> This has nothing to do with advancing knowledge and specialization, and in fact reducing pesticide usage is only going to be enabled through greater advancement of our ag tech.
Or by restructuring how land is used. When you have miles upon miles of corn fields, it's a fucking buffet for corn pests. In contrast, land that has a great variety of usages - corn, wheat, grass for making hay, marijuana, rice, potatoes, berries, tomatoes - makes it difficult for pests to explosively sweep over entire swaths of land and leaving nothing but total destruction in its wake. Our ancestors knew this and changed sequentially what seeds they sowed, they even let land sit idle for a season or two so it could recuperate nutrients. All of this is extensively documented, a lot of it has actual scientific backing, it just takes a bit more effort so it isn't worth it under capitalism.
Also, California should stop growing fucking alfalfa only for the Saudis to feed cows with it. That is a waste of water and land that could both be used for something more productive than blood money from oil returning home. And they're not the only ones doing atrocious wastes of all kind of valuable resources.
> Also, if you have some magical way of doing this, I'm all ears, it would be great, but wishful thinking is no substitute for actual on the ground solutions that are working.
Well... France for example forces supermarkets to provide leftover food instead of trashing it. That led to a massive increase in food that ended up in people's mouths via food banks, over 10.000 tonnes a year in fact[1], additionally it creates a negative incentive against overstocking.
Restaurants can be forced to limit portion sizes (which might also have side effects to improve public health, aka obesity epidemic).
Stores could be forced to do regular maintenance on their cooler systems to reduce the amount of food lost there.
Students could get education on how to cook, how to check if food is still edible and other food aspects. It's not like their parents are teaching them...
tl;dr: stopping food waste can be tackled on so many levels and, given 50% food waste ratios, even slashing half of that is equal to provide 25% more food to the world's population.
> California should stop growing fucking alfalfa only for the Saudis to feed cows with it.
Dairy is like the auto industry: every state seems to think it needs to have its own protected domestic industry, but it's far from a strategic industry when every nation ends up with excess capacity.
Canada, an excellent environment for dairy production, kneecaps itself in this industry. Could be an export juggernaut, but instead, NZ is the biggest dairy product exporter. 20th dairy producer in the world despite being a top6 barley/oat/wheat/hay producer.
You can’t reasonably expect farming families to be able to afford all the specialized equipment to be able to willy-nilly change the crops they grow and large corporations are just going to specialize based on economy of scale.
When all you need is a water buffalo and a shitton of labor you can diversify crops all you want but if you have to compete in a low-margin mechanized market you do whatever it takes to keep the farm going even if that means diversity gets thrown out the window in favor of cash crops.
Correct. Rubber meeting the road comment here. This is the reality of most farms in America. Possibilities are not "endless" for revolutionizing farm practices, they must be profitable and margins are tight.
Or by restructuring how land is used. When you have miles upon miles of corn fields, it's a fucking buffet for corn pests. In contrast, land that has a great variety of usages - corn, wheat, grass for making hay, marijuana, rice, potatoes, berries, tomatoes - makes it difficult for pests to explosively sweep over entire swaths of land and leaving nothing but total destruction in its wake. Our ancestors knew this and changed sequentially what seeds they sowed, they even let land sit idle for a season or two so it could recuperate nutrients. All of this is extensively documented, a lot of it has actual scientific backing, it just takes a bit more effort so it isn't worth it under capitalism.
Also, California should stop growing fucking alfalfa only for the Saudis to feed cows with it. That is a waste of water and land that could both be used for something more productive than blood money from oil returning home. And they're not the only ones doing atrocious wastes of all kind of valuable resources.
> Also, if you have some magical way of doing this, I'm all ears, it would be great, but wishful thinking is no substitute for actual on the ground solutions that are working.
Well... France for example forces supermarkets to provide leftover food instead of trashing it. That led to a massive increase in food that ended up in people's mouths via food banks, over 10.000 tonnes a year in fact[1], additionally it creates a negative incentive against overstocking.
Restaurants can be forced to limit portion sizes (which might also have side effects to improve public health, aka obesity epidemic).
Stores could be forced to do regular maintenance on their cooler systems to reduce the amount of food lost there.
Students could get education on how to cook, how to check if food is still edible and other food aspects. It's not like their parents are teaching them...
tl;dr: stopping food waste can be tackled on so many levels and, given 50% food waste ratios, even slashing half of that is equal to provide 25% more food to the world's population.
[1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/lebensmittel-verschwe...