
Small-town America fights for its life - whatami
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/small-town-america-fights-for-its-life
======
spodek
Environmental destruction is the story here, but with one misunderstanding.

> _Rural America is eroding. If you talk to farmers such as Short and Roger,
> they lament it. But almost nobody thinks it can be prevented. More efficient
> farming..._

The new farming isn't more efficient physically, chemically, or biologically.
It consumes without replacing resources like topsoil, biodiversity, water,
etc. It looks more efficient financially only by neglecting the future costs
to restore those resources.

I wouldn't call willful, determined overuse "erosion," though. I would call it
destruction.

We've created financial incentives to eat our seed corn as a culture and the
article presents one place it's playing out. Destroy the environment and
people will leave it.

~~~
bryanlarsen
> The new farming isn't more efficient physically, chemically, or
> biologically. It consumes without replacing resources like topsoil,
> biodiversity, water, etc. It looks more efficient financially only by
> neglecting the future costs to restore those resources.

B.S. Farmers aren't stupid, they still remember the lessons of the 1930s. They
all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the family
farm will stay in the family for generations to come. Their biggest asset is
that land, and they'll be relying on it for decades to come.

That's why they're adopting methods like zero-till and cover crops to prevent
soil erosion, why they carefully manage their straw cover et cetera.

They also don't listen to city folk who think obviously silly things like
"organic is better for the environment". The alternative to glyphosate is
tillage, and farmers have first hand experience with how destructive tillage
is to the soil, how it erodes the soil and the subsequent erosion destroys the
waterways.

~~~
danaris
> They all plan to farm until they're physically unable to, and hope that the
> family farm will stay in the family for generations to come.

And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food actually
comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of the
largest farms in the US in 2011[1].

Most of our agriculture today is not good old Farmer John and his wife and
eight kids going out to hoe the beans at dawn. It's massive operations with
hundreds or thousands of acres, huge agricultural machines, and, yes, loads of
chemicals treating the soil to make it produce even when we've stripped it
bare of nutrients by forcing it to grow the same crops year after year. (It's
also many thousands of migrant farm workers doing the actual physical labour,
but that's a separate issue...)

There _are_ good permaculture movements springing up that seek to return to
more sustainable methods, but they're almost exclusively individuals or small-
community groups.

As for glyphosate...OK, sure, it can help to reduce the mechanical damage to
the ground caused by repeatedly tilling the soil. But count me in the
Extremely Skeptical camp as to it being "totally harmless" to humans,
particularly given how influential Monsanto's money is in shaping the research
into the subject. (And that doesn't even touch on the effects on the
environment from spraying it all over the place, year after year, and letting
it run off into waterways...)

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/16/the-d...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/16/the-
decline-of-the-small-american-family-farm-in-one-chart/)

~~~
bryanlarsen
> And small family farms are an ever-decreasing share of where our food
> actually comes from. Over 70% of the farm acreage was held by the top 10% of
> the largest farms in the US in 2011[1].

Those large farms are also small family farms. I know a guy who owns 15,000
acres but it's a 3 man operation: him, his wife and a single hired man. That's
the norm in Saskatchewan.

> as to it being "totally harmless" to humans,

Of course it's not "totally harmless". It's just better than the alternatives.

~~~
danaris
> Of course it's not "totally harmless". It's just better than the
> alternatives.

Not using herbicides is totally harmless to humans. It just reduces profits.

Personally, I'm for options that prioritize humans over money.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Not using herbicides destroys the land which is where this discussion started.

~~~
danaris
If you assume that herbicides and tillage are the only possible options ever.

------
ur-whale
For the lazy, here's a streetview of the church. It is indeed quite nice:

[https://goo.gl/maps/2cToS5cmVitVJLgY8](https://goo.gl/maps/2cToS5cmVitVJLgY8)

------
revicon
TLDR;

"You’ve got better genetics on the seeds,” Roger explained. “You’ve got
fantastic technology on the equipment. And so you don’t need as many people.”

------
tabtab
There is no article there. Is there a _Magic Button_ I'm missing, other than
"subscribe"?

It seems content is also fighting for its life.

Here's a similarly-name article that's open-able, at least to me:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/rural-america-
eco...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/rural-america-economy-
revive.html)

~~~
cmdshiftf4
Working fine for me on Firefox 70.0.1 w/ ublock, noscript, privacy badger and
a bunch of other privacy extensions enabled.

~~~
tabtab
It's working now for me. I've seen that multiple times lately: an article is
_intermittently_ hidden. It may be marketing games whereby they make it open
to attract links from commenting forums such as Reddit and this one, and then
switch on "subscriber only" mode when traffic comes. If intentional, that's
evil in my book.

------
zrail
No judgement on this particular opinion piece, but just for sake of clarity in
case people are unaware, the Washington Examiner has a rather pronounced
conservative and Republican bias.

~~~
dfsegoat
Neutral source: [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-
examiner/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/)

~~~
CharlesColeman
> Neutral source: [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-
> examiner/](https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/)

Neutral, perhaps, but also poorly qualified:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check):

> The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur
> attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media
> analyst."[2] Van Zandt describes himself as someone with "more than 20 years
> as an arm chair researcher on media bias and its role in political
> influence."[3] The Poynter Institute notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a
> widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation,
> despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."[4]

~~~
dfsegoat
Totally fair, thank you. But you left out some important bits from your
response, including that several academic groups have used the site for
building fake news classifiers:

> _The site has been used by researchers at the University of Michigan to
> create a tool called the "Iffy Quotient", which draws data from Media
> Bias/Fact Check and NewsWhip to track the prevalence of 'fake news' and
> questionable sources on social media. The site was also used by a research
> group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in initial training of an
> AI to fact check and detect the bias on a website._ [3]

Despite publications in academia using the site, you may also note the
following:

> _In 2016, Kyle Pope, who had served as the editor in chief of The New York
> Observer, was announced as the new editor and publisher of [Columbia
> Journalism Review]_. [1]

> _In 2016, the New York Observer became notable for being one of only a
> handful of newspapers to officially endorse United States presidential
> candidate Donald Trump in the Republican Party presidential primaries.[18]
> The newspaper 's owner and then publisher, Jared Kushner, is Donald Trump's
> son-in-law._ [2]

...I'm not sure what to think of the above pedigree for CJR's editor, but IMO
I suspect he either fell to one end of the political spectrum or the other.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Journalism_Review#Edi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Journalism_Review#Editor)

2 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Observer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Observer)

3 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Bias/Fact_Check)

~~~
CharlesColeman
> But you left out some important bits from your response, including that
> several academic groups have used the site for building fake news
> classifiers

No I didn't. My quote from Wikipedia included this: "The Poynter Institute
notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and
even studies about misinformation, _despite the fact that its method is in no
way scientific_ [emphasis mine].""

The fact that some AI group used it to train a classifier is not a very strong
endorsement in my opinion. AI researchers aren't journalism subject matter
experts, and Media Bias/Fact Check is obviously a very _convenient_ data
source, but covenience is not good indicator of quality.

> Despite publications in academia using the site, you may also note the
> following:

> ...I'm not sure what to think of the above pedigree for CJR's editor, but
> IMO I suspect he either fell to one end of the political spectrum or the
> other.

You seem to be trying to synthesize two disparate observations to imply the
idea that Kyle Pope is some kind of conservative and therefore too
untrustworthy to evaluate Media Bias/Fact Check, but that betrays a poor
understanding of how newspapers operate. In a well-run paper, there's a
separation between the newsroom and the opinion/editorial pages. For instance,
the WSJ has a famously conservative editorial page. You might think its
reporters have the same ideology, but (IIRC) _its newsroom staff is even more
liberal than that from the NYT_ , a fact that seldom shows because they're so
professional. The newsroom exists to report the facts, and the editorial pages
to voice the opinions of the owner/publisher. That Jerod Kushner had his paper
endorse Donald Trump in no way reflects on Kyle Pope's judgement as a
journalist.

Furthermore, Kyle Pope's own Wiki page has him saying:

> In an interview with Brian Stelter of CNN, Pope stated that after the
> election of President Donald Trump, the news media needs to rethink how it
> covers the news in order to "retake the agenda from this man who so hungers
> for attention, and how do we tell stories in a way that reflects the scale
> and sweep of the moment we're in?"
> ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Pope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Pope))

The tone of that kinda confirms to me that your quotes are two puzzle pieces
that don't actually fit together.

I'm inclined to trust the CJR's editor's judgement on journalism topics
(topics which include the Media Bias/Fact Check website), because the CJR is
the professional journal of the most prestigious American school of
journalism.

~~~
dfsegoat
Excellent points. I'll concede my arguments were pretty speculative and weak
re: Pope.

At the end of the day I suppose I am still curious where/how I can gauge the
political bias of a given news source? Does CJR do something like this on
their own?

