
The Dizzying Grandeur of 21st Century Agriculture - adriand
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/big-food-photo-essay.html
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rwmurrayVT
A more interesting and enlightening article on the state of 21st Century
Agriculture is plugged after this article.

Michael Pollan is a wonderful writer. This article shouldn't surprise anyone
who spends time thinking about the food they put into their body and where it
that food is sourced.

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obama-
administration-big-food-policy.html)

~~~
triplesec
.. and also much more enlightening than this puff piece for capital
agriculture, is this one, also promoted on the article:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/meat-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/meat-
industry-transparency-fight.html)

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rudedogg
Hopefully technology (robotics + machine learning) will improve this a lot in
the future. Rather than needing to keep dairy cows in a shed they could graze,
and some robotic contraption could roam the field milking them, etc.

It's also worth mentioning that these are probably the better food operations
out there (most wouldn't allow cameras).

Agriculture is ugly, and always will be.

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weberc2
> most wouldn't allow cameras

Because farmers are concerned that reporters are out to portray their
operations as more inhumane or less safe than they really are. For example,
nursing sows are kept in very small cages so they can't roll over and kill
their piglets, but farmers know that most journalists would only see (and thus
talk about) the claustrophobic quarters.

> Agriculture is ugly, and always will be.

I grew up on a farm; while there's certainly room for improvement, most
farming operations are very humane. I can't speak to the extreme "big ag" end
of the spectrum, but family farms--even large ones--tend to treat their
animals well.

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inimino
> so they can't roll over and kill their piglets

If you'll excuse an ignorant question, how did pigs ever survive before this
practice? And is it necessarily "humane" just because it reduces one kind of
risk?

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gambiting
Same as with any other animal - they have multiple offspring, so even if some
of them die it's no big deal in nature. On a farm, you don't want even a
single piglet to die that way, so you keep the sow in such position that it
can't kill the piglets accidentally.

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inimino
If it's not a big deal in nature, then it happens infrequently, yes? So the
sows are kept in tiny pens (or pinned on their sides as in the photos in the
article) to make reproduction a bit more efficient on the farm than in nature?

This was given as an example of something that looks more inhumane in pictures
than it really is. The reason it looks inhumane is because one imagines the
sow would prefer freedom of movement, as other living things do. The reason
why it is done is certainly relevant, as is how long they are kept in that
position, whether they ever appear to be in distress trying to move about,
etc.

None of this is visible in a photo, and needs to be explained. However, I
don't buy the argument that people have no right to see where their food comes
from because they just wouldn't understand what they're seeing. A system where
living things are raised for our benefit seems like a place where more
transparency is called for, not less.

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subpixel
Semi-related: I wonder why the Times is publishing the magazine during the
week now. I suspect it has to do with when and how people read these days -
many fewer people getting the hard copy, and probably fewer people reading
online over the weekend.

I feel like we're at peak long-form journalism, podcasts, and binge-worthy tv.
I could (I do not) devote 2+hrs a day to the good stuff and still be way
behind.

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TheGRS
Funny you should say that, I just subscribed to the Times a little over a
month ago, the digital version that is. Its the first newspaper I've
subscribed to in over 4 years. I like their articles and generally find myself
actually reading through them the whole way. Its the only paper I've found
worth my time/money.

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walrus01
Be very glad you can't smell that cattle feed lot through the screen.

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whybroke
>Our industrialized food system nourishes more people, at lower cost, than any
comparable system in history...

It does puzzle me though why in Spain, among most other food, bread is 1/5 and
Tomatoes 1/10 the price. Particularly odd is that US boxed cereal and
California wine are also cheaper.

But that is off topic I'm sure.

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elorant
The first picture is just depressing. All those calves living their lives in a
cramped space without exposure to nature or to one another, constantly fed to
achieve maturity in a fraction of the time it would normally take. This is so
fucked-up. And of course their meat tastes nothing like beef.

~~~
hexane360
"Newborn females arrive from local dairies and spend their first 180 days at
Calf Source — first in one of 4,896 hutches, like the ones seen here, and then
in larger group pens. Trucks pass down each of 72 rows, dispensing water and
milk. After a transfer to Heifer Source, another facility owned by the Milk
Source company, the cows are inseminated and then returned — seven months
pregnant, and just under 2 years old — to the dairies they came from."

They only spend a small part of their life there. And they're cows, so they're
not used for meat.

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ciconia
> They only spend a small part of their life there. And they're cows, so
> they're not used for meat.

Yeah right, being separated from your mom at birth, enslaved from your first
day, raped and made pregnant once a year is not such a bad deal. At least
you're not dead...

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toomanybeersies
Given that cows cannot give consent, you can hardly call it rape any more than
natural insemination from a bull is rape.

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nayuki
Why is it that in the Taylor Farms photo of vegetable processing, all the
workers are wearing dusk masks or respirators? What is dangerous in that
environment?

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bglazer
I'd imagine it's their sneezes and coughs.

The problem isn't what's going into the workers, it's what's coming out of
them.

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ge96
Amazing.

People can complain about conditions and what not of mass produced food but
it's a big demand. I think it's ingenious the designs of these various mass-
production facilities.

Sure, treat the animals with respect. Does suck to think you're born for food.

That line of cows being inseminated and sent back to where they came from.
Shit. Sounds dirty haha. Poke. I don't know how they do it though so just
speculating.

Great post

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zeveb
Weird: I have JavaScript enabled, but the article is an unreadable grey-on-
white.

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titanomachy
I had the same problem but it cleared on a page refresh.

