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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

There's no reason we have to make farm work unsafe or low-paying. It's a consequence of the state of agriculture a century ago, when we were constantly afraid of running out of food. We put into place a lot of systems to drive down the price of food and increase the quantity.

So yes, we should improve it. This is one suggestion for how to do so. It costs more money, but we no longer have to make price the #1 objective, not in a world where people are willing to spend $4 and up on a cup of coffee or pay a 50-100% premium for a dubious "organic" label (a term that has drifted very, very far from what it meant when Rodale coined it).

That makes more money available for farm labor, to improve safety and pay workers better. It would take only a small increase in costs to make a large increase in wages: they receive only a few percent of the final consumer cost of the product.

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>There's no reason we have to make farm work unsafe or low-paying.

Okay. Who is paying for it?

Farming is razor thin margins already. Most people aren't on techie salaries that can afford organic food. Raising the price is just a tax on the poor.

Food cost does not need to go up when the cost of farming goes down. Regenerative ag does take more farmers which means more jobs. The shift to regenerative farming is already happening. Gabe Brown was meeting with General Mills a couple years ago. Now General Mills is promoting pilot programs. https://www.generalmills.com/en/Responsibility/Sustainabilit...

> Regenerative ag does take more farmers which means more jobs.

More workers (jobs) raises food costs, not lowers. Our savings with food crops is found mostly in the scale of production and automation.

Inputs are drastically reduced or eliminated. That is where the cost saving comes in. There is room to pay more people when you arent spending the majority of revenue on fertilizer.

By how much? Your link don't say anything about how much fertilizer usage is reduced. Nor does it mention how much formerly crop fields are now being used for ranch land.

The concept of self-sustaining farming and ranching is as old as dirt itself, with various implementations including crop rotation or fallow fields, but it typically means that the are of land dedicated to a staple crop (such as oats or wheat for the exemplar GM) drops dramatically, as would the profits.

Nothing in the linked literature disagrees with this notion or comments on the different costs (other than the grants for a farm that's trying it).

I keep coming back to this comment for some reason. I think this video can answer some of your criticisms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuRpEA1sFow

Farmers, particularly large ones, are pretty savvy about what is more or less profitable for them. If they could add labor and save more money on fertilizer than the additional labor cost, they'd probably already be doing it.

Source: I dated a literal farmer's daughter and talked with him a fair bit about the economics of his farm (corn, soybeans, and dairy, plus associated by-products) and farms larger than his. He was sharp on the numbers in addition to being sharp on the biology.

From stories that Gabe Brown has shared there are many farmers that are afraid to take a leap to an entirely different way of farming from one they know well. He recommends farmers do a trial field so they can prove to themselves that it works.

Watch any of Gabes talks on YouTube. They are usually to small crowds of farmers looking to improve their operation. People are learning but the easy path is to continue doing what you know. Gabe has said he would have done the same if he wasnt flat broke when he inherited his farm. He simply didnt have the money to buy inputs. His choice was find a different way or sell the farm.

But, if the price increase is to give a better wage to "the poors" working in the farm, because we need more people working there to produce the same amount organically. Then, they would be able to afford those more expensive products right ?

People who shop at neighborhood farmers' markets, as a start.

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