4 ms·

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species? I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty per

I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species? I don’t quite understand why there seems to be a pretty persistent thread around “honey bees are invasive and harm the ecosystem by stealing all the food from the native bees and doing all their pollination; that’s why they decline” - when at the same time the use of pesticides is so rampant that insects are literally gone entirely. Honey bees are not great and reliable pollinators btw. So the solution is: more genetically modified crops? More pesticides? Unless “we need to stop our use of pesticides and we should also acknowledge that honey bees are an invasive species and consider making changes to the way we do monocultures” are in the same sentence this entire “honey bees are invasive” argument just feels super weird. Pesticides kill native pollinators. It’s not the honey bees. Edit: and just to be clear - honey bees do not survive in the wild by themselves anymore due to varroa mites. They essentially depend on humans to protect them. That’s what the entire purpose of this article is about. So, if humans stopped keeping honey bees - they’d have a pretty hard time surviving in the wild on their own.

mastermage 3mo ago
An idea that sprang to mind and please point me out at which points its unrealistic and why because I am talking completely out of my ass here. If we want to reduce mono culture but we still need to somehow figure out how to provide humanity. Could large scale vertical farms, in Green Houses reduce the footprint of monocultures? By being more productive year round? Or is that just technolgist delusions of mine?
- j4k0bfr 3mo ago
  The thing that always baffles me with vertical farming is sunlight. Assuming most crops are pretty good at turning full spectrum sunlight into useful stuff, why shrink your solar energy per crop? And assuming you get around this via grow lights, surely the energy and material cost goes up too much for high-volume crops to make economical sense.
  - b112 3mo ago
    This only makes sense in certain circumstances I think. For example, shipping tomatoes from 5000km away when it's winter in Canada. I recently did some research, and there are multiple local greenhouses around many large Canadian cities for just this reason. They are competitive in the winter, and sell to local supermarkets. The cost of the greenhouses vs shipping + loss. And there is a loss in nutrition, when you harvest green and it takes weeks to hit the table, vs something picked yesterday and picked when actually ripe. Of course, these are large warehouses, not typical greenouses. So I guess the answer is, it can make sense in certain circumstances. A warmer place where you can grow fruit outside year round, not so much.
    - anjel 3mo ago
      Canadian hydroelectric is the catalyst that makes winter hothouse produce cost competitive. Wealthy us elec producers have no incentive to match Canada's low cost of production. Indeed their incentives are rather contrary.
      - lebuffon 3mo ago
        In southern Ontario where there are many ( the most?) greenhouses electricity is primarily produced by Nuclear (50..55%) Hydro power is about 24 ..38% of the total. I think the bigger difference is the Canadian attitude about the "commons" nature of electricity and so profiting excessively on power is frowned upon.
      - badc0ffee 3mo ago
        Most of the tomatoes and cucumbers I buy here in Alberta year-round are greenhouse grown in-province. Our electric power here is basically natural gas with a bit of wind and hydro. Although to your point, we're probably one of the cheapest locales in the world for NG.
  - ssl-3 3mo ago
    I think it's hard to generalize whether vertical farms are good or bad; efficient or inefficient. It seems that whether it works or not relies very heavily on the locality. In my part of Ohio, we have lots of farmland -- and plenty of water that just falls out of the sky. We've got reasonably-long, generally-hot days during our growing season and we get some serious crop production done here while it lasts. The rest of the year? The days are short. It's dark and cold outside; frozen, even. We can't grow crops outside here in the winter. But vertical farms (eg, fancy greenhouses) can just keep going. With artificial light and/or supplemental heat, they're still producing even in the depths of winter. Thus, I can go to the grocery store near my house and buy a locally-grown tomato in February. It's expensive to get this done, but the alternatives include paying someone to drive it up here from thousands of miles away or just going without a tomato until after things have warmed up again and stayed that way for awhile.
- looping__lui 3mo ago
  I’m just saying: stop hating bees with made up arguments
- forlorn_mammoth 3mo ago
  I appreciate you being upfront about the depth of your knowledge. Regenerative farming and/or permaculture offer ways to run industrial-scale agriculture without the monoculture. See i.e. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.521/ https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal... Another innovation I see is the use of "crop tunnels" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytunnel) to greatly extend the growing season in colder climates (another poster mentioned "Ohio"), and/or better control evaporation.
- bell-cot 3mo ago
  Over the years, many firms have poured many $millions into vertical farms. If you're growing extreme-value crops - marijuana, or maybe exotic salad greens for Michelin-starred restaurants - that can actually work. Otherwise, you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt, and extremely efficient modern agro-tech stacks. Bankruptcy awaits. > just technologist delusions of mine? I'd bet you've read several articles about techno-utopians setting up vertical farms, and their grand dreams. Which always hand-wave the "how can this massively expensive setup complete with dirt?" part. Farming sun-lit dirt does not magically require monoculture, nor poor farming practices. The problems is monoculture's appeal to certain human cultures - especially profit-maximizing "big ag" capitalists - and the agricultural policies enacted by naive politicians.
  - m4x 3mo ago
    > you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt You're begging the question with this statement. Indoor growing is used when you don't have access to this kind of resource. There are many locations where access to land or suitable conditions is restricted. CEA has been used profitably for a long time, and the most valuable crops are mushrooms and leafy greens, not exotic or illegal plants.
    - bell-cot 3mo ago
      > ... when you don't have access to ... These days, "don't have access" is a micro-market. Everywhere else, indoor growing has to compete with the cost & delay of importing. Last I heard, even Antarctic bases are only growing a few fresh veggies - 99% of their food is imported. (Well, plant-based food. They might do a fair bit of fishing.) > CEA has been used ... My comment was replying to magemaster's "large scale vertical farms ... just technologist delusions".* Vs. greenhouses - which can be little more than plastic sheeting over light wooden framing over sunlit dirt - yes, those have far saner economics. Mushrooms - which can be grown in dark caves without dirt using prehistoric technology - are also a very different thing. *To quote Wikipedia - "The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.[2] Despommier and his students came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people."
anjel 3mo ago
Robotic polinators ftw.
- ghssds 3mo ago
  I saw that Black Mirror episode.
- fhdkweig 3mo ago
  Better than having to do it with human hands. They had to do that when the bees died in Biosphere 2.
  - cindyllm 3mo ago
    [dead]
dqv 3mo ago
> I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species? No? Well not in a way that wouldn't be stretching an owl over a globe. But Carolina Jessamine is toxic to honeybees and not natives (or at least there exist native bees who have adapted to not slurp on it if it is toxic to them). That doesn't stop people from spreading the lie that Carolina Jessamine "hurts bees". It hurts some species of bees. To transfer this concept to the human population, you'd have to start arguing that there are different species of humans or, again, construct a stretching-an-owl-over-a-globe argument. And people can't mention every caveat in every discussion, sorry. You've really just constructed a strawman. In a 40-minute discussion with someone like Doug Tallamy, both the issue of invasive honeybees and pesticides will come up. The venn diagram of people who care about both things is very close to a circle. Also, as to your edit - that honeybees rely on humans doesn't change their impact on native bee populations, which is they outcompete native bees. There's nothing weird about correcting the popular ignorant assumption that the only pollinator that matters is honeybees.
eleveriven 3mo ago
I think the problem is that these things can both be true. Pesticides can be a much bigger threat to native insects, while dense managed honeybee populations can still put extra pressure on native bees in some places

mastermage 3mo ago

An idea that sprang to mind and please point me out at which points its unrealistic and why because I am talking completely out of my ass here. If we want to reduce mono culture but we still need to somehow figure out how to provide humanity. Could large scale vertical farms, in Green Houses reduce the footprint of monocultures? By being more productive year round? Or is that just technolgist delusions of mine?

j4k0bfr 3mo ago
The thing that always baffles me with vertical farming is sunlight. Assuming most crops are pretty good at turning full spectrum sunlight into useful stuff, why shrink your solar energy per crop? And assuming you get around this via grow lights, surely the energy and material cost goes up too much for high-volume crops to make economical sense.
- b112 3mo ago
  This only makes sense in certain circumstances I think. For example, shipping tomatoes from 5000km away when it's winter in Canada. I recently did some research, and there are multiple local greenhouses around many large Canadian cities for just this reason. They are competitive in the winter, and sell to local supermarkets. The cost of the greenhouses vs shipping + loss. And there is a loss in nutrition, when you harvest green and it takes weeks to hit the table, vs something picked yesterday and picked when actually ripe. Of course, these are large warehouses, not typical greenouses. So I guess the answer is, it can make sense in certain circumstances. A warmer place where you can grow fruit outside year round, not so much.
  - anjel 3mo ago
    Canadian hydroelectric is the catalyst that makes winter hothouse produce cost competitive. Wealthy us elec producers have no incentive to match Canada's low cost of production. Indeed their incentives are rather contrary.
    - lebuffon 3mo ago
      In southern Ontario where there are many ( the most?) greenhouses electricity is primarily produced by Nuclear (50..55%) Hydro power is about 24 ..38% of the total. I think the bigger difference is the Canadian attitude about the "commons" nature of electricity and so profiting excessively on power is frowned upon.
    - badc0ffee 3mo ago
      Most of the tomatoes and cucumbers I buy here in Alberta year-round are greenhouse grown in-province. Our electric power here is basically natural gas with a bit of wind and hydro. Although to your point, we're probably one of the cheapest locales in the world for NG.
- ssl-3 3mo ago
  I think it's hard to generalize whether vertical farms are good or bad; efficient or inefficient. It seems that whether it works or not relies very heavily on the locality. In my part of Ohio, we have lots of farmland -- and plenty of water that just falls out of the sky. We've got reasonably-long, generally-hot days during our growing season and we get some serious crop production done here while it lasts. The rest of the year? The days are short. It's dark and cold outside; frozen, even. We can't grow crops outside here in the winter. But vertical farms (eg, fancy greenhouses) can just keep going. With artificial light and/or supplemental heat, they're still producing even in the depths of winter. Thus, I can go to the grocery store near my house and buy a locally-grown tomato in February. It's expensive to get this done, but the alternatives include paying someone to drive it up here from thousands of miles away or just going without a tomato until after things have warmed up again and stayed that way for awhile.
looping__lui 3mo ago
I’m just saying: stop hating bees with made up arguments
forlorn_mammoth 3mo ago
I appreciate you being upfront about the depth of your knowledge. Regenerative farming and/or permaculture offer ways to run industrial-scale agriculture without the monoculture. See i.e. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.521/ https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal... Another innovation I see is the use of "crop tunnels" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytunnel) to greatly extend the growing season in colder climates (another poster mentioned "Ohio"), and/or better control evaporation.
bell-cot 3mo ago
Over the years, many firms have poured many $millions into vertical farms. If you're growing extreme-value crops - marijuana, or maybe exotic salad greens for Michelin-starred restaurants - that can actually work. Otherwise, you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt, and extremely efficient modern agro-tech stacks. Bankruptcy awaits. > just technologist delusions of mine? I'd bet you've read several articles about techno-utopians setting up vertical farms, and their grand dreams. Which always hand-wave the "how can this massively expensive setup complete with dirt?" part. Farming sun-lit dirt does not magically require monoculture, nor poor farming practices. The problems is monoculture's appeal to certain human cultures - especially profit-maximizing "big ag" capitalists - and the agricultural policies enacted by naive politicians.
- m4x 3mo ago
  > you're trying to compete with millions of square miles of naturally sun-lit dirt You're begging the question with this statement. Indoor growing is used when you don't have access to this kind of resource. There are many locations where access to land or suitable conditions is restricted. CEA has been used profitably for a long time, and the most valuable crops are mushrooms and leafy greens, not exotic or illegal plants.
  - bell-cot 3mo ago
    > ... when you don't have access to ... These days, "don't have access" is a micro-market. Everywhere else, indoor growing has to compete with the cost & delay of importing. Last I heard, even Antarctic bases are only growing a few fresh veggies - 99% of their food is imported. (Well, plant-based food. They might do a fair bit of fishing.) > CEA has been used ... My comment was replying to magemaster's "large scale vertical farms ... just technologist delusions".* Vs. greenhouses - which can be little more than plastic sheeting over light wooden framing over sunlit dirt - yes, those have far saner economics. Mushrooms - which can be grown in dark caves without dirt using prehistoric technology - are also a very different thing. *To quote Wikipedia - "The modern concept of vertical farming was proposed in 1999 by Dickson Despommier, professor of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.[2] Despommier and his students came up with a design of a skyscraper farm that could feed 50,000 people."

anjel 3mo ago

Robotic polinators ftw.

ghssds 3mo ago
I saw that Black Mirror episode.
fhdkweig 3mo ago
Better than having to do it with human hands. They had to do that when the bees died in Biosphere 2.
- cindyllm 3mo ago
  [dead]

dqv 3mo ago

> I suppose honey bees are not native in North America pretty much the same way as the human species? No? Well not in a way that wouldn't be stretching an owl over a globe. But Carolina Jessamine is toxic to honeybees and not natives (or at least there exist native bees who have adapted to not slurp on it if it is toxic to them). That doesn't stop people from spreading the lie that Carolina Jessamine "hurts bees". It hurts some species of bees. To transfer this concept to the human population, you'd have to start arguing that there are different species of humans or, again, construct a stretching-an-owl-over-a-globe argument. And people can't mention every caveat in every discussion, sorry. You've really just constructed a strawman. In a 40-minute discussion with someone like Doug Tallamy, both the issue of invasive honeybees and pesticides will come up. The venn diagram of people who care about both things is very close to a circle. Also, as to your edit - that honeybees rely on humans doesn't change their impact on native bee populations, which is they outcompete native bees. There's nothing weird about correcting the popular ignorant assumption that the only pollinator that matters is honeybees.

eleveriven 3mo ago

I think the problem is that these things can both be true. Pesticides can be a much bigger threat to native insects, while dense managed honeybee populations can still put extra pressure on native bees in some places