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Brannock posted:One thing Salatin didn't bring up, and one thing McWilliams didn't mention, is that we eat entirely too much meat. Any future that has improved agricultural and improved food practices will involve a lot less meat than we currently eat. That is not to say that we should eliminate animals entirely from our diet. Animals are a very useful vehicle for converting inedible biomass into human-digestible nutrients, and in particular animals are excellent at turning land that are otherwise unsuitable for growing crops into productive food environments. (There is a reason, for instance, that Scottish Highland Cattle exist. The highlands are nearly impossible to grow food in, but the cattle can transform the weeds and grasses there into food for us.) Oh Salatin. The guy who thinks the Wetlands produces more Methane that bovine agriculture. Got it quote:Commenting on a New York Times op-ed contribution about sustainable farming and bovine methane production,[11] Salatin wrote "Wetlands emit some 95 percent of all methane in the world; herbivores are insignificant enough to not even merit consideration. Anyone who really wants to stop methane needs to start draining wetlands. Quick, or we'll all perish." He also said that most livestock producers use "Neanderthal management" that exaggerates the amount of land required, and that modern technology allows for far more sustainable land usage. No, I'm gonna say Salatin isn't a very good source for farming tips and helping solve the ecological impact of farming. The guy is just a farmer. That's it. No studies. No actual evidence. Just lots of first hand experience and anecdotes. quote:Salatin says that his Christian faith informs the way he raises and slaughters the animals on his 500-acre (2.0 km2) farm. He sees it as his responsibility to honor the animals as creatures that reflect God’s creative and abiding love, and believes his method is to honor that of God.[2] Salatin is quoted in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma (p.331) as justifying the killing of non-human animals because "people have a soul, animals don't." "Don't worry guys, I have it in faith that my system can replace industrial agriculture!" His system is insane. Nor is this a sustainable system. By his logic, we should all have to drive out to the farm to get all our poultry and meats. This would result in farms of massive scale surrounding cities and towns. A bunch of farmers with their own homespun wisdom on farming is not a viable solution to sustainable agriculture and farming. Tuxedo Gin posted:The problem with this topic is that the way we are doing things right now, works for the world right now. We are raping our agriculturally productive land. We are wasting space with useless suburban sprawl. We have massive populations in places that simply cannot support those populations. Local Community Farming is not going to solve anything unless we let a lot of people die. Period. Its just not feasible nor a solution worth approaching unless we nearly halve our population. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 21:33
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ReidRansom posted:It's all such small scale it's usually pretty low impact though. So it's sutainable for a tiny bourgeois elite than can pay for astoundingly inefficient production? I guess, but that's not really what the green types are talking about when they want to expand that vision to all corners of the world icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 21:36
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icantfindaname posted:There is this thing called 'economy of scale' which is why we don't produce things by using artisans in cottages like the 1700s anymore We overscaled the economy. Industrial agribusiness is dependent on government subsidies to maintain growth and profits, and a ridiculous amount of the product is thrown away every day. Not to mention agribusiness using scarce, communal resources (like water in California, or land in general) to make bundles of cash exporting almonds and alfalfa (incredible thirsty crops, not at all suited for drought prone regions) to China. Why should they make huge profits at the expense of others? Smaller local farmers who can't afford to add a few thousand feet to their well have fallow fields because the big dogs are raping the groundwater for export profits. Even if the drought in CA suddenly ends tomorrow, it could take decades or longer to bring the groundwater to a healthy level.
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Jun 10, 2016 21:40
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Tuxedo Gin posted:We overscaled the economy. Industrial agribusiness is dependent on government subsidies to maintain growth and profits, and a ridiculous amount of the product is thrown away every day. .....no, we scaled a solution to meet a need. A growing population required food that popping down to the local farmers market was never going to solve. I'll agree with you on food waste being a huge issue, but that is better tackled through other means rather than suggesting that community farms be the fix. Tuxedo Gin posted:Not to mention agribusiness using scarce, communal resources (like water in California, or land in general) to make bundles of cash exporting almonds and alfalfa (incredible thirsty crops, not at all suited for drought prone regions) to China. Why should they make huge profits at the expense of others? Smaller local farmers who can't afford to add a few thousand feet to their well have fallow fields because the big dogs are raping the groundwater for export profits. Even if the drought in CA suddenly ends tomorrow, it could take decades or longer to bring the groundwater to a healthy level. That's a bigger issue, Climate Change is going to effect everything eventually, but smaller local farms are NOT going to help combat climate change. We already know this, it would only increase our carbon dependency and water usage.
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Jun 10, 2016 21:43
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Tuxedo Gin posted:We overscaled the economy. Industrial agribusiness is dependent on government subsidies to maintain growth and profits, and a ridiculous amount of the product is thrown away every day. Perfectly efficient food production is eating Soylent and ground cricket flour, not organic local produce. Local organic production is massively less efficient than even the system we have now, and setting up the entire world's agriculture like that means billions of people die of starvation icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 21:46
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icantfindaname posted:So it's sutainable for a tiny bourgeois elite than can pay for astoundingly inefficient production? I guess, but that's not really what the green types are talking about when they want to expand that vision to all corners of the world Er.... yes, I suppose. But hey, I don't advocate making everything like that. Neither do I begrudge someone offering consumers that choice should there be demand for it. Like, I'm not paying $200+ for a Bresse capon, but if there are people that will, gently caress it, let em. ReidRansom fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 21:50
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icantfindaname posted:Perfectly efficient food production is eating Soylent and ground cricket flour, not organic chickens. Local organic production is massively less efficient than even the system we have now, and setting up the entire world's agriculture like that means billions of people die of starvatoin We don't need a perfectly efficient system, and we don't need to feed billions of people. People should not be living in places that can not sustain them. This goes to my argument: CA agribusiness is raping a drought stricken state to feed Chinese people. China has a shitload of land. De urbanization is the best thing for this planet. Too many people in areas that cannot support them leads to other areas being hurt. Then, when middle America and California's central valley cannot sustain industrial levels of agriculture due to overexploitation of resources, what the gently caress do we do? Pray that technology has an answer, just like all the other climate change factors that we choose to ignore now because of convenience or greed. e: Also, if people are so concerned about people starving all over the world, why the gently caress are we throwing away tons and tons of food, and bleaching dumpsters, every day?
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Jun 10, 2016 21:54
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Since everyone keeps complaining about hog confining, my great uncle invented it in the 60s  http://avbarn.museum.state.il.us/viewclip/3131 He also has barns full of working condition farm implements from the 1800s and puts on a show every year where people break out steam powered tractors and whatnot, he's cool
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Jun 10, 2016 22:03
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ReidRansom posted:Er.... yes, I suppose. That's the problem though: These people are arguing that their method of farming should be the only viable and acceptable version. So, yes, it is an issue. Tuxedo Gin posted:We don't need a perfectly efficient system, and we don't need to feed billions of people. People should not be living in places that can not sustain them. This goes to my argument: CA agribusiness is raping a drought stricken state to feed Chinese people. China has a shitload of land. De urbanization is the best thing for this planet. Too many people in areas that cannot support them leads to other areas being hurt.  Who shall live and who shall die? Get back to us and let us knowTuxedo Gin posted:Then, when middle America and California's central valley cannot sustain industrial levels of agriculture due to overexploitation of resources, what the gently caress do we do? Pray that technology has an answer, just like all the other climate change factors that we choose to ignore now because of convenience or greed. Technology DOES have the answer in this case. And we're using it. Its the dense fucks that think we need to go backward that are praying for solutions to problems they are helping create. Small. Farms. Are. Not. The. Answer. To. Climate. Change. They will ONLY exasperate the problem.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:04
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Tuxedo Gin posted:We don't need a perfectly efficient system, and we don't need to feed billions of people. People should not be living in places that can not sustain them. This goes to my argument: CA agribusiness is raping a drought stricken state to feed Chinese people. China has a shitload of land. De urbanization is the best thing for this planet. Too many people in areas that cannot support them leads to other areas being hurt. Then, when middle America and California's central valley cannot sustain industrial levels of agriculture due to overexploitation of resources, what the gently caress do we do? Pray that technology has an answer, just like all the other climate change factors that we choose to ignore now because of convenience or greed. No actually we do need to feed billions of people, that's exactly the problem. And as for people living in unsustainable places, there are hundreds of millions of poor brown people living in just such places today, and those places will become increasingly unsustainable in the future thanks to climate change. The major stress on world food production isn't Las Vegas and California suburbs, it's third world countries under water stress, and while eliminating waste and inefficiency in Las Vegas will help a little its effect on a country like Yemen or Bangladesh will be negligible. The solution to developing countries' problems looks nothing like small, local farms, it looks like industrial agriculture with huge inputs of capital and technology icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 22:18
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icantfindaname posted:No actually we do need to feed billions of people, that's exactly the problem. The major stress on world food production isn't Las Vegas and California suburbs, it's third world countries under water stress, and while eliminating waste and inefficiency in Las Vegas will help a little its effect on a country like Yemen or Bangladesh will be negligible. The solution to developing countries' problems looks nothing like small, local farms, it looks like industrial agriculture with huge inputs of capital and technology But we're not using that solution either. We're selling almonds and alfalfa to China for cash, and destroying the community resources in California to do it. So you can say my suggestion isn't a viable one, but yours isn't either - exchanging profit for altruism is largely unthinkable. Until the people of Yemen and Bangladesh can afford US produce prices (essentially never, unless we continue to subsidize even more), it will never happen. Instead of subsidizing industrial agriculture to sell to developing countries, why not just subsidize developing countries to help them become sustainable? Because we don't get rich that way, of course.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:28
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CommieGIR posted:That's the problem though: These people are arguing that their method of farming should be the only viable and acceptable version. So, yes, it is an issue. This is outright false. What they're arguing isn't that all industrial production should cease immediately, they're saying that industrial production has significant negative externalities that aren't being fully accounted for, and that there isn't sufficient alternative sources of food for people. On top of that, they're also advocating a shift back (to be clear, a shift, not a complete and instant transformation of the entire industry) to cities sourcing their food from nearby areas instead of halfway across Earth. Some of the more zealous will go on all-encompassing rants talking about the deleterious effects of the industry, but the overall consensus is that it's impossible to feed 7+ billion without mass industrial farming. The real question is: how did it get to be this way? Why is it this way? Is it the best way we can arrange the system? (No) Is it good and healthy for our people, or for our culture, or for our mental state, satisfaction and happiness? CommieGIR posted:Oh Salatin. Okay dude when you quote an external source citing a quote from the same article that I provided full text of, to rebut a part of that article that in the very post that you quoted I actually point out his mistake about methane and wetlands, when you do that it makes it laughably clear that you aren't actually bothering to take time to read and comprehend, and that you aren't approaching this with anything resembling conductiveness to a discussion. I think I'm done with you. icantfindaname posted:Perfectly efficient food production is eating Soylent and ground cricket flour, not organic local produce. Local organic production is massively less efficient than even the system we have now, and setting up the entire world's agriculture like that means billions of people die of starvation This is a cute rhetorical flourish serving to paint a frightening picture, but without much real substance to it. Yes of course if we go back to 1875 CE farms everywhere it won't be able to keep up with the ravenous hunger of seven billion locusts, but that's not remotely what anyone except the disingenuous are arguing. For the people who are heavily advocating mass centralized industrial farming, it would be useful to remember that these sort of setups are much more vulnerable to sudden failure, than a system with a healthy amount of diffused and distributed smaller farms that can at least resist shocks localized to one part of the country. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and such. The Soviet peasants reverted to small local farms near the end of the Soviet Union. If they'd had these farms all along, in addition to the large centralized industrial farming, I suspect there would have been much fewer starvation deaths. icantfindaname posted:No actually we do need to feed billions of people, that's exactly the problem. And as for people living in unsustainable places, there are hundreds of millions of poor brown people living in just such places today, and those places will become increasingly unsustainable in the future thanks to climate change. The major stress on world food production isn't Las Vegas and California suburbs, it's third world countries under water stress, and while eliminating waste and inefficiency in Las Vegas will help a little its effect on a country like Yemen or Bangladesh will be negligible. The solution to developing countries' problems looks nothing like small, local farms, it looks like industrial agriculture with huge inputs of capital and technology Building upon what I wrote above, don't you think these places should have local farms along with the huge industrial agriculture? One can cover for the other, and vice versa. They'd also be much more resilient to economic and financial shocks. If it was exclusively big-business agriculture, what happens when the suits decide it's no longer profitable, or try to find other methods of extracting profit and utility from its Third World customers and consumers?
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Jun 10, 2016 22:29
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CommieGIR posted:That's the problem though: These people are arguing that their method of farming should be the only viable and acceptable version. So, yes, it is an issue. Do you have sources, Mr. Unsourced opinions? Cause here's some that say you are wrong. Local food is demonstrably better for the environment than globally transported industrialized ag products: http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS09-05.pdf http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-food/ http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~hertel/data/uploads/publications/avetisyan-hertel-sampson-food-miles.pdf The only time local is NOT more ecologically responsible is meat, because livestock is loving awful for the environment.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:33
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Yeah, you guys seem to think that we are arguing for a return to agrarian lifestyles, which we have never done. Nobody is saying abolish industrial ag. Just tone it down a bit. The majority of what you want, produce wise, is available from local farms. Do that when you can. I've said that already.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:37
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Do you have sources, Mr. Unsourced opinions? Cause here's some that say you are wrong. Local food is demonstrably better for the environment than globally transported industrialized ag products: Problem is all-local wouldn't be able to meet the food needs of most large population centers. A mixed approach, not entirely unlike the way poo poo is currently, is probably best.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:38
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ReidRansom posted:Problem is all-local wouldn't be able to meet the food needs of most large population centers. A mixed approach, not entirely unlike the way poo poo is currently, is probably best. Nobody is saying all-local. But the current mixed approach should be expanded. Some people get produce locally, but the majority don't even consider it. Most supermarkets should be like meat and processed/frozen foods. There's not much reason to buy produce from a supermarket unless you absolutely have to have that out of season thing imported from the other side of the world, in which case, gently caress you.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:42
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Do you have sources, Mr. Unsourced opinions? Cause here's some that say you are wrong. Local food is demonstrably better for the environment than globally transported industrialized ag products: Your own sources show that small vehicle emissions are a larger impact overall that agriculture and transportation. Hm. quote:So while buying local food could reduce the average consumer’s greenhouse gas emissions by 4-5 percent at best, substituting part of one day a week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products with chicken, fish, eggs, or vegetables achieves more greenhouse gas reduction than switching to a diet based entirely on locally produced food (which would be impossible anyway). Eating foods that are in season and eating organic and less processed foods can further reduce one’s greenhouse gas emissions. Their study did not say that the impact of local farming was actually going to significantly decrease agriculture emissions, because local farming would not replace the amount of food they produce. Tuxedo Gin posted:Yeah, you guys seem to think that we are arguing for a return to agrarian lifestyles, which we have never done. Nobody is saying abolish industrial ag. Just tone it down a bit. You honest to god made the argument that we should not support the population we have. Unless you were being sarcastic, I think the burden is on you to demonstrate why people should have to perish to support your goals.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:43
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CommieGIR posted:Your own sources show that small vehicle emissions are a larger impact overall that agriculture and transportation. Hm. Interesting that you deflect instead of giving up your sources. I'll stand by for whatever google results you pull out of your rear end, I guess. Small vehicle emissions are happening whether food is local or not. Even the one source I gave that you are talking about still stipulates that even considering that, local food use results in a 4-5% reduction in carbon footprint, more if the local farms use more sustainable practices than the industrial farms (many do). People are going to die either way. We are trading one bandaid for another. Technology is not advancing fast enough to reverse climate change. Either we re-evaluate our urban make up (Keep core cities that can sustain themselves, otherwise have much, much smaller cities) or we stay the current path and down the like billions die anyway because we've overpopulated and reached too high a density in urban/suburban areas and industrial ag can no longer keep up. Obviously that's our choice, cause we're already doing it, but that doesn't make it the best choice. A mixed local-industrial plan is best. We can continue industrial production on a reducing scale for emergencies, export, and and supplementing the system. The majority of people should be strongly encouraged to buy local every chance they get. That's my entire argument. Nobody has to die for this, it just requires a reevaluation of our relationship with food. Stop throwing it away, and you don't need strawberries in January.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:54
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Interesting that you deflect instead of giving up your sources. I'll stand by for whatever google results you pull out of your rear end, I guess. We'll have bigger emissions hits by switching off coal and gas than we will switching off industrial agriculture that currently does feed our planet. And yes, people will die for your plan. And what are suggesting is a major step backwards for agricultural capacity, and no, local farms are not going to make up the difference, as your own linked studies said. Your system basically sets us up, waiting for a single bad year to basically leave us dying from hunger that WON'T BE HANDLED BY THE LOCAL FARMS. I'm glad you like purchasing from the local farmers market. Its not going to make ends meet.
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Jun 10, 2016 22:57
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CommieGIR posted:We'll have bigger emissions hits by switching off coal and gas than we will switching off industrial agriculture that currently does feed our planet. Agricultural capacity is bullshit. We throw away tons and tons of perfectly good food every goddamn day. Agricultural capacity is currently too loving high. Wasted resources. e: I just said I'm not calling for the end of industrial ag. Just scale it back a bunch. You're frothing at the mouth imagining that we are calling for the reversal of technology to 1800's agrarian life, but we're not.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:00
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Agricultural capacity is bullshit. We throw away tons and tons of perfectly good food every goddamn day. Agricultural capacity is currently too loving high. Wasted resources. And what makes you think cutting back on capacity is going to cut back on consumer oriented waste? "Hey guys, we've cut back on capacity, eat everything you have or starve" Wonderful plan.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:01
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CommieGIR posted:And what makes you think cutting back on capacity is going to cut back on consumer oriented waste? Consumer oriented waste is not the only type of waste. It's like you don't read a loving thing anyone writes. Producers and retailers have ridiculous amounts of food waste.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:03
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CommieGIR posted:You honest to god made the argument that we should not support the population we have. Unless you were being sarcastic, I think the burden is on you to demonstrate why people should have to perish to support your goals. He made the argument that, ideally, we shouldn't be supporting huge populations in places like Saudi Arabia and the American Southwest desert. That we still got huge populations there is an example of wildly inefficient market capitalism that allowed its purchasing power to be distorted to the extent that it's actually "profitable" to ship resources there to be pissed into the sand. These places should not have happened. He is not advocating that we march out and guillotine every citizen living in these places. Perhaps, and here I venture into speculation, he is advocating a slow over-time reduction in population there with encouragement for its citizens to move to other areas less resource-expensive and more habitable to human life. Similarly, a global population of seven billion should never have happened in the first place, especially not an increase of five billion in sixty years. This explosive increase has forced our hand, agriculturally, into practices and methods that we perhaps would never have used otherwise, simply to feed these people. Chicken and egg, though, without these drastic shifts in agricultural methods, we probably would not have had 7+ billion in the first place. Either way we're facing an ecological disaster thanks to global overconsumption. In the (sadly increasingly unlikely) case that our civilization survives it mostly-intact, it would be more than prudent to have a better way of handling this to prevent any future disasters. There is nuance here, CommieGIR. I challenge you to examine it. CommieGIR posted:We'll have bigger emissions hits by switching off coal and gas than we will switching off industrial agriculture that currently does feed our planet. Okay, I regret going back on my resolution to not address you anymore. Local farms are supplementary, not a total replacement. Local farms are incredibly useful because they can help absorb ecological and economic shocks to the industrial system. You are responding to him as if he's advocating for an extreme position that exists mostly in your mind.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:03
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Also, I'm still waiting for your sources on carbon footprint being smaller for industrial ag operations. Or was your "stopping coal and oil would be better" a backpeddle on that?
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Jun 10, 2016 23:04
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Brannock posted:Okay, I regret going back on my resolution to not address you anymore. Local farms are supplementary, not a total replacement. Local farms are incredibly useful because they can help absorb ecological and economic shocks to the industrial system. You are responding to him as if he's advocating for an extreme position that exists mostly in your mind. Brannock posted:He made the argument that, ideally, we shouldn't be supporting huge populations in places like Saudi Arabia and the American Southwest desert. That we still got huge populations there is an example of wildly inefficient market capitalism that allowed its purchasing power to be distorted to the extent that it's actually "profitable" to ship resources there to be pissed into the sand. Tuxedo Gin posted:We don't need a perfectly efficient system, and we don't need to feed billions of people. People should not be living in places that can not sustain them. This goes to my argument: CA agribusiness is raping a drought stricken state to feed Chinese people. China has a shitload of land. De urbanization is the best thing for this planet. Too many people in areas that cannot support them leads to other areas being hurt. Then, when middle America and California's central valley cannot sustain industrial levels of agriculture due to overexploitation of resources, what the gently caress do we do? Pray that technology has an answer, just like all the other climate change factors that we choose to ignore now because of convenience or greed. Awaiting on both your plans on how to mass emigrate these people and also resolve the massive agricultural debt of Africa. Thanks in advance. These places happened. These PEOPLE happened. What is your solution to them? Tuxedo Gin posted:Also, I'm still waiting for your sources on carbon footprint being smaller for industrial ag operations. Nope. Not a backpeddle. But a point that there are bigger issues the resolve prior to the systems that currently ensure the world is fed. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 23:08
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CommieGIR posted:Awaiting on both your plans on how to mass emigrate these people and also resolve the massive agricultural debt of Africa. Thanks in advance. Awaiting details of your plan on how increased use of resources via industrial ag as cash crops and exports will save humanity from stripping this rock bare in a few hundred years. Our plan depends on people being willing to give up massive corporate profits, and possibly being open to allowing brown people to settle land in their countries. None of this will ever happen, obviously, so we're strait hosed. But your plan of "stay the course" is not a plan.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:12
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CommieGIR posted:Nope. Not a backpeddle. But a point that there are bigger issues the resolve prior to the systems that currently ensure the world is fed. It is a backpeddle, because I provided evidence that you are WRONG that industrial agriculture has less environmental impact than local agriculture, so now you are dismissing it altogether. How does industrial agriculture feed the world? People in developing countries are loving starving. People in America are lacking access to food.
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Jun 10, 2016 23:15
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Tuxedo Gin posted:How does industrial agriculture feed the world? People in developing countries are loving starving. People in America are lacking access to food. This highlights an issue with capitalism and for-profit driven economics, not farming in generally. The food is there, its denied to people on the basis of economic merit, not on lack of availability. Were you not the one that highlighted food waste as a significant weight on food availability? Maybe solving that would go further than shifting to small farms? Don't make Norman Bourlag cry. GMOs have done far more for farming and in decreasing carbon footprint than small farms will. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 23:19
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CommieGIR posted:This highlights an issue with capitalism and for-profit driven economics, not farming in generally. The food is there, its denied to people on the basis of economic merit, not on lack of availability. Were you not the one that highlighted food waste as a significant weight on food availability? Maybe solving that would go further than shifting to small farms? Food waste is not a significant weight on food availability. It is proof that the system is not working as intended. Yes, my argument highlights an issue with capitalism and for-profit economics. Industrial agriculture is the result of that. I've said many times in this thread that the problems with industrial agriculture are intertwined with environmental and economic issues. I've presented evidence of this. You've presented no evidence to dispute this other than "people will die." People are going to die with the current system, too. They already are. The system is broken. The solution is not to double down. The solution is to fix it. If we were diverting all surplus food to starving people around the world, I would be with you. We don't really do that, at least not in a really meaningful way. That is the only way the current system can be justified. Feed the world. Your arguments are the same arguments of the farmers in central California with the signs that say "Is growing food wasting water?" stuck in their almond, alfalfa, and cotton farms - mostly for export and profits. Sure, if you want industrial ag to feed the world, then loving feed the world. But you're not, so why even use that defense?
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Jun 10, 2016 23:28
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Tuxedo Gin posted:...and you don't need strawberries in January. More people really should try to eat seasonally, I agree.
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Jun 11, 2016 00:00
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Food waste is not a significant weight on food availability. It is proof that the system is not working as intended. Yes, my argument highlights an issue with capitalism and for-profit economics. Industrial agriculture is the result of that. I've said many times in this thread that the problems with industrial agriculture are intertwined with environmental and economic issues. I've presented evidence of this. You've presented no evidence to dispute this other than "people will die." People are going to die with the current system, too. They already are. The system is broken. The solution is not to double down. The solution is to fix it. If we were diverting all surplus food to starving people around the world, I would be with you. We don't really do that, at least not in a really meaningful way. That is the only way the current system can be justified. Feed the world. Why do you think local production will result in less food waste from producers and retailers? Industrial agriculture IS feeding the world.  Why do you want to go back?
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Jun 11, 2016 00:01
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Anos posted:Why do you think local production will result in less food waste from producers and retailers? Less food lost in transportation, to name one thing. As for other reasons, when customers buy directly (or near-directly) from farms they are more likely to forgive superficial flaws thanks to an assurance of quality from the farmer and a knowledge that the farmer is responsible for it. When you buy something from a faceless corporation in a supermarket, and it's discolored and deformed, you have no idea whether this is just something that occasionally happens and is normal, or if it represents a severe or dangerous defect in the manufacturing process. Maybe some pesticide leaked into the food? Maybe some industrial mixer screwed up the alchemical balance of the pureed corn that goes into your Dorito? Who knows? Better safe than sorry and spewing from two ends at once, and you reach for something else instead. But the lumpy potato you buy from Farmer Myles? "Oh, that one had to grow around a rock. Just slice off that eye there and you're good to go!" Anything that's left over? Compost and fed to the pigs. Or, you know, we could keep on putting it in the dumpsters. Anos posted:Why do you want to go back? Partly because the consequences of an increase of five billion people in sixty years is destroying the planet. If we manage to survive that I'd rather not repeat the same mistake. There's that rhetorical trick, again. "You want to go back to being mud-encrusted and starving?!" It's {current year}, we've learned a shitload about farming techniques and technologies that we can apply to local and smaller farms. There has been significant improvement and education. It's not a "going back", it's "fixing and improving what we're doing." The system does work, yes. Precariously. It is not a stable system. Running out of fossil fuels will shatter this system. A potential collapse of globalism will utterly devastate this system. Climate change and especially the ensuing political chaos will completely mutilate the remnants of this system. If population centers at least have a network of nearby farms (of large and small size) that they can fall back on, instead of being utterly and completely reliant on shipping food across the Pacific from California, then any potential loss of human life will be mitigated to significant amounts. Stability aside for now. We have only a vague idea what all these antibiotics being poured into our meat is doing to us (and to our water supply). We do know that antibiotic resistance is increasing at scary amounts, though! We're experiencing the aftermath of injecting corn into every part of our food process, and the aftermath is an overlarge, fleshy, and wheezing population. China began importing Western food and Western practices; an obesity crisis is growing in China. These antibiotics and all the parts of the corn kernel are specifically because of our factory farming practices.
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Jun 11, 2016 00:22
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Consumer oriented waste is not the only type of waste. It's like you don't read a loving thing anyone writes. Eliminating food waste is not sufficient for solving hunger http://www.wri.org/blog/2013/12/global-food-challenge-explained-18-graphics 
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Jun 11, 2016 00:53
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Does anyone else find it weird that Tuxedo Gin has described large scale farming as "raping" like a dozen times in less than two pages?
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Jun 11, 2016 01:55
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ghetto wormhole posted:Does anyone else find it weird that Tuxedo Gin has described large scale farming as "raping" like a dozen times in less than two pages? I'm still enjoying their condemning anyone in the Middle East for living in places not conducive to farming. And appeals to 'Organic'
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Jun 11, 2016 02:06
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Sorry, my thesaurus is packed away. I can assure you I don't use it in the gamer sense of "You got raped", but instead according to the actual dictionary definition of "to despoil". Sorry if I offended your sensibilities with my legitimate use of a word according to the primary M-W definition of that word.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:07
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CommieGIR posted:I'm still enjoying their condemning anyone in the Middle East for living in places not conducive to farming. You're illiterate, right? Cause nobody has loving said that. But, continue to take pieces of our arguments out of context while ignoring the larger argument in order to prove your point which you refuse to back up with any facts.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:09
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Nobody is saying all-local. Yeah, because it's really loving expensive.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:13
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Tuxedo Gin posted:You're illiterate, right? Cause nobody has loving said that. But, continue to take pieces of our arguments out of context while ignoring the larger argument in order to prove your point which you refuse to back up with any facts. OP was citing a loving farmer appealing to 'faith' as a guide for his farming practices. And again, both you and him DID say that, apparently, people in inhospitable places deserve lack of access to exported food because 'They shouldn't be living there'. As if they have some loving choice. But yeah, I'm taking it out of context.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:15
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computer parts posted:Yeah, because it's really loving expensive. If you read some of the articles I cited, you might notice that it is not. If you buy in season fruit and veg from a farmer's market it will typically be less expensive than supermarket prices. Yeah, they aren't doing the same volume, but they also don't have nearly as much middleman overhead and transportation costs. CommieGIR posted:OP was citing a loving farmer appealing to 'faith' as a guide for his farming practices. We never said they deserve lack of access. We said something should probably be done to ween them off of exported foods. If that means we have some desert mega ghost cities in 100 years, gently caress it. It's a pipe dream, but so is the argument that we're feeding the world - we demonstrably are not. So, yes, you are taking it out of context. We've both said multiple times that our point is that the current system is unsustainable, and doubling down to expand it is not the solution. In a perfect world, people would have freedom to move out of the deserts and populate areas that can sustain them. But, keep ranting on about how we're calling for the deaths of billions because we want to completely eliminate industrial agriculture. If you actually read either of our posts you'd see that we specifically said that is not what we are talking about.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:30
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