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The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

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Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#111

Post by MichaelRo »

em-bee wrote: post #98
MichaelRo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about today's Germany. I was referring to post-war Eastern Europe where land property was so fragmented that famines would still happen because individual peasants didn't have enough land to meet MVP (minimum viable produce of anything should anything go awry and it always did). And 1900s Germany doesn't require state farms precisely because commercially viable land was already concentrated enough (th…

i love that this story is 100 years old. people ask me how it is possible to live in china without speaking chinese, but i literally experienced the same thing in china and any other country that i have been to. heck even on a market where you don't serve yourself, i can point at the items that i want, even if i don't know the names. it was in fact this very experience that made me realize that i can live in other co…

Kudos to you for that.

I spent most of my adulthood time in Europe talking to non-Roman speaking languages like German, French, Bosnian, Magyar.

First thing to realize about non-Roman languages is that non-Roman doesn't equal Latin. It helps but eventually you're gonna need to learn Russian, Magyar, German.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#112

Post by fnordpiglet »

bsder wrote: post #99
fnordpiglet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N.b., the author is British not American. Argindustry isn’t a uniquely American thing, it’s global and pervasive, specially for protein and animal feedstock. A lot of vegetable in a global context is grown locally and purchased at local markets (outside the US and urban settings globally, which are end to end industrialized), but most people don’t raise artisanal pigs for slaughter. Most people buy their meat from a…

> The economics are just too strong. This is really the crux of the issue. Farming sucks. Farming at small scales really sucks. There is a massive incentive to consolidate. Even when left alone, farmers tend to form co-ops in order to mitigate risk. I had a long talk with a local producer of "Hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed, grass finished" beef (need it because of family member with corn allergy). The econo…

Oh yeah, farmers are engineers of the land and nature for sure. They know their processes, their dependencies, and procedures in extreme depth and they are complex and unforgiving. Farming isn’t gardening, and every farm is a business end to end - and a risky one with low payouts and huge downsides that are often entirely out of your control. Modern farming techniques aren’t that way out of some sort of malevolent spite, they actually work and make farms profitable reliably. That they blast the earth and poison the populace is sad and most farmers don’t relish destroying their land.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#113

Post by asdff »

peteradio wrote: post #102
jgraham wrote: post #83

If you're interested in this topic, I can recommend his book on the subject of food production: Regenesis — Feeding The World Without Devouring the Planet [1]. It tries to look at food production as a global system, the successes it's had in terms of making food more affordable and avoiding global famine, but also the damage it's causing to climate and biodiversity, and possible ways forward given the constraints of…

Free range eaters are hoping to maintain a relationship with their free range farmer if/as the screws get turned. Might not scale for... everyone.

There's always going to be "gourmet" free range meat anyhow. A lot of pasture land is pasture land because the land can't support much else.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#114

Post by asdff »

pfdietz wrote: post #110
hollerith wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we in the US use more energy cooking food than is used to grow it Do you have a citation or a calculation for that?

Not directly, but various things I google show that in the US food system, only 10-20% of the energy used is on the farm. Much more is in handling (which includes cooking and refrigeration), transportation, and processing.

No surprise, farm is powered by the sun and water pressure.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#115

Post by asdff »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #82
youngtaff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people often have to work multiple jobs and often work many more hourse than 8 hours a day. The stress of worrying about how you’re going to feed your kids, pay energy costs, rent etc soon eats time too

Maybe in USA, not in europe. 40 hours is pretty much the max, maybe 48 for some professions. Random independent contractors (electricians, painters,...) are an exception, but they're far from poor. Having to work multiple jobs and many hours and low access to food (stores) is pretty much a uniquely US problem.

Depends on where you are in europe. Germany, probably better than the U.S. Romania, far worse.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#116

Post by dang »

watwut wrote: post #56
MichaelRo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about today's Germany. I was referring to post-war Eastern Europe where land property was so fragmented that famines would still happen because individual peasants didn't have enough land to meet MVP (minimum viable produce of anything should anything go awry and it always did). And 1900s Germany doesn't require state farms precisely because commercially viable land was already concentrated enough (th…

[flagged]

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#117

Post by dang »

jowdones wrote: post #62
watwut wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah well my grandpa wuz a hero. Narrowly escaping being shot on the spot for carrying a firearm (he was a partisan), got 16 years in the Romanian gulag, reckoned after 11 that noone's coming to the rescue as it happened to the West before USSR good a chance to "rescue" them. What you are regurgitating is spoken precisely from the vantage point of a well fed ignoramus.

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments or personal attacks, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#118

Post by oldbbsnickname »

Commercial, profit-optimizing meat and dairy ag inexorably lead to GMO corn megafarms, CAFOs, and overuse of antibotics bringing the risks of antibiotic resistance, pandemics, climate change, and pollution of air, water, and soil.

What is missing is regulators mandating genuine sustainable practices and taxing and fining where appropriate. The absurd cruelty of CAFOs and using the atmosphere as an open-air sewer for methane and CO₂ must end.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#119

Post by oldbbsnickname »

goda90 wrote: post #3

This debate just feels like a useless distraction from what the people on the ground of sustainable farming are saying. We should be talking about how we can get high yield without destroying the ecosystem.

Yellow vests protests and Occupy Wall St. are examples of ineffective movements: lacking identification of root causes of problems, lacking specific demands to redress, lacking leaders, or lacking resolve. XR is also sort-of in this camp.

The unfortunate reality is declarations about existential peril and what we "should" be doing fall on deaf ears of policymakers and regulators where particular governments are de facto run by the billionaires. Most necessary changes cannot happen without first defenestrating corporate lobbyists and the money politicians receive. This won't happen by elections, by reform from within (Sen. John McCain discovered this), or by wishing for it. And honestly, most US politicians should be in prison because they do more than just take stacks of cash and gold bars to fund reelection media buys, many allow their attention and votes to be curried for it, and even propose bills verbatim from the lobbyists of their benefactors.

Change can only happen externally by many, sustained, nonviolent mass demonstrations sufficient to achieve specific policy objectives. ("World peace" and "save the planet" aren't policies, while "phase out all coal power plants in 5 years" is.)

In absence of the people demanding specific actions and changes, the "green revolution" will be half-assed for renewables in electricity (currently at 30% worldwide, may top out at 80-90%), but that's about it. No net negative global emissions and not much carbon sequestration. Ultra-processing and megafarming practices sure as shit won't change by debate or wishful thinking alone.

Re: The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People

#120

Post by tormeh »

asdff wrote: post #114
pfdietz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly, but various things I google show that in the US food system, only 10-20% of the energy used is on the farm. Much more is in handling (which includes cooking and refrigeration), transportation, and processing.

No surprise, farm is powered by the sun and water pressure.

I hope you're trolling, because that's definitely not how that works.
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