I cannot wait for the day that the US seriously revisits the farming subsidies and agricultural practices we've adopted. Everytime I read about modern, large scale farming I'm a little more disturbed by the norms we're establishing. Surely there are better, healthier ways to grow food that are still economically viable.
I say the US specifically because unfortunately we seem to be the origin for almost all of the modern, disturbing practices that have become ubiquitous. We've been setting the standard and hopefully we'll make a 180 and start raising the bar.
> I cannot wait for the day that the US seriously revisits the farming subsidies and agricultural practices we've adopted.
As someone that grew up on a farm, can you explain why? And also explain why the practices, aka fallow fields, are incorrect? A lot of the subidies and practices we have in place today are direct results of things like the dust bowl.
> Surely there are better, healthier ways to grow food that are still economically viable.
Have you validated such assumptions? I can guarantee that large scale farming is a lot more nuanced than one can assume in an arm chair style.
Until you've seen what pests can do to a field that hasn't been treated with fertilizer or say herbicide, its really hard to understand why they get used. It is the difference between having a crop to sell, and going out of business and selling off your farm.
This black and white thinking that comes from people that haven't any experience in the chosen field is honestly more annoying. Should we improve? Sure, no farmer would disagree, but would you be ok with increasing your food costs by 5x? 10x? even more? These are the things you ultimately have to consider when you knock modern practices.
There is no free lunch (pun intended) if you ban modern practices. There is a good chance that requiring the things you want makes large scale farming impossible, and results in more people without food at all. I'm not sure that is an overall net positive.
I've never worked in the industry but I've been casually studying about it for the last 10 years or so. I'm well aware of the roots of our current agriculture system stemming from the dust bowl. I've spent a good amount of time trying to understand the history of the subsidies that shaped the Ag industry.
The fact of the matter is that our modern farming practices are way too short sighted. Topsoil erosion is the easiest thing to point to to identify that something needs to change. Things like monoculture issues, herbicide issues, pollinator health, are all things we should take more seriously but nothing is as concrete as the argument that we need to maintain our soil better.
Small scale forest farming practices have shown that there's alternative methods to produce high yields off the same land with better practices. There's a multitude of simple techniques like hugelkultur that seem like amazingly efficient ways to improve yields. Salatin's work has highlighted some potential ways to incorporate more biodiversity on the farm to maintain a healthier long term ecosystem. There's been meaningful traction with hydroponic and vertical farming practices.
I'm certainly no expert in what the actual solution is but whatever we're doing now is unsustainable. Much of it originates from the abused and malformed subsidies that over-emphasize food security over health or environmental issues. High Fructose corn syrup and ethanol being perfect examples of the stupidity of our current strategy around agricultural subsidies.
The government already pumps a tremendous amount of money into the agriculture industry. We should just do it more deliberately and thoughtfully.
Sure, prices or taxes will likely go up. By how much is the real debate but ultimately I'd say whatever the change is it's probably going to be worth it. Modern farming practices is right up there with climate change as an existential threat that we should not neglect and saddle future generations with.
It feels like part of the problem is one of wording. 'Modern farming' sounds very positive -- who doesn't like modern things? I suggest that 'industrial farming' would be a better description, and invoke a more realistic mental image of what it involves.
Holmgren & Mollison formulated a more recent answer to the problems of sustainable food production than Haber & Bosch. So perhaps a system that doesn't rapidly render the land unproductive, and does not requiring an energy input roughly the same as the (food) energy output, could be considered more 'modern'.
Industry insiders cannot always be relied on to dictate good policy. I won't profess to know more about ag, but I know that in any industry insiders can get too close to a problem and lose the big picture. Ag's totally insatiable appetite for water strikes me as one example, and disregard for long term pollinator health strikes me as another.
The point being, you don't have to be a farmer or rancher to have valid concerns, and the outcome affects all of us so we all have a stake.
Monocropping field corn to feed cattle has always stood out to me as a big one. Monocrops are inherently vulnerable, beef is a luxury good not a necessity, and the total input for a pound of beef is extremely high compared to most other food items. I haven't personally done the math, but I understand beef production enjoys significant subsidies at multiple steps.
Another topic, a common desire among ecologists is to incentivize more natural habitat at the margins to support native plants, insects, and birds. It's fairly simple, easy to measure the cost & implementation, and the goal would be it would ultimately be better for everyone, with healthy predator populations and so forth.
Edit: just wanted to add, the vast majority of all corn grown in the US is field corn for cattle, we're not talking some small portion of US agriculture.
Ranching is way better for natural habitat than cropping. Cattle in the North American prairies graze on native grasses where on cultivated land (in Saskatchewan, for peas, wheat and canola) all native grasses are ripped up for crop and riparian and wetland areas are destroyed to increase acreage.
Exactly. Meat produced from grazing animals is not neccesarily a bad thing -- many fields are simply not suited for farming, and grazing animals may be able to produce more food per square metre compared to withering crops.
Problem is that most meat simply isn't produced that way.
>Until you've seen what pests can do to a field that hasn't been treated with fertilizer or say herbicide, its really hard to understand why they get used. It is the difference between having a crop to sell, and going out of business and selling off your farm.
In my meager attempts at a backyard garden, I have lost entire "crops" of vegetables due to insects. From the slugs eating the young/new growth, grasshoppers eating the leafy plants, birds/insects eating the fruit, and just neighborhood stray cats using the loose soil as litter box digging up the plants. Then there's the squirrels and possums or raccoons that come along digging up plants looking for food. I just want to nuke the whole place from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
With all of that, it's just a hobby to "keep me off the streets", but damn those pesky pests. I have often said that I'm really lucky/thankful that my livelihood does not depend on me being able to successfully grow food. Oh, and before you get to the stage of pests, it has to rain just the right amount. Not enough, and nothing grows. Too much, and everything drowns and rots. None of these things are in the farmer's control.
A simple out of the box solution is intercropping. The loss of a single crop in a multi-crop system is not a ruinous loss compared to monocropping. It also reduces the requirements for pesticides and fertilizers if done well.
Is this solution compatible with contemporary mechanized agriculture ? Seeding, spraying, harvesting by machines ?
Otherwise, it's like finding an automobile manufacturing improvement that can only be used with hand assembly. Besides Rolls-Royce, it won't help anyone.
Somewhat, but 180 bushels of corn at $3.50/bushel is worth more than 60 bushels soybeans at $10/bushel. Farmers only grow soybeans because they are a source of fertilizer for their corn and so it works out in the long run.
I’m no subject matter expert, but I think what brd was saying is that farm subsidies are hugely distorting to the agricultural commodities market, and that leads to inefficient capital and resource allocation, which in turn causes misalignments between overall consumer wealfare beyond monitary means and spills over to hurting the health of the general public.
How much of this is true I do not know, but based on economic theory such negative externalities are possible.
You can’t ignore at the fact that the US is much more libertarian than Canada and the EU when it comes to business regulations. And we all know what happens when governments are too business friendly and not addressing market failures or safeguarding public interest.
Ask yourself this, what percentage of your operational best practices are invented/peddled by the industry vs truly independent research?
> what percentage of your operational best practices are invented/peddled by the industry vs truly independent research?
It would be helpful to define “independent” because there is an “industry” of anti-GMO advocates that produce research to support their views and, compared to a Cargill-sponsored study, they’d be viewed as “independent.”
I think we ascribe too much credibility to non-profit corporations. As an example, we routinely dismiss an Exxon climate study as “biased” or “corrupt” but a Greenpeace study is somehow more noble or accurate? Greenpeace lives and dies from donations — donations that would disappear if the threats they purport to care about are diminished. Greenpeace type organizations have just as much at relative stake as “industry” and thus studies they sponsor ought to be held to similar levels of skepticism as “industry” studies. Climate change is an industry with just as much as stake as fossil fuels. Al Gore, as an example, became a billionaire from the climate change issue. It would be difficult to argue that research promoted by a guy like him are independent considering he has gotten ultra wealthy from peddling climate alarmism just as Exxon gets rich from promoting studies rife with skepticism. Truly independent studies are extremely rare — everyone has an agenda.
We don’t necessarily need more independent studies because even independent studies are funded by someone with an agenda, what we need are more reproducible studies that can be analyzed objectively. A reproducible Exxon study is more valid than an in-reproducible study from the Sierra Club (and vice-versa
The problem is that an Cargill study is immediately dismissed as corrupt, but some non-profit study is given the benefit of the doubt.. I propose that all studies should be viewed with skepticism until their results are reproduced and corroborated.
Canada, EU and the U.S. all have massive agriculture subsidies.
This article was actually about Canada, you realize?
The EU subsidies for Iberian fisherman to allow them to catch and catch regardless of economics have been the prime mover in destroying fisheries up and down the North American and African coasts. It was, and is, one of the worst environmental crimes of the last century, perhaps only matched by the EU subsidies for diesel vehicles that have contributed so much to climate change and point-source pollution.
I completely agree that the reality is far more nuanced.
Have you questioned your assumptions yourself that food cost has to go up using alternative approaches? There is research out there painting a different picture[1].
I think subsidies are a good thing, however our current application of them is definitely backwards. Corn is one of the worst crops to subsidize, the whole reason we grow corn is because how absolutely robust and resilient it is as staple crop. However the trade off for being such a strong crop is poor input-output efficiency. I think subsidies need to be applied to more vulnerable crops, some should go to staple crops other than corn, but I think the larger portion of it should go to fruit and vegetable production. I would also like to see some of it given to more sustainable farming practices, with an emphasis in reducing artificial irrigation, reducing artificial fertilizer usage, and maintaining or increasing topsoil depth and soil health, although I have no idea how to properly implement those practice.
When you grow a crop that takes nutrients out of the soil they must be replaced. When you eat the crop in the same location (substance farming) there isn't a problem as your excrement is fertilizer.
When you live in the city that doesn't happen - nobody transports sewage back to the fields. It isn't necessarily a good idea to try: the energy to transport sewage back to the fields needs to come from somewhere; sewage needs to not have harmful chemicals/heavy metals from other processes mixed in.
Unfortunately I think this will only arise if/when we have a major crisis that results in a large amount of Americans being poisoned. We're really, really bad at preventative measures instead opting for short term profit over long term stability and health.
The amount that farms end up poisoning local rivers, streams etc I thought would be enough of a wake up call but I guess I was too optimistic. Organic foods aren't the answer either sadly, since a lot of the time that's the result from unfounded fears.
The poisoning is happening. It's just not yet happening to humans, it's happening to our rivers and streams and oceans that are receiving all the phosphorous runoff, and to the wild herbaceous plants that are caught in the drift of dicamba, glyphosate or 2-4,d.
(p.s. I live rural, have a hobby orchard/vineyard, and live next to two cash crop farms)
However that theory was challenged when Ted Cruz opposes ethanol subsidies and still won the state. The problem is that most politicians aren’t as courageous to fight for what is right (in their view) as opposed to what they think Iowa voters want.
But you are correct: Iowa’s status as the first caucus state has a lot to do with the state of farm policy.
I'm hoping for a single solid study establishing either
A) alternative farming practices that are reasonably efficient and profitable to highlight a way for smaller scale farmers to thrive.
B) the negative health effects of some of these choices in our food supply that causes people to actually get up in arms about it and force some regulation with real teeth.
I can only hope you're wrong and that we don't hit a point of mass poisonings before we do anything but I can very easily see that coming to fruition.
the question is, though, whether the slow mass poisoning isn't already happening since a couple of years and the symptoms are just misattributed to other factors?
I have read somewhere, and i agree with the argument, that the subsidies given to farming in the US is partly in place in order to secure food in case of imported foods not being an option due to sanctions, war or any other reason.
So as long as the farms in the US fulfills this criteria there is no urgent reason for the government to restructure the subsidy criteria, incentives and payouts.
That will never happen unless people start voting with their feet. Look into CSAs in your area. The guy that runs mine is fanatical about using traditional practices—“just compost and hard work”. It’s incredibly satisfying.
I say the US specifically because unfortunately we seem to be the origin for almost all of the modern, disturbing practices that have become ubiquitous. We've been setting the standard and hopefully we'll make a 180 and start raising the bar.