Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

news.mongabay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 170 posts

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#111

Post by reillyse »

einpoklum wrote: post #105
reillyse wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the European farm subsidies, I think they are a great example of how to share wealth among a lot of citizens and maintain high quality food. Btw, 59 Billion seems like a large number but compared to the actual GDP of the EU thats a very very small number. Also in the US for example farm subsidies are pretty high and generally funnel to rich people, there is both farm related subsidies that go direct to farmers…

I actually didn't say I oppose them. However, note that better-off Europeans and US citizens are subsidized, then their products flood the markets elsewhere and farmers all over the world - who also don't have access to appropriate technology - can't compete against it. So the farmers in poorer countries get screwed. Not such a great example of wealth sharing...

Did you edit your original comment? I recall there being more emphasis and an exclamation point or two :)

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#112

Post by core-questions »

hosh wrote: post #107
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of big Ag is an effort to shortcut all this. Use a chisel plow to break up compacted soil. Add ammonia. Use earth movers to create more flat land with useful soils. Etc. The advantages are clear: you can decide when to do these things, and do them on a short schedule. Its hard to argue waiting 5 years for some remediation project to maybe work, when I have a chisel plow right over there in the shed.

Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them. Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one…

> we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people.

Do you have an alternative to this? This is basically animal behaviour, it's not unique to humans. Most of that hoarding is out of an effort to get a mate, too.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#113

Post by einpoklum »

reillyse wrote: post #111
einpoklum wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually didn't say I oppose them. However, note that better-off Europeans and US citizens are subsidized, then their products flood the markets elsewhere and farmers all over the world - who also don't have access to appropriate technology - can't compete against it. So the farmers in poorer countries get screwed. Not such a great example of wealth sharing...

Did you edit your original comment? I recall there being more emphasis and an exclamation point or two :)

Yes, I did...

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#114

Post by tootie »

dkarp wrote: post #73
tootie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long until we can deploy fleets of microdrones capable of killing pests with computer vision and lasers?

Don’t forget those pests to us are food to other organisms.

But we're already killing them in vast quantities using chemical biocides. Micro Laser Drones (tm) are only killing pests that are already doomed. They just don't seep into the water table or cause cancer.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#115

Post by hosh »

freeqaz wrote: post #34
mikeg8 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm definitely not anti-technology as a whole, but I very much think many of the environmental problems we're facing in agriculture were caused by an over reliance on technology in the first place. We abstracted ourselves out of the process too much and it has had horrible consequences.

There is an element of truth to this. I agree -- people are out of touch with the world around them, on average. But it's a double-edged sword. The abstraction has been hugely beneficial to society as a whole. Specialization lets us create entirely new industries. These problems can't be ignored forever though. Eventually the dollar figure behind them will motivate even the most conservative actors. If it's cheaper t…

Having been wrangling this over the years, I've come to conclude that these abstractions create more problems than it benefits society.

I think these very abstractions are the cause of class inequalities, and by extension, racial and gender inequalities as well. Many identity issues come from that specialization. We've defined worth to society to how economically productive someone is. There are many things that society as a whole and individuals can benefit from, but society don't value them economically to pay for them. People involved in that (such as artists and musicians) are constantly struggling with the tension of authentic expression as an artist and creating something popular so they can make a living wage.

I won't even go into how these abstractions are a detriment to mental and emotional health, let alone, someone's spiritual life.

I am not advocating for things to go back "to the way they used to be".

Rather, I think there is a way to move forward. I think it will involve decentralizing our food system using resilient, and regenerative practices at the household and neighborhood scale. People will have to become more involved with growing their food, and that is generally a good thing. We have collected a number of design patterns that can yield nutrient-dense foods without as much labor, and reducing transport costs to ... going to your backyard (or going down the street).

Our society is already moving towards more remote work (for some segment of our populous at least), and that will drive a trend towards the hyperlocal. The big missing piece is the decentralized food system.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#116

Post by hosh »

tootie wrote: post #64
freeqaz wrote: post #16

I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field. Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1]. But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the…

How long until we can deploy fleets of microdrones capable of killing pests with computer vision and lasers?

Or, I can plant things that repel specific pests, plant things that attract the natural predators of that pest, or plant sunflowers and tobacco as sacrificial plants. I can let the chickens go after the pests. I can recognize that sometimes, the pests are a solution to a different problem, and adjust things accordingly.

All of those solutions are more resilient than microdrones, computer vision, and laser. These high tech solutions require a long global supply chain. They don't make them as robust as as they used to. Further, having multiple, redundant pest management systems means that when one of them fails, they won't all fail.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#117

Post by hosh »

core-questions wrote: post #112
hosh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Big Ag is not incentivized to be sustainable, let alone be regenerative. Big Ag is certainly not resilient. Its very reward system (like modern commerce in general) is based on the extraction of resources (whether that be in the earth, or people resources), and then controlling access to them. Overharvesting always happen, because we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one…

> we're culturally conditioned to define wealth and status in terms of how much one has hoarded more than other people. Do you have an alternative to this? This is basically animal behaviour, it's not unique to humans. Most of that hoarding is out of an effort to get a mate, too.

I wrote the alternative: seeing wealth as being stewards of regenerative processes. I'll elaborate.

Plants are generally more cooperative than they are competitive, and groups of plants that cooperate will do better together than by themselves. Trees will establish a network of roots, and shunt nutrients to trees within the grove that are not doing so well. Just because some plant species will engage in chemical warfare with some species doesn't mean it won't cooperate with others, and there are many examples of such cooperation. This idea that nature is based on competitive pressure is not wholly true; there is a whole aspect of cooperative processes that occur in ecology.

Animals (an insects), if you actually observe them, can also be more cooperative than competitive. It depends on how you set it up.

Some examples: chickens are micrograzers, and sheep are grazers. They don't compete for the same niche. Due to the size of their mouth, sheep cannot eat plants past a certain height. Chickens will also eat bugs. That includes eating the bugs off of the sheep, if you let them.

Yeah, my chickens get into my tomatoes sometimes. They scratch at the green mulch I put down in the garden. They will fly over the small fence to get to it.

But a different perspective: I let them out into the main yard, and they like the forage there more than they like it in my garden. They help keep the cricket population down (which helps keep the black widow spider population down. The fertilize my backyard (which has poor soil fertility from the previous owner). Their scratching to get at things help aerates the soil, and bring in more fertility.

So I don't have to compete with my chickens. I can shape the circumstances such that their natural instincts further the overall health of the system.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#118

Post by totetsu »

tootie wrote: post #64
freeqaz wrote: post #16

I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field. Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1]. But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the…

How long until we can deploy fleets of microdrones capable of killing pests with computer vision and lasers?

drones are used to disperse corn moth preditor larve in germany, and cv is being tested on mobile platforms that can target spray or dig plants.

Re: Investors say agroforestry is climate friendly and also profitable

#119

Post by [deleted] »

freeqaz wrote: post #16

I think that "mixed" farming like this article describes has a huge potential for automation by the software field. Monocrops[0] (homogeneous fields of crops like corn or soybeans) are easy to build automated robots for. We've been doing that for generations now, starting with combine harvesters[1]. But there are many problems with growing monocrops[2]. Pests are a problem -- they breed and spread disease. And on the…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN