Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#151

Post by escherplex » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:24 AM UTC

vladTheInhaler wrote: post #150

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I can't really comment specifically on the soil quality. I don't have first hand scientific knowledge. On the other hand, it's certainly true that these producers are not implementing anything like a closed-loop nutrient plan. They're absolutely trucking in fertilizer from somewhere else to keep yields high. And they're producing monocultures, enforced with chemical pesticides and herbicides, to keep…

Wendell Berry said it best: "Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."

Not to mention the law of unexpected consequences: with all the nitrogen fertilizer used on local farms and lawns in SW FL with subsequent run-off into streams and bayous due to the heavy rain every day during the summer, the 'red tide' plague shows no signs of abating.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#152

Post by lbarrett » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

cheez wrote: post #8

Are farmers not able to use financial instruments to hedge their costs? Simply borrowing money with no hedge seems VERY scary to me. I guess that's just the game?

I think they can easily hedge prices (via futures), but hedging production is much harder (because your weather & production might be different from others around, and with insurance the incentives can get bad; see moral hazard).

I worked for a company that tried to insure farmers so they'd be profitable even in bad years, but the reduction in profit on good years (i.e. cost of insurance) was too much to sell well.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#153

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

elvinyung wrote: post #90

Spooky23 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is similar to what happened in Ancient Rome. As wealth and influence concentrates, farms get bigger and bigger. Instead of slaves we have massive machinery and migrant workers. Disruption or destruction of key transit or water infrastructure in California would be a crippling blow to the US. The infrastructure to farm is gone. I worked on a farm as a teen in the 90s. There were 10 active farms in my town…

I'm interested in the history of the role of land centralization in the fall of Rome. I'm curious if you can provide a source for further reading?

Look at the post Punic war period. So much wealth was transferred to Rome and it had to go somewhere. Land is always a place where capital goes to hide!

The money bought out smaller farmers and created the great latifundium slave estates. Some of these estates survived in various forms into the 20th century.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#154

Post by singularity2001 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

lsc wrote: post #116

singularity2001 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have weavers; we just have shirt production.” Not exactly the same but as long as we have national reservoirs and get politically enforced sustainability and diversity we should be fine.

>politically enforced sustainability and diversity This is important, and politically difficult. I mean, we subsidize farms to farm in America because it makes us much more secure against all sorts of potential problems. I, for one, think farm subsidies, if well done, are a very good use of my defense tax dollar. But it's important that we see those subsidies as a defense subsidy and not, you know, just a handout to…

Yes, conditional subsidies. Obvious in hindsight, thus brilliant. ++

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#155

Post by astralship » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 9:30 AM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #71

nitwit005 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could be diverted to feeding the population. The main threat to agriculture in time of war used to be dependence on foreign oil, but the US has largely solved that.

“Quite a bit of US food production is going to produce animal feed, and some is exported. It'd take an amazing blow to cause actual starvation, given that could divert that back to feeding the population.” Well, not really. Yes, it's true that a substantial fraction of current US food production goes to animal feed. Yes, it's true, theoretically, that you could turn all of that into human food production instead. Of…

Choose this as an entry point to say something. I agree with the battleship analogy to a point but I don't think it would be very hard to turn around. Not when compared to building rocket ships or many other things we do at scale.

I grew up on a UK small holding sheep farm (2-400). In the 80s it was possible to raise a small family largely thanks to the benefit system.

As I see it hobby farmers are all we need for sheep production. I agree that we need a degree of livestock but we need to transition to reducing our consumption of meat hugely. Much of the land currently used for livestock should be converted to forest and forest garden communities as soon as possible. There a problem with consumer awareness. If consumers cared about pesticides in their food, or food miles, or dependence on foreign imports (on an island nation) then the locally produced food would be more viable. However most consumers are so heavily hypnotised by modern consumerism there only desire what is persuasively advertised which means sexy new 'phones' and not poison free vegetables. Control of food and water gives certain control of people. Only a small percentage of the population is really aware of what it takes to make enough food to stay alive. Large corporate forces now control policy and effectively the market condition in most respects so small scale passionate farmers are best of not trying to engage with the commodity markets. If the UK leaves the EU and there is a major global conflict people will quickly start to realise the value of local food.

I'm mostly interested in how we can reduce the labour overhead in the this kind of small scale farming. At EMF camp I saw an brilliant example of someone building their own open source horticultural robot. It will be at https://pretix.eu/farmhackwales2018/fhw2018/

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#156

Post by lsc » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #139

lsc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>humans can't survive on what is currently being grown. In other words, we can't just stop feeding all of that corn and soybeans to animals and give it to humans instead. We can't live off of a diet that is 75% field corn and industrial soybeans. Both feed corn and industrial soybeans yield their deliciousness to the power of the chemical engineers. Both are processed into food you and I eat every day. I bet you a do…

Yes, but that's part of my point. You don't eat straight lecithin. Or high fructose corn syrup. You need a lot of other ingredients and a lot of processingto turn that corn into edible food products. That's one reason why it would be very challenging to double the number of calories we take in from corn — you would also need to double your production of all of that other stuff. I don't know all of the specifics, so I…

> You don't eat straight lecithin. Or high fructose corn syrup. You need a lot of other ingredients and a lot of processingto turn that corn into edible food products. That's one reason why it would be very challenging to double the number of calories we take in from corn — you would also need to double your production of all of that other stuff.

I don't, but I would, if I were hungry enough. Most of the stuff we mix corn syrup with we mix in to make it taste better. If you've ever had straight corn syrup on your pancakes, (It's commonly sold under the brand Karo for this) you'd know it's fine. It's not maple syrup, but it's certainly something you could eat just fine, if you were hungry.

I think that's true of most of these things. If you are hungry enough, you'll take your macro-nutrients as they are.

I don't personally know how to make soy protein isolate, but I do know how to make tofu. If you gave me my 3000 calories a day in buckets of dry soybeans, I wouldn't be happy about it, but I wouldn't starve.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#157

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 11:54 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #93

Spooky23 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is similar to what happened in Ancient Rome. As wealth and influence concentrates, farms get bigger and bigger. Instead of slaves we have massive machinery and migrant workers. Disruption or destruction of key transit or water infrastructure in California would be a crippling blow to the US. The infrastructure to farm is gone. I worked on a farm as a teen in the 90s. There were 10 active farms in my town…

> Disruption or destruction of key transit or water infrastructure in California would be a crippling blow to the US. I doubt that the US is that dependent on California. For lettuce and strawberries, yes. Not for wheat, corn, soybeans, or cattle, though. We won't starve without salads or strawberries. I know that I'm missing some of what California grows. Losing it would hurt. But it's not vital .

It wouldn’t lead to famine, but the lack of most fruits and vegetables would be economically devastating.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#158

Post by IkmoIkmo » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 9:02 AM UTC

rapnie wrote: post #104

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #42

“We’re heading to a place where we don’t have farmers; we just have food production.” This. I don't know what the solution to this is. I have a small farm, and raise meat sheep. But it's very much a hobby. The problem is, though, that almost all of the other farmers in my area, the ones I meet at the feed store or the livestock auction, they're also hobby farmers. There is exactly one “real” farmer (meaning that it's…

> I don't know what the solution to this is. The problems you mention are very real. I am not in farming, so a noob, but it is clear to me that significant change in food production is a requirement. I see some positive trends (at least here in The Netherlands). On the one hand the awareness that industrial-scale production is unsustainable. There is a Guardian article on that today: 'Europe's meat and dairy producti…

> NL is 2nd-largest food exporter (in a bunch of markets) in the world, after US [1].

No it's not, it's a relatively tiny food producer with high yield rates per unit of area. Take their best yielding crop, tomatoes, they're not even in the top 10 producers worldwide. Uzbekistan produces more tomatoes than we do.

We do have high yields, but that's mostly for food that are 96% water like tomatoes, as there's barely any solids to grow, you can just stack em in a greenhouse. Nothing too innovative going on there, in potatoes for example we're well below the number one in area-efficiency.

And even the high yields in things like tomatoes or cucumbers isn't special in any way, it just optimises for area. The US has about 30 people per square kilometer, the Netherlands has over 400. Some countries don't have a priority for production density because they literally have 10-15x as much land. Besides, the vast majority of agricultural land is used for livestock anyway, if you take meat out of the equation, we could feed tens of billions of people easily. That's really where the problem lies, in meats. The source of all issues in production really lies with us, in our diets. You could spend less money if you ate better food as long as we all cut your meat consumption, and to get there we need to start pricing in all externalities because right now we a high price pay for shitty food we shouldn't eat through our taxes, and then overconsume by paying a low price in the supermarket after subsidising it with said taxes.

Re: Is the Second Farm Crisis Upon Us?

#159

Post by Latteland » Sat, Sep 22, 2018, 5:48 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #148

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Is the main problem simply the reduced price of output (due to competition with large scale industrial agriculture), rather than other factors (such as potential increased costs of inputs, degraded soil quality, access to water).” It's mostly the market price of outputs. As was stated in the OP, producing a gallon of milk costs $1.90 or thereabouts. The cost in the grocery store is $2.59 in my area this week. This p…

Farmers can make a very good living at much less than $5 per gallon of milk. Here in Canada with our supply management quota system that Trump rails against, milk retails for $4.29 CAD for four litres; $3.06 USD per US gallon. And it's so insanely profitable that farmers are willing to pay $20000 to $50000 for a single cow quota.

so why is it so expensive in the us? I'm guessing middlemen between the farmer drive up prices and soak up profits, but I don't really know.