

My Empire of Dirt - fendrak
http://nymag.com/print/?/restaurants/features/37273/

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petercooper
_Eating local is expensive and time-consuming, which is why this consumerist
movement will not easily trickle down into mass society._

And it's bad for the environment too based on the studies Superfreakonomics
quoted. Why? It turns out transportation is a minor contributor to food
related emissions:

 _Transportation represents only 11 percent of food emissions, with delivery
from producer to retailer representing only 4 percent._

You need the book to go into full detail but the crux of it is that large,
optimized farms are significantly less destructive to the environment on a
proportional basis than small, local farms. The people behind the study said
that cutting out one meal of red meat and dairy per week would have a better
result than eating entirely locally produced food.

Some quotes here: [http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Books/superfreakonomics-read-
exce...](http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Books/superfreakonomics-read-
excerpt/story?id=8848071)

~~~
kleiba
This is not true. The book you cite, 'SuperFreakonomics,' by Steven Levitt and
Stephen Dubner, apparently misquotes the original research on which they base
their claim. Here's a quote from the book[1]:

"Even the 'locavore' movement, which encourages people to eat locally grown
food, doesn't help in this regard. A recent study by two Carnegie Mellon
researchers, Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, found that buying
locally produced food actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions."

But compare that to how one of the two authors of the original study,
Christoph Weber, actually summarizes their findings[2]:

"The point of the paper was to say that yes, you can lower your footprint by
eating local foods, but you can do more on average by eating differently. It’s
not that eating local is a crock."

In that light, it seems as if Levitt and Dubner either misunderstood the paper
by Weber and Matthews or preferred to portrait it in a light that helps make
their own book look profound and surprising.

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Books/superfreakonomics-read-
exce...](http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Books/superfreakonomics-read-
excerpt/story?id=8848071)

[2] <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es900427m?cookieSet=1>

~~~
jdminhbg
You're quoting the authors' summary of their opinions, not disagreeing with
Superfreakonomics' interpretation of their data. There's a big difference.

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jgershen
What I really enjoyed about this article was hearing how difficult his
experience really was -- and you can tell he A) actually knows what he's
talking about and B) is still understating the difficulty. I've always assumed
that I would "know how to survive off the land" -- my outdoor self-confidence
pretty much comes from time backpacking in the Scouts as a kid, and from
reading a lot of Heinlein. And I have power tool experience, and I can do
physical labor. How hard could it be?

So at the beginning of the article, I was thinking "this seems incredible, I
would love to do something like that." In the middle, I was beginning to
appreciate how horribly difficult and unpleasant it would actually be. And by
the end, I was realizing that if I absolutely had to live off the land on my
own, without society to bail me out, I would almost certainly screw something
up and starve. I think almost all of us would.

Anyway, you might have already known that. But for some reason this article
hit just the right note to make me aware of the arrogance I've always had
about how hard surviving via subsistence farming would really be. I'm going to
go eat some cereal now and get back to work on the startup in the morning.

~~~
barrkel
I thought he was being way too ambitious. If I _had_ to make something like
that work, my focus would be on potatoes and possibly a cow for milk, but it
would of course depend on more land, the correct climate and probably better
timing. He seemed dead-set on eating meat every day, which seems to me to have
been very unrealistic, especially with such a tiny amount of land, unless he
was cheating and using bought grain etc. to feed the animals.

~~~
eru
You can probably go for eating eggs every day.

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thunk
Title is a reference to NIN's _Hurt_ , (beautifully) covered by Johnny Cash:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=related)

~~~
jokermatt999
More trivia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)#Mus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_\(Nine_Inch_Nails_song\)#Music_video_2)

Read the Reznor quote.

~~~
mortenjorck
_Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine
anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and
art form._

To have your own work transformed in such a profoundly moving way has to be
among the greatest possible creative experiences.

------
yardie
The author started way too fast and was surprised he would burn out so
quickly. If you are trying to set up a small self sustaining ecosystem you
don't dump everything in all at once. Anyone that's done an aquarium will tell
you that. You start with one thing, stabilize it, add another thing,
stabilize, rinse and repeat.

After reading this the only lesson he learned was how to waste $11,000. Off
the mark he's growing tomatoes, corn, potatoes, eggplant, raspberries, etc.
Nothing is mentioned about the watering and fertilizing cycles of the plants.
Which is pretty damn important. And these aren't the easiest vegetables,
except maybe the tomatoes and the cale.

I've started my own little terrace garden this summer and so far I've learned
getting started is expensive and no matter how smart you think you are, read
the directions. I basically spent $200 last month on what basically amounts to
soil, pots, hand tools, and seedlings. And this is only to grow herbs.

My objective is to get out from under the thumb of my local grocery store.
Last time I went shopping they were charging $3 for a bag of lettuce! If
things work out by the end of summer I won't be paying for something like that
again.

~~~
eru
Why did you have to spent $200? Would you give a small breakdown?

My housemates and I have recently started growing stuff in our garden. We did
not have to buy soil and pots, only some seeds and tools.

~~~
yardie
Organic soil 25lbs (10kg) : $11

Handtools : $25

Garden hose : $20

Garden hose attachments : $18

Seed packets $4 x 8 : $32

Various pots : $70

Primer and varnish : $40

Now that I think about it it probably wasn't my wisest shopping. But I live in
the city and to get to a gardening center would take a few hours by bus or
metro.

But these are sunk costs, you only need to by seeds once, you only need to
pots once, a big bag of soil costs almost the same as a small bag and can last
a while. If this little experiment works out I will have learned a lot from
the experience and have the required material.

But I'd never spend $11,000 on the first run. That's a really expensive
education. If anything the guy proves that "his" urban farm is unsustainable.

~~~
eru
Thanks for the breakdown.

Did you get a box (or whatever) to make compost in? I guess even now you have
lots of kitchen waste, that will make for great soil. I heard used coffee
powder is good for most potted plants.

A worm compost is fun, but other methods work as well. You can compost not
only food wastes, but also most kinds of paper.

If you want to go really crazy, go the humanure route
(<http://weblife.org/humanure/default.html>). Needs a bucket and some saw dust
and a compost heap. Make sure you separate the phases.

By the way, what's the advantage of organic soil over just taking a shovel and
digging up some dirt?

~~~
yardie
I'm not composting this year. If things work out I'll probably start a little
later. My last heap turned to kindling since I never watered it, it was in a
remote part of a farm and I forgot about it.

The city did send me a flyer saying they are starting a composting project and
asking for interested citizens to respond.

The reason I went with organic soil instead of sticking plants in the ground
is because our building is from the 1960. Lots of things were fashionable then
like lead paint and asbestos. I already have a sealed ventilation shaft that
has asbestos on my property. The dirt itself could contain anything. I've
already picked out broken glass, garbage, rags. All of this is in the dirt.
Like the Obamas, I don't want to find out my lawn has high traces of lead.

Going with my own soil I have control of what's in it and what, eventually,
goes into me. BTW, my mints and basil have started to pop up. 2 fresh
ingredients I no longer need from the store.

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todayiamme
This article reminded me of something I've always wanted to do before I grow
old; make an automated farm. What drives me crazy is the idea of an integrated
system that gives me high quality produce at the maximum possible efficiency.

If we use something like hydroponics then we can precisely control the
nutrients the plants get. Further, since they grow inside a greenhouse we
don't need to use any pesticides at all. Further, we can control the amount of
light they receive to optimize for maximum growth, and by stacking such units
one on top of the other than we don't have to worry space at all. So a massive
500 acre farm can be theoretically reduced to a one acre farm with 500 decks
of plants in an efficient arrangement.

In fact, someone else way smarter than me has already though of this and
developed the idea to quite a long extent (see:
<http://www.verticalfarm.com/>). Has anyone over here ever tried something
like this? Are there more awesome people like Mr. Howard?

~~~
cullenking
To address one of your points, just because the crop is inside a greenhouse
(or even indoors!) does not mean you won't get pests. Anyone who has had
fungus gnats or spider mites even in their far-spaced house plants can attest
it happens :(

~~~
todayiamme
Yes, but as loewenskind pointed out. It is exactly like quarantine. think
about it this way if we can keep entire football fields dust free for years at
a time to fabricate micro-processors then surely we can do this?

Something that really amazes me is that technology has been pushed to limits
that we can't imagine. Who would have thought that we are now engineering
things 100 atoms apart? Unbelievable.

~~~
eru
> [...] then surely we can do this?

There's a difference between technologically possible, and economically
feasible.

------
weak
The author, Manny Howard, was on the Colbert Report tonight. This guy was
incredibly deadpan, one of the more enjoyable Colbert guests that I can
remember.

~~~
fendrak
That's what prompted me to look him up. I caught parts of the interview while
browsing the web, and decided that he sounded interesting enough to warrant a
quick search, and this article turned out to be better than the interview (at
least from an information perspective).

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jkndrkn
Nice Nine Inch Nails reference ^_^

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dylanz
Permaculture FTW

