The other thing that this fellow doesn’t see is garbage in garbage out. People have high medical bills because they don’t care about their food. And when your meat and produce is of low quality you eat less of it and get less nutrition from it which leads to chronic disease. We know that green revolution food is cheaper, worse and less nutritious. If you can’t understand that health and nutrition comes from healthy soil then you can’t call yourself a farmer.
Yes. I also found that to be an odd omission. My book has an entire chapter devoted to the human health costs of industrial food, so he can't have missed it. I also have separate chapters addressing the threats of water and soil erosion, which are truly horror movies in their own right.
I think the heart of the disagreement is that he doesn’t understand that industrial farming is productive for the processors, wholesalers, groceries, input and machinery manufacturers, but not the person on the land. If the grocery store stays open our food and our farmers will suffer. He is obviously a proponent of the “green” revolution, which I would encourage him to look further into, because the case of Sri Lanka is telling. Your friend would argue that you can’t get 600 bushel corn without industrial techniques, which is true. And then John would counter that the farmer making 600 bushel corn is probably losing money. Both things can be true. But a farmer who is losing money being maximally productive will not be farming for very long. Our system incentivizes people to lose money because it produces cheap grains and high input consumption (main lobbying interests in Washington). I would challenge your friend to listen to John Kempf’s Regenerative agriculture podcast, because he discusses in detail the advantages of approaching agronomy from a biological systems approach vs conventional chemical approach. Round up gets leas and less effective over time. Using synthetic nitrogen mines the fertility out of soils. Using chemistry is fundamentally unsustainable long term.
I agree with all you say. However, I also don't see how Garth addresses soil depletion and aquifer drawdowns -- neither of those is being addressed at the industrial or political scale: we are exporting alfalfa from Arizona to Saudi Arabia. Fact is, industrial ag is ecologically unsustainable even if it were economically viable. But there are at least two other serious threats: 1) food security (a centralized food production system vulnerable to technological and economic disruption such as an EMP, war, social unrest currency collapse, etc.) and 2) hyperinflation (due either to money supply policy or resource costs such as an oil supply disruption). So I agree with Garth that modern ag is truly amazing. But it has created truly amazing risks that will eventually inflict a truly amazing suffering. Like him I wish I was wrong, but for different reasons. :)
I listen to various ag reports. Today one of the reports concerned pig farmers in Minnesota who are unable to procure grain for their large operations. The reason not being that there was not grain to be purchased, but the large grain farmers not selling because the price of grain is too low for them to sell and make a profit. So yes, economics plays a role in fragility. The larger the potential economic loss, then it stands to reason that the more fragile the system. Couple this with heavy market manipulation and disasters are more likely. Smaller more diverse farms are less efficient, but my chief argument is that efficiency should not be conflated with ethics. By ethics I mean a whole basket of benefits to humanity. Therefore accounting for ethics and the true good to humanity smaller more diverse farming is the model that we as a society should support. Let’s start right here at home in Vermont. It is after all much more beneficial ( on so many levels ) than tourism.
THE 2020s BRINGS MORE DUMBING DOWN CONTROL OF THE PEOPLE 😕 ONE NATION UNDER GOD , IS THE CURE......, FEEDING THE SUSTENANCE OF LIFE BIOSLUDGE FOR WE THE PEOPLES LIVES IS TERRORISM!!! BIRD FLU / MAD COW ALL EVIL MAN MADE,, GOD DID NOT MAKE ANIMALS TO KILL US ASK NOAH AND HIS ARK FAMILY. ONE NATION UNDER GOD , IS THE CURE. --- MOE, - LARRY, - THE NUREMBERGER - LOL -- HANG EM BY THEIR TERRORIST MURDEROUS WHO'S ALL OF THEM.
Garth is good-hearted, but young. He suffers from technomysticism, and lives in a time when the illusion of endless resources gives most people that delusion that technology will only improve and expand forever. Is it the "Great Delusion"?
The other thing that this fellow doesn’t see is garbage in garbage out. People have high medical bills because they don’t care about their food. And when your meat and produce is of low quality you eat less of it and get less nutrition from it which leads to chronic disease. We know that green revolution food is cheaper, worse and less nutritious. If you can’t understand that health and nutrition comes from healthy soil then you can’t call yourself a farmer.
Yes. I also found that to be an odd omission. My book has an entire chapter devoted to the human health costs of industrial food, so he can't have missed it. I also have separate chapters addressing the threats of water and soil erosion, which are truly horror movies in their own right.
I think the heart of the disagreement is that he doesn’t understand that industrial farming is productive for the processors, wholesalers, groceries, input and machinery manufacturers, but not the person on the land. If the grocery store stays open our food and our farmers will suffer. He is obviously a proponent of the “green” revolution, which I would encourage him to look further into, because the case of Sri Lanka is telling. Your friend would argue that you can’t get 600 bushel corn without industrial techniques, which is true. And then John would counter that the farmer making 600 bushel corn is probably losing money. Both things can be true. But a farmer who is losing money being maximally productive will not be farming for very long. Our system incentivizes people to lose money because it produces cheap grains and high input consumption (main lobbying interests in Washington). I would challenge your friend to listen to John Kempf’s Regenerative agriculture podcast, because he discusses in detail the advantages of approaching agronomy from a biological systems approach vs conventional chemical approach. Round up gets leas and less effective over time. Using synthetic nitrogen mines the fertility out of soils. Using chemistry is fundamentally unsustainable long term.
I agree with all you say. However, I also don't see how Garth addresses soil depletion and aquifer drawdowns -- neither of those is being addressed at the industrial or political scale: we are exporting alfalfa from Arizona to Saudi Arabia. Fact is, industrial ag is ecologically unsustainable even if it were economically viable. But there are at least two other serious threats: 1) food security (a centralized food production system vulnerable to technological and economic disruption such as an EMP, war, social unrest currency collapse, etc.) and 2) hyperinflation (due either to money supply policy or resource costs such as an oil supply disruption). So I agree with Garth that modern ag is truly amazing. But it has created truly amazing risks that will eventually inflict a truly amazing suffering. Like him I wish I was wrong, but for different reasons. :)
I listen to various ag reports. Today one of the reports concerned pig farmers in Minnesota who are unable to procure grain for their large operations. The reason not being that there was not grain to be purchased, but the large grain farmers not selling because the price of grain is too low for them to sell and make a profit. So yes, economics plays a role in fragility. The larger the potential economic loss, then it stands to reason that the more fragile the system. Couple this with heavy market manipulation and disasters are more likely. Smaller more diverse farms are less efficient, but my chief argument is that efficiency should not be conflated with ethics. By ethics I mean a whole basket of benefits to humanity. Therefore accounting for ethics and the true good to humanity smaller more diverse farming is the model that we as a society should support. Let’s start right here at home in Vermont. It is after all much more beneficial ( on so many levels ) than tourism.
THE 2020s BRINGS MORE DUMBING DOWN CONTROL OF THE PEOPLE 😕 ONE NATION UNDER GOD , IS THE CURE......, FEEDING THE SUSTENANCE OF LIFE BIOSLUDGE FOR WE THE PEOPLES LIVES IS TERRORISM!!! BIRD FLU / MAD COW ALL EVIL MAN MADE,, GOD DID NOT MAKE ANIMALS TO KILL US ASK NOAH AND HIS ARK FAMILY. ONE NATION UNDER GOD , IS THE CURE. --- MOE, - LARRY, - THE NUREMBERGER - LOL -- HANG EM BY THEIR TERRORIST MURDEROUS WHO'S ALL OF THEM.
:)
Garth is good-hearted, but young. He suffers from technomysticism, and lives in a time when the illusion of endless resources gives most people that delusion that technology will only improve and expand forever. Is it the "Great Delusion"?
2 Thess 2: 9-10....