than large overseas farms. You’re romanticizing a past that is long gone.

_heimdall 3y ago
I'm not sure where you got this data from, but small farms don't all operate the same way and can't be generalized to a simple metric of "environmental impact per kg of food". Massive farms get away with externalizing a large portion of their environmental impact. Does your data account for the impact of everything from fertilizer production and transportation to chemical use and ecological damage of pesticides and fertilizers? How is the environmental damage for the massive amount of soil loss with industrial farming even accounted for? > You’re romanticizing a past that is long gone. I'm not romanticizing anything and to assume that belittles the point. I agree that we don't have many small farms today and I was raising that as a problem, not a bygone era that we're better off without. Your assumption that I'm romanticizing it because we disagree in the feasibility or benefits is like me claiming that emissions controls will reverse climate change is a romanticized view, and implying that its a waste of time. I don't agree with anyone that thinks emissions controls will save the planet, but I wouldn't disrespect their ideas for a different future either.
- BenFranklin100 3y ago
  Large farms enjoy economies of scale that small farms can’t meet. Additionally, container shipping has to be one of the greatest innovations of the last century and is extraordinarily efficient at transporting goods. That overseas carrot could well has a lower environmental impact than the carrot grown on a farm tens of miles away. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-farmers-markets-locavore-slow-food https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-fa... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147589/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147589/
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    I don't have time to dig deeply into both links at the moment but I can reply to the Vox article and research it links to. That article actually makes my point. The consideration for comparison is exclusively the potential for reducing transportation a related emissions. No consideration is given to any externalized costs. The research assumes that local farms will have effectively the same farming practices and that emissions on the farm will remain unchanged. They assume that feed consumption will be the same, even though local farms more often graze their animals as much as possible and will use much less feed than feed lot operations. They even ignore the infrastructure required to make transportation work. They assume that the containers, trucks, freezer warehouses, grocery stores, etc. already exist that and that the emissions caused by creating and maintaining all that infrastructure can go ignored.

_heimdall 3y ago

I'm not sure where you got this data from, but small farms don't all operate the same way and can't be generalized to a simple metric of "environmental impact per kg of food". Massive farms get away with externalizing a large portion of their environmental impact. Does your data account for the impact of everything from fertilizer production and transportation to chemical use and ecological damage of pesticides and fertilizers? How is the environmental damage for the massive amount of soil loss with industrial farming even accounted for? > You’re romanticizing a past that is long gone. I'm not romanticizing anything and to assume that belittles the point. I agree that we don't have many small farms today and I was raising that as a problem, not a bygone era that we're better off without. Your assumption that I'm romanticizing it because we disagree in the feasibility or benefits is like me claiming that emissions controls will reverse climate change is a romanticized view, and implying that its a waste of time. I don't agree with anyone that thinks emissions controls will save the planet, but I wouldn't disrespect their ideas for a different future either.

BenFranklin100 3y ago
Large farms enjoy economies of scale that small farms can’t meet. Additionally, container shipping has to be one of the greatest innovations of the last century and is extraordinarily efficient at transporting goods. That overseas carrot could well has a lower environmental impact than the carrot grown on a farm tens of miles away. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-farmers-markets-locavore-slow-food https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23132579/eat-local-csa-fa... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147589/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8147589/
- _heimdall 3y ago
  I don't have time to dig deeply into both links at the moment but I can reply to the Vox article and research it links to. That article actually makes my point. The consideration for comparison is exclusively the potential for reducing transportation a related emissions. No consideration is given to any externalized costs. The research assumes that local farms will have effectively the same farming practices and that emissions on the farm will remain unchanged. They assume that feed consumption will be the same, even though local farms more often graze their animals as much as possible and will use much less feed than feed lot operations. They even ignore the infrastructure required to make transportation work. They assume that the containers, trucks, freezer warehouses, grocery stores, etc. already exist that and that the emissions caused by creating and maintaining all that infrastructure can go ignored.