squish78

This is true. The issue, in my opinion, is that if we complicate the agricultural industry with too many specialized independent operators, it just creates more potential places to fail. Farming is one of those trades where its better to have generalists, for the sake of creating a resilient food supply

Just get mom and a cereal bowl and get that 1993 look

You mean like a fight or flight trigger?

There’s nothing wrong with a little prepping but you have to take that to the scenario’s logical conclusion. What happens if you run out of supplies and there is no deus ex machina narrative and you are faced with starvation.

But your brain chemistry is evolved to seek it as a survival mechanism, is all I’m saying

Our species spent a million years forming complex social bonds and we're doing our damnedest to engineer them away

My barbershop comes with a cool feature called human interaction, which is useful for raising serotonin levels in the brain.

Think on this topic long enough, and you'll find yourself starting a vegetable garden in the spring.

You make several outdated assumptions about farming in the USA that are based in 20th century models of agriculture. The entire sector is incredibly fragile in its present form, because every method is unsustainable.

Industrial agriculture is depleting soil fertility faster than it can be replaced. Topsoil has been decimated in the past 100 years. This is primarily due to tractor tillage and herbicides. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

Correlation between monoculture field crops and bee colony collapse https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/honey-bees-a...

Monoculture field crops are 100% dependent on chemical nitrogen fertilizer, the supply of which is finite https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247398/

This is nothing to say about the ethics of undocumented indentured servitude of migrant labor, which floats the entire California farm sector

Explain how what I said is patently absurd. Are we looking at the same USDA data?

I would agree, but we're not yet to the point of massive famine and crop failures - although it seems closer year after year. Every farmer I talk to is worn out and tired of the bullshit.

Less reliance on the tech sector for hardware solutions, and more research in logistics and supply chain. Let farmers farm.

They are proving that it can be done with more profitability acre-for-acre with hand tools than tractors

https://www.neversinkfarm.com/

This is excellent news, and good awareness for the ag sector.

The most existential threat to human survival is the consolidation of the farm sector. If any industry needs to be decentralized (for the sake of resiliency) it's agriculture.

We don't want to create single points of failure in the food supply

Urban USA doesn't can't comprehend the fact that famine is a logistical possibility if finance/tech fucks up farming.

Farmers create the one product you can't live without

I don't think anyone disagrees with you. My point (again) is that this land can't be sustainably farmed for vegetable/cereal crops, so cattle is the only industry that the land could be used for. I would prefer there were some sustainable ranching practices, but I don't know enough about Brazilian agriculture to comment on how that land is managed after it's cleared.

I guess the million dollar question is - who has the moral authority to tell Brazilians that they don't have the right to utilize their land and natural resources like China, USA, India, and every other industrial nation?

Rainforest land is not arable. Farmers who try to grow crops (typically soybean) in the Amazon get 2-3 years of crops before the land becomes infertile, then it has to fallow again. Their only option is to add massive amounts of chemical fertilizers which washes out into the Amazon basin. Aside from leaving the forests undisturbed (which is my preference), raising cattle is better for that ecosystem than agricultural farming would be.

The parent comments were about civilization collapse and hunter-gatherers, so I was staying on-topic

Those vast amounts of land usually don't have viable soil for multi-year agriculture. Arable land is limited

Except in the winter in temperate climates when you can't harvest enough calories or protein to survive on a vegetarian diet

Manhattan is doing some incredible work in Bio- and Agro- defense research. Some of the best scientists in the world are in Manhattan

https://www.usda.gov/nbaf

Yes, you are correct. My comment implied that a healthy population needs both. The agriculture crops are equally necessary for calories and protein

Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US

How much would it cost to cover 100 acres with LEDs?

How much are you willing to pay for a head of lettuce? I have no idea about the logistics or costs for building hydro-electric indoor multi-storied farms on mountainsides, but it sounds like many millions of dollars.

I think a more realistic approach to mountain farming would be what Sepp Holzer does in the Austrian Alps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GMXqgQIU9c

Incredible, thanks for sharing

I agree it's a nice luxury product for urban upper-middle class. Hardly the future of farming for the rest of the world though.

Ok I can concede that if 99% of the global population disappears or we have to evacuate the planet, this would be reasonable

"Does the future of farming (something indoors) ?"

No. It never will, despite all of the admittedly cool proof-of-concepts. The energy required to photosynthesize will never be more economical from artificial lighting than the sun. The future of farming (in the U.S.) is better soil management, agro-forestry, and removing archaic systems of subsidies which favor corn and beef to the detriment of human and environmental health.

Underground crops are cool, but they cannot feed the planet

From the HN Guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

"A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

It makes me wonder how many millions of teenagers are going to turn on to Alex Jones because their parents project so much outrage towards him.