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Tuxedo Gin posted: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. Well from my personal experience there usually is a significant price difference (especially once you move to things like meats, eggs and cheeses). But even if we grant you that, the fact that they're not able to produce as much volume means that prices will rise significantly if people actually start switching over to local consumption. computer parts fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 02:32
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Local farming vs industrial agriculture in New England:
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Jun 11, 2016 02:34
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computer parts posted:Well from my personal experience there usually is a significant price difference (especially once you move to things like meats, eggs and cheeses). Of course meats and cheese are more expensive. Buy those at the supermarkets. Livestock is terrible for the environment and you shouldn't encourage local livestock operations. Eggs are not nearly as bad, and I'm surprised you find them more expensive at markets. They're much cheaper here. Same with honey and most in season fruits and veg.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:42
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Of course meats and cheese are more expensive. Buy those at the supermarkets. Livestock is terrible for the environment and you shouldn't encourage local livestock operations. But even if we grant you that, the fact that they're not able to produce as much volume means that prices will rise significantly if people actually start switching over to local consumption.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:46
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computer parts posted:But even if we grant you that, the fact that they're not able to produce as much volume means that prices will rise significantly if people actually start switching over to local consumption. Read the thread. Switch when it makes sense, don't when it doesn't. Most people don't even consider it, which is the problem. Buy most of your produce from local markets. The price won't go up too high or people will stop buying it. We're not saying eliminate supermarkets and industrial agriculture - but use them to supplement what is produced locally.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:51
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Read the thread. Switch when it makes sense, don't when it doesn't. Most people don't even consider it, which is the problem. Buy most of your produce from local markets. The price won't go up too high or people will stop buying it. We're not saying eliminate supermarkets and industrial agriculture - but use them to supplement what is produced locally. That's the point. Local produce is very sensitive to demand shifts because it has very low volume. The net result is going to be that maybe a few more people will buy local, and most people will still buy what they've always bought.
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Jun 11, 2016 02:58
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computer parts posted:That's the point. Local produce is very sensitive to demand shifts because it has very low volume. The net result is going to be that maybe a few more people will buy local, and most people will still buy what they've always bought. Which is why we should encourage more local farms, and we should encourage more people to buy from them. That's the main point of the argument. People need to change the way they think about food and the way they interact with food production. The current system is environmentally unsustainable and economically wasteful.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:05
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Which is why we should encourage more local farms, and we should encourage more people to buy from them. Local farms are even more environmentally unsustainable and economically wasteful. They objectively use up more resources.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:07
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computer parts posted:Local farms are even more environmentally unsustainable and economically wasteful. They objectively use up more resources. Read the thread. I've already posted sources that dispute that claim. Please post some that support it. This parallels the discussion in the CA Politics thread. Drive up I-5 and see farms spraying water up into the air and on the ground in 90+ degree weather. Much of that water is lost to evaporation. My farm, and all the neighbors I've seen, have irrigation systems on our small farms so we aren't just spraying everywhere. We also water during the times of day that minimize evaporation. Most people who are running small farming operations in this day and age, and working local markets, in opposition to the large industrial agribusinesses, want to make a living sustainably. They are far more likely to invest in ecologically responsible methods, even if that hurts the bottom line. The large agribusinesses are absolutely not willing to take a hit in profit unless they are forced to by regulation. Shareholders are king. e: The exception, as I've said, is livestock. You don't want local livestock operations. They are terrible for the environment. Tuxedo Gin fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Jun 11, 2016 |
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Jun 11, 2016 03:13
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Read the thread. I've already posted sources that dispute that claim. Please post some that support it. Your sources do not dispute it.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:17
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computer parts posted:Your sources do not dispute it. I've already told him that, he raged.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:21
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computer parts posted:Your sources do not dispute it. Well I'm sorry about your reading comprehension skills. The Columbia article I posted on the last page discusses it. As I did in my own post from my own experience being a local farmer and being surrounded by small local farms. Small farms are more likely to adopt practices that limit negative environmental impacts. We use less water and spray less chemicals. Our produce has a smaller carbon footprint than large agribusinesses.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:23
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CommieGIR posted:I've already told him that, he raged. No you didn't. You handwaved and said it was irrelevant because oil and coal are more damaging than industrial farming. And continued to refuse to post sources that support your argument.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:25
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Well I'm sorry about your reading comprehension skills. The Columbia article I posted on the last page discusses it. Yeah and it concluded "you'd do better to just go Vegetarian". 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). Note the use of "could" and "at best".
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Jun 11, 2016 03:26
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Well I'm sorry about your reading comprehension skills. The Columbia article I posted on the last page discusses it. As I did in my own post from my own experience being a local farmer and being surrounded by small local farms. Their data supports large farming. No, you don't produce a smaller carbon footprint. You're own sources highlighted as much. Mass transportation and packaging of product REDUCES the footprint because a single vehicle is used to transport it to market versus the mass collection of MULTIPLE people going to the farmers market to acquire it. And your anecdotes don't count. Tuxedo Gin posted:No you didn't. You handwaved and said it was irrelevant because oil and coal are more damaging than industrial farming. Your own sources support our argument and you're now appealing to anecdotes to support your claims. Cmon now
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Jun 11, 2016 03:27
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computer parts posted:Yeah and it concluded "you'd do better to just go Vegetarian". 4-5% is not insignificant, especially because that is just greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn't consider water use, chemical use, and excessive need for fertilizer due to monoculture practices. You guys are hilarious. You find one little point, pull it out of context of the entire argument, and try to argue that your (unsupported) claims completely destroy the argument. Post some facts that unrestrained industrial agriculture is awesome for the environment and local economies and I will shut up.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:29
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Tuxedo Gin posted:4-5% is not insignificant, especially because that is just greenhouse gas emissions. It doesn't consider water use, chemical use, and excessive need for fertilizer due to monoculture practices. And that's literally the best case scenario they could've constructed, and they still concluded with "but if you just ate a little more chicken instead, it would've saved a ton more greenhouse gas emissions".
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Jun 11, 2016 03:30
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CommieGIR posted:Their data supports large farming. No, you don't produce a smaller carbon footprint. You're own sources highlighted as much. You can't read. It says that even despite the savings by mass collection, local production results in a 4-5% decrease in carbon emissions. But hey, keep not reading and railing on without posting facts to support your claims. You've not posted anything except your opinion.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:32
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Read the thread. I've already posted sources that dispute that claim. Please post some that support it. You're making dumb distinctions that don't have to do with big farm vs small farm. The idea that small farms won't waste water is a laughable anecdote. And if they don't have the incentive to be profitable (another silly claim) they won't have the incentive to be efficient with resources like water or land either. The dumbest sprinklers I've seen are private houses watering their driveway because on a small scale that kind of waste is a negligible expense. The problem is that you're not accounting for all the costs of local farms. Your small farm is efficient if you take for granted that you own X acres of cleared land. If that's a given, then its great you have a bunch of apple trees or whatever instead of a pruned lawn. But when people don't farm forests actually return. As I alluded to in the picture above in New England it's actually a remarkable transformation. Roughly 40% of land has re-grown forests after being previously clearcut. This is among the visible direct benefits of modern industrial scale farming.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:33
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Eating a chicken sandwich instead of a hamburger saves more greenhouse emissions than switching your entire diet to local food.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:33
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I'm done engaging. No wonder the OP fled. You won, but not by proving your point. You won by endlessly arguing your opinion with no support other than more of your opinions.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:34
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Tuxedo Gin posted:You can't read. It says that even despite the savings by mass collection, local production results in a 4-5% decrease in carbon emissions. Let's see: The carbon footprint of a single large farm producing mass amounts of GMO product (which use LESS pesticides and herbicides and can use less water, and require less tractors) or hundreds of small farms, each following 'Organic' principles using far more toxic herbicides and pesticides and requiring more water, not to mention the larger impact of each farm having its own set of tractors and transportation. Yeah, 4-5% is insignificant because you are asking to scale up on thousands of small farms. I sincerely doubt that 5% is going to stand up to expanding your scenario, I'm willing to bet it would wipe out any carbon gains. Tuxedo Gin posted:I'm done engaging. No wonder the OP fled. The OP was citing a Bible bashing redneck that was using faith to guide his God granted principles of farming. Holy poo poo.
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Jun 11, 2016 03:34
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Tuxedo Gin posted:I'm done engaging. No wonder the OP fled. I'm just using the factually sourced articles you posted. 
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Jun 11, 2016 03:35
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ITT: Small-town California farmer's market operator goes apeshit over marginal waste of fresh produce
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Jun 11, 2016 04:26
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Tuxedo Gin posted:I'm done engaging. No wonder the OP fled. I'll recognize that you make some valid points. It would be better to not grow cash crops for export. It is bad and a result of bad policies. However, industrial agriculture is incidental to those policies and it remains a good and useful way to grow subsistence crops. People sourcing local food is good – like eating less meat or driving less or not running your AC. Go for it. Beyond that your message is confusing. People should ”de-urbanize”. But cities are incredibly efficient so you should be an advocate for more and denser cities. People should stop living in Nevada or Saudi Arabia. But living on a small farm where you have to drive everywhere is the tops. It's incoherent. If you want us to care about this in particular you have to demonstrate a greater benefit than a 5% reduction because any number of behavioral changes can have a greater impact - without up-ending the entire agricultural system with all the risks that entails while de-populating countries, regions and cities through some unspecified set of policies.
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Jun 11, 2016 10:58
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I can't claim to speak for the OP, but I think a reasonable interpretation of his arguments without the bluster might go something like this: Currently, our system is deliberately weighted in favour of large-scale industrial farming, without regard for local faming in any capacity, through subsidies, tarrifs, price fixing, etc. of certain crops. While to some degree industrial farming is necessary given the populations we need to support and the particulars of where they live, we've distorted the market in such a way that some practices that have obviously negative externalities make sense (growing water-intensive crops in drought regions, transporting vegetables capable of being produced locally over huge distances, growing more corn than anyone knows what to do with, to the point that literally burning it for fuel is cost-effective). One solution to this is to shift where we apply incentives to favour practices that have less negative externalities, such as preferring local farms, sustainable practices, etc., without necessarily banning one or another. We just move the thumb we're currently putting on the "industrial ag" part of the scale and shift it to the "small, local farm" part of the scale. It makes more sense - if a big part of the argument is that industrial ag has large negative externalities that aren't accounted for when we think of how efficient they are, it seems appropriate to either tax for these externalities or subsidize those who can avoid them. This may have an effect on some regions - fresh produce might be more expensive in desert regions, and produce would probably go back to being more seasonal than it is today. Most likely, you could still get whatever you want, it's just that you'd have to pay for it if you want strawberries in February. If we're talking about North America though, there's very few places that food can absolutely not be grown, and subsidies can be tweaked to ensure that staples and basic produce is always cost effective. But yeah, the "won't somebody think of the poors" argument doesn't hold water when you're talking about the ability to have literally whatever fruit or vegetable you want at any time for the same price.
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Jun 11, 2016 12:30
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asdf32 posted:Local farming vs industrial agriculture in New England: huh?
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Jun 11, 2016 17:08
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enki42 posted:we've distorted the market in such a way that some practices that have obviously negative externalities make sense (transporting vegetables capable of being produced locally over huge distances,). People massively overestimate the costs of transportation. Even with carbon externalities factored in, it still might be legitimately less wasteful to ship something in from another region.
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Jun 11, 2016 17:11
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asdf32 posted:This is among the visible direct benefits of modern industrial scale farming. Visible, but what is the direct benefit? Farm lands require forests as well. Places that demolished forests are turning into deserts, so I'm not sure what is supposed to be so great about the picture you posted. If you want to argue visible benefits of small scale vs only industrial, what of pig farms and their massive sewage ponds?  North Carolina has serious, crippling problems every few years when heavy rains or hurricanes pass through, and pig poo poo covers the land for miles and miles. The smells are bad enough to make people faint and will be a prime location for spreading the next superflu when an anti-biotic resistant disease appears in one of these giant pig farms.
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Jun 11, 2016 17:15
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Minrad posted:Visible, but what is the direct benefit? Farm lands require forests as well. Places that demolished forests are turning into deserts, so I'm not sure what is supposed to be so great about the picture you posted. No actually forests and farming don't go that well together. Hence the mass scale reforestation of a large part of the us east coast largely due to the decline in 'local' farming. Concentrated industry concentrates waste. That's a given. It's also not a bad thing if the result is less systemic waste overall. Lot's of people think cities are more wasteful than rural living for the same reasons and they're wrong.
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Jun 11, 2016 23:11
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So going by Tuxedo Gin's own posts in the OP, where he lives it takes seven people to manage 120 trees. That is goddamn ridiculous.
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Jun 11, 2016 23:51
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Minrad posted:Visible, but what is the direct benefit? Farm lands require forests as well. Places that demolished forests are turning into deserts, so I'm not sure what is supposed to be so great about the picture you posted. you'd think someone would try and find a way to use that as a resource.
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Jun 11, 2016 23:54
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Tuxedo Gin posted: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? You forgot raisins. My motherland is known for its ability to fill grapes with water just to dry them out
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Jun 12, 2016 00:48
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asdf32 posted:Concentrated industry concentrates waste. That's a given. It's also not a bad thing if the result is less systemic waste overall. I thought it was that in small-scale farming, the animal waste goes back into the land
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Jun 12, 2016 01:01
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Grognan posted:you'd think someone would try and find a way to use that as a resource.
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Jun 12, 2016 03:10
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Why is the discussion of subsidies limited to industrial farms. Where I live small farmers are entitled to subsidies just as much as large farms. And it is generally recognised here that although small and part-time farmers help maintain rural economies, they limit efficiency and hinder long term development. Though it's politically difficult to say that small farmers should be bought out and replaced by larger organisations.
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Jun 12, 2016 18:35
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I live in a well developed farming nation (Denmark), and it's my clear impression that organic tastes better and doesn't contain herbicides that are toxic to humans - but itt a lot of respected posters claim the label is bullshit? Am I being a dumb, or is organic just not regulated in the United States?
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Jun 13, 2016 13:55
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Tias posted:I live in a well developed farming nation (Denmark), and it's my clear impression that organic tastes better and doesn't contain herbicides that are toxic to humans - but itt a lot of respected posters claim the label is bullshit? Most certified and regulated Organic pesticides and herbicides are MORE toxic: quote:Just last year, nearly half of the pesticides that are currently approved for use by organic farmers in Europe failed to pass the European Union's safety evaluation that is required by law 5. Among the chemicals failing the test was rotenone, as it had yet to be banned in Europe. Furthermore, just over 1% of organic foodstuffs produced in 2007 and tested by the European Food Safety Authority were found to contain pesticide levels above the legal maximum levels - and these are of pesticides that are not organic 6. Similarly, when Consumer Reports purchased a thousand pounds of tomatoes, peaches, green bell peppers, and apples in five cities and tested them for more than 300 synthetic pesticides, they found traces of them in 25% of the organically-labeled foods, but between all of the organic and non-organic foods tested, only one sample of each exceeded the federal limits8. quote:Yet organic proponents refuse to even give GMOs a chance, even to the point of hypocrisy. For example, organic farmers apply Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin (a small insecticidal protein from soil bacteria) unabashedly across their crops every year, as they have for decades. It's one of the most widely used organic pesticides by organic farmers. Yet when genetic engineering is used to place the gene encoding the Bt toxin into a plant's genome, the resulting GM plants are vilified by the very people willing to liberally spray the exact same toxin that the gene encodes for over the exact same species of plant. Ecologically, the GMO is a far better solution, as it reduces the amount of toxin being used and thus leeching into the surrounding landscape and waterways. Other GMOs have similar goals, like making food plants flood-tolerant so occasional flooding can replace herbicide use as a means of killing weeds. If the goal is protect the environment, why not incorporate the newest technologies which help us do so? http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...al-agriculture/ https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4166 CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jun 13, 2016 |
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Jun 13, 2016 15:26
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Anecdotally (in the U.S.), I've noticed that organic Fuji apples taste better. Nothing stands out to me about the rest. I usually just buy the first of whatever I need that I see at the store.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:09
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Stinky_Pete posted:Anecdotally (in the U.S.), I've noticed that organic Fuji apples taste better. Nothing stands out to me about the rest. I usually just buy the first of whatever I need that I see at the store. No argument on taste, its hard to objectively measure taste.
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Jun 13, 2016 16:19
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