Is America Losing the Ability to Grow Its Own Food?

thebignewsletter.com

14 points·locallost··6 comments

Poorly thought out USDA cuts are also going to hamper our ability to develop improved crops in the future, as discussed in this article:

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-gene-banks-key-n...

The level of down voting on verifiable information is out of control here.

Betteridge's law of headlines: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

That’s a good rule of thumb, but it’s not infallible. In this case, the better question would be why the word “immigrant” is not mentioned even once. The United States has enormous agricultural capacity but we heavily depend on cheap, trapped labor to keep prices low and between cost and working conditions there isn’t an easy alternative.

> Betteridge's law of headlines: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.

> That's a good rule of thumb, but it's not infallible.

A basic critical thinking skill that helps here is to try to disprove these 'truisms'.

It is easy to prove Betteridge's law is not universally true.

If I wrote an article that Betteridge's Law got right (meaning the headline's question could be answered with 'No') I could then change the title's question to make it 'Yes', intentionally, which would then violate Betteridge's Law.

I get that provocation and outrage are currently the driving force in media, but clearly it is not a Law in a natural sense.

(Sorry to those to whom this is obvious, but if I can help anyone see past the surface it is worth seeming like a pedant to some nerds!)

I would think our biggest obstacle is large corporations trying to wring every dollar out of farmers. John Deere, Archer Midland Daniels, and Monsanto come to mind. Oh looks like Monsanto is part of Bayer now.

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