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computer parts posted:A lot of "eat local" rhetoric relies on the idea that transportation costs are some incredible cost to society. The rhetoric also ignores the fact that small local farms are vastly less efficient than a large farm. Really the best argument for buying local is just supporting your local community and economy, which is a perfectly good thing to do.
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Sep 18, 2016 17:53
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computer parts posted:A lot of "eat local" rhetoric relies on the idea that transportation costs are some incredible cost to society. That argument isn't really being made here, though. The argument is that the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Mexico to a market in Oregon is greater than the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Oregon to a market in Oregon. You're not going to ruin the environment by occasionally buying out-of-season tomatoes, the argument is to meter your usage of foods that have to travel from very far away. Farming centralization in general is fine, and you don't have to choose a "tiny" local farm over a large one. fishmech posted:But there's nothing wrong with eating Fishmech you dipshit that isn't what I'm saying
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Sep 18, 2016 20:40
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QuarkJets posted:That argument isn't really being made here, though. The argument is that the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Mexico to a market in Oregon is greater than the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Oregon to a market in Oregon. You're not going to ruin the environment by occasionally buying out-of-season tomatoes, the argument is to meter your usage of foods that have to travel from very far away. Farming centralization in general is fine, and you don't have to choose a "tiny" local farm over a large one.
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Sep 18, 2016 20:57
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Taffer posted:The rhetoric also ignores the fact that small local farms are vastly less efficient than a large farm. Really the best argument for buying local is just supporting your local community and economy, which is a perfectly good thing to do. Small farms are typically more productive of food per acre than large farms (the inverse size-yield relationship). They employ more labour, so are less profitable and 'efficient' in terms of produce per person hour - but people who prefer to buy local produce aren't going to be dissuaded by telling them they're supporting more agricultural jobs.
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Sep 18, 2016 21:33
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Oh dear me posted:Small farms are typically more productive of food per acre than large farms (the inverse size-yield relationship). They employ more labour, so are less profitable and 'efficient' in terms of produce per person hour - but people who prefer to buy local produce aren't going to be dissuaded by telling them they're supporting more agricultural jobs. Labor is not the only (or even the major) reason why smaller farms are less efficient. QuarkJets posted:That argument isn't really being made here, though. The argument is that the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Mexico to a market in Oregon is greater than the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Oregon to a market in Oregon. This is one example, since there actually are situations when moving from end of the state to the other is less efficient than moving from one end of the country to another.
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Sep 18, 2016 21:45
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computer parts posted:Labor is not the only (or even the major) reason why smaller farms are less efficient. Aren't you saying something opposite from the person you are quoting? 
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Sep 18, 2016 21:50
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WrenP-Complete posted:Aren't you saying something opposite from the person you are quoting? I'm saying small farms are inefficient in more ways than one.
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Sep 18, 2016 21:52
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computer parts posted:I'm saying small farms are inefficient in more ways than one. Yes. Isn't oh dear me saying that small farms are more efficient? Edit: I see it now! Nevermind! 
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Sep 18, 2016 21:53
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computer parts posted:I'm saying small farms are inefficient in more ways than one. They are more efficient than large farms in terms of food production per acre. If there is a kind of efficiency you think more important, at least say what it is.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:01
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I think the question is what's the input/output by which you judge efficiency.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:19
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WrenP-Complete posted:I think the question is what's the input/output by which you judge efficiency. Moreover, I think this discussion is going to keep circling the drain until we can see some numbers.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:56
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Moreover, I think this discussion is going to keep circling the drain until we can see some numbers. Excellent idea.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:59
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WrenP-Complete posted:Excellent idea. I'm not sure numbers help since the disagreement is about what the important inputs and outputs are. Still: for food per acre there is evidence for the inverse farm size relationship from places all over the world, but the amounts vary with different local conditions. A study in Turkey found that one percent of increase in farm size results in 1.28 percent of decrease in productivity per decare. Or there are some different figures here or here or here.
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Sep 18, 2016 23:45
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QuarkJets posted:That argument isn't really being made here, though. The argument is that the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Mexico to a market in Oregon is greater than the carbon cost of moving a tomato from a farm in Oregon to a market in Oregon. You're not going to ruin the environment by occasionally buying out-of-season tomatoes, the argument is to meter your usage of foods that have to travel from very far away. Farming centralization in general is fine, and you don't have to choose a "tiny" local farm over a large one. And what you are forgetting is that the carbon cost of moving food in bulk from far away is often extremely low just as far as the transport goes, let alone the carbon cost all in of the transportation and everything needed to grow the food. Sure it seems like local will always use less at a first glance, but it simply isn't true. Let's take your tomato from one part of oregon to other parts of oregon versus mexico to oregon for instance: You can need quite a lot more fuel per tomato to truck that poo poo from the middle of nowhere to the Portland suburbs, compared to the tomatoes loaded in bulk on ship at some port in mexico and sent up the coast, or sent by long distance rail. And that's just with current day technology, not adding in anything futuristic like electrifying the whole rail path, or those special ships being planned that can derive most of their propulsion from solar farms on board.
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Sep 18, 2016 23:55
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I'd certainly accept that locally produced food is not always going to have a lesser carbon footprint than imported food, but doesn't the argument about the cost of trucking the food from Nowhere, Oregon to the Portland apply just as much to the cost of trucking the food from Nowhere, Mexico to the port in Mexico? Do we have numbers we can look at to quantify whether the carbon footprint of moving crops from foreign farm to port--plus moving them from port to port--tends to be lower or higher than the carbon footprint of moving crops from "local" farms to those same cities?
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Sep 19, 2016 00:45
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Reveilled posted:I'd certainly accept that locally produced food is not always going to have a lesser carbon footprint than imported food, but doesn't the argument about the cost of trucking the food from Nowhere, Oregon to the Portland apply just as much to the cost of trucking the food from Nowhere, Mexico to the port in Mexico? Do we have numbers we can look at to quantify whether the carbon footprint of moving crops from foreign farm to port--plus moving them from port to port--tends to be lower or higher than the carbon footprint of moving crops from "local" farms to those same cities? As it turns out, a ton of tomato production in Mexico is done close to the coasts, as opposed to the interior areas (Baja California and Baja California Sur are very big for it). They're not likely to need to travel the 250+ miles by truck you can easily need to ship things from the middle of Oregon up to the Portland suburbs, as in the example. Although it's a terrible example, as there is very little production of tomatoes in Oregon while there's tons grown in Mexico. The USDA says that as of 2009 there were about $14 million worth of tomatoes under cultivation in the state. Florida for instance produces $520 million the same year, and the US as a whole produced $2.5 billion worth. So it's likely that "local tomatoes" in Oregon are some small time crop a farmer does on the side out in nowhere - not likely to be done efficiently in the least, due to the general growing conditions.
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Sep 19, 2016 01:02
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fishmech posted:As it turns out, a ton of tomato production in Mexico is done close to the coasts, as opposed to the interior areas (Baja California and Baja California Sur are very big for it). They're not likely to need to travel the 250+ miles by truck you can easily need to ship things from the middle of Oregon up to the Portland suburbs, as in the example. I'm not sure being close to the coast necessarily means crops aren't likely to travel long distances. Looking at a map and Wikipedia, for example, it doesn't look like there's a major port on the Baja peninsula between Ensenada and La Paz, so farmers are likely to be taking their goods there to be shipped, which given how long the peninsula is could be quite some distance (though that very much depends on where the farms are). I'd agree it's on average likely to be less than 250 miles, but by the same token, how likely is a crop from Oregon to come from the east side of the state, as opposed to the valley between Portland and Salem? I'd have thought eastern Oregon would be mostly arid plateaus and forested mountains, I wouldn't have imagined there'd be all that much agriculture out there, though I might be wrong. In any case, I'm not sure tomatoes vs tomatoes is the right comparison for the idea of local food and seasonal produce, for the very reason you mention, that tomatoes aren't a common crop in Oregon, so part of the point localists make is that Oregonians shouldn't be eating tomatoes. What is a common crop in Oregon, and how does the carbon footprint of shipping that from your average farm in Oregon to Portland compare to the carbon footprint of shipping tomatoes from your average farm in Mexico to a port and then from that port to Portland? Is there anywhere we could find that out?
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Sep 19, 2016 01:36
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Oregon's top 5 crops by value are hay, wheat, potatoes, pears and onions, in that order. At least as of 2011. "Greenhouse and nursery products" is the largest category but it's not clear what that means exactly, other than that they grow a lot of decorative plants.
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Sep 19, 2016 01:44
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fishmech posted:Neither Bayer nor Monsanto have monopolistic market shares, unless you don't know what the word monopoly means. This is a weird interpretation of the fine and ag chemical markets... Bayer pretty clearly has monopolies on certain pharmaceuticals, some without even the benefit of API patents. For many drugs in their portfolio they are the primary provider. It doesn't make sense to view pharmaceutical monopolies in terms of a single market, "pharmaceuticals", because a patient needing epilepsy medicine isn't interacting in the same market as a patient needing blood proteins. For instance. Bayer, having spun off its BPA, et al manufacturing about a year ago, now makes most of its profit from a collection of these small pharmaceutical manufacturing monopolies. In terms of the agricultural chemicals, glyphosate usage has risen 15-fold in the last 20 years, and absolutely dominates the market: "Genetically engineered herbicide-tolerant crops now account for about 56 % of global glyphosate use. In the U.S., no pesticide has come remotely close to such intensive and widespread use. This is likely the case globally, but published global pesticide use data are sparse. Glyphosate will likely remain the most widely applied pesticide worldwide for years to come, and interest will grow in quantifying ecological and human health impacts." Do you know what the word monopoly means?
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Sep 19, 2016 02:13
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Mofabio posted:This is a weird interpretation of the fine and ag chemical markets... Bayer pretty clearly has monopolies on certain pharmaceuticals, some without even the benefit of API patents. For many drugs in their portfolio they are the primary provider. It doesn't make sense to view pharmaceutical monopolies in terms of a single market, "pharmaceuticals", because a patient needing epilepsy medicine isn't interacting in the same market as a patient needing blood proteins. For instance. Bayer, having spun off its BPA, et al manufacturing about a year ago, now makes most of its profit from a collection of these small pharmaceutical manufacturing monopolies. There's nothing weird about understanding that "monopoly" doesn't mean "company I don't like". Yes, and neither of those are examples of Bayer or Monsanto being monopolies. They are both minority players in the markets they're in, they don't even crack 45% in their market segments let alone super-majorities. You might as well claim Amoco is a monopoly because they have a monopoly on Amoco-branded gasoline.
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Sep 19, 2016 02:32
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Mofabio posted:This is a weird interpretation of the fine and ag chemical markets... Bayer pretty clearly has monopolies on certain pharmaceuticals, some without even the benefit of API patents. For many drugs in their portfolio they are the primary provider. It doesn't make sense to view pharmaceutical monopolies in terms of a single market, "pharmaceuticals", because a patient needing epilepsy medicine isn't interacting in the same market as a patient needing blood proteins. For instance. Bayer, having spun off its BPA, et al manufacturing about a year ago, now makes most of its profit from a collection of these small pharmaceutical manufacturing monopolies. Glyphosate is mostly sold by Chinese companies at this point, it left patent protection a while ago. You might possibly be able to make an argument about seed monopolies, but a monopoly on pesticides based off the quantity of glyphosate is barking up the wrong tree.
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Sep 19, 2016 02:57
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:Glyphosate is mostly sold by Chinese companies at this point, it left patent protection a while ago. You might possibly be able to make an argument about seed monopolies, but a monopoly on pesticides based off the quantity of glyphosate is barking up the wrong tree. The thing is for any super-specific seed there's always going to be just one company that makes and sell that. But there's hundreds to thousands of individual strains across GMO and non-GMO varieties for any major world crop, and on top of that some other company likely sells a similarly specced seed. Calling it monopolistic as he does means that most products and companies are therefore monopolistic, because you can't get exactly Cheerios from Kellogg and you can't get exactly Coca-Cola from Pepsi - and so on.
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Sep 19, 2016 03:54
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Mofabio posted:Reading you talk about chemical process safety was like hearing a clock chime 13 times. So wrong, you wonder if it's ever been right. Mofabio posted:Reading you talk about chemical process safety was like hearing a clock chime 13 times. So wrong, you wonder if it's ever been right. Mofabio posted:Reading you talk about chemical process safety was like hearing a clock chime 13 times. So wrong, you wonder if it's ever been right. Reading them talking about chemical process safety IS like hearing a clock chime 13 times. It IS "so wrong that I wonder if it's ever been right." Mofabio, however, does not wonder, because they know all answers! Please explain the benefits of the twelve-hour day Mofabio! I think it'd just make calendars really loving stupid, but what do I know? I do, after all, support GMO! Big Hubris fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 07:18
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fishmech posted:And what you are forgetting is that the carbon cost of moving food in bulk from far away is often extremely low just as far as the transport goes, let alone the carbon cost all in of the transportation and everything needed to grow the food. Sure it seems like local will always use less at a first glance, but it simply isn't true. You're ignoring that the tomatoes have to travel from the middle of nowhere in Mexico to a port in Mexico and also from the port in Portland (or possibly somewhere else like LA or Seattle, food shipping is weird sometimes) to the suburbs of Portland. You're also ignoring the cost of refrigerating a whole boat of tomatoes for a few days. Hmm I wonder why you would ignore all of this additional factors Also the joke's on you, most produce shipped from Mexico to the US is actually shipped via big rear end trucks, even when produce is traveling as far north as Seattle. How about you provide some numbers to back up your claim that the carbon costs are at least neutral? You're pretending like it's obvious that transporting food thousands of miles costs less carbon than transporting food 100 miles but it sure as hell isn't.
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Sep 19, 2016 09:17
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QuarkJets posted:You're ignoring that the tomatoes have to travel from the middle of nowhere in Mexico to a port in Mexico and also from the port in Portland (or possibly somewhere else like LA or Seattle, food shipping is weird sometimes) to the suburbs of Portland. You're also ignoring the cost of refrigerating a whole boat of tomatoes for a few days. Hmm I wonder why you would ignore all of this additional factors Except they very often don't have to travel from "middle of nowhere" Mexico in the first place (they also don't tend to get shipped from Mexico to the US in large numbers in the first place but that's another issue, you're the one who insisted on tomatoes from Oregon vs Mexico). And as we've already established tomatoes are a very minor crop in Oregon in particular, and not likely to be within close distance. You also need only minor refrigeration if any at all, because ideal shipping conditions for tomatoes are to ship them unripened at about 60-65 F, which is easy to attain in a cargo hold. It's not like we're shipping milk here. The point is that you're ludicrously and falsely assuming local must equal less carbon which is simply not true. This is because you have an orthrorexic obsession with "local" food. And as we've further already established, it's very easy for local food to build up more carbon and other resource uses when you're trying to grow a crop in an unfavorable climate (like Oregon) instead of a favorable one (like Florida or the western Mexican coastal states).
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Sep 19, 2016 14:22
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In tech we sometimes use the metaphor of big pipes vs small pipes. For example, Google Hangouts may have better service between Portland and New York than within Portland, since big pipes connect Portland and New York, and only small pipes connect places within Portland. Perhaps that metaphor will be useful here.
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Sep 19, 2016 15:23
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No one has a real point here. Neither "eat local" nor "eat the specific foods that are grown in regions where the ease of farming offsets the increased costs of transporting food from farther away" are complete solutions to reducing the carbon impact of your consumption, but "eat local" at least fits on a bumper sticker and has secondary benefits.
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Sep 19, 2016 15:31
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Does Bayer really not hold any pharma monopolies? That seems pretty unlikely, but it could be true I suppose. Fishmechs argument that monopolies only count for entire industries and not particular services is pretty stupid, regardless, although I sort of lost track of what the original argument was so maybe its appropriate here, I dont know For the shipping thing, eat local is a heuristic and people should stop treating it as anything but.
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Sep 19, 2016 16:11
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GlyphGryph posted:Does Bayer really not hold any pharma monopolies? That seems pretty unlikely, but it could be true I suppose. So I see you're one of those types who would declare nearly every company in existence a monopoly then? Surely you realize how useless that makes the term? To take one example, it wasn't a problem that Standard Oil was the only one who could sell the Standard Oil blend of gasoline, the problem was that they held over 90 percent of national oil refining capacity at their height.
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Sep 19, 2016 16:29
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fishmech posted:Oregon's top 5 crops by value are hay, wheat, potatoes, pears and onions, in that order. At least as of 2011. "Greenhouse and nursery products" is the largest category but it's not clear what that means exactly, other than that they grow a lot of decorative plants. Those plants aren't decorative.  EDIT: Portland is known as "Rose City" for a reason. Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Sep 19, 2016 |
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Sep 19, 2016 17:12
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ErichZahn posted:APT DESCRIPTION HOLMES. Who are you, and why are you reading my old posts? The economic definition of a monopoly is single market actor, which isn't that common except when there's IP. The legal definition of monopoly (and IANAL) doesn't require that, it's based on flexing of market power, to be decided by the courts. At the risk of a derail, you can see that in successful, recent antitrust litigation like US v Apple ebook price fixing, US v Microsoft in the 90s, etc. Fishmech was probably thinking of the former when he made the comment "do you know what a monopoly is", but Sanders' tweet was pretty clearly referencing the latter. Monsanto's the biggest thing to happen to the pesticide industry in a loooooong time, and for many crops they dominate the market. Whether they use their market power for anticompetitive ends was the subject of the DOJ investigation, and the DOJ can build a case whether or not Monsanto has a true economic monopoly.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:06
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Mofabio posted:Monsanto's the biggest thing to happen to the pesticide industry in a loooooong time, and for many crops they dominate the market. Whether they use their market power for anticompetitive ends was the subject of the DOJ investigation, and the DOJ can build a case whether or not Monsanto has a true economic monopoly. How are you still so wrong? Monsanto isn't close to #1 in pesticides.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:16
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Tom Clancy is Dead posted:How are you still so wrong? Monsanto isn't close to #1 in pesticides. They aren't even close to a majority in glyphosate at this point.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:30
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Kalman posted:They aren't even close to a majority in glyphosate at this point. Do you have some data handy? It would be fun to sling it around the next time the issue comes up in real life.
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Sep 19, 2016 20:38
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Mofabio posted:Who are you, and why are you reading my old posts? And Sanders is also saying something wrong just as you are. It's a bad and incorrect sentiment. There is absolutely no issue in the fact that random products can only be sold by a given company in their exact configuration. The DOJ isn't going to be able to build a case that they have a "true economic monopoly" when they only thing they have monopolies over are legally-granted things, like patents, which are a normal business practice. Again: see how nobody cared that you couldn't get Standard Oil's exact gasoline blends from anyone else, what mattered is that they controlled 90% of the nation's refineries. Solkanar512 posted:Those plants aren't decorative. Some of the lists I saw listed weed separately. 
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Sep 19, 2016 20:42
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fishmech posted:So I see you're one of those types who would declare nearly every company in existence a monopoly then? Surely you realize how useless that makes the term? Fishmech I know you loving being really stupid about things like this, but this is dumb even for you. You are managing to make yourself look stupid on a page where Mofabio is posting. Its sad. But, no. I am not one of those types who would declare every company a monopoly. Just someone who realizes what a monopoly actually is, which you, apparently, are not. Normally I would to make a persuasive argument here with factual citations and poo poo but lol, its fishmech, you would just ignore my pointa in favour of making pedantic attacks against something I never said.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:10
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GlyphGryph posted:Fishmech I know you loving being really stupid about things like this, but this is dumb even for you. You are managing to make yourself look stupid on a page where Mofabio is posting. Its sad. Except Monsanto does not hold a monopoly in any market or product segment - for that matter neither does Bayer. Not sure why you seem so insistent on claiming otherwise? You also never made a "point" you just tried to weasel word your way into saying that someone's dumb statement was right.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:21
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GlyphGryph posted:Fishmech I know you loving being really stupid about things like this, but this is dumb even for you. You are managing to make yourself look stupid on a page where Mofabio is posting. Its sad. What exactly is your definition of monopoly and how does it apply to Monsanto in this discussion? There are many suppliers of seeds, pesticides, etc., even for many identical products (glyphosate in particular). If the definition of monopoly is "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service" then I am completely at a loss as to how that applies to Monsanto without discussing things at the patent level.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:37
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Thanks for proving the one point I made, I guess? I dont think Monsanto has monopoly anything, and I honestly have no idea whether or not Bayer has any actual monopolies, I am just suprised if they really dont because being an exclusive provider of the only worthwhile treatment for a condition is a pretty desireable thing in the pharma field and they seem like a big company. But yeah sure whatever you said, you win lol no company is ever capable of a monopoly unless they own the entire industry whatever
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Sep 19, 2016 22:37
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archangelwar posted:What exactly is your definition of monopoly and how does it apply to Monsanto in this discussion? The normal one, and it doesnt.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:42
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