5 ms·

I disagree. I think we should have more human labor take over farming but on an individual level that's working much much closer to the consumption source. Thin

by zo1 2y ago

I disagree. I think we should have more human labor take over farming but on an individual level that's working much much closer to the consumption source. Think having your own farmer and food-producer in your own house or property, or perhaps shared with your small flock of neighbors. Way too-many of the problems plaguing society atm can be solved by reducing transport and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps between our food (other other food-related products) and ourselves. Just think about how much effort is put into something simple like flour or butter or cheese (nevermind all the crazy processed stuff). The food will be more natural, it'll be healthier and with less additives, we'll be be contributing less to AGI/automation and creating actual valuable jobs, we'll be reducing the amount of plastic, fuel and electricity used for transport, storage, processing, packaging, labelling, accounting, lawyering. Every one of the major food production + distribution industries has huge support networks.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago
You are getting downvoted, but presumably, in Russia a significant amount of food is being produced in small family farms/gardens called Dacha [1], with a typical size of only 600 m^2 [4]. Since, original sources are all Russian, it's hard to fully verify via secondary sources, but there are claims that (1) as much as 77% of all vegetables and 59% of all meat [2] or (2) as much as 50% of all food [3] produced in Russia is on these farms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha [2] https://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/in-1999-35-million-small-family-plots-produced-90-of-russias-potatoes-77-of-vegetables-87-of-fruits-59-of-meat-49-of-milk-way-to-go-people/ https://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/in-1999-35-millio... [3] https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/84725 https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/84725 [4] https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/a-dacha-for-everyone-community-gardens-and-food-security-in-russia.html https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/a-dacha-for-everyone-...
hamlsandwich 2y ago
Local, small-scale food production used to be the only way food was produced - people didn't eat better then, and there were many, many fewer people to feed. There's huge variability in what can be grown where, especially if you want to reduce the amount and number of inputs that are imported from further afield. There are places that can support all the crops and livestock that provide a healthy, balanced, and sustainable human diet, but not everywhere can. What if you want to eat flour in a place where grain crops aren't tenable, or butter where cows, sheep and goats don't do well? Producing food this way also means that we need to build houses on fertile land that's good for growing things. That happens a _lot_ where I live, and I hate the site of previously productive soil disappearing under concrete house-slabs.
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  You can have both large scale production and small scale production at the same time. It is actually required for survival on a large scale long term. Technologies enabling small scale farms to be more efficient are as great an enabler as the advent of industrial farming. If you want to see less fertile land covered up make it easier for people to make money growing on their own land.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
crubier 2y ago
Oh yes, taking agriculture back to where it was 2 centuries ago, when there definitely weren't any famines at all.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  counterpoint: like the great chinese famine, when the government forced the country from an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy, and they fucked up the local food systems.
  - themaninthedark 2y ago
    The same thing happened when the Soviet government forced the country from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one. A lot of people have drawn inferences that it may have been the government, their leadership and application of ideology rather then the shift from agrarian economy.
    - greenie_beans 2y ago
      seems to me that taking farmers away from their land will make people starve. similar to how in the american south in the 20th century, sharecroppers were forced to work on commodity farms and didn't grow food. instead, they imported processed corn from the midwest that gave them pellagra. thanks in part to market forces of the midwest corn trade.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        In Soviet case, the primary reason why people starved is because they have deliberately took away most of the food from the peasants to feed the cities. The cities didn't starve; the countryside did, which in turn prompted millions of peasants to move to the cities (and become industrial workers, which was the whole point).
        greenie_beans 2y ago
thworp 2y ago
> Think having your own farmer and food-producer in your own house or property Impossible. The world is too urbanized, there simply is no space to do this for more than a few % of the population. > Way too-many of the problems plaguing society atm can be solved by reducing transport and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps [...] Maybe some problems can be solved, many more will be unsolved. Reducing our transport capacity of food increases the vulnerability to crop failures. De-centralizing processing will make it harder (read: more expensive) to test for pathogens, nutrients and ensure hygiene. > we'll be be contributing less to AGI/automation and creating actual valuable jobs No, we would be shrinking the GDP by moving labour from highly productive sectors into agriculture. At the same time food will become much more expensive, even more so if those new employees are paid minimum wage. > and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps between our food (other other food-related products) and ourselves How? You're simply replacing one set of steps for another, more labor-intensive one. I encourage you to visit one of those museums where people demonstrate how people in the 18th century lived for some perspective. > we'll be reducing the amount of plastic, fuel and electricity used for transport, storage, processing, packaging, You didn't quite state the full conditions to achieve this reduction, so I'll do it for you. Basically we have to completely change our diets. Fresh food can only be eaten in season, and only what is locally available. We can only store food that does not need climate control to keep, so in winter there are only conserved vegetables and fruits. Not using any modern packaging and storage methods means that even in season things have to be eaten really quickly. On the whole, your insinuation that our food distribution is some kind of unnecessary luxury that we can do away with just rubs me the wrong way. It is the reason the amount of people in famine has been dropping every decade despite a population explosion. It ensures that there are no mass-scale outbreaks of botulism, moulds and other pathogens that used to kill lots of people and waste huge quantities of food. Its efficiency (along with high productivity) guarantees that almost everyone can afford to eat sufficient nutrients even through winter. Sure we could get some of those benefits in your agrarian fantasy, but the cost would be enormous.
- pawelmurias 2y ago
  If we accept subpar nutrition we could propably plant GMO potatoes and things like that all over the place
pawelmurias 2y ago
This would be utterly horrible. AGI/automation is a valuable thing while being forced to toil working the land sucks hard.
dukeyukey 2y ago
Small-scale agriculture like that is _vastly_ less efficient than industrialised agriculture. It won't create valuable jobs, it'll take labor away from valuable jobs.
infecto 2y ago
This is the typical utopian dream that is complete horse manure. We like to look back and think how quaint and healthy things were but they were not. While there are a lot of improvements to be had in our current supply chain, going back to smaller farms is not the way to get there. What you described would be more costly and I don't think there is really any relationship to health. Your food would end up being more expensive as most of the things you listed cost very little in the grand scheme, labor is the most expensive part.
- InSteady 2y ago
  I haven't crunched the math or anything, but you don't feed 8 billion people with small farms unless every 10th person is willing to go farm. Currently it's more like every 150th.
  - infecto 2y ago
    Sounds like solid napkin math. It true though, you don't have that happen unless a lot more people are farming and honestly, farming is valuable but the labor is not. Its better spent else where. I absolutely believe there are massive improvements to be made but I think they will happen with technology and more automation.

by zo1 2y ago

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

You are getting downvoted, but presumably, in Russia a significant amount of food is being produced in small family farms/gardens called Dacha [1], with a typical size of only 600 m^2 [4]. Since, original sources are all Russian, it's hard to fully verify via secondary sources, but there are claims that (1) as much as 77% of all vegetables and 59% of all meat [2] or (2) as much as 50% of all food [3] produced in Russia is on these farms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha [2] https://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/in-1999-35-million-small-family-plots-produced-90-of-russias-potatoes-77-of-vegetables-87-of-fruits-59-of-meat-49-of-milk-way-to-go-people/ https://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/in-1999-35-millio... [3] https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/84725 https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/84725 [4] https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/a-dacha-for-everyone-community-gardens-and-food-security-in-russia.html https://www.notechmagazine.com/2020/03/a-dacha-for-everyone-...

hamlsandwich 2y ago

Local, small-scale food production used to be the only way food was produced - people didn't eat better then, and there were many, many fewer people to feed. There's huge variability in what can be grown where, especially if you want to reduce the amount and number of inputs that are imported from further afield. There are places that can support all the crops and livestock that provide a healthy, balanced, and sustainable human diet, but not everywhere can. What if you want to eat flour in a place where grain crops aren't tenable, or butter where cows, sheep and goats don't do well? Producing food this way also means that we need to build houses on fertile land that's good for growing things. That happens a _lot_ where I live, and I hate the site of previously productive soil disappearing under concrete house-slabs.

tastyfreeze 2y ago
You can have both large scale production and small scale production at the same time. It is actually required for survival on a large scale long term. Technologies enabling small scale farms to be more efficient are as great an enabler as the advent of industrial farming. If you want to see less fertile land covered up make it easier for people to make money growing on their own land.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

crubier 2y ago

Oh yes, taking agriculture back to where it was 2 centuries ago, when there definitely weren't any famines at all.

greenie_beans 2y ago
counterpoint: like the great chinese famine, when the government forced the country from an agrarian economy to an industrialized economy, and they fucked up the local food systems.
- themaninthedark 2y ago
  The same thing happened when the Soviet government forced the country from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one. A lot of people have drawn inferences that it may have been the government, their leadership and application of ideology rather then the shift from agrarian economy.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    seems to me that taking farmers away from their land will make people starve. similar to how in the american south in the 20th century, sharecroppers were forced to work on commodity farms and didn't grow food. instead, they imported processed corn from the midwest that gave them pellagra. thanks in part to market forces of the midwest corn trade.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      In Soviet case, the primary reason why people starved is because they have deliberately took away most of the food from the peasants to feed the cities. The cities didn't starve; the countryside did, which in turn prompted millions of peasants to move to the cities (and become industrial workers, which was the whole point).
      - greenie_beans 2y ago

thworp 2y ago

> Think having your own farmer and food-producer in your own house or property Impossible. The world is too urbanized, there simply is no space to do this for more than a few % of the population. > Way too-many of the problems plaguing society atm can be solved by reducing transport and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps [...] Maybe some problems can be solved, many more will be unsolved. Reducing our transport capacity of food increases the vulnerability to crop failures. De-centralizing processing will make it harder (read: more expensive) to test for pathogens, nutrients and ensure hygiene. > we'll be be contributing less to AGI/automation and creating actual valuable jobs No, we would be shrinking the GDP by moving labour from highly productive sectors into agriculture. At the same time food will become much more expensive, even more so if those new employees are paid minimum wage. > and eliminating all the huge intermediate steps between our food (other other food-related products) and ourselves How? You're simply replacing one set of steps for another, more labor-intensive one. I encourage you to visit one of those museums where people demonstrate how people in the 18th century lived for some perspective. > we'll be reducing the amount of plastic, fuel and electricity used for transport, storage, processing, packaging, You didn't quite state the full conditions to achieve this reduction, so I'll do it for you. Basically we have to completely change our diets. Fresh food can only be eaten in season, and only what is locally available. We can only store food that does not need climate control to keep, so in winter there are only conserved vegetables and fruits. Not using any modern packaging and storage methods means that even in season things have to be eaten really quickly. On the whole, your insinuation that our food distribution is some kind of unnecessary luxury that we can do away with just rubs me the wrong way. It is the reason the amount of people in famine has been dropping every decade despite a population explosion. It ensures that there are no mass-scale outbreaks of botulism, moulds and other pathogens that used to kill lots of people and waste huge quantities of food. Its efficiency (along with high productivity) guarantees that almost everyone can afford to eat sufficient nutrients even through winter. Sure we could get some of those benefits in your agrarian fantasy, but the cost would be enormous.

pawelmurias 2y ago
If we accept subpar nutrition we could propably plant GMO potatoes and things like that all over the place

pawelmurias 2y ago

This would be utterly horrible. AGI/automation is a valuable thing while being forced to toil working the land sucks hard.

dukeyukey 2y ago

Small-scale agriculture like that is _vastly_ less efficient than industrialised agriculture. It won't create valuable jobs, it'll take labor away from valuable jobs.

infecto 2y ago

This is the typical utopian dream that is complete horse manure. We like to look back and think how quaint and healthy things were but they were not. While there are a lot of improvements to be had in our current supply chain, going back to smaller farms is not the way to get there. What you described would be more costly and I don't think there is really any relationship to health. Your food would end up being more expensive as most of the things you listed cost very little in the grand scheme, labor is the most expensive part.

InSteady 2y ago
I haven't crunched the math or anything, but you don't feed 8 billion people with small farms unless every 10th person is willing to go farm. Currently it's more like every 150th.
- infecto 2y ago
  Sounds like solid napkin math. It true though, you don't have that happen unless a lot more people are farming and honestly, farming is valuable but the labor is not. Its better spent else where. I absolutely believe there are massive improvements to be made but I think they will happen with technology and more automation.