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The current use of automation in car manufacturing does not preclude the future capacity of building more cars by any means. Your so called "efficient farming"

The current use of automation in car manufacturing does not preclude the future capacity of building more cars by any means. Your so called "efficient farming" does increase the yield of calories per acre at the cost of killing of the microscopic ecosystems in the topsoil and bankrupting farmers. The only thing those practices are good at is to increase the margins of fertilizer and pesticide producers.

burntsushi 13y ago
Could you provide some data on the number of farmers that have been bankrupted by the death of microscopic ecosystems as a result of "efficient farming"?
- crpatino 13y ago
  Of course the death of the soil does not bankrupt farmers, this is just a nasty side effect of industrial farming. What bankrupt the farmers is that industrial farming does increase the yield of a given field at the cost of relying in an ever increasing and more advanced industrial inputs. This has the double effect of increasing both the fixed (machinery) and variable (GMO seeds, pesticides, fertilizers) costs, while at the same time increasing the offer and saturating demand. The farmers find themselves in the predicament to ever increase production just to survive on an ever decreasing margins. And when they can no longer afford the fancy inputs, the soil is already dead so they end up the proud owner of a wasteland and go belly up. It would be hard to come up with sources for all of these assertions, specially in an informal debate, but for starters look at: http://www.joshuabradley.org/green_revolution/index.html http://www.joshuabradley.org/green_revolution/index.html
greeneggs 13y ago
Non-organic food is also far better for the environment as a whole, since it uses land more productively.
- lazerwalker 13y ago
  It's not that conventional farming is more productive than organic farming, but rather that large-scale commercial farming (which can include using organic methods) is more productive than small-scale farms.

burntsushi 13y ago

Could you provide some data on the number of farmers that have been bankrupted by the death of microscopic ecosystems as a result of "efficient farming"?

crpatino 13y ago
Of course the death of the soil does not bankrupt farmers, this is just a nasty side effect of industrial farming. What bankrupt the farmers is that industrial farming does increase the yield of a given field at the cost of relying in an ever increasing and more advanced industrial inputs. This has the double effect of increasing both the fixed (machinery) and variable (GMO seeds, pesticides, fertilizers) costs, while at the same time increasing the offer and saturating demand. The farmers find themselves in the predicament to ever increase production just to survive on an ever decreasing margins. And when they can no longer afford the fancy inputs, the soil is already dead so they end up the proud owner of a wasteland and go belly up. It would be hard to come up with sources for all of these assertions, specially in an informal debate, but for starters look at: http://www.joshuabradley.org/green_revolution/index.html http://www.joshuabradley.org/green_revolution/index.html

greeneggs 13y ago

Non-organic food is also far better for the environment as a whole, since it uses land more productively.

lazerwalker 13y ago
It's not that conventional farming is more productive than organic farming, but rather that large-scale commercial farming (which can include using organic methods) is more productive than small-scale farms.