Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

Industrial agriculture has plenty more problems than just cow farts and carbon dioxide released from disturbed soil. Still on the vein of CO₂ emissions there's the large amounts of industrial machinery, vehicles and other such things that are powered by fossil fuels and release large amounts of CO₂.

Then on the vein of soils, we're actually running out of arable soil. Soil erosion is a huge problem around the world and industrial farming is a large part of the problem. Farm plots are never left to fallow and replenish, all nutrients and organic matter are stripped out and replaced with liquid chemical fertilizers, that run off the fields and pollute waterways.

Not to mention, fertilizers, globally, phosphate reserves are beginning to deplete. At some point in the next 50-100 years, we'll have come close to completely running out. Industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on phosphorous.

https://foodprint.org/issues/how-industrial-agriculture-affe...

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/industrial-agricultural-polluti...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

You have almost all of this backwards. The more "industrial" the farm, the more likely they are to employ the precision methods to address the issues you raise. Talk to any major farmer and they will tell you all about how nutrients are managed down to the square foot or smaller to reduce waste application. The tech that makes no-till planting viable, which is one of the most important ways to reduce erosion and increase sequestration is being adopted by the biggest players first. Advances in no-till and pesticide technology are reducing the number of tractor passes per field per year dramatically.

Really? Source? One of the most comprehensive study on the topic (1), says:

"Our food system has put the focus on short-term production and profit rather than long-term environmental sustainability. The modern agricultural system has resulted in huge increases in productivity, holding off the risk of famine in many parts of the world but, at the same time, is based on monocultures, genetically modified crops, and the intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides that undermine long-term sustainability. Food production accounts for 70 per cent of all freshwater withdrawals and 80 per cent of deforestation, while soil, the basis for global food security, is being contaminated, degraded, and eroded in many areas, resulting in long-term declines in productivity."

USCUSA isn't in love with industrial farming either (2):

"Monoculture degrades soil structure and leaves it more vulnerable to erosion, resulting in costs for soil replacement, cleanup, and lost farmland value."

Maybe major farmers aren't the most objective not most qualified group of people to assess the sustainability and [unpaid-for] externalities of their output?

(1) https://www.unccd.int/sites/default/files/documents/2017-09/...

(2) https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-agr...

Both of the links you provided are to political action groups.

It's like linking either the NRA or Everytown/Moms Demand/March For Our Lives (they rebrand a lot) "studies" on gun control.

Both have very clear objectives, and are quite happy to twist -- or sometimes outright fabricate[1]! -- data and facts.

[1] https://massshootingtracker.org

If you're going to dismiss one of the most comprehensive bodies of work on the subject (or, I'd guess any UN initiatives), you can provide your own sources?

> If you're going to dismiss one of the most comprehensive bodies of work on the subject.

Creationists have some of the most comprehensive bodies of work on evolution.

Doesn't mean that they are right.

The NRA is a political organization. I do not trust any data they collect, nor any studies they produce, because their job is to advocate for a specific set of policies.

Bloomberg's various anti-gun groups are political organizations. I do not trust any data they collect, nor any studies they produce, either.

For precisely the same reason.

Personally, I think that climate change is a huge problem.

But credibility is a scarce resource these days.

All organizations are not created equal. Do you really distrust the NRA and farming studies from the UN to the same extent? For me that sounds very black and white.

You didn't just write that the UN is a "political action group" and compared it to the NRA?

This is the group that put China as the chair of it's Human rights council.

Which arguably makes the NRA look reasonable in comparison.

If true, that is absolutely hilariously sad.

And what do you think the UN is then?

I should clarify that my perspective is coming from a strictly American point of view, where only 15% of crop ground is irrigated, and the percentage of owner-operated land is around 60%.

To be honest I don't even know how to begin sourcing the claims you are asking about. Do I need a source to tell you that over-applying fertilizer and pesticides is expensive? So much so that it is a very real risk to find yourself in a situation where the sum costs of your inputs can easily overshadow the yield of a field on a bad year? Do I need a source to say that farmers want to avoid that situation, and that those with the means invest heavily to do exactly that?

The other point, around sustainability of soil quality is one of the most common misconceptions I see on sites like this. There seems to be this idea that there's some boogeyman hiding on the 20 year horizon that we are headed towards because of our extraction from the soil. The truth is that you don't have to wait that long at all. Everyone knows a neighbor or friend of a friend that got sloppy with crop rotations, or waterway maintenance or nutrient deficiencies. Its not some unpaid externality. You don't get away with it for long – it costs you dearly when it's your own land and it only takes a few years.

Not everywhere https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2009.105#:~:text=Resear....

I’d be keen to see some supporting links for this?

> cow farts

It's ironic because the way to build topsoil and reverse desertification (which captures carbon) is just well managed grazing.

Glad to see this, a great related TED talk by Allan Savory that introduces why this is true can be found here https://youtu.be/vpTHi7O66pI

Note that many experts have serious reservations about Savory's claims.

A couple good summaries:

http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/244566/...

https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/4472/RANGELANDS-D-13-0...

It is weird that there is this symbiotic relationship between environmentalists and industry.

Not at all.

In the nonprofit sector, the term "sustainable" is a euphemism for "can keep doing it" or "financially sustainable."

If a group wants to retain it's privileges (say the banks) it can feed back 1% of its profits to buy politicians off year after year. Campaign finance spending limits just make it cheap.

Ordinary people who want to change the status quo to say, fight corruption or just simply survive the next century in the face of climate change, might expect to fight for 30 years to change the system and face the certainty of falling into despair in that time.

If anybody can find powerful allies they make it much more powerful than they can accomplish "something" even if it isn't what they set out to do.

It's certainly bad for Monsanto's bottom line if people eat less monocropped processed food, and more pastured meat (note this isn't an attack on GMO).

There's no toxic fertilizer, no proprietary seeds or pesticides to sell. In fact, there's pretty much nothing that you need to raise pastured animals, other than trucks and fencing.

I feel like that's a bit of an oversimplification; better land management should also be on the forefront. Not trying to 100% utilize the land, but leave space for forests, shrubs, tall / unkempt grasses, etc.

It's not much and not helpful to industrial farming, but I'm doing my part on my own garden by creating healthy soil via composting.

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