[HN Gopher] Farmland practices are driving bird population decli...
___________________________________________________________________
Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across
Europe
Author : tfourb
Score : 279 points
Date : 2023-05-16 08:02 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Probably the most exciting future technology is precision
| fermentation.
|
| We use massive amounts of land to grow monocultures because
| that's the cheapest way to produce food.
|
| We're in a conundrum: more expensive food would cause mass
| suffering. OTOH, our current food production methods are
| destructive, and cause mass suffering.
|
| A cheaper method to produce food that uses a lot less land and
| resources would be a game changer.
|
| Enter precision fermentation:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/24/green-...
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| If it's cheaper for more nutritious food, and every other
| aspect remains the same or better, then you won't need to
| convince anyone, it'll sell itself.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I doubt there is anything which is more conservative and
| traditional than food. So even if its cheaper, more
| nutritious, better for the environment and tastes better, a
| lot of people will shun it and eat the same foods they've
| always eaten.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| So what?
|
| As along as it's not literally 100% of the population,
| which I highly doubt, there should be more then enough
| customers to get a foothold.
| kuschku wrote:
| This is why all those "don't have outdoor cats, they kill all the
| birds" stories annoy me. At best they're misguided, at worse
| they're intentionally misleading to hide the fact that pesticides
| and farming practices are actually at fault. (In Europe, on other
| continents the story may be different)
|
| Similar to the CO2 footprint, it's another way to individualize
| social issues and distract from large corporate sources of
| environmental destruction.
| winrid wrote:
| Yeah, my understanding is the poor regulation of the emissions
| controls on container ships is huge.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| We can't discount the effect of the increase in cat ownership
| and roaming:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kil...
|
| "A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to
| 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real
| figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011
| pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12
| million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze"
|
| The study didn't include animals that cats killed and abandoned
| in the wild, so it is likely higher still.
| kuschku wrote:
| Quoting your own linked article:
|
| The UK's largest bird charity, the Royal Society for the
| Protection of Birds (RSPB), is not particularly concerned
| about the impact of cats on the British mainland. Instead it
| focuses on what it says is driving UK bird declines: global
| warming, intensive agriculture and expanding towns and cities
| leading to habitat and food loss. "While we know that cats do
| kill large numbers of birds in UK gardens, there's no
| evidence this is affecting decline in the same way that these
| other issues are," said a spokesperson.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I agree that the environmental changes are affecting
| birdlife as well.
|
| But even taking the lower end of the estimate of the number
| killed by cats, 40 million birds each year is a felt loss.
| The RSPB may opine as they wish, but that's the data.
|
| Anecdotally, my neighbour's cat is known to bring home as
| many as three birds on some weeks. I've seen them stalk my
| bird table using the bushes as cover. Data + eyewitness
| observation makes a compelling case.
| kuschku wrote:
| If you read the article, they actually argue that the
| cats don't really have an effect because those 40 million
| birds are usually of species that aren't endangered and
| are usually birds that otherwise wouldn't have made it
| anyway.
|
| Though 40 million dead birds sounds like a lot, in
| regions where wildlife had millenia to adapt to cats'
| existence - in continental Europe cats have existed for
| tenthousands of years - it's not a significant issue.
|
| And it's sad that so much time and energy is wasted on
| this discussion when people are still spraying their own
| backyards with pesticides and destroying "weeds", which
| are actually necessary for insects, and as result birds,
| to thrive.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| > Since house cats are one of the biggest threats birds
| face in the wild--they kill somewhere between 1.3 and 4
| billion birds every year in the U.S.
|
| The Audubon society lists domestic outdooor cats as one of
| the biggest threats to birds.
|
| https://www.audubon.org/news/how-stop-cats-killing-birds
| kuschku wrote:
| We've got to be really careful with those numbers.
| There's a massive difference in the ecosystem between
| continents. While we've become used to flora and fauna
| from continental Europe being brought to the rest of the
| world, that doesn't make them native there.
|
| The issue in the report you linked isn't cats living
| outside, the issue here is european flora and fauna
| existing at all in the US, where it doesn't belong. This
| issue isn't limited to cats, it even includes things like
| different species of lawn grass being invasive in regions
| it doesn't belong.
| Veen wrote:
| Is this a U.S. thing? Where I live--a rural part of the UK--I
| don't think anyone thinks twice about letting their cats out.
| It's just what you do with cats.
| immibis wrote:
| It's an environmentally conscious person thing. Most people
| in most countries don't think twice about having cats or
| letting them out - even though they kill birds.
| mahogany wrote:
| But what are the environmental effects of harvesting &
| manufacturing the food for the cats that are kept indoors?
| This is always left out of the equation in these
| conversations. Cats have to eat _some_ animal to survive.
| To me, it seems bad for the environment to have cats as
| pets at all... (I have a cat)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Most pet food is created from primarily "waste" meat
| product from the human food supply chain is my
| understanding? Though that may be changing.
| kuschku wrote:
| European cats aren't native to northern america, and as
| result, they're quite an invasive species with significant
| harm to the ecosystem. But that's not just limited to cats,
| that issue applies even to different species of lawn grass.
|
| The other issue is destruction of ecosystem in the EU, where
| cats are native and primarily used as scapegoat.
|
| Both of these need entirely different solutions, but "don't
| let cats outside" is very oversimplified and just serves to
| divide people.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Precisely! The people reiterating that study also acts like it
| is valid all around the world, including places where cats are
| not invasive. For example in mainland and southern Europe the
| cat has been tamed since at least 1200 BC and the wild cat has
| been since the ice age. Birds in those areas have long since
| adapted, as evident by the wild cat which predominately hunts
| ground-dwelling mammals.
|
| It is of course a good argument to consider the study generally
| valid on e.g. the British isles and North America where the cat
| was more recently introduced into the fauna.
| msrenee wrote:
| Ok, don't have outdoor cats because they live short lives with
| high risk of dying painfully.
|
| They definitely do stalk feeders and add to the stressors
| already in place for bird species. More than one thing can
| contribute to the reduction of bird populations.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| This seems nuts to me. Keeping a cat in an apartment its
| entire life is psychological torture and almost all the
| indoor only cats I've ever met are neurotic.
|
| If you don't want to let your cat move freely, I suggest just
| not having one.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Entirely two different environments -- cats are a threat to
| birds in one of the oasis environments _outside_ of modern mass
| agriculture -- urban areas. More and more, cities are becoming
| a place where certain key species actually find _refuge_.
| Unleashing cats in that environment is cruel to both cats and
| birds.
|
| That, and if cats are our friends and we care about them, we
| should be sheltering _them_ from the hostilities of an outdoor
| environment. I have had enough cats I knew in the past die from
| injuries from cars, or diseases /injuries they acquired outside
| to feel that it's just best to keep ours inside. We live rural,
| on 6 acres, and she loves it outside, naturally, but so do
| birds we love. Would she be "happier" outside? Maybe. But
| considering all trade-offs, I'll keep her pampered inside, and
| let the birds nest on my deck.
| juujian wrote:
| If you are the author, and you are in this thread: those graphs
| are stunning. Would have never thought to superimpose graphs over
| maps. But you folks made it work, and it's not just a gimmick, it
| provides information in a helpful and intuitive fashion.
| mvdl wrote:
| Is there a reason windturbine effects on bird decline are not
| used in this study?
| atlantic wrote:
| This is anecdotal, but I see a lot of land that used to support
| birds and small animals and is now stripped of vegetation and
| covered in solar panels. Destroying habitats to save the planet
| is the order of the day, apparently.
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| This comment + the dovecote comment elsewhere makes me ponder
| whether solar will ever be part of crop rotation /
| intercropping / cover cropping.
|
| Mini nests/pigeonholes/etc could potentially be built
| into/under panels (though potential issues include predator
| access, + guano and other substances degrading equipment.)
|
| And/or solar panels could 'migrate' over time, plugging
| themselves into their nearest hub once they have moved
| themselves to a fallow / poor soil area. Fixed solar would
| always be more efficient, but perhaps migrating solar could one
| day have a niche position in soil science / ag, and allow solar
| to be position closer to cities.
|
| Anyway... all unlikely to be economical, I suppose.
| AbsoluteCabbage wrote:
| Is "farming to blame", or is farming being blamed to suit an
| agenda?
|
| Don't push ridiculous articles like this with zero factual
| evidence. What we put out to the world has real effects-
| especially dangerous rhetoric like this that incites the left
| side of the Bell curve into a frenzy.
| immibis wrote:
| The agenda is preventing the extinction of human life.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| Why should I care about animals that have no use for me?
|
| Stories about wolves, bears, and now birds and insects, seem to
| presume that I feel some automatic emotional connection to them,
| or that there's some self-evident moral argument why they need to
| kept alive. I won't deny that they have _some_ intrinsic value,
| but if there are competing interests and hidden costs, that value
| really needs to be put into perspective.
| Solvate8441 wrote:
| The consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse
| than the cost of keeping them around. That's what it boils down
| to. Knowing that, you just have to figure out if you think this
| is true for the things you value. You can try to figure this
| out yourself, or, if you think someone else could make a better
| judgement, see what they think. If the answer is "yes, perhaps
| the consequences of killing birds and insects could be worse
| than the cost of keeping them around for the things I value",
| then you should care.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Because birds and insects act as pollinators. Replicating
| natural, biological processes like that are difficult to
| replicate and most easily done by letting the natural process
| do its thing.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| You live in nature. You might not be able to draw a straight
| line from bears to your quality of life, but everything is
| connected and if the rest of the web collapses, you will go
| with it.
| nforgerit wrote:
| IIRC EUs farming regulations stem from 60s/70s and their only
| adaptations were intensification and market concentration. Some
| decade ago the sister of a small German farmer told me how EU
| laws were systematically pushing him out of the market forcing
| him to sell his ground to bigger competitors to avoid going
| bankrupt.
|
| You reap what you sow I guess
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am not sure EU is the culprit.
|
| Firstly, EU has some of the smallest average farm size in
| developed economies - below 50 hectares, USA is close to 500.
|
| Secondly, the concerns around machines dominate farming. For
| exanple many studies have shown effectiveness of multicripping
| - growing severage different crips together. This will never
| take off, because muticropping fields are unharvestable -
| harvesters are specialised for grains, potatoes, etc. While
| they are hacesting one, they would damage / destroy another.
|
| Machine have become much larger, more sophisticared and more
| expensive. So many farmers don't own all the machines, they
| rent them or pay someome to d perform a job on their fields.
|
| Lastly, if you eant a decent existance, you need to generate
| enough revenue from your farm. Farms below 50cha can hardly
| support a family with the revenue they generate.
|
| The only way to save small farms is for them to diversify
| income - I knew a few farmers that installed wind turbines,
| etc. However UK planning system makes it impossible to get
| permission for a win turbine. In the past 5 years there were
| like 2 permissions given for any time of wind turbine in all of
| UK
| megablast wrote:
| Farmers have always been making excuses why they failed.
| brvsft wrote:
| Did you mistake farmers for bankers?
| nforgerit wrote:
| No it's backed by some reports i've heard and read in the
| meantime. There's no excuse but bitter results of BigFarm
| corps lobbying and politicians who incentivize the wrong
| things.
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| It's neoliberalism 101. It's how it functions.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Dutch farmers are having their farms seized by globalists in
| their government _right now_.
|
| There's a lot of corruption in farming.
| myshpa wrote:
| We could immediately reduce the negative impacts of farming by
| 75%, just by switching to plant based diets.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
|
| The industrial farming practices / propaganda making us reliant
| on overuse of poisons in our food chains makes us sick, is
| poisoing/destroying nature, destroying soil microbiomes,
| biodiversity, waters and air.
|
| We have to find ways to farm without poisons, and teach farmers
| to use those methods - it won't be easy and it won't change with
| one law and it will take maybe decades, but the methods exists,
| it's possible and should be done.
| Balero wrote:
| The replacements for some of those poisons (large amounts of
| artificial fertilisers) are animal products. In a world without
| artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to produce
| fertiliser.
|
| The optimal for this would still be much less animal farming,
| and a massive shift in how and where it is done. But removing
| all animal products would be counter productive. (Perhaps this
| is what you meant by plant based though).
| myshpa wrote:
| > large amounts of artificial fertilisers
|
| Sure, but also pesti/herbicides.
|
| > without artificial fertiliser you need to have animals to
| produce fertiliser
|
| Or compost / nitrogen fixing / companion plants.
|
| > But removing all animal products would be counter
| productive
|
| There are people practicing it for decades pretty well
| without animal inputs.
|
| Syntropic agriculture (Ernst Gotsch), natural farming
| (Masanobu Fukuoka), veganic farming, permaculture,
| hydroponics, animal-free biodynamic farming, etc.
|
| It's not a necessity.
| asdff wrote:
| Europe is a double whammy then for bird populations. The first
| thing you notice traveling around many european cities is
| ostensibly there are no spay and neuter programs (or they must be
| totally ineffective) for the thousands of stray cats that clad
| each and every rooftop and loiter around every park and street.
| For some places like Istanbul the overabundance is a point of
| pride or a tourist attraction in its own right. It's hard to
| imagine there are any birds at all in these cities with the bulk
| of the calories in the environment seemingly being held at the
| small game predator level, which is sustained at a higher level
| than the available prey can even support thanks to stuff like
| restaurant dumpsters or people feeding the cute little killing
| machines directly.
| ciconia wrote:
| There are multiple factors causing the decline in bird
| population, but I'd like to focus on a single one: deforestation.
| Trees provide so many different functions for birds (as for other
| animals, and for humans too), both directly and indirectly:
| shelter, fruits, a cooling effect in summer, and most
| importantly, they act as an entire ecosystem for insects and
| caterpillars. You remove the tree, you remove the insects, and
| you remove caterpillars which are a staple food for baby birds.
|
| So yeah, deforestation + pesticides = less birds, and will lead
| to a desertification of Europe in more than one sense. But even
| in the desert you can find here and there an oasis, a place full
| of life where birdsong is just as vigorous as ever. There are
| still many places across Europe where this is happening, many
| oases (plural?) that teem with life, and bring happiness to the
| heart. In fact, this is not so difficult to do, just bring back
| the trees and the biodiversity, then the insects will return, and
| when the insects are there, birds will return.
|
| Build it and they will come.
|
| It is high time we change our agricultural practices from
| destructive to _regenerative_. The techniques are already well
| known, and pioneering work in this field of regenerative
| practices have been going on for decades already - from Yeomans,
| Molisson, and Holmgren in Australia to Fukuoka in Japan and
| Goetsch in Brasil, the knowledge is there.
|
| I live with my family on a small piece of land where we work to
| increase biodiversity and to reforest. Every year, birdsong gets
| louder and louder. I know it's possible and my garden is proof.
| Build it and they will come.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Europe has a lot more trees today than it had 100 years ago.
| have_faith wrote:
| What makes 100 years ago a good point of reference? as
| opposed to a date pre-industrial revolution maybe.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Because we didn't measure (count?) the number of birds
| then, and we've been noticing a decline in the last few
| decades.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Like siblings said : it's not a good benchmark, as forests
| were not exploited as much before.
|
| In fact, almost all forests are exploited in some way or
| another. Some recently protected primal old growth will take
| a few centuries to recover.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest
|
| "The world has 1.11 billion ha of primary forest
| remaining.[when?] Combined, three countries (Brazil, Canada,
| and Russia) host more than half (61 percent) of the world's
| primary forest. The area of primary forest has decreased by
| 81 million ha since 1990, but the rate of loss more than
| halved in 2010-2020 compared with the previous decade."
| ciconia wrote:
| I would say there's a difference between a fir Douglas
| plantation and a multi-species forest. The two are not
| ecologically equivalent. At least around where I live
| (department 71 in France), there are less and less forests
| and more and more tree plantations.
|
| I think it would be interesting to look at how much
| biodiverse forests we have now compared to 100 years ago. I
| might be proven wrong.
| tfourb wrote:
| From the abstract: "We find that agricultural intensification, in
| particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure
| for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate
| feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and
| temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover
| is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation
| with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature
| change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird
| populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on
| species' thermal preferences."
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Here forests and trees in general are all cut so the farmers
| can do farming. Considering the amount of land that is changing
| into a deserts (which negatively affects the farmers too), it's
| a bit strange they keep cutting forest cover instead of
| subsidising maintaining and replanting.
| immibis wrote:
| One is substantially cheaper than the other. That means more
| profit. And if you don't maximize profit, you are the weakest
| firm, goodbye.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| the-dude wrote:
| I moved to the country side, right between the farmers, about a
| year ago.
|
| It is teaming with life here: insects, birds and bats.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Nice singular data point
| the-dude wrote:
| Thanks, I agree. Very nice.
| tfourb wrote:
| There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse
| declines for insect populations, again mostly due to
| industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of
| chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The standard approach in the
| EU to work against this really worrying trend is to a) bring more
| and more land under some form of protection and remove it from
| agricultural production and b) increase the share of eco-farming,
| i.e. conventional farming without the chemistry. The problem:
| both approaches drastically reduce agricultural productivity. We
| really need a push towards regenerative agricultural practices
| (agroforestry, holistic grazing, etc.) that can deliver high
| yields while also improving CO2 sequestration and habitat
| creation.
| jgraham wrote:
| > There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse
| declines for insect populations, again mostly due to
| industrialized farming techniques and the widespread use of
| chemical fertilizers and pesticides
|
| Yes e.g [0]. Neonicitinoids in particular are basically nerve
| agents for insects that we wantonly spread all over their
| habitat, and which turn out to not remain localised on crops,
| but spread through runoff, via pollinators, etc. As you might
| imagine if someone were to spread sub-LD50 concentrations of
| novichok all over the human environment, the widespread use of
| these componds dramatically affects insect behaviour and
| therefore survival rates.
|
| > holistic grazing
|
| Unfortunately this in particular turns out to be unsupported by
| various studies that have been done to try to validate the
| claims (e.g. [1] for a popular article with some useful links).
|
| In general the debate between nature-integrated farming vs
| maximising yield in smaller areas is complex, and I don't think
| I know enough to summarise it in a HN comment. For example [2]
| claims that maximising yield, but in smaller areas, is a better
| overall strategy. But I suspect the outcomes depend on exactly
| which factors you include in the model (e.g. if you want high
| yield farms using artificial fertislisers to maintain that
| productivity, do you account for runoff into rivers that can
| then have a non-local environmental effect? Maybe studies do
| this but, not being an expert, it seems hard to model).
|
| In any case, a great deal of the land used for farming is given
| over to pasture, or the production of livestock feed. [3] has a
| map for the UK, showing that about half of the total land area
| is used for beef and lamb production alone, plus a similar area
| of land overseas. This compares to about 8% of the UK that
| forms the urban environment. So clearly there's plenty of scope
| for improvement here, but it depends on the will to change; an
| understanding that the world has value even when it's not
| farmed, and that we should stop subsidising, and therefore
| encouraging, high land use, high carbon, diets.
|
| [0] https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-
| ento-... [1] https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/04/allan-
| savorys-ted-t... [2] https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/landsparing
| [3] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-will-englands-national-
| food-s...
| biorach wrote:
| Refreshing to see a well researched comment, with appropriate
| citations that expresses well the complexity of the situation
| and the tradeoffs involved. This subject matter attracts a
| lot of cranks and simplistic non- solutions, so thanks.
| mattashii wrote:
| > The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural
| productivity
|
| That does not have to be an issue for the EU per se, as the EU
| is a net exporter of food in value, and potentially in calories
| as well.
| BelleOfTheBall wrote:
| There's also the fact that we are developing new agricultural
| advancements constantly and I mean the collective we -
| vertical farms in Asia, new irrigation systems, lab-grown
| stuff and so on. Surely we can think of ways to improve
| agriculture while retaining our feathered friends
| masklinn wrote:
| But a non-trivial amount of that is really intensive (one
| could say unnecessarily so) farming e.g. factory pig farming
| in the netherlands.
|
| And on the other hand, the revenue model tends to require
| this sort of practices, unless there's room in (and you aim
| for) the more bougie distribution channels / outlets the hit
| is hard to absorb, especially the hit in _reliability_.
| noselasd wrote:
| Will reducing fertilizers and other chemicals help in any
| meaningful way ?
|
| It seems the main problem is that birds, the things bird eats,
| and for that matter other animals need a place to live, and
| there's really not a lot of places for them to live anymore
| when their habitat is turned from a natural environment, quite
| often forests, in to roads, cities, production of cereal,
| grass, vegetable etc.
| Scarblac wrote:
| And eating less meat, so we can do with less agricultural
| production.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| This goes against so many basic principles of human dietary
| needs and sustainable agricultural practices.
|
| The problems that frequently lead to the argument for cutting
| meat consumption for ecological reasons are all actually
| concerns with industrialized meat production practices, not
| with meat production itself. We don't need to cut meat
| production, we need to change how we raise, process, and
| distribute the meat. Raise thousands of cows in concrete pens
| in a remote area will always require too many inputs and
| produce too many unwanted outputs because it's not part of a
| larger ecosystem.
|
| Ruminants like cows and sheep play a vital role in managing
| pasture and creating fertilizer. Chickens play a vital role
| in pest management and creating compost. Chickens and hogs
| both play a role in making productive use of waste products,
| eating food scraps and garden waste that would otherwise be
| lost.
|
| Heck, we couldn't even have egg and milk production at all
| without producing meat or culling animals along the way. Only
| 50% of eggs hatched are female, we have to do something with
| the males. And dairy cows will only produce milk for 6-12
| months after giving birth, meaning there are calves that need
| to play a part in the system as well.
|
| That doesn't even get to the challenges of trying to raise
| crops without animal byproducts. Where does all the
| fertilizer come from?
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Yes, animal husbandry is an integrated part of food
| production, but there is merit to the suggestion of
| _reducing_ meat consumption; most of the world has
| increased meat consumption per capita quite a lot the last
| 20 years and going back to 2000 levels might not be a bad
| idea in the case of a lot of richer countries.
| kiliantics wrote:
| All those animals need to eat. Most crop farming is done to
| feed livestock rather than humans. That's a lot of wasted
| land use which could be habitat for wild ecosystems if we
| just cut down our meat consumption.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Is love to see us move to a different style of meat
| production, but very much too the same goals you mention.
|
| The entire model of industrial meat production is
| unsustainable by design. Animals can be raised as part of
| a larger system that includes growing most, if not all,
| if the animals' food on site. Having to plant massive
| fields of feed crops so they can be trucked across the
| country to industrial meat farms raising animals in
| crowded lots and concrete boxes is an insane approach.
| meerita wrote:
| Do you realize it's not just about meat but also about the
| excessive farming practices used to produce vegetables?
| Animals naturally fertilize the earth.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution.
| Industrial meat farming is part of the problem. They're two
| different things.
| alex_duf wrote:
| But would pasture farming on marginal land scale to the
| level of consumption we have today?
| CalRobert wrote:
| "Pasture farming on marginal land is part of the solution"
|
| Can you elaborate? I don't see how this is superior to
| leaving it fallow?
|
| I have a few acres fallow and am right next to a quaint
| organic farm and I do see quite a few more bees in my tall
| grass and wildflowers than I do in their grazed land...
| a_c wrote:
| Lands are not equal. They all have different conditions.
| Some land for example can't grow food but is good for
| grazing.
|
| Grazing, done correctly, is beneficial to the land too.
| E.g. grazing brings dungs to the land. The dungs give
| nutrients to both plants and insects. Stamping the land
| aerate the soil and exposes insect for birds, hence
| limiting pest. Birds spread seeds. Everything is in
| balance. Food is ultimately created from sunlight.
|
| Industrial farming, on the other hand, simplifying
| heavily, is converting fossil fuels into food.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I don't understand how that shows human involvement in
| these landscapes is necessary.
| danielheath wrote:
| Greece has lots of land that's either too steep for
| humans to walk on, or too rocky to grow anything but
| grass on, or both.
|
| As a result, traditional Greek cuisine has lots of lamb
| and goat meat.
| contingencies wrote:
| Corn does well on rocky and steep terrain.
| myshpa wrote:
| Pag in Croatia too ... it's called "island of paski
| cheese" iirc ... it's mostly rocky desert with patches of
| grass and herds of islands and goats, but leave the
| island and suddenly the landscape is green and lush.
|
| "Historically, Pag had more forested areas than it does
| today. The island used to be covered with oak and pine
| forests, but due to centuries of human activity,
| including grazing, deforestation, and the collection of
| firewood, much of the original forest cover has been
| reduced. Over time, the vegetation has adapted to the
| island's specific conditions, such as strong winds and
| limited freshwater sources."
|
| The land is rocky to grow anything on exactly because of
| those lambs and goats. They don't give the land the
| change to reforest.
|
| We tend to underestimate the damage that has already been
| done before we came here.
| myshpa wrote:
| herds of sheep and goats, chance to reforest
| CalRobert wrote:
| And what would be there if we didn't have sheep and goats
| there?
| himinlomax wrote:
| Dairy is important for human nutrition because it has an
| excellent level of production of valuable proteins per
| acres and that can be done on marginal land that can't
| really be used for anything else anyway. You could get
| those proteins from soy, but that would have to be done
| on farm land, with fertilizer, irrigation and so on. How
| are those bees going to fare there? And that's assuming
| grazing is entirely hostile to bees, which it's arguably
| not that much considering how it doesn't require
| pesticides. You know, the thing that kills insects.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| as always, it depends on practices. Here's a pretty good
| presentation on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watc
| h?v=4Z75A_JMBx4&t=783s&pp=ygUbY2...
| Lutger wrote:
| They are, but pasture farming implies eating less meat. We
| are currently near a billion cows worldwide, we don't have
| marginal land for all of them.
|
| That means meat is going to be _expensive_ and you 'd
| rather eat avocado toast instead. Unless demand suddenly
| drops or we scale growing meat from a lab.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Meat being more expensive would reduce consumption, but
| that probably isn't a bad thing in terms of health
| outcomes. Many people eat too much meat anyway.
|
| So long as affordable, healthy, accessible alternatives
| exist, of course.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I think that's by far the biggest lever given how inefficient
| meat is at converting land area & water to calories.
| censor_me wrote:
| [dead]
| pvaldes wrote:
| The big plot hole in this master plan that many people
| apparently can't see or accept. If we remove the production
| of meat, this will severely harm the production of
| vegetables. They are connected.
|
| You can't have real agriculture without manure.
|
| Fossil guano is a finite, scarce and very expensive resource,
| and human manure is not so desirable as replacement by
| several reasons so, how do they expect to feed their green
| miracle exactly?.
|
| How efficient is the conversion food-to-meat is irrelevant if
| you omit half of the products obtained. This food also will
| turn into leather, milk, workforce and manure, so the
| calculus is flawed from the start.
| Mumps wrote:
| Dovecots [0] have been used for (likely) millenia. And,
| because of migration, the birds can ultimately bring
| nutrients in from disparate locations - as opposed to
| purely localally grazing livestock.
|
| Per leathers: one, we don't have to completely eliminate
| cattle. Two, synthetics exist. Three, alternatives are
| being made/investigated [1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dovecote [1]
| https://www.felsie.co.uk/ (and others, if you google
| around)
| bainsfather wrote:
| I have learned something new today (re manure from
| dovecotes).
|
| However, I think this is another example of something
| that is 'just too small to matter' in terms of feeding
| the world's population today. Often I see 'nice' stories
| about e.g. using human waste to fertilise fields, that
| quite frankly do not (usually) scale at all well. We (UK)
| use tractors to shovel and spread manure - 10s, 100s of
| tons of the stuff - a dovecote or 10 really isn't going
| to help, and certainly won't be economic.
|
| It seems a bit like someone telling me I should use an
| abacus to increase my compute power - 'they were a good
| idea in the past, why aren't you using them now?'
| orwin wrote:
| You can't use manure of industrial farms in the fields, too
| much chemical compounds that can destroy your soil, killing
| fungi and bacterial life.
|
| I think in my area they try to use manure to produce
| methane.
| biorach wrote:
| > You can't use manure of industrial farms in the fields,
| too much chemical compounds that can destroy your soil,
| killing fungi and bacterial life
|
| Source? Preferably reputable
| pvaldes wrote:
| Most fresh manure can destroy the soil. Specially those
| from birds. Is advisable to dilute it or store it for
| some months before the use. This will remove many
| possible problems also with chemicals. Not all, but a lot
| of them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is plainly not accurate - manure from most aninals,
| especially pig farms, is a hazardous easte to dispose of.
| Only a small percentage of manure is reused as fertiliser
| because transporting it is expensive, and messy. Often it
| needs to be processed before it can be used safely. You can
| gooogle 'industrial farm US' and see pictures of ani als
| standing knee deep in their own poop. Also it is illegal to
| take photos of factory farms in some states.
|
| We feed a lot of grains to aninals as feed. That food coupd
| be used to feed people. We could certainly downsize meat
| producting by 70% withiit any adverse impacts -most people
| eat way too mich meat
|
| PS: There is some strange disbelief below, people think
| without manure cropping will bot work - this is plainly
| fanasyland - most of farmland never sees 'natural'
| fertiliser.
|
| "A recent study by USDA, Economic Research Service
| identified opportunities for increasing the use of manure
| as a fertilizer. In 2020, farmers applied manure to less
| than 8 percent of the 240.9 million acres planted to seven
| major U.S. field crops."
|
| In uk "In 2019, organic manure was applied to 26% of the
| area of tillage crops"
|
| This is easilly accessible information.
| bainsfather wrote:
| None of our animals' waste is any hazard to you, unless
| you slip on it!
|
| You are right that it can be done badly, as can many
| other things. I'd say you are actually arguing against
| badly regulated animal farming (especially since you
| mention the US), rather than animal farming per se.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Hydrogen sulfide is a common killer of farmers in
| Ireland.
| biorach wrote:
| Maybe 1 a year. And this is only emitted in dangerous
| quantities when the manure is being stirred prior to
| being removed from storage. So somewhat tangential to
| original point.
| biorach wrote:
| > manure from most aninals, especially pig farms, is a
| hazardous easte to dispose of. Only a small percentage of
| manure is reused as fertiliser because transporting it is
| expensive, and messy
|
| You'd need to cite some sources for that. And explain
| where the millions of tons of animal manure go.
|
| Here in Northern Europe 100% of manure from housed
| animals is used, either spread as manure or,
| increasingly, used for biomethane
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Here in Northern Europe 100% of manure from housed
| animals is used,
|
| That's the wrong statistics to look it - 100% of waste
| coffee is used. They already have it, good management
| will figure out a way to use it.
|
| But you cannot make an argument that we have to keep
| drinking coffee because fertiliser industry will collapse
| without waste coffee.
|
| There are thousands of studies about impacts of intensive
| animal faming on landscape, economy, health and society
| in general, they are all negative. This was settled like
| 40 years ago.
| biorach wrote:
| I have no idea why you are taking about coffee.
|
| You said
|
| > Only a small percentage of manure is reused as
| fertiliser because transporting it is expensive, and
| messy
|
| That's straight up false, for Northern Europe anyway.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| Can confirm. It's the norm up here. Wikipedia says the
| practice was imported from the US after WW2.
| bitL wrote:
| Some people can only eat meat due to autoimmune issues
| exacerbated by vegetables. Are we going to sacrifice
| them?
| earlyriser wrote:
| "eating less meat" != "sacrifice them"
| bitL wrote:
| How about this modus ponens chain: "eating less meat" ->
| "lowering meat production" -> "hiking up meat prices" ->
| "autoimmune sufferers unable to buy meat" -> "autoimmune
| sacrificed"
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Deal with meat as with any kind of life saving medication
| in that case. There's already infrastructure for that.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Good Christ, did the parent comment suggest banning all
| meat?
| desas wrote:
| Is this an argument made in good faith? The commentator
| said reduce meat consumption and that _most_ people ate
| too much. They didn 't say "ban it for everyone, let the
| autoimmune suffer"
| bitL wrote:
| I purposefully chose an extreme example to put it onto
| the radar of everyone pushing veganism everywhere. Also
| if you really study sustainability, you see that reducing
| meat production doesn't lead to better sustainability
| anyway.
|
| If you reduce meat production, you'll hike up prices,
| likely pricing out those with autoimmune diseases that
| barely survive already. So technically you are true like
| in "you can still eat meat in theory", but in practice
| those folks won't be able. Now where is the good faith in
| that argument?
| thewildginger wrote:
| This is theoretical and not the case in practice. Meat
| companies are an Oligarchy in The United States which is
| the largest world meat producer. There are four massive
| meat companies and if they existed at the onset of anti-
| trust they would have been broken up long ago. The
| miracle of the market to competitively decide on a price
| relies on competitive market environments which do not
| exist in the largest meat market in the world, The US.
|
| You're saying a lot of stuff and I'm going to need more
| evidence to be convinced as to your position. For what
| reason would meat prices increase if people ate less
| meat?
| kiliantics wrote:
| Most soil fertiliser today comes from fossil fuel. This was
| the whole Haber Bosch breakthrough. If we give up
| artificial fertiliser and need to use animal manure, that
| would not justify the unsustainable scale of livestock we
| have today. There are also alternative sustainable nutrient
| sources like compost and seaweed. I don't know how much
| manure can be replaced with alternatives but I don't think
| your point lets us conclude that we absolutely need a meat
| industry like the one that exists currently.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Seaweed has salt. I you put salt in a soil you will ruin
| it for agriculture. In the first years there are a few
| salt tolerant vegetables that you can still culture.
| After a while the accumulated salt will be just too much
| even for asparagus.
|
| Compost can help. I don't know how much that would scale
| in any case.
|
| Is true that we can produce some fertilizers chemically,
| but we need to invest huge amounts of energy for this;
| After Wikipedia >1% of all the energy that we humans use
| in the planet is spent just to make ammonia, and many of
| this is used to make urea. If I'm not wrong we need also
| natural gas to feed the process, so this energy came
| basically from non renewables. Is part of the solution
| but not a miracle cure.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| Something like 85% of livestock feeds are byproduct of
| something that would be grown anyway. E.g like when they make
| coconut milk/ fibre for humans, they take the coconut
| leftovers and grind it down for cattle. That byproduct exists
| regardless of livestock eating it.
| cjrp wrote:
| > increase the share of eco-farming, i.e. conventional farming
| without the chemistry. The problem: both approaches drastically
| reduce agricultural productivity.
|
| A prime example, the seed-dressing used to treat rapeseed and
| prevent cabbage-stem flea beetle from destroying the crop has
| been outlawed in the EU. Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed,
| because the risk of making a huge financial loss is too high.
| Result? We import rapeseed from countries which haven't
| outlawed the insecticide.
| biorach wrote:
| > Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed,
|
| In the EU? I think you just made that up
| clows wrote:
| > Most farmers now won't grow rapeseed, because the risk of
| making a huge financial loss is too high.
|
| Do you have data to back that up? The only info I could find
| is along the lines of the article below.
|
| https://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2022/06/16/eu-
| rapesee...
|
| > EU rapeseed crop 2022 projected at five-year high
| myshpa wrote:
| I'm in country which has 15% of its farmland covered in it.
| Hate it.
|
| It's sprayed 10-20 times per season, the amount of poison it
| spreads to the nature is staggering.
| shellac wrote:
| > There are also quite convincing studies that show even worse
| declines for insect populations
|
| Has the evidence improved recently? About 3 years ago there
| were a few papers, including a meta analysis (-ish), which were
| suggestive but also noted the lack of longitudinal studies, and
| their lack of geographical diversity (Germany and UK as I
| recall).
|
| The consensus was that everyone was certain there was a serious
| issue, but it was nearly impossible to usefully (even broadly)
| characterise the issues.
| hug wrote:
| While not particularly useful as a scientific method, and
| obviously not attempting to counter your broader point asking
| for more detailed analysis, there's _incredibly_ compelling
| evidence: Go for a 100 mile drive at night, and count the
| bugs on your windshield. Ask your parents about it. Ask every
| 70 year old you know. Bugs are in decline.
|
| There's absolutely no lack of evidence. We know it's real. We
| just haven't catalogued that evidence very well.
| shellac wrote:
| Ironically I removed my mention of the windscreen evidence.
| There are some citizen science surveys documenting the
| decline (e.g. a UK study found a 60% decline over 20 years,
| or something like that). But it's a good example of a
| strong indicator but not the greatest quality evidence -
| geographically limited, concerns low flying population
| only, might be confounded by changes in car aerodynamics,
| verge / hedgerow maintenance etc.
| [deleted]
| pif wrote:
| Could this effect be caused, or enhanced, by the
| aerodynamics of the modern cars?
| micw wrote:
| You can see the effect on the very same car very clearly.
| We have been traveling with a camping car from germany to
| romania. In germany we did not need to clean the
| windscreen at all. In romania we did it almost every day.
| pif wrote:
| Your anecdote is very interesting, thank you!
| Someone wrote:
| Could also be that insects evolved to avoid long black
| patches of ground.
|
| That doesn't look likely, but also not impossible. That's
| why we need the study.
|
| Also, predator-prey systems
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka-Volterra_equations)
| can have fairly large cycles with huge population swings.
| That makes verifying that there really is a decline not
| _that_ easy. You can't just repeat an insect count done
| 30 years ago and compare the numbers.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > _The research included vintage cars up to 70 years old
| to see if their less aerodynamic shape meant they killed
| more bugs, but it found that modern cars actually hit
| slightly more insects_
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/car-
| spla...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The problem: both approaches drastically reduce agricultural
| productivity.
|
| We're overproducing anyway, with massive environmental followup
| issues. Switching to less meat would free up a lot of grain
| production and help get nitrate runoff from all the poo used as
| fertilizer under control, but that's politically untenable and
| the markets would just adapt to import more Brazilian meat
| grown on burned-down rainforest farms.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Please, stop this fake news of meat growing in burned-down
| rainforest farms. Most of the cattle in brazil is raised on
| biomes that were never rainforests to start, no matter what
| the lie the NYT told you. Free-ranged cattle are also usually
| raised in regions that are very marginal in arable land. And
| in fact, bovines filled an ecological niche in the "Pantanal"
| region that was once occupied by native herbivores,
| extinguished centuries ago by human occupation. Eliminating
| them now would just mean more fires in the dry season.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Well, it's not just Brazil. A lot of meat in Europe is
| grown on burned or cut-down forest, it just happens to be
| the case it was done centuries ago.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Yes, the entire talk of destruction of rain forests comes
| across as a little hypocritical when it's coming from
| countries with like 6% forest cover.
|
| I was up in scottish highlands recently and many hills
| are bold like someone just shaved them. Looks weired.
|
| The only solution O see is to habe a global forestly
| fund, so developing countries can get paid but dont have
| to destroy forests.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The only solution O see is to habe a global forestly
| fund, so developing countries can get paid but dont have
| to destroy forests.
|
| That just incentivizes scammers and fraud, just like many
| of the "CO2 offset certificates" based on paying people
| not destroying forests they wouldn't have destroyed
| anyway [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2023-01/co2-certificates-
| frau...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I am aware of CO2 market being a scam, this is very
| diffetent to what I propposed.
|
| CO2 market depends on assertations of intent, and on
| efficacy, both of which are easy to forge and hard to
| prove.
|
| Forestry found is much simpler. Everyone put money into a
| pot, say. we hVe 100 billion dollars.
|
| The. yoy get data from satellite, and calculate square
| miles of forest.
|
| Then you divide the pot by square miles of forest.
|
| Then countries det paid based on how many square miles
| are in their borders.
|
| There is not potential for fraud - the calculation is
| sinple and idiotproof. You might debate if some marginal
| land is forest or not, but for 90% of it you can clearly
| see what it is from space.
|
| You can also have debate about how muhch should be put
| into the pot, and by whom.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem: illegal farming and logging will _always_ be
| more profitable than whatever the West can manage to pay
| countries like Brazil - not to mention it isn 't sure
| _how much_ the West can reasonably hand out in payments
| given the multiple crises straining our budgets, or how
| much isolationist politicians like Trump want to pay out
| / if they are even interested in climate and nature
| protection.
|
| And on top of that come the corruption issues. Large
| amounts of foreign money flowing into poor(er) countries
| has historically _always_ invited either said money being
| grifted away or redirected to other political budgets
| that have nothing to do with the purpose the money was
| originally earmarked for.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The bizarre thing is that Scottish (and Irish) people
| largely see barren moonscape as "natural". I never
| encountered such hatred for trees before I moved to
| Ireland. I drove through the Sperrins on Sunday and while
| the rolling hills are pretty they would be a lot prettier
| with native broadleaf forest...
| msrenee wrote:
| Do you have a source for this?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Many sources, spanning many years, and both private (such
| as newspapers or NGOs) as well as governmental (e.g. the
| UN), have found that an _overwhelming_ percentage of razed
| rainforest in Brazil was used for cattle farming [1][2],
| with a large part of the remainder going to large-scale soy
| farms, and a tiny bit for small-scale subsistence farming.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amaz
| on_ra...
|
| [2] https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/14/devastating-
| burning-seas...
| runsWphotons wrote:
| Is switching from meat to more grains better for birds? I
| strongly doubt that. Converting fields to planting fields is
| going to kill a lot more small mammals, birds, insects and so
| on?
| knutzui wrote:
| It is better, because switching from meat to grains results
| in less area needed for planting grains, since we don't
| need to feed the animals anymore. Most grains that we farm
| today are fed to animals.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| Interesting. But rough time to be a cow.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Most farm animals are kept in absurdly large stables. In
| Germany, the record is at 600.000 chickens (avg. 40.000) on
| a single farm [1], for pigs and cows it's 10.000-18.000 per
| farm [2].
|
| This raises a number of problems:
|
| - the poo and urine from the farm animals is way, way too
| much to distribute on the fields around these mega-farms,
| meaning it has to be transported across Europe. The worst
| offenders here are the Dutch, which have so much manure
| that it's impossible to spread out all of it in the
| country, and plans to close down farms have led to protests
| and riots [3].
|
| - These farms themselves, as well as the slaughterhouses,
| are a blight on their neighborhoods - from personal
| experience, it's bad enough to live next to half a dozen
| cows, but large farms? These can be smelled many kilometres
| away.
|
| - all these farm animals have to be fed insane amounts of
| food - depending on which study you believe and which
| animal you look at, 1kg of animal meat requires anything
| from 3 to 20kg of plant-based food (most often, grain).
|
| The last point is where the meat is at: say, you cut down
| the demand for meat in half. For Germany, that would mean
| going from 7.6 million tons a year to 3.8 million tons - by
| the leverage effect anything between 12 to 38 million tons
| of grain production can be avoided, or to put it bluntly:
| out of the 43 million tons of grain produced in Germany in
| 2022 [5], you can avoid around 25%. Obviously the numbers
| are a bit off due to imported food and livestock, but the
| estimate is that, yes, in fact about half the grain
| produced in the country is food for livestock [6].
|
| Even assuming that humans will eat a bit more grain to
| compensate for the calories they would have gotten by meat,
| it's still safe to assume that you could reduce total grain
| growth by at least 10% - enough to provide strips of
| greenery surrounding fields and to make them otherwise more
| friendly for animals. The reduction of manure production
| would lead to higher water quality in rivers and more
| aquatic life, and the space occupied by large stables can
| also be returned to nature for local environments.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/gefluegelmaester-
| in-d...
|
| [2] https://www.boell.de/de/2016/01/13/mecklenburg-
| vorpommern-wo...
|
| [3] https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/Nitrat-im-
| Grund...
|
| [4] https://www.bmel-statistik.de/ernaehrung-
| fischerei/versorgun...
|
| [5] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Branchen-
| Unternehmen/Landw...
|
| [6] https://www.bmel-statistik.de/ernaehrung-
| fischerei/versorgun...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Without looking at details, I agree we produce too much. Of
| everything, not just meat.
|
| Edit: Regarding meat from Latin Amerca, where exactly do you
| think all the raw materials forbthe vegan, processed stuff in
| our super markets come from? Like imported meat, from burned
| down rain forest areas, ranging from Latin America to Asia.
| manojlds wrote:
| I had to learn about this from Clarkson of all people. He seems
| to genuinely be involved in what he's doing and Clarkson's Farm
| is a great show as well!
| cjrp wrote:
| I'd recommend "Harry's Farm" on Youtube as well. He's in a
| similar situation, where realistically he's not financially-
| dependant on the farm any more (made money elsewhere), but
| has great insight into the day-to-day running of one.
| edumucelli wrote:
| That is simply not true! Use of mechanical farming and
| fertilizers/pesticides can be beaten in productivity by
| permacultural practices. One example in France that has been
| followed by researches (and has produced several papers [1]) is
| the Ferme du Bec.
|
| It is able to produce multiple times more and more qualitative
| (organic), for the same area than the national average
| mechanized production in France.
|
| The pesticide industry and mega farmers want you to believe
| that what they are doing is to produce more food, but that does
| not stand the fact check of initiatives like permacultural
| ones.
|
| [1] https://www.fermedubec.com/la-ferme/la-recherche/ (scroll
| to the "STUDY REPORTS (English versions)" if you do not speak
| French.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| The real challenge here is that people simply don't want to
| farm anymore. We built ourselves a vicious cycle with
| mechanization and chemicals that allowed farms to produce
| more per acre, leading to fewer people farming and further
| dependence on oil and chemicals. Even worse, food systems are
| so centralized and complex that there's very little left to
| even pay the farmer by the time the rest of the supply chain
| makes it's cut.
|
| Local food production may go a long way as it reduces the
| steps between the farm and the end consumer. That still may
| not be enough though, rewiring higher food prices regardless
| of how it's produced.
|
| In one of the linked studied the result was that one person
| working 43 hours per week could profit EUR900-1600 per month.
| The same article mentions a minimum wage of EUR9.61/hour, so
| even on the high end the farmer is working all that time and
| owning the risk of a bad harvest to make less than minimum
| wage. They didn't mention any holdback on the crops to feed
| the farmer, so they might be separately paying for food out
| of that income. People just aren't going to do that in large
| numbers unless they have to.
| g4d wrote:
| You raise some crucial points regarding the challenges
| faced by farmers and the complexities of the modern food
| system. The mechanization and chemical-intensive practices
| that have boosted productivity per acre have inadvertently
| contributed to a decline in the number of people engaged in
| farming. This has led to increased dependence on external
| resources such as oil and chemicals, further entrenching
| the cycle.
|
| The issue of centralized and complex food systems is also
| significant. As the supply chain becomes longer and more
| convoluted, the farmer often receives a diminishing share
| of the final price paid by consumers. This creates
| financial strain and makes it difficult for farmers to earn
| a sustainable income.
|
| Promoting local food production can indeed help mitigate
| some of these challenges. By reducing the steps between the
| farm and the end consumer, local food systems can create
| opportunities for farmers to receive a more equitable share
| of the value generated. However, as you mentioned, even
| with local production, there may still be limitations in
| overcoming the underlying financial pressures.
|
| The example you shared about the farmer's income compared
| to the minimum wage highlights the stark reality faced by
| many agricultural workers. Working long hours and taking on
| the risks associated with farming, while earning less than
| the minimum wage, is not a sustainable situation. It's
| important for society to recognize the immense value
| farmers provide and ensure fair compensation for their hard
| work.
|
| To address these challenges, a comprehensive approach is
| needed. This includes supporting policies that promote
| sustainable agriculture, fostering local food systems, and
| advocating for fair pricing and compensation for farmers.
| Additionally, exploring alternative models such as
| community-supported agriculture and direct-to-consumer
| sales can help create a more viable and rewarding
| environment for farmers.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| One big hurdle to jump will be the need for fundamental
| change in government regulations for food production.
|
| The requirements are ridiculous particularly with meat
| production. I can't sell cuts of meat unless the animal
| walks off the trailer at a state or federally regulated
| processing facility. Getting in line at the processor is
| not easy and though lead time isn't as bad as it SAS
| during the pandemic response, it can still require
| planning months ahead on exactly when you will process
| one animal.
|
| Beyond that, there are very real animal welfare concerns
| if you ever look into how those facilities work. Animals
| walk of the trailer and spend their last hours extremely
| stressed, stuffed into concrete holding pens and chutes
| with other animals they don't know in a building that
| must smell unmistakably of death.
|
| The meat is processed in very specific ways, including
| spraying it with bleach. There's no way around that, and
| may stamped USDA has been treated that way.
|
| I do understand how we ended up with so many regulations
| and health concerns, but they are all byproducts of an
| over-centralized system that attempts to produce an
| entire country's worth of meat in one place and
| distribute it nationality so that every store shelf looks
| the same. Those regulations have grown so l large that is
| nearly unsustainable to attempt to raise meat on a
| smaller, more local scale.
| boudin wrote:
| The real underlying issue here is that good farming practices
| require hands.
|
| If we don't value back farming related work and allow people
| to invest a lot of there time and energy into sustainable
| practices we cannot have the amount of people required to do
| what is done at la ferme du bec at a much bigger scale.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| In the US currently industrial and smaller scale farms use
| heavy amounts of effectively slave labor / indentured
| servants with fake/stolen papers, bussed to unknown remote
| locations, company housing and company towns with local
| sheriff in kahoots with the owners, routine ICE raids to
| force compliance and break up organizing. We're quite far
| from kindness to labor. Many modern liberal countries like
| SKorea, Italy have similar. Our most democratic nation
| states run on slave labor.
| immibis wrote:
| It is simply not possible to produce food for 8 billion people
| without destroying the planet.
| mkmk3 wrote:
| I've heard that permacultural practices can compete in terms of
| output, it's just harder to industrialize. I wonder if
| improvements in robotics could make this sort of approach more
| feasible, or if it really is comparatively productive in any
| case
| tommek4077 wrote:
| > permacultural practices can compete in terms of output,
| it's just harder to industrialize
|
| Then they can't compete - _yet_.
| ummonk wrote:
| I think they meant competitive in land yields, not prices.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| If I need 50 workers instead of 1, I can't compete.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Doesn't that just depend on whether income can pay for
| the 50 employees, and that you can find 50 people willing
| to work the job?
| psychoslave wrote:
| This is framing premises so that only this conclusion
| appear relevant.
|
| It's not a predefined unavoidable destiny that is to go
| through, that is all about what policies are chose with
| which agenda in mind.
|
| Unemployment didn't reach 0% anywhere last time I
| checked, and as it was already mentioned, no actor out
| there is playing without some public subsidiaries.
|
| This is all political decisions. Local short term
| optimisation of plutocrate revenues is one possibility.
| Perennial national sustainability is an other one. These
| two agendas however probably don't overlap much.
| ummonk wrote:
| Many of the practices proposed to reduce the impact on
| the environment are nonstarters because of low land
| yields (and indeed might actually be worse on the
| environment because you need to convert more land to
| farmland).
|
| If this method has equal land yields and less
| environmental impact but is highly labor intensive,
| perhaps there is scope for mechanization to make it
| competitive.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Maybe we could do three good things at once:
|
| - switch to this better method of farming
|
| - end the corporate oligarchy controlling food by having
| smaller farms
|
| - shift people out of net negative "services" into farming
|
| I don't see the downfall of industrial farming as a bad thing
| -- they're a whole problem all on their own (including the
| recent push to take away family farms from the Dutch).
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| How might this be implemented without ceasing am even more
| powerful government along the way?
|
| The changes sounds reasonable enough but it sounds like
| it's take the government to force new farming methods on
| us, break up corporations, and force people to leave their
| current jobs and lives to work land elsewhere.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Vote with your wallet.
|
| I buy from small family farms who use better methods --
| and you can too.
|
| I also didn't say anything about "break up corporations"
| nor "force people to leave their current jobs"; I only
| said that it's fine if we make a pivot that's more labor
| intensive... we can use people rather than robots.
|
| Vote with your wallet for farms that use permaculture or
| similar; the market will naturally shift in response to
| the changed incentives and capable people will fill the
| void, through the personal pursuit of profits.
|
| We could also, eg, preference small farms or permaculture
| in existing government subsidy programs.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| Already on that path too, we buy most of our food from
| local farms as well.
|
| I may very well have misunderstood your original message.
| I interested how change like breaking up the corporate
| oligarchies or shifting people from service jobs to
| farming could be made without massive government
| intervention.
|
| The way I see it, our whole system is based on an economy
| that just doesn't line up at all with a farming-first
| type of approach. Major industries wouldn't be able to
| make that shift, modern conveniences would likely fall
| away, and the federal debt we keep piling higher and
| higher could never be paid.
|
| Thst said, I have my own preconceived notions here and am
| genuinely curious what alternatives I've missed.
| ummonk wrote:
| Because the Great Leap Forward was such a smashing success,
| we need to do it again?
| modo_mario wrote:
| How does this relate to the great leap forward? I don't
| think he's arguing that thre be some kind of mass
| mobilization towards agriculture (as opposed to metals
| smelting or the like)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is why the West has such ossified systems. If you
| propose any systemic change, people dont actually
| evaluate the suggestion on it's merits. They just go
| China/communism!
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The proposition is to expropriate landowners (sorry the
| "corporate oligarchy"), force people to move to farming
| and rationalise production methods with a top-down
| approach. The comparaison to the _Great Leap Forward_ is
| not far fetched. I think it's legitimate to point to
| disastrous precedent when people suggest things.
| orwin wrote:
| Rural landowners who didn't had a marketable crop/produce
| (wine) already got expropriated, and their land already
| incorporate 'rationalized' ag. I know of 6 person in my
| mother's village who killed themselves between the 80s
| and late 90s, because of 'revolver' credits (aptly
| renamed), and tbf the rest of their family (4 different
| families) got it worse imho, until the state swoopt in
| and forgave the debt. I think only one independent farmer
| still exist in the area, his wife work at the local post
| office/bank, so they probably were more difficult
| targets.
|
| It's not the great leap forward, it's the small choking
| of those left behind.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| No idea where you are from but I'm French and my family
| has owned a farming equipment dealership for close to 50
| years. I haven't seen this mass incorporation you speak
| of.
|
| Farms have indeed grew larger through consolidation (no
| one got expropriated - farming is now capital-intensive
| and economy of scale kicks in with larger farms - small
| owners either bought their neighbours and became big,
| sold or went bankrupt) but nearly all of them are still
| privately owned by people whose family history is in
| farming.
|
| I find the nostalgia for small scale farming somewhat
| amusing personnaly. In my experience, it mostly comes
| from urban people doing white collar jobs. The reality of
| managing a small farm is not fun.
|
| Livestock farming is the only activity which remains
| somewhat widespread on a small scale here and it's
| miserable. It's a buyer market. Farmers are being
| squeezed out as much as possible by their distributors.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Livestock farming is the only activity which remains
| somewhat widespread on a small scale here and it's
| miserable. It's a buyer market. Farmers are being
| squeezed out as much as possible by their distributors.
|
| Exactly, people removed from farming do not understand
| how predatory the market actually is towards them. And
| they go around tilting at windmills.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Was that what was proposed or is that just the least
| charitable interpretation one can think of?
|
| Nobody mentioned expropriating. One can put down
| incentives that benefit the desired outcome in the same
| way we've been doing in many different scenarios.
|
| Also I didn't see any call for some kind of localized
| mass mobilizations towards agriculture in the way the
| great leap forward might have seen with things like iron
| smelting & the like. Agricultures share of employment is
| sub 5% in most of the west. A quick look at a graph for
| the US makes me think sub 2%
|
| If you push the industry towards these more sustainable
| tho more labour incentive practices chances are it'll be
| a slow change with an increase in workers in agriculture
| that isn't going to radically change society. It's not
| like half a century ago in the 60's the west was in some
| kind of agriculture dominant feudal age despite there
| being even 3-4 times as many workers in agriculture if
| not more depending on where you look.
|
| And of course we're forgetting technology, options for a
| middleground, etc in all this.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| No it wasn't - you're putting words in my mouth to
| justify a poor comparison.
|
| All I said was that we should change the standards around
| farming to stop providing legal support to mega farms (eg
| the _current_ government policy that's failing) and allow
| the natural outcome of more labor intensive farming to
| happen -- which through shifting the incentives and
| existing legal framework, would have people shift back
| into farming.
|
| The person I was responding to said more labor intensive
| farming would be bad -- I pointed out that the market
| effect of that change would actually be positive in
| several ways.
|
| Comparing a change to the legal framework which leads to
| a change in market dynamics that's positive isn't
| anything like the _Great Leap Forward_.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > All I said was that we should change the standards
| around farming to stop providing legal support to mega
| farms (eg the current government policy that's failing)
| and allow the natural outcome of more labor intensive
| farming to happen -- which through shifting the
| incentives and existing legal framework, would have
| people shift back into farming.
|
| The natural outcome is that production is shifted to
| countries with laxer laws and cheaper cost of labour not
| that people shift back into farming. Farming is not
| economically viable on a small scale without subsidies in
| Europe.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Mega farms already receive subsidies -- why is that fine,
| but subsidizing a less damaging method not?
|
| Also, that's what tariffs are for: food security is
| national security.
|
| Finally, the Dutch farmers currently having their farms
| seized seemed to be doing fine -- except for political
| interference in the name of environmentalism. Why is that
| intervention fine, but supporting small farmers rather
| than mega corporations not?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Mega farms already receive subsidies -- why is that
| fine, but subsidizing a less damaging method not?
|
| It's fine and might be a solution to the problem but
| purposefully orienting subsidies towards something and
| putting tariffs in place are as far removed from "the
| natural outcome" as you can get.
|
| > Finally, the Dutch farmers currently having their farms
| seized seemed to be doing fine -- except for political
| interference in the name of environmentalism. Why is that
| intervention fine, but supporting small farmers rather
| than mega corporations not?
|
| I have trouble following your argument. Are you or are
| you not in favour of top down policies and mass
| expropriations by the State? If that's the case, see the
| original point about the _Great Leap Forward_. I think
| you are trying to have your cake and eat it too here.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > removed from "the natural outcome" as you can get.
|
| What does this even mean?
|
| Many varieties of crops are intellectual property, and
| small farms can't affprd them. The entire concept of
| intellectual property is unnatural and did not exisy
| untill recently.
|
| Is it 'natural' to be allowed pollute as much as your
| want, and have waste running into rivers, or is it
| natural to be allowed absolutely zero pollution beyong
| the boundaries of your farm?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I think the comment about dutch farms was that they were
| getting along fine with high labour costs and small
| footprints.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Dutch farms are massive. We are talking about livestock
| farming at a size where robotisation makes sense.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| didn't know that. Are they massive by European standards
| (significantly above 75 acres)? I'm sure they're small by
| American standards given the size of the landmass...
| [deleted]
| myshpa wrote:
| We have something that doesn't work.
|
| _Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth
| system exceeding planetary boundaries
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricu
| ltu... _
|
| We have to change the course, or it will be selected for
| us and we won't have a say in it.
| Lutger wrote:
| I don't think the problem is in output-per-acre (really,
| increase in yield per acre is shockingly low in the past 50
| years), but rather in the amount of labor required. That,
| plus the inertia of vested interests codified as bureacratic
| regulation and protected by lobbyists. Essentially: intensive
| agriculture uses monocultures, extremely large machines and
| herbicides/fertilizers/pesticides in order to reduce or
| displace labor costs, which dominate. And it still can't
| really exist without heavy subsidies.
|
| Any kind of regenerative practice _in the current market
| situation_ needs to be competitive on a labor per output
| basis in the first place, not on the output per acre.
| Lightweight machines and robotics are part of the equation
| for sure, but will not be sufficient.
|
| However, agriculture in Europe is already build on subsidizes
| and heavily regulated. So we have the tools, we just need to
| use them and defeat agro corps lobbying efforts. Not easy,
| considering a political party from an Agro PR firm won the
| elections in the Netherlands, and legitimized a toxic blend
| of corporate disinfo, conspiracy theories and populist
| violence.
|
| Moving beyond the path of destruction seems as hopeless as
| ever.
| tfourb wrote:
| There are some interesting approaches to regenerative
| agriculture that somewhat sidestep the problem of labour
| cost. I.e. Mark Shepard runs a 46ha farm in US mid west
| that he says has been profitable basically from year one.
| Very small degree of mechanization (basically a tractor and
| some implements) and no use of chemical fertilizers or any
| other inputs (pesticides, herbicides, irrigation). They
| basically cut out a huge share of conventional farming's
| cost structure to be able to compensate for increased
| labour costs.
|
| I live in a rural place and the typical farmer here has mid
| to high seven figures invested in machines and implements
| and spends a lot of money on inputs, which in turn has
| contributed to farms getting bigger and bigger, which in
| turn requires more investment in mechanization, etc. On the
| other hand, we have founded a non-profit CSA market garden
| on 4.000m2 that can pay 1.5 people a decent salary. My
| personal impression is that for farming to become
| financially attractive to the practitioners again, we need
| to reduce size, reduce inputs, reduce capital expenditure
| and put quality and diversity back into focus.
| raptorraver wrote:
| Joel Salatin and Richard Perkins (among many many others)
| have done great work by applying permaculture principles to
| farm scale. The "movement" is called regenerative agriculture
| but you can also find lots of bullshit under that term (ie.
| Monsanto has used that term in their marketing)
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| While I have a lot of time for those people (Gabe Brown is
| well worth adding to that list). I fear that for the most
| part those people are successful by selling the dream of
| better quality produce to people with the disposable income
| to afford to buy it, mostly direct to consumer. I suspect
| there isn't enough space in this market place for every
| farmer.
| tfourb wrote:
| There is certainly more space available than is currently
| being filled. I.e. I have lived in more than a dozen
| places around the EU and Africa and have never had access
| to one of these types of farmers, despite being heavily
| inclined to buy from them.
|
| I don't doubt that direct to consumer regenerative
| agriculture will never be 100% of the market, even in
| wealthy societies. But it still has tremendous potential
| to grow.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| direct to consumer seems like a huge growth field to me
| actually, there's much less need for a middle man
| (grocer) now that everyone can buy and sell via their
| preferred marketplace app.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I think, and I have to admit I don't have any current numbers
| on that, that Europe is actually producing more food than we
| currently need. So cutting backnon industrial agriculture,
| ranging from grains to meat, so covering all sorts of
| foodstuffs, can only be a good thing, for people, the
| environment and animals.
| 988747 wrote:
| And yet a billion people in this world are starving...
| Cutting back on industrial agriculture means participating in
| a genocide, basically.
|
| Some geeks here are coming up with sci-fi ideas of producing
| food in vertical farms, or underwater, why don't we start by
| simply using existing techniques?
| knutzui wrote:
| This is incorrect. If all food we produce world wide was
| distributed equally everywhere not a single person would
| starve. However it isn't distributed anywhere close to
| equally. In many societies food is instead wasted in large
| amounts.
|
| Cutting back on industrial agriculture is sorely needed
| from an environmental standpoint, as well as reducing food
| waste. Solving starvation requires different solutions,
| such as improved distribution, as well as political
| stability.
| runsWphotons wrote:
| Distribution is hard, though. Will reducing food even in
| countries where it is wasted solve distribution any
| better, or will it just hurt the people at the bottom of
| the distribution chain more?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Global food production is a, and I oversimplify a lot here,
| more of a distribution problem than it is a capacity
| problem. Certain countries cutting back on theor surplus
| has zero impact on the starving regions of the world,
| because as things stand now those surpluses aren't exported
| there anyway.
|
| Quite the opposite, exporting said surplus, besides accute
| deliveries to mitigate famine, can kill local farming.
| There is no way small, just a bit above subsistance farming
| can compete with the surplus of industrial farming in,
| e.g., Europe. Take chicken for example, in Europe we prefer
| chicken breasts and legs, the wings are a far, far third
| place. As a result, a lot ofbthe chicken left overs, legs,
| wings and so in, didn't have a market in Europe. It got
| expoeted to Africa, with a purchasing price of close to
| nothing since the meat sold in Europe already covered
| costs, overhead and profits. With shipping being close to
| nothing per chicken wing, the imported food was way cheaper
| than locally produced food, driving a bunch of local
| farmers out of busimess and into poverty. And reducing
| local food production, increasing the risk of local famine
| while increasing dependency on global food markets (not
| really a good thing neither....).
|
| Same principle applies for donated clothes, only now local
| tailors, often women, are affected.
|
| So no, cutting back on industrial over production is by no
| means taking part in _genocide (!)_ (you couldn 't aim
| lower than that, could you?).
| runsWphotons wrote:
| But wouldnt it lower the price of chicken in those
| places, providing more people w access to good calories
| although hurting the local farmers? Couldnt this be
| solved by a country putting up tariffs or banning
| importing such chicken? If they didn't do that what was
| their reason?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Why didn't they put tariffs in place? Well, how many
| governments, and people in power, did you ever hear of
| that worried about the poor and common folks? There are a
| lot of people profitting from these things, including the
| social conciousness of us in the developed world. And
| those interests, combined with a ton of money and close
| to no oversight, result in a system that just doesn't
| care about what happens to the average people.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are some counter intuitive economical things going on as
| well. A lot of bad farming practices are heavily subsidized.
| For example a lot of Spanish land is not exploited. But to
| claim the subsidies, farmers still work the land, which leads
| to a lot of top soil erosion for no good reason whatsoever. In
| the same way a lot of dairy production is misaligned with
| actual demand. And you get weird surpluses of things like milk
| and butter. Wine is another example where subsidies lead to
| over production.
|
| And another side effect of subsidies is that it counteracts
| development aid sent to places that the EU competes with on
| farmed products. Instead of boosting their economies by
| importing stuff from those countries we kill their exports with
| subsidized local produce and then spend a lot on development
| aid. And fragile economies in Africa of course create all sorts
| of collateral issues including wars and refugees. All to
| protect local farmers so they can produce things like sugar
| beet so we can have subsidized local sugar production instead
| of just importing that from outside Europe.
| mempko wrote:
| I'm sorry but it seems that it's global warming that is
| causing insect declines as the primary driver, not farming
| practices (though farming practices do play a role of
| course).
|
| Protected lands of the Puerto Rican rain forest saw huge
| declines in insect and consequently birds and there is no
| farming there.
|
| The explanation is simple. Heat waves are killing the bugs.
| They simply can't cope with 1 or 2 weeks of intense heat. You
| also see this with lizards and frogs.
|
| Since they are low on the food chain this translates to bird
| declines, and other animal declines.
|
| PS. I choose not to use "Climate Change" because it's too
| neutral and is the preferred term of the fossil fuel industry
| for a reason. I like "Global Warming" or "Climate Crisis" or
| "Climate Emergency" or "Climate Chaos". The problem is too
| serious to use neutral language.
| binx_ wrote:
| "Climate Chaos" is certainly apt - things are becoming
| verifiably hotter but also more unpredictable and volatile.
| I was a proponent of using 'climate change' fairly
| exclusively but this comment has helped reframe that, thank
| you.
| badpun wrote:
| We subsidize agriculture to maintain food self-sufficiency.
| Otherwise, things could get very nasty around here during the
| next global famine. During a famine, you can't just outbid
| poor countries and buy out their food, as their governments
| will ban food exports and there will be not food to buy,
| regardless of price.
| tfourb wrote:
| If the only way that agriculture can sustain itself in i.e.
| Germany is by subsidies covering 50% of farmers' incomes
| and all of their profits, then the way we do
| agriculture/food is fundamentally wrong.
|
| Also, how self-sufficient are you really if your entire
| agricultural system is predicated on access to chemical
| fertilizers, which in turn is produced from natural gas of
| which you have to import close to 100%? The subsidy system
| is thoroughly dysfunctional and doesn't solve a real
| problem anymore, except by supporting existing economic
| structures.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I'd assume food stores could be made to last long enough
| to enact some kind of rationing, and thus lack of
| chemical fertilizers will have a less profound effect.
| The point isn't that we would have to sustain ourselves
| as before, but to be able to sustain on _some_ kind of
| level.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Across the world agriculture is subsidised.. even in
| poorer countries, because the cost of doing agriculture
| is very high. Farmers are moving to other jobs, selling
| their farmlands etc.. this will put huge pressure on food
| supplies and so the govts figured that there has to be
| some incentive to keep people in agriculture.
|
| Nations which don't have substantial access to food grown
| within their borders will place themselves at severe
| disadvantage when it comes to any sort of global
| negotiations.
|
| Take the example of Qatar - when it was under sanction by
| many of the Arab countries, they could not import food..
| and they were forced to get into agriculture and now
| agriculture thrives in Qatar even though the climate is
| not conducive.
|
| https://thefarmermagazine.com.au/qatars-farmers-have-
| gone-fr...
| CrampusDestrus wrote:
| Agriculture is subsidized to get the farmers' vote
| [deleted]
| badpun wrote:
| That too, but the benefit of food security is there
| regardless of the motive.
| cjrp wrote:
| It's really not. Without subsidies, farms could not
| exist; we simply don't pay enough for produce to keep
| them running. You could argue that subsidies are to keep
| the public onside. If you were the party who removed
| subsidies (and increased food prices by 50%), it would be
| political suicide.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I've never quite followed the math on this argument for
| subsidies. Government subsidies are still payed by us,
| the money is funneled through taxes and government
| budgets but it's not like a subsidy appears out of thin
| air.
|
| This is also does in the face of free markets. If we keep
| process artificially low we won't see any explanation in
| production. That keeps prices high and sticks us in a
| loop where we need subsidies because prices are too high
| and can't reduce price because there's no market
| incentive.
| Guthur wrote:
| Free market is the reason you need the subsidies,
| otherwise import tariffs.
|
| European production costs around labour, regulations etc
| would be drastically undercut by foreign low cost markets
| and you would lose food sovereignty due to foreign
| imports.
|
| Of course subsidies do introduce distortion but they are
| often simpler globally than tic for tat tariffs.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I'm not so sure if subsidizing a handful of industries
| avoids the problem of cost imbalances when trading
| globally.
|
| Say we subsidize corn because otherwise our corn industry
| would be decimated by cheap labor overseas. We
| successfully walled off one industry, but that cheaper
| foreign labor is still available for other production.
| Maybe workers that would be paid overseas to grow corn
| are instead paid to produce cheaper clothing that we
| can't compete with. We can't keep subsidizing one
| industry at a time in hopes of dodging a fundamental
| supply abstracts the other country has.
|
| Tariffs can be an option there *if* imposed on all
| imports from one country. They have their own practical
| issues though, not least of all is enforcement. NATO made
| a huge deal about banning Russian oil when the war
| started but they still sell it just fine, often as crude
| oil to another country that refines it and still sells it
| to us anyway.
| Guthur wrote:
| I doubt it's expected to be holistic, and there's not
| much point tariffing a commodity you don't have a viable
| alternative locally such as oil; Autarky is unlikely to
| viable in the long run.
|
| Though chemical fertilizer is likely a common weak point
| for food security with many countries. But this is not a
| new problem, the US pacific island grab in the 1800s to
| source Guano shows how regenerating soil macro nutrients
| has been a centuries old problem that countries have had
| grapple with.
| cjrp wrote:
| To be clear, I'm not arguing for subsidies; just that if
| they stopped completely and the prices paid by
| supermarkets / consumers didn't increase, the farms would
| go out of business.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Not just that. If you don't have farming going on - and
| it often requires subsidies to keep it going - even
| Netherlands have subsidised agriculture, your food
| security will just disappear.
|
| I am not sure why people don't seem to understand this.
| If a nation ever finds itself dependent on a neighbour
| for water, food, electricity, oil etc, they are going to
| be in big trouble when it comes to any sort of
| negotiations.
|
| The truth is that agricultural land is under tremendous
| pressure. It is far more lucrative to just build
| apartments or commercial real estate on farming land than
| it is to sustain agriculture. Subsidies are used to
| incentivize farmers to continue farming instead of
| disposing of their land.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Instead of boosting their economies by importing stuff from
| those countries we kill their exports with subsidized local
| produce and then spend a lot on development aid.
|
| I think a key takeaway from the pandemic is that you don't
| want to be reliant of import from strategic ressources and
| food is priority number one.
|
| European subsidies are mostly going to France which is a huge
| wheat producer.
|
| Farming is an area where I can predict there are going to be
| a lot of tension in the EU between ecological ambition and
| the cold reality of having to feed everyone.
| psiops wrote:
| It'll be a lot easier to feed everyone if we grow food for
| humans rather than cattle.
| mihaic wrote:
| It seems that optimal calorie output from all our
| available land involves some intermediary animals that
| eat whatever humans can't eat.
|
| I agree we're raising far too many cattle, but just
| wanted to point out it's not very simple.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Depends how you define << optimum >>.
|
| For IPCC it's GHG mitigation and the vegan diet beats
| them all, while << all diets needs to provide full
| complement of nutritional quality, including
| micronutrients >>.
|
| https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2022/11/S
| RCC... (Page 488)
|
| Edit : translate giec to ipcc
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| EU Farming subsidies and ecological ambition are a near
| perfect fit.
|
| Just politics gets in the way as usual. But as the climate
| deniers power wanes it's a powerful tool ready to be used
| for good.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| > push towards regenerative agricultural practices
|
| Say I would really like to be part of pushing towards this in
| some way. Maybe through volunteering, by making a career
| adjustment (I'm full stack engineer) or going back to studying
| for a bit. What can I do?
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| With your salary you could easily afford to by some land in
| eg Portugal and hire someone to manage as you see fit.
| nocsi wrote:
| Probably start a community garden. Be careful though, some
| cities hate their citizens being able to grow their own food
| tfourb wrote:
| Easy mode: If you are in the US, try looking up the Savannah
| Institute. They do some fantastic work to develop and
| research regenerative agricultural practices and they can use
| your money :-)
|
| Medium mode: Find a motivated young people that want to start
| a regenerative agricultural enterprise. Support them in some
| meaningful way. Agriculture will need to be changed from the
| bottom up to some important extend and that needs capital and
| other input. Access to land is expensive and farming involves
| a lot of bureaucracy both issues that you are probably well
| placed to support with.
|
| Hard mode: Become a farmer! You don't need to cultivate 300
| acres to be one. Find something (chickens, nut trees, bees,
| peaches, etc.) you are passionate about and that fits into
| your local context, spend a year or two to become an armchair
| expert, visit 10 other people already doing it and then get a
| bit of land and do it yourself. Depending on what you choose,
| a decent sized backyard can be a serious farming enterprise.
| [deleted]
| nabla9 wrote:
| > There are also quite convincing studies
|
| There is noticeable quantitative difference.
|
| People 40+ and older remember from their childhood how car's
| windshield, lamps and grille were covered with dead insects
| every time you took long drive outside cites. Today you can
| drive small country roads for a day and get only small number
| of insects.
|
| It used to be that you could walk in the garden and count
| easily 10-20 ladybugs eating aphid's from your planted flowers.
| My mother used fight aphids by spraying vinegar soap mix. Today
| the exact same spot with same flowers has no aphid problem and
| very few ladybugs.
| balderdash wrote:
| Don't forget the the sounds (crickets at night etc.)!
| timwaagh wrote:
| Farming does a heck of a lot worse damage than 'a decline in bird
| populations'. What causes such decline in wild animal populations
| and causes damage to humans is that farming takes up all the
| available room driving both animals and humans away. I would
| rather see the farmer being free to sell their lands to housing
| developers or build on it instead of the current level of
| masochism with considerations like autarky and tradition being
| dominant. Presumably a lot would go for it. Farmer happy, people
| happy. Probably birds happier too. We will help to ensure Ukraine
| wins that war and afterwards it can sell us food. Or Africa. Or
| wherever, really. Europe has better things to do.
| pkphilip wrote:
| What do you think is going to happen if farmers start selling
| their land for building residences and offices? where do you
| think your food is going to come from? Corporate farms? do you
| seriously think corporate farms are going to be carrying more
| for the environment than farming families?
| dmreedy wrote:
| "Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and
| his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a 6-inch layer
| of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
|
| I'd hesitate to be flippant about the complexities and
| difficulties in the generation of food, and the market forces
| that it drives. And I'd certainly hesitate to claim that anyone
| has "better things to do".
| Separo wrote:
| Anecdotal but I noticed in Portugal recently, in summer, over the
| course of two months, I saw pretty much no birds.
| cmilton wrote:
| Just to add an another anecdotal view, here in the US, I have
| seen more birds than recent years. I attribute the increase in
| my area to the halting of mosquito spraying practices.
| [deleted]
| jononomo wrote:
| In the old days, there were flocks of birds so large that they
| would blot out the sun, and the herds of bison were so large that
| it would take a week for a herd to walk by your campsite.
| asdff wrote:
| As we get more control of the resources on this planet, the
| proportions of species measured in earths biomass will
| certainly change. For example, there are no more wild cattle in
| europe. There are actually more domestic cattle in europe than
| there were ever wild cattle, however. The calories to support
| that surplus of bovine has to come from somewhere in the
| environment, there is no free energy. More nutrients that would
| have otherwise gone towards other plants perhaps are used to
| grow foods for the cattle, and n-th order effects to the rest
| of the environment happen from there. You can't have 8 billion
| people generating a surplus of food without changes to the rest
| of the network of life's interactions.
| jononomo wrote:
| There is free energy from the Sun.
| Haga wrote:
| [dead]
| j0057 wrote:
| > Considering both the overwhelming negative impact of
| agricultural intensification and the homogenization introduced by
| temperature and land-use changes, our results suggest that the
| fate of common European bird populations depends on the rapid
| implementation of transformative change in European societies,
| and especially in agricultural reform.
|
| The chance of transformative change like that happening in the
| Netherlands anytime soon is 0%. BBB has won big in provincial
| politics and they will be able to stall or vote down any policy
| that isn't beneficial to the few big agro firms for the coming
| years.
| taneq wrote:
| > Common bird time series in Europe have shown a general decline
| in abundance between 1980 and 2016 (-25.4% +- 2.8)
|
| In case anyone else was skimming through to find over what time
| period this occurred.
| DrBazza wrote:
| When I was a kid growing up in the London suburbs in the 70s
| and 80s I could remember flocks of all types of birds
| especially starlings and blackbirds being common place, and
| then, reading this article, it reminded me that I stopped
| seeing flocks.
|
| Even now, living outside London, I rarely see flocks of birds,
| and if I do, nowhere near as large as I remember, and I don't
| think its observer bias either.
| jabiko wrote:
| Thanks. It's always a bit annoying when someone throws around
| percentages of changes without giving the time frame.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The authors of the paper give the percentage right next to
| the time (as quoted), it's the submitter who has invented a
| new title.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Ah yes, more guidance from Europe about getting rid of farms to
| save birds and stuff.
|
| Let's do that, and instead get rid of people. Cut exports, that's
| what everyone wants, right?
| faangguyindia wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| emptyfile wrote:
| [dead]
| unglaublich wrote:
| Whenever possible, buy Demeter products. Their approach to
| farming improves biodiversity and soil quality.
|
| https://demeter.net/biodynamics/biodiversity/
|
| > 35% more birds and 23% more insects are found in organic
| farmland thanks to the creation of natural habitats and the
| absence of chemical and synthetic pesticides.
|
| We, customers, vote with our shopping behavior.
|
| Yes, those products are 100-200% more expensive in terms of
| money. But don't forget that there is a huge price to pesticide
| use that is not passed through to the customer.
| arnoooooo wrote:
| Biodynamics is complete hogwash. We do need labels for
| sustainable farming, but we need them to be based on science,
| not popular beliefs about moon phases and such things.
| nforgerit wrote:
| Agreed. Demeter is based on highly esoteric principles. Plus
| they've had an "interesting" relationship with the Nazi
| regime and obviously repeated their non-scientific weirdo
| theories in the Covid pandemic[0]. Personally, I only buy if
| I cannot avoid it.
|
| [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter_(Deutschland)
| vitro wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but because of farming we also started to
| have problem with mistletoe. Many small bushes of rose-hips,
| blackthorns and other food that birds usually eat disappeared
| because of smaller fields being merged to one, flattened. So what
| birds eat now is mistletoe, spreading it from tree to tree by
| wiping their beaks onto the bark of the tree, leaving mistletoe
| seeds there.
|
| To clear mistletoe from that many trees is fairly expensive so
| owners usually don't do it, and we have alleys and alleys of
| trees full of mistletoe. Eventually the tree dies because of
| mistletoe parasitizing it.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Birds had smart enough DNA to outlast the dinosaur era and
| conquer the sky but I wonder if they have smart enough DNA to
| survive the mammalian pest that has been unleashed on the planet.
| myshpa wrote:
| Don't forget that elimination of sparrows in some regions in
| China led to a famine with millions dead.
|
| Elimination of bird predators like owls and hawks (caused by
| destruction of their environment and poisons by bad agriculture
| practices) leads to mice infestations.
|
| Civilizations can only function if they don't destroy their
| ecosystems. We have enough warning examples in the past, let's
| hope we'll be smarter this time.
| mschild wrote:
| Theyll probably survive, but in what numbers and which types of
| birds is an entirely different story. Nevermind the massive
| impact that has on the environment in general.
| jononomo wrote:
| We need to move away from agriculture as a means of food
| production and switch to becoming herders. Farming is an
| incredibly destructive practice.
|
| If we were all to switch to eating only meat, then we could get
| rid of farming entirely and raise billions of cattle for food
| instead, which would be far better for human health and
| longevity, as well as being a far more environmentally-
| sustainable approach to food production.
|
| I am in favor of using nuclear power to desalinate seawater in
| order to turn both the Sahara Desert and the Australian Desert
| into vast grasslands that can support billions of cattle, along
| with all the bugs and birds that such a regenerative approach
| would give rise to.
|
| We really need to get humanity off of plant-based food.
| contingencies wrote:
| Large scale terraforming does not have a history of success and
| is broadly associated with authoritarian governments.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| These are very soft words for the ongoing biocide. If you look at
| animal farms and insecticide even a word as drastic as "animal
| holocaust" might be appropriate.
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