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Tuxedo Gin posted:The real argument here is industrial global ag vs. local community centered ag. What exactly does that entail - is it less mechanized and what farm size qualifies as non-industrial? Brannock posted:I also want to suggest that things being more expensive is not inherently or necessarily bad. Higher food prices are only a problem when people cannot afford them, which is a problem stemming in large part from our system that actively attempts to keep the poor poor. There is an enormous amount of waste in the system, as well as an enormous amount of government subsidization for farming and agriculture. Paying hypothetically $2.50 for your pound of green beans instead of $2.00 is not going to break the bank. Producing 20% fewer green beans, especially when we're already wasting a colossal amount of food, is not going to destroy the system. We might even be better off for it, if these green beans are coming from people we know and interact with, coming from farms that aren't a quarter of the planet away, and are grown in-season when the weather and the soil is appropriate for it. If we can pay slightly more for food, especially the sort of food that employs more people, is grown more conscientiously, is (arguably) of higher quality and (unarguably) of greater variety, then that seems better all around, right? It's a similar (but not identical) principle of having a $15 minimum wage. The US exports a lot of food so higher food prices have effects beyond the borders of the US. Paying 50 cents more for a pound of beans may or may not be manageable for the poor in the US but more likely than not it won't be for the poor that rely on US exports. When biofuels became a thing in the 2000s food prices spiked across the world. In Europe and the US people managed but there were shortages and ultimately political instability in other places. As far as I can tell implementing reforms that reduce production by 20% will have the same effect.
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Jun 10, 2016 19:09
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Brannock posted:Exporting food is on its face a good thing, but ends up stifling agricultural and economic growth in other countries. Here's another, and one more. Regions should be nutritionally self-sufficient. When artificial political and economic barriers interfere, we get serious market imbalances, unnecessary food shortages, and that are enormously wasteful like most of the American desert regions that inexplicably have large populations and siphon off loads of water and resources. Not all regions can be self-sufficient. Should they ideally be? Sure. But they aren't and they can't be. We can take Saudi Arabia as the worst example. I guess they could theoretically desalinate enough water to grow enough food but it's not obvious that it would require less energy than importing it. Moreover, climate change will shift which areas are more productive, potentially making populous and currently self-sufficient countries rely on imports in the future. We need a global food network to deal with the fact that people do not naturally distribute themselves according to agricultural output and short or long term changes thereof. Tuxedo Gin posted:I don't think there would be any size restrictions. It's more about feeding your local market and not a global one. My family has a tiny farm in rural San Diego county. We sell within the county. Between sales at markets and trading with other small local farms (We have extra eggs, persimmons, and honey - we trade for things that are in season but we don't grow), we have very little food waste. What produce is wasted is composted and used to fertilize our fields and orchards. Ok, but what do you do if your crop fails? As in, all communities are now self-sufficient and there's very little food waste but this year floods destroyed a whole lotta farmland. You can't just say you'll import it from somewhere else because that system doesn't exist anymore and besides they have to feed their own local communities. Without over-production or a food network you have no hedge against it. There's a reason developed countries rarely experience famines today and it's not self-sufficiency. The people who live in the suburbs and the people who struggle to afford food are very often two different groups. Suburbanites don't grow food because they can afford not to and those that can't afford food also can't afford the land to grow it on. Tuxedo Gin posted:You can make the argument that people in other countries will die from a 50 cent increase in green beans, but the whole point of the local farming argument is that we should be using land to feed our local community. Millions across America don't get enough food to eat. Lots of kids get one meal a day: school provided lunch. Industrial ag isn't working for anyone but big business and middle class - and it isn't even better for the middle class, it just works for them. But it does kinda work - there's enough food and it's here reliably without the famines of the past. People may struggle to afford it but that's a systemic, political problem unrelated to farming practices and it won't be solved by changing how we grow food and making food more expensive. If you solve poverty then I guess we could grow food in a different way but surely we should first ensure that people can afford it before we make those changes.
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Jun 10, 2016 20:41
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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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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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tsa posted:This is ATOMS nonsense. Corporations run reactors safely throughout the world and if 'corner cutting' was an issue we'd see meltdowns yearly in China. Not all corporations are Enron but some are and you only need one for a disaster. Nuclear power is subject to a lot of fear-mongering and hyperbole but no matter how you slice it, it's not without risk. Nuclear is great if you have the expertise and institutions to regulate it. I'm not particularly interested in seeing it in operation without those things.
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Jun 15, 2016 21:31
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