Simple Living and Higher Thinking

[Yeshe Dawa]

I don't believe you.


If the farming model you think is ideal isn't actually practical any more, then it's not sustainable.

Hi 9-10ths_Penguin!

I'm not an economist by any means, but I had some questions about our current farming system. Isn't the reason that small scale farming isn't practical the same reason that other small business models are becoming impractical - large corporations can dominate the market and use their volume to undercut pricing? This might make small farms impractical when looking at the market overall, but if the goal is sustainability - where most of the produce is consumed on site, the current market situation shouldn't matter, I guess. Also, because of the current farming model, isn't food pricing tied directly to the price of petroleum? That seems like a highly unstable situation to me. True, in the United States we can (and do) keep food prices artificially low through tax subisidies to large scale farms, but many people in the rest of the world are very vulnerable to changes in food pricing. Given these factors, do you think that our current farming model is sustainable?

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:

 

[idav]

Yeshe, just like Wal Mart trampling over small business owners same things are happening to farmers.

 

[painted wolf]

It has more to do with the fact that we have 6 billion people and climbing and very limited good agricultural land.

We use less water, loose less soil and get greater production with modern methods. Especially when combined with the best practices from traditional methods.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

And like walmart, if people chose to support small businesses and local farms then they will survive. You choose what matters more to you.

wa:do

 

[idav]

And like walmart, if people chose to support small businesses and local farms then they will survive. You choose what matters more to you.

wa:do

With growing technology also comes cheaper labor and less jobs. That fact doesn't help the fact that the rich are becoming fewer but with more of the money. With that everyone is trying to save a buck and so it keeps snowballing.

 

[Yeshe Dawa]

With growing technology also comes cheaper labor and less jobs. That fact doesn't help the fact that the rich are becoming fewer but with more of the money. With that everyone is trying to save a buck and so it keeps snowballing.

Hi Idav!

This is the trend that I also have been noticing. It's hard for people in low wage jobs to pass over the cheap, industrial farmed produce at the superstores and buy healthier, organic food that was produced locally with no pesticides. In theory, it makes sense that if people don't want the industrial farmed food, they will not buy it, but I think that in many cases their economic situation forces them to choose the superstore over the farmstand. Good point!

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:

 

[jarofthoughts]

It's hard for people in low wage jobs to pass over the cheap, industrial farmed produce at the superstores and buy healthier, organic food that was produced locally with no pesticides.

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that organic food is healthier, or that locally produced food is somehow better in any way?

Consider this:

"On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs."
Source: http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2009/07/29/ajcn.2009.28041.abstract

"Except for higher nitrate content and lower vitamin C content in some conventionally-grown vegetables, Woese et al. concluded (after examining about 150 publications) that “with regard to all other desirable nutritional values...no major differences were observed” between organically- and conventionally-grown vegetables."
Source: http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsid.1232/news_detail.asp

I fear that this 'organic food is healthier' thingie is more in people's heads than an actual fact.

 

[Revoltingest]

How do you know how weather happens? Your senses are very limited.

Not that limited.

Not at all. I am the follower of an enlightened being.

How's that work'n for ya?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hi 9-10ths_Penguin!

I'm not an economist by any means, but I had some questions about our current farming system. Isn't the reason that small scale farming isn't practical the same reason that other small business models are becoming impractical - large corporations can dominate the market and use their volume to undercut pricing?

I suppose it might be, but that still doesn't make it sustainable.

BTW - when I talk about sustainability, I'm talking about sustainability overall (as measured by things like the Triple Bottom Line), not just environmental friendliness.

If a practice is sustainable, then this means it can be done indefinitely. If it's so impractical that it can't get started in the first place, then it sure can't be done indefinitely... so it's not sustainable.

This might make small farms impractical when looking at the market overall, but if the goal is sustainability - where most of the produce is consumed on site, the current market situation shouldn't matter, I guess.

Right. If we're talking about simply moving back to subsistence agriculture, then there's nothing stopping us: if you eat what you grow and don't sell any of it to anyone, and if you don't rely on external inputs that you have to buy, then prices on the open market don't matter at all.

The fact that people tend not to engage in subsistence farming when they have any choice in the matter isn't because they can't do it; it's because the advantages of not doing things that way are so overwhelming.

Also, because of the current farming model, isn't food pricing tied directly to the price of petroleum? That seems like a highly unstable situation to me.

I suppose it is tied to it to a certain extent, but so is any other product where the input materials or the final product is shipped long distances. It probably does make sense in the long run to change to a model of smaller producers serving smaller areas, but that'll work itself out as transportation costs rise.

 

[Yeshe Dawa]

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that organic food is healthier, or that locally produced food is somehow better in any way?

Hi Jarofthoughts!

I hope I found some information that would answer your question. I just picked tomatoes because it is something I buy fairly often (when the garden hasn't any ripe ones).

I didn't have to look very far to find a website that had a list of pesticides that have been found on tomatoes: What’s On My Food :: Pesticides on Tomatoes The site uses data from the US Dept of Agriculture, and lists 35 pesticides that have been found on tomatoes. It breaks the pesticides down into carcinogens, bee toxins, hormone disruptors, neurotoxins, and reproductive toxins, and how often each pesticide is found.
I guess I would say that buying local produce is better because it drives the local economy, it reduces petroleum use and pollution from shipping, and you're eating food that hasn't been picked green to keep it from spoiling and then artificially ripened with chemicals.
I hope that helps!

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:

 

[idav]

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that organic food is healthier, or that locally produced food is somehow better in any way?

You would have to go by example. Lets take chickens for example. They say it is better to buy chicken eggs and chickens from ones grown on pastures. The ones that are caged and spreading infection may be less healthy and certainly less humane. Then what they do is label the eggs in weird wording to make it sound more better but they are deceptive like "free-range" or "organic" which is ok but doesn't always mean they are not being treated inhumanely. Free-range at least they open the door to feed which is good but best to find pastured eggs or grass fed. Ok that is just one example.

 

[Yeshe Dawa]

I suppose it might be, but that still doesn't make it sustainable.

BTW - when I talk about sustainability, I'm talking about sustainability overall (as measured by things like the Triple Bottom Line), not just environmental friendliness.

Hi 9-10ths_Penguin!

I agree with you. With our current market system, smaller (organic) farms might be more environmentally friendly, but they are not sustainable in a business sense when they are competing with large-scale industrial farming.

It probably does make sense in the long run to change to a model of smaller producers serving smaller areas, but that'll work itself out as transportation costs rise.

I also agree that transportation costs could cause us to shift to smaller farms once again. (Though I guess that doesn't necessarily mean organic). Hopefully the system will work itself out before more economically vulnerable people are impacted.

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:

 

[jarofthoughts]

You would have to go by example. Lets take chickens for example. They say it is better to buy chicken eggs and chickens from ones grown on pastures. The ones that are caged and spreading infection may be less healthy and certainly less humane. Then what they do is label the eggs in weird wording to make it sound more better but they are deceptive like "free-range" or "organic" which is ok but doesn't always mean they are not being treated inhumanely. Free-range at least they open the door to feed which is good but best to find pastured eggs or grass fed. Ok that is just one example.

Sure, but 'humane' is a different argument from 'healthier', and is, in my opinion, a whole different discussion.

 

[painted wolf]

With growing technology also comes cheaper labor and less jobs. That fact doesn't help the fact that the rich are becoming fewer but with more of the money. With that everyone is trying to save a buck and so it keeps snowballing.

There are less manual labor jobs... but technology also opens up more higher end jobs to replace those. Labor costs are political as much as anything.

Places that rely on manual labor and single industries for their livelihood are putting all their economic eggs in one basket. This is the struggle the northern part of my state is having with loss of the one major paper mill. It's amazingly tragic but it's also spurring the people left to make major changes in how they view economics and sustainability. Not to mention shifting focus from global to local resilience.

wa:do

 

[painted wolf]

Jar - Local may not be healthier, but if I get food poisoning I know where it came from and it can be dealt with quickly. Look at the mess from trying to figure out the source of the recent European E.coli outbreak. I can also choose to visit my local farms and know how my food is being treated (both from a safety and a humane perspective).

Another interesting note: That outbreak was Organic bean sprouts.
Bean Sprouts Confirmed as E. Coli Source | Europe | English

Organic is assumed safe... but the past few major E.coli outbreaks have been from Organic farms that are not safely treating manure as fertilizer. It happened in the USA with spinach in 2006.
2006 North American E. coli outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No single method is going to be magically safe or better than another.

wa:do

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Hi 9-10ths_Penguin!

I agree with you. With our current market system, smaller (organic) farms might be more environmentally friendly, but they are not sustainable in a business sense when they are competing with large-scale industrial farming.

I'm not so sure about that. There are both economies and diseconomies of scale; Getting bigger makes some aspects of the business cheaper but makes other aspects more expensive.

And bringing this back to the original topic, I think that technology makes it easier for smaller businesses to be more effective generally, including small farming operations.

A big part of the problem in the past has been that a large buyer of produce or livestock wouldn't want the inconvenience of dealing with many small producers instead of just one. However, as the internet becomes more pervasive and gets used in more novel ways, this inconvenience diminishes, meaning that large producers lose some of their appeal.

Also, circumstances are changing in interesting ways. For instance, take the urban agriculture that they're trying to get going around Detroit (as well as other places). Even if all the farms were owned by a few large companies, each one would be a fairly small operation.

... or take the greenbelt around Toronto: our land use planning is starting to reflect the idea that farmland near major cities should be preserved. I think that one side effect of this will be that smaller farmers in these areas will be able to make a go of it more easily.

 

[jarofthoughts]

Jar - Local may not be healthier, but if I get food poisoning I know where it came from and it can be dealt with quickly. Look at the mess from trying to figure out the source of the recent European E.coli outbreak. I can also choose to visit my local farms and know how my food is being treated (both from a safety and a humane perspective).

Another interesting note: That outbreak was Organic bean sprouts.
Bean Sprouts Confirmed as E. Coli Source | Europe | English

Organic is assumed safe... but the past few major E.coli outbreaks have been from Organic farms that are not safely treating manure as fertilizer. It happened in the USA with spinach in 2006.
2006 North American E. coli outbreak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No single method is going to be magically safe or better than another.

wa:do

I don't disagree with any particular point.
I'm just pointing out that before we go off on a tangent and blindly assume that this or that method is better or healthier we need to check the data properly and base our decisions on that rather than on what we think -should- be true.
For a long time many people have taken for granted that organic food is healthier than 'normal' food, something which I have a hard time finding backing for. Similarily it is often assumed that locally grown food is better for the environment because of reduced needs for transport, but there is a reason we don't grow oranges in any sort of scale in Norway; the climate is completely wrong for it. Sure, we could build greenhouses and the like to make it happen, but then the environmental cost of doing so would have to be taken into account when deciding which method is better.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Similarily it is often assumed that locally grown food is better for the environment because of reduced needs for transport, but there is a reason we don't grow oranges in any sort of scale in Norway; the climate is completely wrong for it. Sure, we could build greenhouses and the like to make it happen, but then the environmental cost of doing so would have to be taken into account when deciding which method is better.

Well, kinda. Part of the "grow locally/eat locally" movement is to take into account which crops grow well in each area. This usually means adjusting one's diet accordingly.

Here in southern Ontario, for instance, this would mean only having fresh strawberries for a few weeks a year. If we want strawberries the rest of the time, they'd have to be in the form of preserves like jams.

In Norway, locally grown food wouldn't normally mean growing oranges in greenhouses; it would mean choosing other foods instead of oranges.

 

[Yeshe Dawa]

Also, circumstances are changing in interesting ways. For instance, take the urban agriculture that they're trying to get going around Detroit (as well as other places). Even if all the farms were owned by a few large companies, each one would be a fairly small operation.

... or take the greenbelt around Toronto: our land use planning is starting to reflect the idea that farmland near major cities should be preserved. I think that one side effect of this will be that smaller farmers in these areas will be able to make a go of it more easily.

Hi 9-10ths_Penguin!

These sound like lovely projects! I've seen programs on urban agriculture. I think it's great that these areas in the cities are producing healthy food.

I think I understand what you mean about the internet helping smaller farmers. It's definitely helped other small businesses.

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2:

 

[Yeshe Dawa]

Similarily it is often assumed that locally grown food is better for the environment because of reduced needs for transport, but there is a reason we don't grow oranges in any sort of scale in Norway; the climate is completely wrong for it. Sure, we could build greenhouses and the like to make it happen, but then the environmental cost of doing so would have to be taken into account when deciding which method is better.

Hi Jarofthoughts!

You're right - oranges don't grow well in Norway, and it would be crazy to try and grow them in greenhouses in any quantity. But aren't there local fruits and vegetables that are fond of your climate that are also high in Vitamin C? I guess unless someone really likes their oranges just for the taste, you wouldn't have to spend the resources transporting or growing them - you could get the same nutritional benefits from a native plant.

Peace and blessings,
Yeshe
:flower2: