# Responsible agriculture and eating



## LostHighway (Sep 7, 2021)

I have taken the liberty of moving this comment from @tgfencer in the covid thread since no one else was stepping up to start a new food related thread.

_"I can't argue with veg vs meat, but there is cattle farming and then there is cattle farming. Factory farming is definitely bad, feed lots and massive ranches are environmental landmines in terms of water, carbon, and pollutant production in much the same way that concentrated pig farming in places like eastern NC are causing tons of problems both for the land and the people.

I will say though that farms focusing on raising cows (or any animal really) with regenerative practices and adaption to the local environment can be quite beneficial locally-and let's face it, farms doing these practices are really only providing their goods locally/regionally anyway. Cows and other animals grazing help improve soil carbon capture and enhanced carbon improves soil and water quality, decreases nutrient loss, reduces soil erosion, increases water conservation, and increases crop production. I certainly agree (as a livestock farmer myself) that eating cattle as a primary source of meat or protein everyday isn't responsible. There's a reason that historically and traditionally animals such as chickens, ducks, and pigs were the primary animal meat source. Chickens and ducks you could kill and eat the same day. Hogs and cows were slaughtered in the fall/winter and mostly preserved for the future (but refrigeration has changed that old cycle). The problem mainly lies in the centralization of animal production in a handful of extremely influential corporations worldwide and the consumption habits of people.

The widespread adoption of small-scale, local, and regenerative livestock farming practices phased in for mass animal production by corporations would negate large portions of the detriments to animals as foodstuffs. Meat would be more expensive because there would simply be less of it, carbon would be better sequestered and less carbon and other gases/pollutants would be produced during the production cycle from farm to table, the local soil, water, and air would likely see a boon (while the places suffering right now from mass production would be relieved of the burden of the pollution. If you've never been to a meat processor or seen feed lot/mass pig farm, you really would not believe how incredibly unnatural they are). The reason this hasn't happened is the same reason small businesses always suffer: powerful, rich competition; start-up costs; and low, variable margins.

The maxim of eat less, eat local, and buy responsibly definitely holds true here. Anyway, I digress."_

I'm not a beef eater but I generally agree with this. The small scale regenerative stuff is great but where rainfall is abundant enough to permit largely non-irrigated or minimally irrigated plant production I think the case for producing very much meat is tenuous. Where dry land farming is impossible without mining water grazing animal production starts to look more reasonable. The huge caveat is that that sort of biome doesn't allow for much animal density per acre. (Edit: at least not on a continuous basis, but migrating herds...)

Has anyone here looked at the real research on feeding seaweed to reduce methane? I'm interested but all I've seen is popular press info which more often than not is bad when it comes to science reporting.

As @juice alluded large scale row crop production is also problematic but at least arguably less awful either environmentally or ethically (humane treatment of animals) than large scale meat production. From an inputs to output perspective it is unarguably more efficient.

Out treatment of the oceans is a mess. IMO we need new, stronger treaties and regulations on fishing and *much* stiffer enforcement. I'd like to see the exclusive economic zone expanded from 200 nautical miles to 300 nm (555 km). Fish farming may be the future but I have little positive to say about salmon farming as presently practiced and I am very dubious about farmed shrimp or tilapia. My understanding is that farmed trout is less problematic but my "understanding" is quite shallow.


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## parbaked (Sep 7, 2021)

There are a number of farms in Northern CA that raise crops and animals responsibly.
They are fortunate to have a market can pay for their efforts.
One of our friend's daughter even trains horses to work the fields to replace tractors.
Pigs, goats and chickens can play an important role in sustainable, biodiverse farming.
Beef require much more land and don't play well with others...

If there were only responsibly raised cattle, beef would be healthier and more expensive.
As a result, we'd eat lower quantities of better quality beef.
We'd also find tasty alternatives to cheap beef that hopefully resemble falafel and portobello steaks and not "impossible" meats...


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## tgfencer (Sep 7, 2021)

I should say I'm by no means an expert. Another farmer I work with taught regenerative agricultural practices at a college and is much more knowledgeable than myself. I have not studied this subject outside of what I've picked up from my job. 

I will say that regenerative agriculture is not the end all be all solution to the meat industry. Like most things, it is a multi-faceted problem. Then again, a bit like fossil fuels or plastic, one of the best, most straight-foward solutions is also the hardest to bring about-simply change our habits and regulate production, or if we can't change, consume far less. But when going up against the greed of the economy, industry, profits, and this illusory concept of 'growth', things are far from that simple.


Anyway, here's some good articles about agricultural issues. Hopefully it will motivate people to pay more for meat, source it from small farmers, and eat less of it. 









Is the US chicken industry cheating its farmers?


Leaked documents reveal remarkable power US poultry industry holds over farmers struggling to stay afloat on thin margins




www.theguardian.com












The North Carolina hog industry's answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project


Instead of implementing safer systems, activists say Smithfield Foods is seeking to profit from hog waste under the guise of ‘renewable energy’




www.theguardian.com












'It smells like a decomposing body': North Carolina's polluting pig farms


After years of burying neighbours’ complaints about illegal spraying of hog manure, state officials suddenly began posting them online. What changed?




www.theguardian.com













Meet Allan Savory, the Pioneer of Regenerative Agriculture


No one has had more influence on the development of regenerative farming than Allan Savory, the provocative 82-year-old president and founder of the Savory Institute.




www.agriculture.com












A Different Kind of Land Management: Let the Cows Stomp (Published 2021)


Regenerative grazing can store more carbon in soils in the form of roots and other plant tissues. But how much can it really help the fight against climate change?




www.nytimes.com












A New Study on Regenerative Grazing Complicates Climate Optimism


A new, peer-reviewed paper on White Oak Pastures' practices advances our understanding of the climate impact of beef and the power of regenerative grazing to store carbon in the soil.




civileats.com


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## luuogle (Sep 7, 2021)

Small scale local sustainable agriculture does have benefits the environment, but there is a drawback of reduced production of food for the people. If it was implemented food prices would certainly rise. 

Here is an article that discusses some of the pros and cons of sustainable agriculture.









 Sustainable Agriculture


Learn what threatens global food supply and the planet's ecosystems, and what you can do to help.




www.nationalgeographic.com


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## LostHighway (Sep 7, 2021)

Polyface Farms some of you are probably already familiar from reading Michael Pollan's books (if I remember correctly).


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## HumbleHomeCook (Sep 7, 2021)

First world problem at best.

I lived on a 500 head cattle ranch, hunted, fished, etc.

I also drive by a school where once a week it's food bank day and the line of cars extends for blocks. Kids in the dead of winter with spring jackets and socks on their hands. If every thing was all so clean and tidy those kids wouldn't have anything. What's more, the OVERHWELMING majority of people well beyond that line would suffer and require radical lifestyle changes.

It's all messy and for sure there are consequences for everything, but ugly as it is, corporate farming and ranching feeds the world. It damn sure fed my kids way back when I was active duty military and qualified for food stamps for my kids.

What I do these days, is to do what I can. I try to buy as I go with fresh stuff, maybe three or so days out so I can get things from smaller farms that won't last as long but I support. I break down chickens and it lets me save enough to buy free range birds. I try REALLY hard to think about not just leftovers, but left over ingredients. There's just two of us now. If I buy a head of lettuce, I'm thinking about how to use it all up before it goes bad. It takes planning and creativity and can be a legitimate challenge.

I don't have issues with folks who want to do better. It is an admirable goal. But in what is left of my lifetime I doubt there will ever be a global shift that affords me the luxury of castigating corporate food production. People require it.


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## Jovidah (Sep 7, 2021)

A few points that crossed my mind when considering the whole sustainability theme. In no particular order. 

-The whole debate on 'sustainable practises' and for example 'the responsibility' of meat consumption is extremely muddied. Whether intentional or not positions are often supported by only a limited selection of all the variables.

-Sustainability and animal welfare are often presented as the same thing, while in reality they are at odds with eachother. Animal friendly rearing practise almost invariably mean raising animals in larger areas over a longer time period than the bio-industry. The result is a higher input of food, higher requirement for housing, and as a result an across the board higher footprint in water, carbon, etc.

-Sustainability on what variable? Carbon footprint? Methane output? Water consumption? Sustainably practise isn't necessarily one thing, and practises that score would improve one variable might worsen another. 

-As a result, since the situation is different everywhere, there's not necessarily 'one' best practise. Raising cows might not make sense in places where you have fertile farmland where bountiful crops can be grown, but if you're in a place where only grass grows it might make perfect sense.

-Similarly buying local, however trendy it is, isn't always the most efficient. It can in some cases be more efficient to grow / raise certain things in places that have better conditions and truck it around, than to just grow it locally with a higher consumption in water, energy, imported feedstock, whatever.

-We have to face the reality that simply going back to low-output low intensity farming might be an acceptable solution for well-off westers with enough disposable income but it might not be a workable solution for everyone. For many people higher food prices are simply not an option, and similarly we might run into a situation where we simply cannot go back to feeding the world the same way we did it when we only had 1 billion inhabitants.

-Especially people with an animal rights agenda like to always bring up cows (usually grainfed) because they score so poorly on most sustainability variables. However this ignores the fact that different animals have widely different environment foodprints. Not all animals are created equally.
Similarly you cannot just compare a kilo of beef to a kilo of lettuce and treat them the same since they have widely different nutritional value. If you really want to make a fair comparison you have to look at an equal protein to protein comparison, and then the situation suddenly starts looking a whole lot more complicated.

-The best example is chicken. It's still one of the most efficient ways of producing protein we have. More efficient than plenty of vegetarian and vegan alternatives. If you look at for example water consumption most nuts will actually have a higher foodprint than for example chicken and pork. I don't remember all the numbers of every single product but my point is that it's more complicated than a simple 'meat bad, veggies good' relationship. It's still REALLY hard to beat chicken, which is also why it's so cheap.... It's simply very resource efficient to produce - especially if you deprioritize animal welfare.

I guess the biggest point that I want to make is that even if you _want _to do better, it's not always so straightforward and simple to determine what that is, and it might not necessarily be a solution you can export universally. Buzzwords like sustainability look great on paper, until you start diving into the nitty gritty, and then there's a lot of awkward unconvenient truths that really aren't all that easy to solve.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 7, 2021)

A lot of the US population is paycheck to paycheck. They are going to buy big bags of chicken parts. Much is personal choice. Eating
less more healthy foods. A small % actually do that. Look at all the football players how many 
would eat like Tom Brady.

I worry much less about farmed salmon misinformation all on internet kind of like covid 
vaccine dangerous. All the science to prove yeh right. The only way to help oceans is eat less seafood. Otherwise catching wild stock to feed the world will deplete stocks eco system under
pressure. Seafood farming is way of the future.
In Hawaii they are clearing out ancient fish ponds where fresh water from mountains meets salt water from ocean.

Since I reduced my blood sugar to normal just eating more healthy read labels on everything.
Now make things from scratch like salad dressing, hummus. Greens, spices come from our organic garden. 

You would not believe what food industry puts in processed foods. All the cereal
is loaded with sugar. They put ingredient info.
on the bottom of the box so it's harder to find.
They don't care don't pay hospital bills.

It's no wonder type 2 diabetes are major health
problem. Eat fresh we do it but hardly anyone
is. I used to think ate not too bad pretty healthy.
When I had blood test pre-diabetes. Read several books on how to reverse with change of 
eating habits. Found wasn't eating healthy.
Education is important. Even so most people
don't care. I see people loading on spam at the big box stores.


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## juice (Sep 8, 2021)

tgfencer said:


>


Allan Savory is a champ.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 8, 2021)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> First world problem at best.



I don't know how you can say this? 

Tell me... what do you suppose would happen if the entire world wanted to eat 100kg of meat per year? Can you extend this to the suburban dream of owning a quarter acre block, two cars, draws full of obsolete gadgets and a boat for the weekends? There are currently almost 8,000,000,000 people.

The words 'responsible' and 'sustainable' can be loaded with as much or as little meaning as the author/reader choose to imbue in them. 

To unmuddy the waters, I propose that industrial agriculture and 'sustainable' or 'responsible' agriculture are not mutually exclusive terms. We need industrial agriculture - I think everybody would agree on that. Implying otherwise is a distraction. Shifting towards responsible or sustainable agriculture simply reflects including the cost of negative externalities into the price of foods. Depleting soils, ruining water systems, loss of biodiversity and climate change are externalities that we do not pay for. Everybody _pays_ for them and nobody 'pays' for them. 

Of course, moving to a more 'responsible' and 'sustainable' system may raise the price of certain foods. Indeed, we may even consider certain forms of agriculture too damaging to be 'sustainable' or 'responsible' in a particular area. If we don't want to wreck the place, participate in intergenerational vandalism or benefit at the cost of others... then so be it. It is the price we will have to pay. 

The right to food is regarded as a basic human right but it is not:



> a right to a minimum ration of calories, proteins and other specific nutrients, or a right to be fed. It is about being guaranteed the right to feed oneself, which requires not only that food is available – that the ratio of production to the population is sufficient – but also that it is accessible – i.e., that each household either has the means to produce or buy its own food.



That is pretty airy and inexact language. But it clearly excludes excessive consumption and near unlimited preferences/choice.





Jovidah said:


> -The whole debate on 'sustainable practises' and for example 'the responsibility' of meat consumption is extremely muddied. Whether intentional or not positions are often supported by only a limited selection of all the variables.
> 
> -Sustainability and animal welfare are often presented as the same thing, while in reality they are at odds with eachother. Animal friendly rearing practise almost invariably mean raising animals in larger areas over a longer time period than the bio-industry. The result is a higher input of food, higher requirement for housing, and as a result an across the board higher footprint in water, carbon, etc.
> 
> -Sustainability on what variable? Carbon footprint? Methane output? Water consumption? Sustainably practise isn't necessarily one thing, and practises that score would improve one variable might worsen another.



I really don't think they are as hard to define as you make out? All high-functioning economies have enough scientific and economic resources to quantify these things. The only dimension that becomes a subjective (political) decision is "how much damage are we willing to tolerate to subsidise a particular living standard"....

I am in no way claiming that is an easy decision to make... but we _do_ have the tools to quantify natural resources, consumption and incomes. And there's the rub. To be 'fair' or 'moral', affluent countries need to pull their socks up and move rapidly towards sustainability and circular economies..... selling that to an electorate is political suicide.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 8, 2021)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> First world problem at best.





Luftmensch said:


> I don't know how you can say this?





After re-reading what I just wrote... I suppose you _could_ cheekily say, this is predominantly a first world problem


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## MarcelNL (Sep 8, 2021)

Growing seafood also has it's serious downsides such as pollution and the amount of antibiotics needed when the fish are kept with millions in smallish reservoirs (which is common), The feed also needs to come from somewhere, I think that responsible seafood growing can be part of a solution yet there probably is not just one single solution...

BTW: industrial scale farming is not needed to feed the world, it was an effect of the food shortages caused by a.o. WWII and it became an economic model. We waste like a third of all food produced. 
Looking at the Netherlands, in 2020 we produced more meat than any other EU country, enough to feed approx 80 million on top of our own population of 17M, Poland, Denmark Spain and Germany go at it on the same scale and it's not as if the other EU countries do not produce anything either. All of this is done in a fierce global competition which somehow leaves farmers unable to earn a decent income with their products and at the same time they are pushed to produce at (ridiculously) low cost... animal welfare, biodiversity and the environment take the hit affecting all of us but is not included in food price. 

I do not have the solution either, however I do think there is plenty of simple things we all can do to help decrease the impact of the issue. Eating local sustainably grown food and less meat will help, even if it does not tick all the boxes every time.

As (EU) governments seem to regulate everything with taxes I can envision that a tax for every mile a food item travelled might work, no more pigs born in the Netherlands, grown fat in Belgium, slaughtered in Poland and made into Parmaham in Italy to be sold in the Netherlands again, by the time the final product is on your plate it has travelled around the world.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 8, 2021)

MarcelNL said:


> As (EU) governments seem to regulate everything with taxes I can envision that a tax for every mile a food item travelled might work, no more pigs born in the Netherlands, grown fat in Belgium, slaughtered in Poland and made into Parmaham in Italy to be sold in the Netherlands again, by the time the final product is on your plate it has travelled around the world.



Interesting point. 

I anticipate that Australia will be forced to act on climate change _despite_ our government... not because of it. Unless the government changes, we are unlikely to legislate any serious, proactive measures in combating climate change. However, I suspect our trading partners (primarily EU and now America) will move faster and place tariffs on our produce if we dont act... or traders can't prove that the original source had good carbon credentials.

... Depends... we have an election in the next 6-8 months


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

There are some interesting points being raised.

It is indeed true that smaller scale and local operations are limited by their both their scale and locality. They cannot feed everyone, at least, not without there being more of them. Similarly,what is produced is limited by where you live. I am lucky to be in a place where a great deal or foods can be raised or grown, so that if I wanted I really would only have to import tropical climate fruits and vegetables. However, say one was in Arizona, that would be a whole different story. Having cities of millions in regions that only used to hold tens of thousands necessitates a certain amount of outsourcing.

There is little reason that big corporations in Ag couldn’t clean up their acts and move to sustainable and regenerative models. They are vilified by many because they choose not to, the same way that gas giants like BP or Exxon could take their billions of profit and massive amount of influence and jump start a clean energy revolution rather than continue to cause massive pollution.

@Keith Sinclair I have a great deal of sympathy for the argument of viability for the average person in terms of cost. This is the greatest pitfall of modern sustainable farming practices, that it produces more expensive products. I don’t necessarily have an answer to it, but before becoming a farmer and in fact even now I can’t necessarily afford the meat I help raise and butcher, or at least, not a lot of it. Then again, modern life has a lot more costs then it used to: cars, streaming services, cell phone bills, internet, medical costs, (expensive knives!) etc. Indeed, health insurance premiums alone in the US can wipe people out. I think there are many issues with the cost of living and wages here, but if you’re going to spend money on stuff, spending more on the things that keep you alive and healthy is probably worthwhile and ultimately cost effective down the road. Obviously there are many for who even a small increase in monthly costs is untenable.

@Jovidah It may interest you to know that raising animals in a sustainable or regenerative way does not really change how long it takes to go from birth to slaughter, in much the same way it takes most children the same amount of time to get from baby sized to toddler sized, assuming adequate nourishment. Chickens take 5-8 weeks, pigs take 10 months, and cows take 2 years, approximately. What really changes depending on the feed system (and genetics) is the nutrients in the meat and the fat quality, rather than the amount of resources needed to produce the animal (locality dependent of course). You would be right otherwise though, more time means more resources and some breeds of particular animals do require more time, but they aren’t commonly farmed for that reason.

I would also add that chicken are cheap, not because they’re a good source of protein, but because their size and the speed at which they hit mature weight means that they can be bred en masse and raised in confinement more easily than other animals and turned over quickly for a profit. As someone who works on a farm with a small scale pasture-raised chicken operation (4,000/year), they are actually more work and labor than cows or pigs from field to table, especially when you take into account slaughter on site (not many independent chicken processors left) and butchering. To just break even we would have to charge something like 4-4.50/lb, and we actually charge 6/lb for whole birds, which always seems absurd to me, but that’s what it takes.


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## LostHighway (Sep 8, 2021)

Perennial grasses are one possible path forward. Pastured livestock live primarily on perennial grasses (I acknowledge that I'm leaving out some important qualifiers here) and it makes for a fairly efficient system of livestock production without huge external inputs. Humans more-or-less abandoned perennial grasses as a direct food source millennia ago but there is potential there. Wes Jackson's The Land Institute was one of the first places seriously researching this but Cornell University and several other institutions have also entered the game.


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## HumbleHomeCook (Sep 8, 2021)

Luftmensch said:


> I don't know how you can say this?
> 
> Tell me... what do you suppose would happen if the entire world wanted to eat 100kg of meat per year? Can you extend this to the suburban dream of owning a quarter acre block, two cars, draws full of obsolete gadgets and a boat for the weekends? There are currently almost 8,000,000,000 people.
> 
> ...



Let me clarify. When I said "first world problem" I meant the luxury of contemplating the alleged evils of corporate farming/ranching, not that is a problem that only affects the first world. Even within the first world, it's really only something people who can afford it think about.

You make a good point about interpreting the words and the weight behind them. I reckon it would be up to the original user of the words to clarify. 

I just think this is a way bigger problem than industrial farming/ranching practices. I'm not admonishing nor defending them, I just think there's a lot of things that have to be addressed when discussing the world's food supply. Further I'd wager, collectively, the population of the world that doesn't care about any of this far exceeds the population that does. It's an uphill battle until there's a much broader cultural shift.

When I encounter problems that involve organizations, I don't care if it is a local PTA or big corporation, my initial thought is "what are the individuals doing?" It's no different for me here. Just imagine the reduction if individuals stopped wasting food. Imagine the impact if people got truly educated about "expiration" dates. I don't let the organizations off the hook, but I just always feel you have to start with the individuals involved first or it will never take or last. Get individual momentum, then you start moving mountains, or at least hills.


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## Lars (Sep 8, 2021)

How can the western world ask the emerging middle classes of India and China to eat less meat after we have had our fun? It's going to be a tough sell imo..


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## TheNewMexican (Sep 8, 2021)

What I do know is that growing up (largely thanks to the efforts of my grandfather who lived with us) we had two acres of garden and self butchered one cow and one pig every fall to fill the freezers. That produced 85% of the food we ate for a family of eight. Mom would go to the grocery store once a month for other staples such as flour, sugar, coffee, or various canned goods for variety. Boxed breakfast cereal was a treat and we milked a cow while it was in season. Long before "organic" was a thing, we were doing it. Only we considered it as eating "poor". 

I really miss those times.


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

Lars said:


> How can the western world ask the emerging middle classes of India and China to eat less meat after we have had our fun? It's going to be a tough sell imo..



Maybe, you’re right. I don’t know how much meat the average person in India or China eats. 
But I think that question is also missing the point. Just because we may not be able to ask other nations to alter their production or consumption habits does not provide us free reign to continue to ignore our own habits and problems, things that we can definitely address ourselves.

Likewise,@HumbleHomeCook, I’d say you also have a bit of a straw man argument, although it may be accidental. Blaming consumers for industry practices is an easy out for everyone involved. It’s akin to gas companies blaming the worlds pollution problems on people buying cars that use gasoline or plastic companies ignoring the harms of their industry by pointing out people like bottled water. The small company and farm I work for alone probably goes through more trash and plastic in a 4-7 days then I do in a year.

Yes, people are to blame. But people can only buy what it offered to them and 99% of the time they don’t know what it took to produce the item they’re purchased. The fact of the matter is that you’re right when you say people don’t care enough to make the change, because it’s hard to care about everything and we’ve all got crap going on in our lives. That’s why companies doing the right thing for themselves and their customers is so important, and equally, if they won’t, government regulation is necessary to enforce adequate measures. Say what you will about covid, but it surely demonstrated the powers of the state to instigate change, for good and bad.


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## Lars (Sep 8, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> I don’t know how much meat the average person in India or China eats


A lot more than they were eating 20 years ago..


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

Lars said:


> A lot more than they were eating 20 years ago..



Haha I’ll accept that answer.

Funnily enough, Chinese companies now own several of the biggest pork producers in the US, including Smithfield’s, partly because they want to cut down on domestic production of pork in China due to its pollution, particularly its pollution of water sources and rivers. There are whole areas of the country where commercial livestock farming has been banned. Better just to import it from the US and let us pay the ecological costs.


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## Lars (Sep 8, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> Haha I’ll accept that answer.
> 
> Funnily enough, Chinese companies now own several of the biggest pork producers in the US, including Smithfield’s, partly because they want to cut down on domestic production of pork in China due to its pollution, particularly its pollution of water sources and rivers. There are whole areas of the country where commercial livestock farming has been banned. Better just to import it from the US and let us pay the ecological costs.


China is buying lots of land abroad to insure they can grow enough food to feed their people.


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## HumbleHomeCook (Sep 8, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> Maybe, you’re right. I don’t know how much meat the average person in India or China eats.
> But I think that question is also missing the point. Just because we may not be able to ask other nations to alter their production or consumption habits does not provide us free reign to continue to ignore our own habits and problems, things that we can definitely address ourselves.
> 
> Likewise,@HumbleHomeCook, I’d say you also have a bit of a straw man argument, although it may be accidental. Blaming consumers for industry practices is an easy out for everyone involved. It’s akin to gas companies blaming the worlds pollution problems on people buying cars that use gasoline or plastic companies ignoring the harms of their industry by pointing out people like bottled water. The small company and farm I work for alone probably goes through more trash and plastic in a 4-7 days then I do in a year.
> ...



Nothing I said was by accident. I no more blamed consumers for industry practices than I absolved the industry itself.


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## HumbleHomeCook (Sep 8, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> Haha I’ll accept that answer.
> 
> Funnily enough, Chinese companies now own several of the biggest pork producers in the US, including Smithfield’s, partly because they want to cut down on domestic production of pork in China due to its pollution, particularly its pollution of water sources and rivers. There are whole areas of the country where commercial livestock farming has been banned. Better just to import it from the US and let us pay the ecological costs.



If you believe the Chinese government cares one wit about pollution, well... If they are concerned about pork pollution there are other motives at play to be sure. China is a massive global polluter.


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## Towerguy (Sep 8, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> I have taken the liberty of moving this comment from @tgfencer in the covid thread since no one else was stepping up to start a new food related thread.
> 
> _"I can't argue with veg vs meat, but there is cattle farming and then there is cattle farming. Factory farming is definitely bad, feed lots and massive ranches are environmental landmines in terms of water, carbon, and pollutant production in much the same way that concentrated pig farming in places like eastern NC are causing tons of problems both for the land and the people.
> 
> ...


My question is this: Could "responsible agriculture" produce enough product to satisfy U.S. and foreign demand?


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> If you believe the Chinese government cares one wit about pollution, well... If they are concerned about pork pollution there are other motives at play to be sure. China is a massive global polluter.



I'm well aware, I'm not saying that's their only motive or even their main one. But my point is that if its polluting enough for them of all countries to at least make marginal efforts to be _seen_ tackling it, it should make everyone else to sit up and take notice.

Of course there are other majorly lethal and polluting industries like rare earth metals mining in China and chemical production here in the US. I'm not saying that industrial meat production is as bad as others, but that also doesn't mean it should just be ignored.


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

Towerguy said:


> My question is this: Could "responsible agriculture" produce enough product to satisfy U.S. and foreign demand?



No idea, especially in regards to foreign demand and consumption levels. At any rate, probably not in the US with current consumption habits, especially in regards to meat, and definitely not without having the big producers fall into line. Maybe in a theoretical world where meat returned to local/regional production and the number of farms increased substantially with the decline or break-up of the big producers, but that's hardly realistic.

The average American ate 222lb of meat in 2018, which is about a quarter/a third of one cow, which at 330mil population, is 73.2 billion lb if I've done my lazy math correctly. This is up about 40% since 1961. For comparison, my farm probably does roughly 30-40k lbs of beef or so, 48k lb of pork, 27k lb in chicken, 6k lb of turkey across 120-200 acres annually.

All that said, a lot of estimates are that the US throws away/wastes about a quarter of its total meat production, roughly 1 billion chickens and 100mil+ of other land animals combined, so there's definitely a _lot_ of room to reduce production and not impact supply lines. In fact, local/regional production is much more resistant to supply line issues than big national producers, as evidenced by Covid and by the current Australian beef situation.

I think there are more vegetable and crop farming technologies and innovations that can scale 'sustainable' methods better, but I'm not an expert.


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## LostHighway (Sep 8, 2021)

In defense of poor people's food I've had some really great meals (no meat) among the sadhus in North India. It was basically dal and chapatis every day but the dal was different every day and the chapatis were freshly made and still warm. In the Americas, at least among those still connected to food traditions, it is likely to be beans, corn in some form or rice, plus a small amount of eggs, chicken, or pork, fish where locally available and seasonings. As the song goes, "It ain't the meat..."


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## tgfencer (Sep 8, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> In defense of poor people's food I've had some really great meals (no meat) among the sadhus in North India. It was basically dal and chapatis every day but the dal was different every day and the chapatis were freshly made and still warm. In the Americas, at least among those still connected to food traditions, it is likely to be beans, corn in some form or rice, plus a small amount of eggs, chicken, or pork, fish where locally available and seasonings. As the song goes, "It ain't the meat..."



I love beans. And lentils. And rice. And quick breads!


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## EShin (Sep 8, 2021)

Towerguy said:


> My question is this: Could "responsible agriculture" produce enough product to satisfy U.S. and foreign demand?


There are several ways to understand and to answer your question, but to answer it in one way: US and foreign _nutritional_ demands could be satisfied by producing in the most responsible ways, so by permaculture or natural agriculture (probably not so well known outside of Japan, but it is a form of agriculture that doesn't use any fertilisers or pesticides). That would mean:

A lot more people would have to engage in agriculture than is now the case in industrial nations (actually, 70% of the farmers worldwide are subsistence farmers)
Diets would have to change (food based on many different sorts of local fresh ingredients rather than cheap calories)
Food supply would change (own garden or directly from the farmer as main supplies)
Costs for the health sector and environmental sector would decrease dramatically because of much better physical and environmental health (for example, it is estimated that for every GBP spent on food in the UK, an additional GBP of direct environmental and health costs incur, see this study on True Cost Accounting for Food, Farming & Finance. These costs are externalised today, that's why prices seem cheap. Add in indirect costs...)
The business model of most suppliers of fertilisers, pesticides, seeds, agricultural machinery etc. would no longer work
Property rights and land ownership would have to change

So it would be closer to "poor people's food" such as @LostHighway or @TheNewMexican described above, and was still common here in Japan around 100 years ago and is the backbone of Japanese cuisine that should be based on local fresh ingredients. These people are "poor" in the sense that their revenue is much lower than the one of people in industrialised nations. That is a problem if you want to live the same lifestyle as probably all users here do now, but it doesn't have to be because you are a lot less dependent on buying things and more dependent on your local community (your local blacksmith ). This again comes with lots of pluses and minuses and it might seem like a rich life to some, poor to others.

In any case, what I think is important to understand is that these changes would go against today's economic system that is dependent on growth (because of interest). In other words, a big reason why sustainable agriculture is not advancing much more is because more people in agriculture, less chemicals, less machinery, better physical and environmental health is bad for the economy.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 9, 2021)

Was in India 1990. Southern India has largest groups of vegetarians on the planet. It's no surprise that the best vegetarian grocery & eating place has Indian workers & local Hawaii
folks that are Buddhist or Hindu. 

Can relate to posts here. In Virginia we were a Scottish clan relatives all around shared 
foods grown, trees for peaches & apples. Pecans, walnuts, figs. So much produce & fruit
canning for winter months. Hand crank apple press for cider soft & hard. I know my grandfather's whiskey apparatus was still in the barn when I was a kid. We had a smoke house
for curing ham. My Aunt & Uncle had one cow, horses, fox hunting hound dogs, lots of chickens for eggs & eating. When was real young remember uncle butchering pig. Must have had affect on me because must have been 3 or 4 years old. Not only that right on Chesapeake so unlimited fish, blue crabs, oysters. We didn't need to buy anything from store. Only thing was flour, sugar for baking
& sharp cheddar cheese. Tea & coffee. Drank a lot of ice tea.


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## MarcelNL (Sep 9, 2021)

Where I live there a new initiative where a large group of people basically own a cooperative farm by buying a share and 'hiring' a farmer and pay the running cost, in return they get like 60% of their needed organic and sustainable produce from the farm (meat, fruit and veg). We looked at joining a while ago, while not 'cheap', around 2000 euro to join and 45 euro per month per mouth it is IMO a great way to change things. We hesitated because it's pretty new and the farm had a pretty narrow sort of crop in mind (not suited to our style of cooking). Now ~3 years later they are in full swing, growing a much wider range of produce than initially planned, and have reached their limit.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 9, 2021)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> I reckon it would be up to the original user of the words to clarify.



For sure. Like I say, *I* think 'responsible' agriculture is about limiting the impact of production on the environment to a 'sustainable' level. There could also be a a mandatory premium on animal welfare - not for selfish, existential reasons (I dont think there are any - perhaps disease).... but because we are civilised enough to have compassion! We can throw as much technology and industrial processes towards solving this problem as we choose.

But this is only the way *I* view the issue. I acknowledge there is a wide range of opinions. I only offer it up to try and provide a definition for what 'responsible and 'sustainable' might mean. For what it is worth, _some_ of this is likely to get swept into the carbon accounting movement. For instance, agriculture plays a huge role in greenhouse gasses due to fertiliser production and use (aside from livestock). Farmers typically over fertilise to ensure they get the best yield/quality from of their crop. Excess fertiliser breaks down into N2O which is a 310x more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Currently there is no disincentive (other than profit) that prevents farmers from using such crude applications. I would expect carbon accounting to hit farms in the developed relatively soon. The cost of food may reflect this. Since farmers are large land holders, they could also be incentivised through other schemes to increase their soil carbon.



HumbleHomeCook said:


> When I encounter problems that involve organizations, I don't care if it is a local PTA or big corporation, my initial thought is "what are the individuals doing?" It's no different for me here. Just imagine the reduction if individuals stopped wasting food. Imagine the impact if people got truly educated about "expiration" dates. I don't let the organizations off the hook, but I just always feel you have to start with the individuals involved first or it will never take or last. Get individual momentum, then you start moving mountains, or at least hills.



It sounds like you are a conscientious consumer. That is great 

But I have to agree with @tgfencer, most people arent thoughtful consumers. I believe change _has_ to be (and will be) built into the system. Most people are well meaning... but unless they are passionate, they are probably disengaged or apathetic. After all... they are just one person in 8billion... they are likely to have other worries in life. Does it really matter if they 'cheat'?





tgfencer said:


> All that said, a lot of estimates are that the US throws away/wastes about a quarter of its total meat production



It is problematic across the supply chain - from paddock to plate. Australia is the same. We are hugely wasteful. I do believe _some_ (but by no means all) of this is a cost issue. If your meat costs a trivial amount... an apathetic consumer is going to treat it like a trivial product. Maybe throwing out something as resource intensive as meat _should_ feel a bit painful for the middle class. I bet that would help reduce waste at the household level. I do also think that the current practice of driving down the cost of animal products sends the wrong message to consumers. The produce gets treated more like a commodity rather than something that likely hard a large environmental footprint and welfare concerns.





Towerguy said:


> My question is this: Could "responsible agriculture" produce enough product to satisfy U.S. and foreign demand?



Yes.

Like I implied earlier, I dont think this question is particularly meaningful without talking about what standard of living** (for lack of a better term) you expect. Often, implicit in questions like these, is the assumption that people get to continue their current consumption at no additional cost. I propose that is unreasonable.

I acknowledge it is also unreasonable to expect that we will all be eating some grey biscuits of dried up algae and ground up insects. Though I fear, if governments dont have this discussion sooner rather than later, mother nature might force our hand. In 200 years once the planet is a hostile oven... maybe those grey biscuits will look mighty tasty 

... and so we comeback to that question: how much damage are we willing to tolerate to subsidise a particular living standard**? Or conversely: what living standards** are we willing to forego to reduce our environmental footprint?


[**Post note edit: I am using 'standard of living' here as a shorthand for consumer expectation and choice. I reject the idea that actively disincentivising consumers in countries like America and Australia to reduce their meat consumption constitutes a reduction in living standard. I am also not sure that paying more for food constitutes a reduced living standard. To maintain our living standards, as a society we will have to ensure low income demographics can access nutritious staples.]


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## juice (Sep 9, 2021)

Luftmensch said:


> If your meat costs a trivial amount... an apathetic consumer is going to treat it like a trivial product. Maybe throwing out something as resource intensive as meat _should_ feel a bit painful for the middle class.


Do people actually waste meat? I know people waste plenty of pre-processed stuff, and some veges (don't get used and go off), but meat? Really? I don't reckon I've thrown out any meat in my life.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 9, 2021)

juice said:


> Do people actually waste meat? I know people waste plenty of pre-processed stuff, and some veges (don't get used and go off), but meat? Really? I don't reckon I've thrown out any meat in my life.



Fair cop. Yes. 

Although, I agree, households are probably statistically much more likely to waste vegetables etc...

It can be hard to imagine. We also have a pretty small waste footprint and have never thrown out a packet of meat... but we have certainly let milk go off! I can easily imagine a time-poor couple with several kids throwing out meat.

Waste is a broad category. It includes unfinished meals. It also includes large meals that you cooked, put in the fridge for later and threw out two weeks later when you rediscovered it. I'll posit that a weaker form of waste is throwing out bones fat and less choice trimmings - these could be used for stock. Throwing out delivery food....

The FoodwasteCRC has a 2019 report that includes a survey asking respondents to consider their previous week of waste. It states:


> about one quarter (26%) reported throwing away meat and seafood - 0.75 of a 100gm serve (75gm) on average




I am sure you have read up on some of this stuff generally... and I know the following links dont directly answer your question... nor my assertion... but the amount of _aggregate_ food waste is certainly well documented:

Food Waste Fast Facts
Surprising Facts about Food Waste
Fight Food Waste CRC | Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre


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## MarcelNL (Sep 9, 2021)

food waste is not just at the consumer, what do you think of a supermarket selling stuff with a relatively short expiry date? Or meat that is stored frozen, 'because the commodities market is down and expected to go up in 6 months'...

In the EU we had (or probably still have) a Butter surplus that could be used to feed half of Europe for weeks on butter alone....subsidized dairy farming at work (a post WWII solution with some side effects).
Currently that surplus has been consumed (?) but we still 'own'a small surplus of milk powder, somewhere around 360.000 tons of it....


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## tgfencer (Sep 9, 2021)

EShin said:


> There are several ways to understand and to answer your question, but to answer it in one way: US and foreign _nutritional_ demands could be satisfied by producing in the most responsible ways, so by permaculture or natural agriculture (probably not so well known outside of Japan, but it is a form of agriculture that doesn't use any fertilisers or pesticides). That would mean:
> 
> A lot more people would have to engage in agriculture than is now the case in industrial nations (actually, 70% of the farmers worldwide are subsistence farmers)
> Diets would have to change (food based on many different sorts of local fresh ingredients rather than cheap calories)
> ...



Also land access is an absolute monster of a problem, doubly so with affordability.While not true for produce farms, pretty much every livestock farmer I personally know in my region/state inherited their land. In fact, a lot of them raise cattle and such just to help utilize their land and pay their taxes, it’s not even their main jobs for some. Good luck convincing people or companies to sell or lease their family or corporate land holdings to want-to-be farmers.


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## tgfencer (Sep 9, 2021)

MarcelNL said:


> food waste is not just at the consumer, what do you think of a supermarket selling stuff with a relatively short expiry date? Or meat that is stored frozen, 'because the commodities market is down and expected to go up in 6 months'...
> 
> In the EU we had (or probably still have) a Butter surplus that could be used to feed half of Europe for weeks on butter alone....subsidized dairy farming at work (a post WWII solution with some side effects).
> Currently that surplus has been consumed (?) but we still 'own'a small surplus of milk powder, somewhere around 360.000 tons of it....


Id imagine most of the waste is actually done by producers or business rather than individual, either due to incentivized over-production or inefficient production methods.

There was a while during Covid where dairy farmers in the us were pouring millions of gallons of milk down the drain because the supply chain was having issues and people were shopping less often.


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## MarcelNL (Sep 9, 2021)

I do think the article below has some valid points. We as consumers are a key reason for food waste, our erratic behaviour makes up for unpredictable markets/supply chains requiring 'the industry' to be very flexible....Sure they can be flexible, yet it comes at a cost. First; we as consumers overpay for our products, and farmers end up with a tiny percentage of the retail price. Second, large amounts of food are wasted because we do not buy it (timely).





__





What a Waste! On the root causes of food waste occurrence in retail stores (and beyond) | Surrey Business School blog







blogs.surrey.ac.uk


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## LostHighway (Sep 9, 2021)

This is a bit of an aside from the general thrust of this but I have to say that I have little patience for the producers that are mostly doing things right on the production side yet manage to turn out mediocre to bad products. Organic Valley is one of my pet peeves - I should love them as they are a regionally based (Wisconsin), organic, farmer owned cooperative. The caveat is that their cheeses are, IMO, all seriously mediocre. Maybe their milk and butter is better, I don't know. However, compared to Horizon Organic, their bigger corporate competitor, Organic Valley is far more committed to responsible production and small producers. Food giant Danone currently owns Horizon Organic.
Organic food distribution in the US is dominated by UNFI and KeHe both are awful IME.


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## MarcelNL (Sep 9, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> This is a bit of an aside from the general thrust of this but I have to say that I have little patience for the producers that are mostly doing things right on the production side yet manage to turn out mediocre to bad products. Organic Valley is one of my pet peeves - I should love them as they are a regionally based (Wisconsin), organic, farmer owned cooperative. The caveat is that their cheeses are, IMO, all seriously mediocre. Maybe their milk and butter is better, I don't know. However, compared to Horizon Organic, their bigger corporate competitor, Organic Valley is far more committed to responsible production and small producers. Food giant Danone currently owns Horizon Organic.
> Organic food distribution in the US is dominated by UNFI and KeHe both are awful IME.


that is a pet peeve I recognize, it took me a while to realize that growing whatever organically does not translate into great products...the relation is upside down, of different just hwo you want to look at things....
SOME farmers, or farms want to create great products and in that journey they may end up going organic.
Some farmers, or farms want to produce organic food, and they might create some great products.

So far I found one farm producing organic produccts that all are of stunning quality, La Vialla in Italy. At first I did not trust them one bit as the marketing was just too smooth...Imagine Tuscany;s rolling hills, sun in a blue sky, rows of Cypress trees in the enrty lane, an old farm house with a winery, folks sitting outside in the shade of some plants having a rustic Italian 'ploughmans lunch' served on wooden boards and tables with red and white checkered tablecloth....until a few years ago when we were having a vacation in Italy (remember those days?) we discovered that we were only a few kilometres away and paid them a visit....to find out that everything they show in their messaging is for real....we had lunch on their property a few days in a row!


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## chefwp (Sep 9, 2021)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> Let me clarify. When I said "first world problem" I meant the luxury of contemplating the alleged evils of corporate farming/ranching, not that is a problem that only affects the first world. Even within the first world, it's really only something people who can afford it think about.


I understand and I think Gandhi summed it up pretty well with his famous quote, "There are people in the world so _hungry_, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." 
You can bet your ass that the people he refers to could not give a damn if the nutrition that gets them to tomorrow was sustainably or responsibly farmed. But that is an enormous part of the problem, isn't it? We will have major problems until we can get to a baseline where poverty is eliminated enough to where most people have food security, and maybe then they will start to care about where there food comes from and whether or not it is ecologically sustainable.


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## MarcelNL (Sep 9, 2021)

it should be possible to NOT teach and or support those folks in need in making our mistakes too, and teach and support them setting up sustainable food chains from scratch, or is that a naive thought?


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## LostHighway (Sep 9, 2021)

I am quite certain large numbers of people who live downwind and/or downstream or share the same water table as large scale animal feedlots or poultry operations do care, regardless of what their personal dietary preferences and concerns may be. We all should care about their methane output.

The belief that all the people of the world are going to get adequate nutrition in my lifetime or within the next few generations is wildly naive. The only way this could happen is with some sort of altruistic global totalitarian government. I am neither wishing for nor holding my breath for that solution.

The notion that since we can't fix all the world's long list of problems we should just shrug and do nothing seems notably unhelpful to me. I will, however, acknowledge that big differences won't come down to individual choices, at least within the next few decades. Individuals definitely should make responsible choices but real change is going to mean action by governments, intergovernmental organizations like the heinous WTO, and large corporations (willingly or not).


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## chefwp (Sep 9, 2021)

One thing that really bothers me is the consumer backlash against "GMO" products. Not that I think GMO research doesn't need to be super careful and maybe should be under some sort of oversight and regulation, but this kind of research and technology has huge promise to solve a lot of problems and should not be reflexively condemned or pigeonholed as 'capitalism gone wild and only about profit.' GMO research and production might provide some of the key innovations that will allow crops to grow in a climate-stressed environment.


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## chefwp (Sep 9, 2021)

Consumers are going to be key bringing changes to the systems of food production. If the demand is there, industry and capital markets will respond to it. The problem is opening peoples' eyes, for example when I tell people that if they take their favorite tuna salad recipe and instead of opening a can of nasty tuna, grab a can of sardines, they don't seem to buy it. Even when I tell them that not only are these cans of sardines from sustainable fisheries, are sustainably fished, are much healthier fishes compared to tuna, but that the taste is also superior, they don't believe me. My own wife didn't. Even after she covered her nose and eyes, tried it, and admitted "omg, this IS good!" she still has a hard time believing it when I tell her she is having sardine salad for dinner, like some kind of subconscious mental block.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 9, 2021)

Eat sardines most in water because share with my cat. She doesn't touch the flavored brands.

Also take Spirulina grown & harvested on Kona 
coast of Hawaii island.


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## AT5760 (Sep 9, 2021)

Change, if it will come at all, needs to come from both consumers and regulators. At least here in the U.S., there are so many thumbs on the scales that it is hard to understand true costs, capacities, etc. If the incentives and subsidies were removed _and_ if producers were suitably charged for the costs that they attempt to externalize, then we could start to understand what our food actually costs and the impact of production. Couple that with better nutritional education and resources for families to make better choices. Maybe in a couple of generations we'll see progress.

I want to do better, and I have the resources to do better, but it's so freaking easy to keep some meat in the freezer, thaw it and throw it on the grill. Vegetables take more advance planning and more trips to the grocery store. I cooked better before kids, even though I care now more about what we eat.


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## EShin (Sep 9, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> This is a bit of an aside from the general thrust of this but I have to say that I have little patience for the producers that are mostly doing things right on the production side yet manage to turn out mediocre to bad products. Organic Valley is one of my pet peeves - I should love them as they are a regionally based (Wisconsin), organic, farmer owned cooperative. The caveat is that their cheeses are, IMO, all seriously mediocre. Maybe their milk and butter is better, I don't know. However, compared to Horizon Organic, their bigger corporate competitor, Organic Valley is far more committed to responsible production and small producers. Food giant Danone currently owns Horizon Organic.
> Organic food distribution in the US is dominated by UNFI and KeHe both are awful IME.


What you are saying is perhaps the most important thing of the whole discussion surrounding sustainable agriculture and health. To sum up years of research in one sentence, well produced food tastes great just like that, and we can and should trust our senses (and not our heads) to tell us what we need. So if in the end the taste is mediocre or even bad, something isn't how it should be. Already quite complicated in the case of cheese as problems could lie with the production and especially fermentation, but if the milk isn't really good, you'd have to look into how the cows are held, what they are fed etc.
Generally, organic can be a pure business strategy in which case you would try to maximise the production according to organic standards (that can vary hugely). Then, you'd use organic compost and fertilisers like chemical fertilisers without actually working with the soil microbiology so without establishing a working nitrogen cycle, leading to a high concentration in nitrate. The plants will grow fast but at the same time will taste 80% the same, mostly lack micronutrients and spoil fast (this can be prevented by using waxes and preservatives, but the actual problem is a one-sided diet. It's similar to giving humans just sugars).
Now I don't mean to suggest that this is the case with Organic Valley and neither do I want to condemn producers that do this - it's not good for human or environmental health, but it makes sense economically and with debt constantly increasing, the economic pressure is becoming bigger and bigger. As long as these factors are opposed, I think the situation will only get worse, with either the debt or the environmental crisis bringing down the global economy. The most promising strategy I see is a negative-interest money system, but that's a different discussion.



chefwp said:


> I understand and I think Gandhi summed it up pretty well with his famous quote, "There are people in the world so _hungry_, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
> You can bet your ass that the people he refers to could not give a damn if the nutrition that gets them to tomorrow was sustainably or responsibly farmed. But that is an enormous part of the problem, isn't it? We will have major problems until we can get to a baseline where poverty is eliminated enough to where most people have food security, and maybe then they will start to care about where there food comes from and whether or not it is ecologically sustainable.





MarcelNL said:


> it should be possible to NOT teach and or support those folks in need in making our mistakes too, and teach and support them setting up sustainable food chains from scratch, or is that a naive thought?


These extremely poor people are in many cases former subsistence farmers or even hunter and gatherers deprived of their land and their community. Perhaps they didn't make any money before, but they didn't have to to meet their needs in a sustainable way. Now, they are part of the economy and need to pay for food so of course they won't care much about what kind of food it is, any source of energy will do if circumstances are severe enough. The economy grew, and this can seem like a growth in welfare - they make more money now than before. Even if they farm again, they now produce for the market so they have an economical incentive to externalise whatever costs they can to maximise profit. I think that's why our ecological footprint has been increasing steadily despite having become aware of environmental issues. Still, what MarcelNL says is very true, developmental work to set up sustainable food chains will prevent them from having to depend on seeds, fertilisers and pesticides with all their negative effects. The Paani Foundation in India is a very inspiring example.



chefwp said:


> Consumers are going to be key bringing changes to the systems of food production. If the demand is there, industry and capital markets will respond to it. The problem is opening peoples' eyes, for example when I tell people that if they take their favorite tuna salad recipe and instead of opening a can of nasty tuna, grab a can of sardines, they don't seem to buy it. Even when I tell them that not only are these cans of sardines from sustainable fisheries, are sustainably fished, are much healthier fishes compared to tuna, but that the taste is also superior, they don't believe me. My own wife didn't. Even after she covered her nose and eyes, tried it, and admitted "omg, this IS good!" she still has a hard time believing it when I tell her she is having sardine salad for dinner, like some kind of subconscious mental block.


Haha, I really like your example because I always felt that it's strange that people buy these very smelly tuna cans even though fresh tuna doesn't smell bad at all, but again fresh tuna doesn't taste like much so why not go for superior tasting but less expensive fish? In any case, I think demand is a very complicated topic. Even if you are very conscious and perhaps even farming yourself, as soon as you enter a supermarket you see all the food as inorganic goods and compare the looks, prices, labels etc. as that is the main source of information - you really have to decide with your head, whereas if you go out in the fields, your senses would work much better. More people are becoming aware of such problems and also that many labels like "MSC" are better than nothing but mostly greenwashing, so alternative direct models like CSA's have been gaining in popularity. But the reality is that sustainably produced local products are mostly much more expensive than stuff imported from far away because many costs can be externalised and some very powerful companies are dependent on farmers using their chemicals so they make sure that subsidies are paid to these farmers. Again, very well understandable, but possibly disastrous.



chefwp said:


> One thing that really bothers me is the consumer backlash against "GMO" products. Not that I think GMO research doesn't need to be super careful and maybe should be under some sort of oversight and regulation, but this kind of research and technology has huge promise to solve a lot of problems and should not be reflexively condemned or pigeonholed as 'capitalism gone wild and only about profit.' GMO research and production might provide some of the key innovations that will allow crops to grow in a climate-stressed environment.


Many people fear some kind of zombie-plant and while it is true that nobody really knows what he's doing when manipulating the genome, that is nonsense. The risk is much rather that through the immunity against some disease, pest etc., these engineered organisms are highly likely to drive mutant variants and resistances through selection pressure and that these effects cannot really be assessed in lab settings. In other words, they could turn out to be a quick fix that increase the stress on the environment even more, instead of putting our energy into regenerating a working ecological system in which germs and diseases exist, but rarely have a bad influence. Also, the yield in such systems can be multiple times that of any monoculture, but they're not suited for large scale industrial farming. That being said, we know that antibiotics have turned out to be quick fixes that require endless innovations against endless new variants, but that doesn't mean that it was bad to develop antibiotics altogether. However, it could suggest that large scale monocultures of GMO crops might be a bad idea, but I'm not an expert in GMO research and risks assessment.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 9, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> Id imagine most of the waste is actually done by producers or business rather than individual, either due to incentivized over-production or inefficient production methods.



It depends how you atomise the supply chain. In Australia, the majority of waste occurs _before_ the consumer.... however, consumers are the single _largest _source of waste totalling 34% of produce [ref]. This only marginally exceeds primary production at 31%... and is a significant amount more than manufacturing at 24%. Basically... the higher up the value chain you go, the more waste has occured to deliver you a value added product - with the services sector probably being the most wasteful way to consume food if you are a conscientious consumer.

Those stats are specifically for Australia, but I am sure they are indicative of other wealthy nations. Point being... it seems like primary production are fractionally _better_ than consumers. But the supply chain prior to consumers is approximately twice as bad....



MarcelNL said:


> food waste is not just at the consumer, what do you think of a supermarket selling stuff with a relatively short expiry date? Or meat that is stored frozen, 'because the commodities market is down and expected to go up in 6 months'...



I suppose some fresh products just have a short shelf life? I have no objections to a short shelf life per se - I just think they should be cost reflective. Again, stronger price signaling may cause a majority of consumers to purchase non-staple foods mindfully. In a world of choice, I would rather consumers use their produce before expiry... but if they dont and the cost of waste is built into the system - I suppose they are only harming their wallet?

As for frozen goods? Similarly... I don't have objections if the produce is being consumed. In fact... it can be a good mechanism for smoothing out supply. It is up to consumers to decide whether they like consuming produce that has been in deep storage. Personally I prefer fresh...

I know a fair amount of R&D and activity is being dedicated to smarter supply chains. Things like 'smart' packaging or cold storage that can detect gases from spoiling food and raise a warning. Hopefully those sorts of innovations make us more capable of pushing the envelope with regards to food longevity through the supply chain.

What I do think is worth adding... is that consumers shop with their eyes. They will always reach for the unblemished apple - even though the blemished apple took the same amount of resources to grow and tastes just as good. In Australia, we have an oligopoly (practically a duopoly) in the supermarket sector. These businesses are price setters at the farm gate (bad for the farmer) and they dictate what food needs to look like (based on consumer behaviour). The downshot of this is that huge amounts of produce does not leave the farm if it fails supermarket specification. At best farmers can sell it at a lower grade for processed foods. At worst they till it back into the soil or dump it in a pile to rot.

Fortunately there is a growing movement of 'ugly' or 'odd' vegetables. Some supermarkets offer these options at a lower cost. I am mixed about the movement. It is fantastic value for the consumer and it reduces waste. But like I said, ugly or not, costs of production are fixed. Farmers have to sink the difference.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 10, 2021)

We have oranges that don't look good on outside but are juicy & sweet on inside.

Too much is put on look or seedless as in 
watermelon. Food that looks good but tastes
like crap. Melons must be vine ripened not much water towards end to become flavorful
great taste. For the most part are picked before ripe no flavor at all. Most people don't even know how awesome ripe cantaloupe & 
watermelon can taste.

Mangos can be heavenly if tree ripened same as peaches. They too are picked green for shipping flavor suffers greatly.


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## Jovidah (Sep 10, 2021)

Luftmensch said:


> I really don't think they are as hard to define as you make out? All high-functioning economies have enough scientific and economic resources to quantify these things. The only dimension that becomes a subjective (political) decision is "how much damage are we willing to tolerate to subsidise a particular living standard"....
> 
> I am in no way claiming that is an easy decision to make... but we _do_ have the tools to quantify natural resources, consumption and incomes. And there's the rub. To be 'fair' or 'moral', affluent countries need to pull their socks up and move rapidly towards sustainability and circular economies..... selling that to an electorate is political suicide.


What I was pointing it is that at least the public debate over here (and as a result also policy making) has often been a complete mess, and policy making has been... all over the place as a result. Part of the issue is that a lot of things are often thrown together (like for example sustainability and animal friendlyness), even when they aren't necessarily linked, or when something that works well won't work well for the other. 

There's a similar problem with simplifying sustainability to core values. What's relevant? What isn't? Does carbon foodprint matter more or water input? 
Even when you can do the math on 'how much is consumed' it's not necessarily easy to weigh 'what is more important', even if all you care about is 'sustainability' (whatever that means). 

There's a similar problem with terms like 'responsible agriculture'; it can mean different things to different people, even when all of them have the best intentions. And their solutions and interests might be completely opposing eachother.



MarcelNL said:


> Growing seafood also has it's serious downsides such as pollution and the amount of antibiotics needed when the fish are kept with millions in smallish reservoirs (which is common), The feed also needs to come from somewhere, I think that responsible seafood growing can be part of a solution yet there probably is not just one single solution...


Agreed. I don't know the exact numbers but a lot of aquaculture fish is fed with fish that comes from the ocean like fish. While there are certainly some advantages to aquaculture I don't think it's a golden bullet. 



> BTW: industrial scale farming is not needed to feed the world, it was an effect of the food shortages caused by a.o. WWII and it became an economic model. We waste like a third of all food produced.
> Looking at the Netherlands, in 2020 we produced more meat than any other EU country, enough to feed approx 80 million on top of our own population of 17M, Poland, Denmark Spain and Germany go at it on the same scale and it's not as if the other EU countries do not produce anything either. All of this is done in a fierce global competition which somehow leaves farmers unable to earn a decent income with their products and at the same time they are pushed to produce at (ridiculously) low cost... animal welfare, biodiversity and the environment take the hit affecting all of us but is not included in food price.


What really bothers me in this whole situation is that the farmers are often pushed into a corner and even if they want to move towards 'better practises' (whatever that may be) they're often held back by players lower in the chain like supermarkets. Sadly those are also the ones making the big bucks, and ironically their pricing practises are often slowing down wider adoption of 'better' food. I think the magical term is 'marktsegmentering'... basically the supermarkets tend to add a massive surcharge to anything that's organic, animal friendly, higher quality etc, because they know that people who care about these things are often willing to pay the massive surcharge. But it's artificially inflating the price gap and keeping more price conscious consumers from making better choices.
If you look at the difference in cost for the farmer the differnence is often surprisingly small. Bio industry chicken is only like 1-1,5 euros per kilo cheaper than the really nice animal friendly 3 star label rouge stuff, but once it's cut up into parts suddenly it costs 3-4x as much. It's a damn joke.


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## Jovidah (Sep 10, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> @Jovidah It may interest you to know that raising animals in a sustainable or regenerative way does not really change how long it takes to go from birth to slaughter, in much the same way it takes most children the same amount of time to get from baby sized to toddler sized, assuming adequate nourishment. Chickens take 5-8 weeks, pigs take 10 months, and cows take 2 years, approximately. What really changes depending on the feed system (and genetics) is the nutrients in the meat and the fat quality, rather than the amount of resources needed to produce the animal (locality dependent of course). You would be right otherwise though, more time means more resources and some breeds of particular animals do require more time, but they aren’t commonly farmed for that reason.
> 
> I would also add that chicken are cheap, not because they’re a good source of protein, but because their size and the speed at which they hit mature weight means that they can be bred en masse and raised in confinement more easily than other animals and turned over quickly for a profit. As someone who works on a farm with a small scale pasture-raised chicken operation (4,000/year), they are actually more work and labor than cows or pigs from field to table, especially when you take into account slaughter on site (not many independent chicken processors left) and butchering. To just break even we would have to charge something like 4-4.50/lb, and we actually charge 6/lb for whole birds, which always seems absurd to me, but that’s what it takes.


On the first part. It really depends on what aspect you're talking about. But over here the classifications for better animal welfare always entailed slower-growing breeds that had more space. The first invariably means more food, the second invariably means more housing per animal (or slower turnover). Both drive up resource cost per amount of produced protein in the long run. For comparison, over here the norms for the cheapest crap are a slaughter age of roughly 42 days, for the most animal friendly stuff it's 81 days. The birds end up being roughly the same size and weight. 
But the bigger issue is 'what is sustainable'. It often means different things to different people, and my point was that often it gets thrown in together with higher animal friendlyness standards and not all of those are necessarily compatible. 
I agree that nutritional content is another really interesting discussion that doesn't get the attention it should, and is often forgotten when people only look at the total kilograms of product produced. I saw some reports that nutritional value of a lot of vegetables here basically got cut in half in a few decades. There's also some interesting differences between grass fed vs grainfed cows there as well (iirc grass fed had significantly higher omega 3 values)

I get that there's other factors at play making chickens cheap, but their efficiency really does play a big role too, and it's quite relevant when talking about sustainability matters. They are far more efficient in converting food input into protein than for example cows, which really gives them a very different footprint when comparing a kilo of chicken protein to a kilo of beef protein. You could make significant environmental gains simply by shifting people to eating more chicken instead of beef.


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## Jovidah (Sep 10, 2021)

juice said:


> Do people actually waste meat? I know people waste plenty of pre-processed stuff, and some veges (don't get used and go off), but meat? Really? I don't reckon I've thrown out any meat in my life.


In most articles I've seen on the subject most food waste happens at the supermarkets and at the consumer level. But supermarkets are often in a damned if you do damned if you don't situation since consumers 'demand' well stocked shelves and an overabundance of choice.
The food industry is actually really good at preventing waste since their margins are thin and they have a strong incentive to keep it at a minimum because it directly cuts into their bottom line.

IMO the easiest 'low hanging fruit' when it comes to meat waste is to have supermarkets sell meat more in vaccumed and frozen form. Yes it might not look as appealing, but the expiration date is massively improved... but good luck getting that done.

Also.. one thing to keep in mind in the whole food waste debate, is that a certain level of food waste is always unavoidable. The whole current EU system might have it's flaws but it was specifically set up so we would never have a food shortage or starvation ever again. It's worth remembering that. Trying to get a 0-waste perfect supply would mean you're going to have a shortage anytime there's an unexpected problem.


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## tgfencer (Sep 10, 2021)

Jovidah said:


> On the first part. It really depends on what aspect you're talking about. But over here the classifications for better animal welfare always entailed slower-growing breeds that had more space. The first invariably means more food, the second invariably means more housing per animal (or slower turnover). Both drive up resource cost per amount of produced protein in the long run. For comparison, over here the norms for the cheapest crap are a slaughter age of roughly 42 days, for the most animal friendly stuff it's 81 days. The birds end up being roughly the same size and weight.
> But the bigger issue is 'what is sustainable'. It often means different things to different people, and my point was that often it gets thrown in together with higher animal friendlyness standards and not all of those are necessarily compatible.
> I agree that nutritional content is another really interesting discussion that doesn't get the attention it should, and is often forgotten when people only look at the total kilograms of product produced. I saw some reports that nutritional value of a lot of vegetables here basically got cut in half in a few decades. There's also some interesting differences between grass fed vs grainfed cows there as well (iirc grass fed had significantly higher omega 3 values)
> 
> I get that there's other factors at play making chickens cheap, but their efficiency really does play a big role too, and it's quite relevant when talking about sustainability matters. They are far more efficient in converting food input into protein than for example cows, which really gives them a very different footprint when comparing a kilo of chicken protein to a kilo of beef protein. You could make significant environmental gains simply by shifting people to eating more chicken instead of beef.



That’s interesting info about Dutch/Eu standards. Sorry if I came off as condescending, I tend to check these things before I got to work at 5am so I’m not always my most articulate.

You’re definitely right about the efficiency of beef and chicken and protein per kilo. Also, that longer breeds require more food and resources and labor. A lot of people raise cattle because they’re actually the easiest and cheapest in terms of labor costs (assuming you have land). Grass is free if you’ve got time to maintain pastures and they pretty much look after themselves in terms of sickness, predation, and breeding barring the odd medication. Making or sourcing hay for the winter is the most tedious part.
However any animal you’re feeding grain or pellet feeds to that you buy elesewhere does massively increase their overall resource consumption in the scheme of things.

I think chickens are easier and cheaper either at a home level or large scale production. Anything in between is time consuming and expensive which is why few farmers do it.

If I was farming just for myself, family, and maybe some neighbors, I’d probably do chickens and pigs with maybe a few goats or a cow thrown in for land management. Chickens and pigs are the most adaptable to different terrains, have lower water demands, and provide both quick easy protein (chickens) and longer but much greater volume of meat (pigs).


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## Jovidah (Sep 10, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> That’s interesting info about Dutch/Eu standards. Sorry if I came off as condescending, I tend to check these things before I got to work at 5am so I’m not always my most articulate.


No worries; didn't come across as such.  Most of what I wrote wasn't necessarily a direct response or critique to anyone either; more 'stuff that popped into my head related to the subject'.


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## tgfencer (Sep 10, 2021)

Jovidah said:


> No worries; didn't come across as such.  Most of what I wrote wasn't necessarily a direct response or critique to anyone either; more 'stuff that popped into my head related to the subject'.



No worries. I just thought I sounded a bit sharp so I wanted to make sure.

Raising our regulations and standard here in the US would definitely do a lot. Part of the reason I'm against large scale industrial production of animals is not just because of their animal welfare practices, but also their general business practices, which while maybe not that different than other parts of the economy, are even less responsible due to what's involved.

Take for instance Tyson, who manufacture chicken, pork, and other products, but are mainly famous for chicken. On their way to a virtual monopoly, they have had particularly shady dealings. Consider this very real scenario:

When sourcing farmers and land to produce for them, they asked would you like to raise chickens for us? Unlike eggs, the market for pasture-raised birds is very small, particularly in the areas of the country a lot of these farms are located in. Tyson offered an easy and consistent way to ensure a steady stream of profit from raising chickens and having access to the national market. Sounds good, right?

Well, the first catch was that you can only use chicks produced by Tyson-controlled hatcheries, which were sold cheaply to farmers or in some cases provided for free. A small price to pay, perhaps, for certain profitability. Fine. Then things changed, slowly. To continue being able to raise and sell birds to Tyson you had to have so-and-so machinery. Then your facilities had to be set up in certain ways, with certain specifications and systems in place. Then, five years down the road, the corporate standards change and facilities/machinery/infrastructure needs to be upgraded or rebuilt. 

Unfortunately, the farms/farmers are on the hook for the cost of those changes and upgrades. You take out loans, get federal grants, etc. In some cases, Tyson itself would loan money to the farmers or build the infrastructure themselves (and pointedly retaining ownership of that infrastructure itself), which I don't need to tell you is a bad idea. But, then again, you've been raising birds for them for years now, your whole business model and farm has been slowly and expensively geared specifically to this one source of production. Maybe you financed the first few upgrades yourself and you thought that would be enough, but now you need to do more and you have no more capital. The money you make for selling chickens to Tyson is barely enough to keep up with the costs of producing for them and pay the bills. But you've sunk so much money into this already, what are you going to do? Maybe you keep going, keep fighting. But as has happened frequently, you decide to throw in the towel, stop throwing good money after bad, and cash in on your primary asset-the farm. And who is going to want to buy that farm, geared specifically to chicken production in just the way that Tyson and only Tyson want? Well, Tyson of course. They might even already own bits and pieces of the land. Either way, the corporation gets what it wants. Either it owns the farmer for all pretense and purposes, or it ends up owning the farm.

The fact that Tyson also own the production vertical- from hatcheries, to transport, to production, to slaughter, to packaging, to marketing, to shelves- means that they are incredibly hard to compete against. The government could break the monopoly if they wanted, but they there's no political will for it. If you're a farmer aiming to take some of their market share, you shouldn't bother. And if you're a farmer who doesn't live somewhere where people will buy pasture-raised chickens for $4-6 a pound, no point in doing that method either.

So that's an example of not only bad animal welfare practices from a company, but unethical business practices that have very real effects on individuals lives and a nation's access to certain foodstuffs.

As a counter to that, the farm I work for also runs a separate wholesale company for beef and pork. We are a bit of a cooperative, but essentially we work with farmers in our area and neighboring states and our pitch is this: You raise your own animals, on your own land, but you raise them to our standards (sustainable and regenerative land practices, organic, grassfed, pastured, etc) and we will inspect you to make sure you're doing what you should be. When your animals are ready for slaughter, we buy them from you. Once the animal leaves the farmer's care, they're done, cash-in-hand, ready to get back to farming or their other jobs. We do the rest: transport to slaughter, establishing and maintaining meat processor relationships and standards, packaging, storage, marketing, and transport to final destination such as a restaurant or store.

This system allows for farmers to just farm if they wish, not also be entrepreneurial marketers and deal with getting their goods into the hands of those who want them. Farmers who would otherwise be competing with each other instead join together and help keep everyone afloat. We use the same basic systems as most corporations and wholesalers do, albeit on a smaller scale, but with a focus on respect for the farmers, the land, and with the idea that we can hopefully take these good products and provide them to people who either wouldn't normally have access to them while also hopefully keep them at a price that reflects the cost of their production, but still remains at least somewhat competitive.

If a big animal producer decided to go in a similar direction, I would support them, even if I wouldn't forgive past indiscretions (much the same way I would welcome BP or Exxon changing their business models without letting them off the hook for their dirty pasts). But they won't if they're not forced into it, by a combination of consumer demand and government pressure, both of which are notoriously fickle.





__





Tyson, Perdue to Pay $35M to Settle Chicken Farmers' Price Fixing Suit


Two of the industry's biggest poultry companies have agreed to pay nearly $35 million to settle a lawsuit that accused them and several other firms of




www.google.com


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## mpier (Sep 10, 2021)

Lets just face the fact that nothing can happen without some kind of population control, I know it seems to be taboo to state, but the planet can not continue to maintain itself with a continual rise in population. Free range meat would be great and better for everyone, but space to accommodate this is just to little considering the cost of the natural inhabitants that take a huge hit when livestock feed from the same area year after year. The only reason for example the great Buffalo were able to sustain such large numbers was the vast area they migrated across annually, and they actually helped the ecosystem. Without population control ranches can only get smaller.

I have a real hard time believing any package labeled sustainable, at this point in human consumption nothing is sustainable, everything is in danger of depletion.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 10, 2021)

Animals in the wild would agree with you if they could talk.


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## EShin (Sep 10, 2021)

mpier said:


> Lets just face the fact that nothing can happen without some kind of population control, I know it seems to be taboo to state, but the planet can not continue to maintain itself with a continual rise in population. Free range meat would be great and better for everyone, but space to accommodate this is just to little considering the cost of the natural inhabitants that take a huge hit when livestock feed from the same area year after year. The only reason for example the great Buffalo were able to sustain such large numbers was the vast area they migrated across annually, and they actually helped the ecosystem. Without population control ranches can only get smaller.
> 
> I have a real hard time believing any package labeled sustainable, at this point in human consumption nothing is sustainable, everything is in danger of depletion.


With today's expansion of the human sphere that overtakes everything, everything is in danger of depletion, I agree. Not so sure if population control can work if we try to sustain the same kind of attitudes and lifestyles. Even if the population would be only a tenth of what it is now, if we continue accumulating much more than we need, resources will become scarcer and scarcer, making us act irresponsibly. Accommodating for everything in this way is impossible, positive feedback processes always hit limits. That's also a thing with "sustainability", is it an end in itself? Is nature fundamentally stable? If we would actually move towards circular economies - what then? Scientific quantifications show a pretty clear picture, so perhaps we have to think about regeneration and transition towards degrowth. It is just one example, but individually crafted knives that can last for a lifetime with people taking great care of them, making passarounds etc., I think this makes our lives much richer than mass-produced knives. And the same goes for many other things and not least also for our food.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 11, 2021)

I've preferred quality over cheaper. Not talking about prestige items just quality. 

Old enough to remember with some repairs 
refrigerators, washing machines, water heaters
that would last 50+ years easy. Now designed
to fall apart around 10 years. Unless keep pouring $ into them not advisable as many are made with cheapest materials they can get away with. It's good for repair business with inflated cost for parts. And you buy more appliances. Not good for waste & environment.

Also population control not popular. Don't see it happening. China tried it now loosening because of aging population. We try don't have
dishwasher, clothes dryer. Compost non meat kitchen scraps, grass clippings, chicken poop
40 gallon spin bin. Organic garden for fresh vegetables & fresh herbs. Don't eat beef or pork these days.
Still we still have larger carbon footprint than majority of people in poorer countries.

Think fresh water shortage in the future will
reduce population.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 11, 2021)

Jovidah said:


> What I was pointing it is that at least the public debate over here (and as a result also policy making) has often been a complete mess, and policy making has been... all over the place as a result. Part of the issue is that a lot of things are often thrown together (like for example sustainability and animal friendlyness), even when they aren't necessarily linked, or when something that works well won't work well for the other.
> 
> There's a similar problem with simplifying sustainability to core values. What's relevant? What isn't? Does carbon foodprint matter more or water input?
> Even when you can do the math on 'how much is consumed' it's not necessarily easy to weigh 'what is more important', even if all you care about is 'sustainability' (whatever that means).
> ...



I think we substantively share the same view - maybe with a few differences around the edges 

Like I say, I believe the difficult part is formalising how much we are willing to sacrifice to sustain agriculture. To some degree this is a moral choice - not an "answer" that falls out of modelling scenarios. Currently we approach regulation in a very ad hoc, piecemeal way. Often the regulation is addressing crises when they reach the media. We need to be more holistic and have a long term strategy.

I still strongly believe we have the expertise and knowledge to do this. We are pretty good at measuring and quantifying things these days. We know what goes into agriculture. We know what damage it can do. The phrase "dont let the perfect be an enemy of the good" come to mind. _Any_ attempt in good faith to design a wholistic approach to our natural resources is likely be better than what we do now. We can do it... We _could_ do it. But we aren't likely to do it... due to the politics of it all (like you suggest).



As a general note (not to @Jovidah specifically). Australia exports almost 70% of its agricultural produce. Fine... we need a diverse economy. There are obvious benefits to trade. But consider this: food exports are an export of sovereign wealth. When we export our food, we are selling our soil health and water to the highest bidder. If we are not doing this sustainably, it is intergenerational theft. We are receiving a short term profit now at the cost of those in the future. This could be anything from ecosystem collapse to biodiversity/habitat loss to soil degradation and desertification of land.


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## LostHighway (Sep 11, 2021)

Luftmensch said:


> As a general note (not to @Jovidah specifically). Australia exports almost 70% of its agricultural produce. Fine... we need a diverse economy. There are obvious benefits to trade. But consider this: food exports are an export of sovereign wealth. When we export our food, we are selling our soil health and water to the highest bidder. If we are not doing this sustainably, it is intergenerational theft. We are receiving a short term profit now at the cost of those in the future. This could be anything from ecosystem collapse to biodiversity/habitat loss to soil degradation and desertification of land.



This is a good point, most agriculture is an extractive endeavor, at least to an extent. Obviously not as purely extractive as mining/petroleum but not far removed from forestry/lumbering. It made me curious about US agricultural exports, as a percentage of production as opposed to gross volume, the products that the US exports 50% or more of production are nuts (walnuts, almonds, and pistachios), cotton (76% exported), sorghum, rice, and soybeans. I was a bit surprised to discover that we only export 21% of our corn production. Pork has the highest percentage of meat production exported, also at 21%. A major problem for the US is that the production of many agricultural products, including those high on the percentage exported list, takes place where water resources are not abundant.


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## Luftmensch (Sep 11, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> A major problem for the US is that the production of many agricultural products, including those high on the percentage exported list, takes place where water resources are not abundant.



Australia is a dry place. We are already having water wars.

We have a region called the Murray-Darling basin. It is a large geographic area in the South-East of Australia. It includes the drainage basins for the Murray and Darling rivers (surprise, surprise). As a result it is an agriculture intensive region. The water system cuts through New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. It also branches up into Queensland and down into South Australia. That is five states/territories - we only have eight in total. The Murray Darling Basin Authority was created in 2008 to manage the water in an integrated way. There were various agreements before the Authority was created. To try and protect the river system, part of the plan is to buy back water allocated to irrigators and return it to the environment.

The Millenium Drought and over irrigation have caused major damage to this water system. The Murray River meets the ocean (the Great Australian Bight) in South-Australia via the Coorong and Lower Lakes. This system is on the brink of collapse. Due to low water flows during drought, the Lower Lakes could not flush seawater out. Consequently, they salinified... they are supposed to be freshwater systems. Century old River Red Gums along the river are dead. Soaring temperatures and low water levels lead to algal blooms and subsequent oxygen depletion that caused three waves of mass fish kills in early 2019. The Murray Cod can live several decades if you give them a chance. The Australian Academy of Science found that excess diversion of water for irrigation was a significant factor in the fish kills. These are recent examples of the water system under strain.

There is no end to the politics and squabbling between the states, the feds and irrigators. And there is water theft. And there are dodgy water buybacks. Climate change is almost certainly already stressing the system and it is only going to get worse.

We need to think hard about the quantities of rice, cotton and orchards in these regions.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 11, 2021)

Don't even get into how much water is used
for agriculture. Even non food like cotton takes
quite a bit of water. 

Flip side is much of Earth's history planet was warmer, also wetter. Area that are now desert we're wetlands. Didn't have 8 billion people either consuming large amounts of fresh water.

Quite a few depend on Glacial melt for water, that's why China took over Tibet. To channel water some that would flow into India from highest mountain range on earth.

It rains quite a bit where we live. Set up two large plastic containers one stacked on other
to catch water from roof gutter. When not raining use to water garden.


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## LostHighway (Sep 11, 2021)

Keith Sinclair said:


> Don't even get into how much water is used
> for agriculture. Even non food like cotton takes
> quite a bit of water.
> 
> ...



Meat, beef cattle in particular, is the most water use intensive foodstuff but it varies quite a bit depending on how the animals are fed, alfalfa fields consume an enormous amount of water. Nut trees and cacao also require massive water inputs, more than some of the less water intensive meats, e.g. poultry. Rice, obviously, is another massive water user. 

The PRC dam projects are potentially explosive issue. Their dams on the Mekong are already causing availability and environmental issues in Southeast Asia. They have proposed a dam, that would effectively be three times as large as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo which become the Brahmaputra* in India. If built it would be the largest dam in the world. Water resources are likely to become a political flashpoint in the not far distant future.

*India's second most important river after the Ganges.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 11, 2021)

Yeh fresh water is most valuable thing on earth. The planet is a natural recycle system.

I heard about Vietnam thought how can they have water problems? Then read up on it.

It's common the upriver countries screw the guys downriver. Turkey is using water flow as a weapon against the Kurds. Syria refugee situation was because of water farmers couldn't grow their crops. 

Find it hard to be optimistic of what's coming down in next 100 years.


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## tgfencer (Sep 11, 2021)

Keith Sinclair said:


> Yeh fresh water is most valuable thing on earth. The planet is a natural recycle system.
> 
> I heard about Vietnam thought how can they have water problems? Then read up on it.
> 
> ...



That's what I think whenever I hear anyone who's moving to the Southwest, or really anywhere relying on the Colorado River. Good luck when the whole region eventually runs out of water.


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## LostHighway (Sep 11, 2021)

tgfencer said:


> That's what I think whenever I hear anyone who's moving to the Southwest, or really anywhere relying on the Colorado River. Good luck when the whole region eventually runs out of water.



A fairly large swath of the US is looking at growing water resource problems: New Mexico and a large portion of California are the most water stressed but southern and eastern Colorado, much of Arizona, southern and western Nebraska, and Nevada all face problems. Florida has water issues too, including salinization of groundwater. There is already talk of giant water transfers from the Great Lakes to the Southwest. Politically I don't think that is going to fly.
Mexico and Central America already have or face near future water issues which is only going to increase immigration pressure on the US.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 11, 2021)

Don't buy real estate in Las Vegas


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## Luftmensch (Sep 13, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> The PRC dam projects are potentially explosive issue. Their dams on the Mekong are already causing availability and environmental issues in Southeast Asia. They have proposed a dam, that would effectively be three times as large as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo which become the Brahmaputra* in India. If built it would be the largest dam in the world. Water resources are likely to become a political flashpoint in the not far distant future.





Keith Sinclair said:


> It's common the upriver countries screw the guys downriver. Turkey is using water flow as a weapon against the Kurds. Syria refugee situation was because of water farmers couldn't grow their crops.



Yeah...  

Look... despite my concerns about the Murray-Darling, I do believe will get _some_ minimum viable solution. Hopefully we can do better than the minimum... and hopefully we don't lose too much along the way . 

Australia is an island continent... The interest of our states are generally, fairly well aligned. So although our problems are difficult, they are _relatively_ politically easy to solve. 

I despair for counties that share freshwater resources - particularly those downstream.


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## LostHighway (Sep 13, 2021)

I just started reading Mark Bittman's new book Animal, Vegetable, Junk which, so far, looks promising. I'm not sure how well known Bittman is beyond the confines of the USA but he is semi-famous here mostly as a cookbook writer but also with regard to more general food journalism and other, not food related, journalistic endeavors.

Most water law, regulations, and compacts in the US predates modern usage demands, modern flow rates, and modern understandings of hydrology. In short, it is a mess and crossing state boundaries compounds the mess. There is an old (mid- '80s) but quite good book about water in the American West, Cadillac Desert by the late Marc Reisner. The King of California: A. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire is another good read about the development of California's Central Valley for agriculture. _"The secret of a great fortune..." _usually attributed to Balzac.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 13, 2021)

Thanks checked these out. Our library system
Here has King of California.

Just picked up Cadillac Desert used eBay for 5 dollars. 

Checked out Animal, Vegetable, Junk on Amazon. Always read one star reviews first
Just to get all perspective. Sometimes bad reviews are best other times don't have anything to offer depending on personal bias.

When your finished post a review.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 13, 2021)

Enjoying reading more tend towards non fiction. Always seem to have a book going these days. Getting use out of my library card.


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## LostHighway (Sep 13, 2021)

Keith Sinclair said:


> Enjoying reading more tend towards non fiction. Always seem to have a book going these days. Getting use out of my library card.



I've gotten more use out of my library card in the past couple years than I have at anytime in decades. I used to buy tons of books but since Amazon killed off the good local bookstores, and other pursuit, like knives, started to consume more of my discretionary spending I'm back at the library. My current reading is about 70% nonfiction and 30% fiction. The fiction tilts rather heavily toward sci-fi (Gibson, Stephenson,...) or mysteries (I'm a big fan of Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May series plus more traditional hard boiled). I do, however, remain a devoted fan of Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and Ford Maddox Ford - contemporaries and acquaintances in late 19th/early 20th C England.


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## Noodle Soup (Sep 13, 2021)

One thing that seldom seems to come up in these discussions about going back to some kind of organic, free range, old timey form of agriculture is how it would affect the income and lifestyle of those that actually live on the land. I started life on a dirt poor, midwest share cropper farm. As a kid I got to watch with envy the city kids with factory worker parents living what seemed like a fabulously rich life style- vacations, summer camps, trips to Europe with the school band, the latest clothes, Honda motorcycles, etc. etc. while I worked long hours 7 days a week in the fields. Over the years a more industrially model of agriculture changed that. My sister and her husband are still farming the family land. Her and her kids have lived a life style that is much more like what I remember only city people having, with actual leisure time to pursue their own hobbies.
As has been mentioned before here, going back to small scale organic farming on a level needed to feed the population will require a large number of people leaving the cities for a life style I started out on. I don't think you are going to find many will really like that. One of the common stories I grew up on was how many guys left the farm for the military during WW-II and never went back. Life was just too much easier elsewhere.


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## LostHighway (Sep 13, 2021)

Noodle Soup said:


> One thing that seldom seems to come up in these discussions about going back to some kind of organic, free range, old timey form of agriculture is how it would affect the income and lifestyle of those that actually live on the land. I started life on a dirt poor, midwest share cropper farm. As a kid I got to watch with envy the city kids with factory worker parents living what seemed like a fabulously rich life style- vacations, summer camps, trips to Europe with the school band, the latest clothes, Honda motorcycles, etc. etc. while I worked long hours 7 days a week in the fields. Over the years a more industrially model of agriculture changed that. My sister and her husband are still farming the family land. Her and her kids have lived a life style this is much more like what I remember only city people having, with actual leisure time to pursue their own hobbies.
> As has been mentioned before here, going back to small scale organic farming on a level needed to feed the population will require a large number of people leaving the cities for life style I started out on. I don't think you are going to find many will really like that. One of the common stories I grew up on was how many guys left the farm for the military during WW-II and never went back. Life was just too much easier elsewhere.



My parents both grew up in farming families and left. There is no question that most small scale farming is hard work and not notably lucrative
One thing that has changed dramatically since the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s is that a large chunk of those jobs that afforded a middle class life off the farm are now gone. Certainly you can potentially still do well in STEM or FIRE careers but the jobs that supported families on a single factory worker, truck driver, or retail shop owner income are gone, there are fewer alternative paths. The work environment has also become harsher in many cases, e.g. Amazon distribution. I definitely do think lack of willing small responsible farmers is a real issue but I also think farming is more appealing than it has been for a long time for a number of reasons. Land cost is probably the single biggest barrier to entry. Maine has quite a few new small farms, in part because land costs in rural Maine remain relatively low compared to most parts of the US. There is also fairly decent support structure. This is despite Maine's short growing season, often poor soil, and general lack of prosperity.


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## LostHighway (Sep 13, 2021)

The full paper this article is based on is hyperlinked and not pay walled.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 13, 2021)

Same a lot of work as a kid. We were labor. Sinclair clan had fair amount of land in Hampton & other hamlet's on Chesapeake Bay.

Farmers, fishermen, boat builders. My father worked for NASA, most of relatives were fisherman & farmers. My father's older sister became multi millionaire developing apartment complexes, expensive waterfront properties, other housing non waterfront she had roads built & many houses. The demand was there Langley Air force Base & NASA very near. 

When I was a kid fairly rural. My best friend in High School was from Hawaii father officer air force, he got me into surfing. I had family in Hawaii too, we would go to VA. beach 1967. Went to outer banks North Carolina too. 

Worked Scallop boat out of Hampton couple summers made good money. Headed for Hawaii 1969. My father said nice knowing you, he knew I wasn't coming back.


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## Noodle Soup (Sep 13, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> My parents both grew up in farming families and left. There is no question that most small scale farming is hard work and not notably lucrative
> One thing that has changed dramatically since the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s is that a large chunk of those jobs that afforded a middle class life off the farm are now gone. Certainly you can potentially still do well in STEM or FIRE careers but the jobs that supported families on a single factory worker, truck driver, or retail shop owner income are gone, there are fewer alternative paths. The work environment has also become harsher in many cases, e.g. Amazon distribution. I definitely do think lack of willing small responsible farmers is a real issue but I also think farming is more appealing than it has been for a long time for a number of reasons. Land cost is probably the single biggest barrier to entry. Maine has quite a few new small farms, in part because land costs in rural Maine remain relatively low compared to most parts of the US. There is also fairly decent support structure. This is despite Maine's short growing season, often poor soil, and general lack of prosperity.


It sounds like you are describing a society were most of the population can't afford organic, free range etc food. Not going to help much to "encourage" people to move "back to the land" (all of us of a certain age remember the last back to the land movement) if no one can buy the products you produce. 
Next is how do these new farmers acquire their land. They certainly can't afford good mid-west ground. I know for a fact there are certain groups in this country that would like the government to "redistribute" the land. Payment is not mentioned. Who should benefit varies depends on the lobby. All land back the Native Americans is popular here in the west with certain city people that don't seem to think they are living on any of it. The old "40 acres and a mule" is still a cry in the south. Mao ended up starving millions of people with his back to the land movement. I've spend a certain amount of time in China. Talk to people my own age or older and you hear how unfair it was Mao sent them to the fields because they were worth so much more to society in the city. Send them other people to the rice patties


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 13, 2021)

Many years ago read Private Life of Mao
By his doctor
His great leap forward was a disaster.

Before that they took all the land farms, businesses from owners. Put in people to run companies & money goes to party leaders. 

Went to have communes grow food. Broke families apart. This was a failure because party 
Guys at communes would fake increased yield
to look good. When came time to send food to cities where trying to increase industry, not enough food for farmers many starved.

Mao wanted China to become a world force in steel production. They had no infrastructure for it so backyard furnace. Mostly wood fired decimated forest areas. Farmers were melting any metal, garden tools, woks they cooked in.
More starvation.

Then Mao wanted to kill sparrows because they ate food crops. Thousands of people killing
sparrows wiped them out. Insects that sparrows ate destroyed the crops. Mass starvation. Had to bring in sparrows from Russia.


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## LostHighway (Sep 25, 2021)

It sounds like we shouldn't pin our hopes on lab/factory grown meat.
Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.


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## Keith Sinclair (Sep 25, 2021)

LostHighway said:


> It sounds like we shouldn't pin our hopes on lab/factory grown meat.
> Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.



Soylent Green will help overpopulation issue too.


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