Small scale Ag is the opposite of Factory Farming. The latter relies on economies of scale and a long supply chain. The former has a shorter supply chain and tries to grow on demand.
Factory farming grows commodities, not food. It exploits labor, soil and destroys habitat. It keeps farmers in debt and they have to keep running faster to stay in the same place.
While more can be grown in the same acre and with the same water(presumably), it includes inputs like pesticides, herbicides and large machinery. It concentrates power in a few hands. It reduces plant varieties and is tied to speculative markets. It requires subsidies and keeps farmers on knife’s edge.
Maybe the spoon fed notion of abundance that comes from the lab and through chemical means..through mining and reliance on fossil fuels...through long supply chains, labour exploitation, subsidies and massive carbon foot print is a fallacy. Might it be that you are mistaken? Please reconsider your POV.
You aren’t making a very clear argument. I think what you are arguing is that modern agriculture does not capture its externalities so any supposed productivity improvements are not as valuable as they seem on the surface.
I’m sympathetic to that argument but if that is your stance you need to provide some evidence towards it. Otherwise you are fighting the very real benefit of the caloric argument for modern agriculture with nothing but buzzwords.
Help me provide evidence. I honestly don’t know where to start.
Bayer fell 40% today as verdicts come rolling against Monsanto’s glyphosate and round up. How do you think large scale factory farming Ag will survive without chemical warfare on soil? You can’t sustain that level of hubris without chemical intervention..which we now know is cancer causing and deadly to environment. And. It’s just the tip of the ice berg...
What does all this produce? Corn and soy that goes to feed anyways? Is calorific surplus the same as nutrient availability in diets? HFCS is a by product of corn which is inedible for humans but goes to feed hogs. Which in turn brings about an avalanche of pig poop which has run offs and poisons our water.
I already know that I am digressing. Where do I even begin? Ask me questions. I am full of answers. I don’t know if I can satisfy with ‘evidence’. Ymmv.
Monsanto seems to have made people believe that there are two choices: cancer or starvation. Entire Ag complex is designed around round up ready crops, gmo seeds, secondary food dependent on the primary fodder aka ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’, as it were...an Ag system that is based on go big or perish. Economics state that when you go big, food is cheap. But isn’t there a cost to it? What good is a 500k tractor to a farmer growing on 1-3 hectares(as it is in most of the world)? We are addicted to cheap food. It’s cheap because of economies of scale and certain unpleasant consequences. It’s quantity over quality.
Glyphosate is almost certainly not a human carcinogen, but, more importantly, glyphosate isn't the topic of this thread. Ag tech is: things like sensor-based control of computer-configurable combine harvesters. These devices generally increase yields for a given input of water, soil, and energy. So, if you're going to begin somewhere, please begin by explaining how those increased yields are a bad thing.
Note that I was specific to crop farming; I chose my words carefully. I'm not interested in debating CAFO meat here; it's not the topic of the thread.
The topic of this thread is economies of scale wet scale of farming. And so yes, we should talk about everything!! Including CAFO meat. Where do you think all the GMO corn and soy goes? As does storable commodity crops. You can’t grow lettuce and eggplants on 2000 acre farms using fancy JD tractors. How will perishables that can be harvested every 60 days be picked and stored and transported and sold?
So yea..large scale Ag is geared towards commodity crops that go to feed livestock and all the sundry by products like ethanol and HFCS etc.
Those ‘increased yields’ aren’t even human edible. It only increases meat and factory farmed meat that taints our water and has a massive carbon foot print and methane. So I am asking you..what are YOU talking about when you think of scale?
A diversified food farm can net anywhere between 1000-40000 bucks. Commodity is anywhere between 45-120 dollars(corn-sugar beets). Why do you think JD makes air conditioned tractors for commodity that nets $50 and not for higher value vegetables? Because you can spray broadacre pesticide for mono crops. Pollinator dependent food cannot abide by chemicals that kill the pollinators.
I don’t know what ‘almost certainly not’ carcinogenic means but I will concur and call it glyphosate based products that are known to cause cancer.
Agtech doesn’t create anything for food crops. Almost always for commodity crops that can be 1. Stored 2. A single one time harvest 3. Traded at the stock market. It is a data play and a speculative industry. It’s neither about Ag nor about Tech. When we can trade spinach on Wall Street, Agtech will create scale appropriate tech.
I am not sure you understand the scope and breadth of Ag. Large scale Ag will falter because it’s not sustainable. At which point, only small scale Ag will feed the world, but our world is over populated. So we need Agtech for small scale farms and for that tech to be born, people must pay the true cost of growing food.
Factory farming grows commodities, not food. It exploits labor, soil and destroys habitat. It keeps farmers in debt and they have to keep running faster to stay in the same place.
While more can be grown in the same acre and with the same water(presumably), it includes inputs like pesticides, herbicides and large machinery. It concentrates power in a few hands. It reduces plant varieties and is tied to speculative markets. It requires subsidies and keeps farmers on knife’s edge.
Maybe the spoon fed notion of abundance that comes from the lab and through chemical means..through mining and reliance on fossil fuels...through long supply chains, labour exploitation, subsidies and massive carbon foot print is a fallacy. Might it be that you are mistaken? Please reconsider your POV.