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Centralized, industrial agriculture is more-or-less necessary to feed as many people as we have. Like I'm growing potatoes but I'm not under the impression tha

Centralized, industrial agriculture is more-or-less necessary to feed as many people as we have. Like I'm growing potatoes but I'm not under the impression that I'm going to be able to feed myself to an acceptable caloric and nutritional level off of what I can grow on a third of an acre or whatever my yard is.

_heimdall 3y ago
If we agree that centralized, industrial agriculture has fundamental problems that can't be avoided, its a moot point whether its the only way to feed today's population. We can't kick the can down the road and throw more control at a problem hoping the system never cracks, given enough time that will *always* fail. Local food doesn't have to mean growing it for yourself in your own yard. Buying local food is a huge improvement. When the food is grown in your area and doesn't have to be processed or packaged to handle national infrastructure challenges the plastics and PFAS aren't necessary. When buying locally you can also have the ability to actually see where and how the food is grown, an option that is never possible when the food is grown across the country, shipped overseas for processing/packaging, and shipped back before eventually hitting shelves at your local chain store.
- Novosell 3y ago
  Unless you actively start destroying modern technology and infrastructure, it's never gonna go back to people generally buying locally produced. Or you'd have to get a totalitarian government with a plan economy with this issue as a primary focus. Neither sounds realistic to me. Either situation would also require many people to die as people now live in places which can't support themselves with the nearby farmland. So what are you, in practice, actually advocating for?
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Well I'm definitely not advocating for a totalitarian state, I was specifically talking about consumer markets driving change if we collectively care enough. I'm advocating for the fact that consumers could make many of the changes we often hear about happen if we actually cared. We have a habit if many people, even majorities of people, yelling about problems like climate change, deforestation, chemical contamination, etc. But we all still choose to use products that contribute to those exact problems. We have no idea what the exact outcomes would be if, for example, consumers stopped buying any products that use PFAS and forced the industry to go away. There would certainly be ripple effects, but I'd argue that those effects will always be better handled when consumers decide to enact change rather than waiting for governments to force it on us all at once or for the environmental damages cause to grow so large that we run into real, devastating outcomes. If we know we're supporting products and companies that are making things worse, we're choosing to kick the can down the road and hope its long enough that its the next person's problem when the pile of damage has gotten too big.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    People like that never know. They don’t know how the system works, they’re just pretty sure it’s bad. You can argue with them but there’s no point. We have 8 billion humans alive, who mostly all want to stay alive and keep eating food. We got to 8 billion entirely because of modern agriculture. But, they are sure, we really don’t need it, we can all just eat local joe farmer’s tomatoes. Nevermind that it’s seasonal and more expensive (and who doesn’t want to can all their food in summer, and who doesn’t have unlimited time and money to devote to food?) we’ll all be just fine. It’s the same with PFAs. They think they just do nothing that can’t be easily replaced, but if you ask them what those PFAs do (must do something if there are that many of them) or how else you’d accomplish those tasks, they’re not quite sure other than they know we should just ban them all tomorrow and everything will be ok. It’s easy to criticize a system you don’t understand and assume it’s all just rigged against us.
    - _heimdall 3y ago
      Its probably best that you don't speak on my behalf when you don't know me at all. I do in fact know how industrial ag works. I have a small farm that I'm still in the process of building up, but have meat in the freezer and produce on the shelves that we grew and processed here. We work with farmers in the regenerative movement and go to events by our local extension office that usually cater much more to the industrial ag process. I spent two summers interning with one of the big oil companies working on software for their upstream research department. I obviously don't know everything about the industry after two internships, but have seen how the companies operate including how proud they are of all the random products they jam petroleum byproducts into (they were particularly proud of having petroleum wax in Hershey's bars). We're simply coming at the problem from different angles. I look at many of the issues raised like PFAS, plastics in the ocean, water contamination, etc and see unsustainable systems. I totally get that we have built societies around those systems, but that doesn't make them functional or sustainable long term. We're going to have to deal with the consequences and limitations eventually. Would you propose that we wait for the damages to pile so high that we can't avoid it anymore? Or peg our hopes on some massive government intervention to find a top-down solution that manages to avoid all the pitfalls of political and economic considerations that likely run against the solutions needed for these unsustainable systems? I'm simply pointing out that consumers can make choices that help push solutions in the right direction. Companies only produce PFAS because we either don't know or don't care, and we collectively prefer the convenience and novelty of the products. If that's the case, why would a government push a solution down our throats? If we'd support a ban on PFAS, why wouldn't we just do that ourselves by avoiding those products?

_heimdall 3y ago

If we agree that centralized, industrial agriculture has fundamental problems that can't be avoided, its a moot point whether its the only way to feed today's population. We can't kick the can down the road and throw more control at a problem hoping the system never cracks, given enough time that will *always* fail. Local food doesn't have to mean growing it for yourself in your own yard. Buying local food is a huge improvement. When the food is grown in your area and doesn't have to be processed or packaged to handle national infrastructure challenges the plastics and PFAS aren't necessary. When buying locally you can also have the ability to actually see where and how the food is grown, an option that is never possible when the food is grown across the country, shipped overseas for processing/packaging, and shipped back before eventually hitting shelves at your local chain store.

Novosell 3y ago
Unless you actively start destroying modern technology and infrastructure, it's never gonna go back to people generally buying locally produced. Or you'd have to get a totalitarian government with a plan economy with this issue as a primary focus. Neither sounds realistic to me. Either situation would also require many people to die as people now live in places which can't support themselves with the nearby farmland. So what are you, in practice, actually advocating for?
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Well I'm definitely not advocating for a totalitarian state, I was specifically talking about consumer markets driving change if we collectively care enough. I'm advocating for the fact that consumers could make many of the changes we often hear about happen if we actually cared. We have a habit if many people, even majorities of people, yelling about problems like climate change, deforestation, chemical contamination, etc. But we all still choose to use products that contribute to those exact problems. We have no idea what the exact outcomes would be if, for example, consumers stopped buying any products that use PFAS and forced the industry to go away. There would certainly be ripple effects, but I'd argue that those effects will always be better handled when consumers decide to enact change rather than waiting for governments to force it on us all at once or for the environmental damages cause to grow so large that we run into real, devastating outcomes. If we know we're supporting products and companies that are making things worse, we're choosing to kick the can down the road and hope its long enough that its the next person's problem when the pile of damage has gotten too big.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  People like that never know. They don’t know how the system works, they’re just pretty sure it’s bad. You can argue with them but there’s no point. We have 8 billion humans alive, who mostly all want to stay alive and keep eating food. We got to 8 billion entirely because of modern agriculture. But, they are sure, we really don’t need it, we can all just eat local joe farmer’s tomatoes. Nevermind that it’s seasonal and more expensive (and who doesn’t want to can all their food in summer, and who doesn’t have unlimited time and money to devote to food?) we’ll all be just fine. It’s the same with PFAs. They think they just do nothing that can’t be easily replaced, but if you ask them what those PFAs do (must do something if there are that many of them) or how else you’d accomplish those tasks, they’re not quite sure other than they know we should just ban them all tomorrow and everything will be ok. It’s easy to criticize a system you don’t understand and assume it’s all just rigged against us.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    Its probably best that you don't speak on my behalf when you don't know me at all. I do in fact know how industrial ag works. I have a small farm that I'm still in the process of building up, but have meat in the freezer and produce on the shelves that we grew and processed here. We work with farmers in the regenerative movement and go to events by our local extension office that usually cater much more to the industrial ag process. I spent two summers interning with one of the big oil companies working on software for their upstream research department. I obviously don't know everything about the industry after two internships, but have seen how the companies operate including how proud they are of all the random products they jam petroleum byproducts into (they were particularly proud of having petroleum wax in Hershey's bars). We're simply coming at the problem from different angles. I look at many of the issues raised like PFAS, plastics in the ocean, water contamination, etc and see unsustainable systems. I totally get that we have built societies around those systems, but that doesn't make them functional or sustainable long term. We're going to have to deal with the consequences and limitations eventually. Would you propose that we wait for the damages to pile so high that we can't avoid it anymore? Or peg our hopes on some massive government intervention to find a top-down solution that manages to avoid all the pitfalls of political and economic considerations that likely run against the solutions needed for these unsustainable systems? I'm simply pointing out that consumers can make choices that help push solutions in the right direction. Companies only produce PFAS because we either don't know or don't care, and we collectively prefer the convenience and novelty of the products. If that's the case, why would a government push a solution down our throats? If we'd support a ban on PFAS, why wouldn't we just do that ourselves by avoiding those products?