anyway. apparently it takes twice as many cows to make organic milk than industry standard milk. it takes considerably more land to grow the same amount of organic wheat than industry standard wheat. apparently this holds true for most all produce, grains, etc. so, organic farming really isn't all that great for the environment, either. interesting. |
forgive me. |
|
so the environs are making a sacrifice for the animal rightists? PETA vs Greenpeace. cage match. |
adults shouldn't be drinking milk anyway, though. twice as many cows means twice as much feed, twice (or more?) as much greenhouse gas production, twice as much manure. |
it does take more land to grow organic crops because they have less yield per acre. organic is still better than inorganic. the real problem, however, is the food industry standard of monoculture, and the "need" to transport large volumes of produce to climates where certain plant foods do not grow naturally. read The Botany of Desire, by Polon. |
why? |
Anyway, regarding organic farming, consider two scenarios: Grow crops on plot A, 2 acres, use .25 gallon of pesticide. Grow crops on plot B, 1 acre, use 1 gallon pesticide. Which is better? |
if you concern is undeveloped rural areas, B is better. |
|
|
|
|
|
Ah, just kidding. |
|
because pesticides don't work anyway. why use harmful, carcinogenic, pollutant substances that don't work? failure of pesticides to control the desired pests due to biodegradation as well as pests' evolved increased resistence cost agriculture industries hundreds of millions of dollars per year. the estimated total pesticide purchase by farmers in the US increased from 184 million dollars in 1955 to 1 billion dollars in 1968. this increase in the sale of pesticides occurred in spite of the fact that harvested acres fell during this period from 335 million to 294 million acres. as the use of pesticides has increased over the succeeding years, the killing of insects has decreased by one half. but anyway, the real problem is monoculture, whether we're talking apples or cattle. more food is produced overall on less land with polyculture, just not mass quantities of a single food item. oh, and the author of The Botany of Desire is Pollan, not Polon. Michael Pollan. sorry 'bout that. |
i'm not in support of pesticides, anyway. |
|
Visions of the things to be, The pains that are withheld for me, I realize and I can see... That pesticide is painless. It brings on many changes. And I can take or leave it if I please I try to find a way to make, All our little joys relate, Without that ever-present hate, But now I know that it's too late, and... That pesticide is painless. It brings on many changes. And I can take or leave it if I please ...And you can do the same thing if you choose. |
i think the most important thing about the system is that we carefully educate ourselves to make the best choices. Its not just looking at the immediate price tag. Sorry for stating the obvious. For a long time i was missing it, so yeah, i'm just starting to appreciate the beauty of the system. clearly there are problems, but its overall effect is positive, and i'm feeling positive too. |
Anyway, capitalism depends on an educated consumer to work properly. Capitalism doesn't work when the consumer has blind faith in capitalism. That's why you need to exercize as much skepticism on the capitalist system as you do on other subjects, Nateypoo. Otherwise, you're not being a good capitalist. After all, shouldn't the capitalist system itself be subject to pressure in the free market of ideas? |
the effect of capitalism i was talking about was minimizing costs and maximizing returns. as in, farmers wouldn't use pesticides if they didn't work. pesticides cost money. |
Maybe the old methods work "well enough" and they don't care to try something better. Maybe "well enough" gets worse every year, but it doesn't matter because the government steps in with economic aid to help pick up the slack, maintain the status quo. Maybe the majority of farms are controlled by large corporations which are slow to change, slower than the environmental adaptation. Maybe these corporations have deals with pesticide companies to use their products. Maybe the corporations which own the farms also own pesticide companies or develop pesticide products. Don't try to sell the simple "it's all supply and demand" argument here. |
it is simple, tiggy. in all your points. "Maybe many of them are still using traditional methods because they don't know the alternatives." if this was so, they'd get phased out. except, "but it doesn't matter because the government steps in with economic aid to help pick up the slack" the US government interferes with the free market. i have a huge problem with that. the farmer welfare state should be abolished. farms should sink or swim or find new methods. "Maybe the majority of farms are controlled by large corporations which are slow to change, slower than the environmental adaptation. Maybe these corporations have deals with pesticide companies to use their products. Maybe the corporations which own the farms also own pesticide companies or develop pesticide products." supply and demand, baby. if there was a better pesticide/policy then someone will use it and produce at less cost. |
They may get phased out, but usualy the "phasing" is done via being bought out by a bigger fish. Said bigger fish may do things more efficiently in other ways and still spray the heck out of the fields. In fact, their very cost savings in other areas could make it MORE feasable for them to be LESS efficient in their chemical use. As for your problems with the subversion of the free market, the problem is that many corporations and the government conspire to subvert the capitalist system. This is reality. You have to live in reality, Nate. Come down off that ideological mountain you live on in sunny California. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for life. |
|
|
Teach a man to fish, and he will sit around in a boat all day drinking beer and drowning bait. |
|
I hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people I command to settle down and earn the bread they eat. |
I read a National Geographic bit about 6 months about this subject and particularly India. i wish i could recall specifics but ive smoked a pound of pot since then and just don't recall. Bottom line, too often cash crops are grown instead of staples while natives starve. i wish tiggy and nate would just tongue kiss already, you know they want it. |
|
Give him a GUN and others will give him fish for therest of his life. -"Bob" |
|
|
i won $5 in the state lottery about a month ago. i redeemed it today and bought five more picks. the jackpot is 36 million. if i win, dave., i'll give you a dollar. |
|
|
|
dave., i didn't win the lottery. sorry. |
|
|
a friend of mine, actually a previous manager at another job, who happened to be Iranian once said to me (during an impassioned anti-Bob Dole rant of his in 96) "humans are the dirtiest of animals, filthy filthy pigs we are." |
|
|
with regard to the food industry, here is an interesting / scary article about the effects of minimizing costs and maximizing returns. i am seriously thinking of becoming a fish-o-tarian. and if it were not for cheese, i could easily eliminate dairy. |
|
(And so is the picture that accompanies it. It took me a few seconds to realize it was not a picture of a humpback whale arcing out of the water, about to crush the poor man using his plate as a shield.) |
|
What food costs it not the same as the cost of food. Eating industrialized food with no nutritional value is the reason this country is a nation full of fat, diseased people. I've been studying food & nutrition informally for more than a decade. And the 1st step was having to make a complete paradigm shift becuz nearly EVERYTHING we've been taught to believe abt nutrition, diet & health is totally ass-backwards & wrong. That's becuz the commmerical food industry - & the lawmakers that support it - is more concerned with reaping huge profits rather than providing healthful food for the public. You remember reading abt The French Paradox back in the 90s? How the French cd eat a diet with so much butter & cream & delicacies like foie gras yet they aren't fat? Turns out the paradox really wasn't so paradoxical. GIGO: Garbage In = Garbage Out. The right fats are good for you -- butter being one of those right fats. (But it has to be the right kind of butter.) The fact that most of the French don't own cars & walk daily or take the train also makes a difference. As does a guaranteed 8-week vacation every year. The American Way of living is harmful in terms of stress levels. But we're certainly not as stressed now as we were during The Depression or WWII. I firmly believe we cd cope with stress much better in this nation if we had a better diet. A country like France, where food is the national religion, that prides itself on it's culinary traditions & regional specialties, is going to produce wonderful, healthy things to eat. The EU chose to ban genetically modified foods. (Did we? Of course not!) A country where the butcher, the baker, the cheesemaker all have union jobs that guarantee them good wages & benefits is a country that takes the business of feeding its people seriously. Food-service work isn't treated like bottom-of-the-barrel employment in France. The French gov't maintains strict controls over the food there. Laguiole cheese, for example, has a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) label. Which means that only cheese made in Aubrac dairies using milk from Aubrac cows that have grazed in specific mountain regions may legally be called “Laguiole.” If one of those Aubrac cows wanders across the road to a field outside of the protected region, by law, her milk cannot be used to make Laguiole cheese for an entire year. Can you see the American gov't doing something like that over cheese? Here, we're lucky if the last package of ground beef we bought doesn't end up being recalled! One reason for all those meat recalls is that literally up until yesterday, it was perfectly legal to slaughter 'downer caws' & put them into the human food supply. http://tinyurl.com/6yzzol But eating right means changing the way you think abt food. Becuz virtually EVERYTHING we've been taught abt how we shd eat, from the USDA Food Pyramid to the 'safety' of pastaurized milk, is a lie. http://realmilk.com/why.html http://www.westonaprice.org http://www.coconutoil.com/ Beef (& the fat that comes with it) really IS one of the healthiest foods you an eat -- providing the cows were raised right & allowed to eat what nature intended them to eat (wild grass & forage, not corn & soy meals). Sure, it takes more land to raise cows in open pastures. But cows raised the natural way produce less methane gas & fecal matter. Shit from a cow that spends all day in the pasture is going to hit the ground & become fertilizer very quickly. Shit from feedlot cows hits the cement floor & stays there, for the cows to walk thru, almost indefinitely. Less land wd be used to grow corn & soy to feed cattle if more cattle were being raised the way cattle shd be raised. Which wd mean fewer pesticides & fertilizers being put into the ecosystem. The nutritiional value of grassfed beef (& milk from grassfed cows), pork & lamb is far superior to that of commercially-raised meats. And bison/buffalo is even healtheir than beef! http://www.foodrevolution.org/grassfedbeef.htm Even pigs & chickens can be raised outdoors without being given commercial feed. http://www.texasgrassfedbeef.com/id78.htm So you can get a fast food burger or chicken sandwich for a buck or two. Which sounds like a bargain, until you look how that cow or chicken was raised. And you find out that not only does that sandwich have almost no nutritional value, it's actually [i]damaging[/i] to yr health. The bread on that sandwich was made from GM wheat, genetically altered to withstand the Round-up pesticide that wheat will be doused with as it grows. The meat in that sandwich was pumped full of growth hormones & fed antibiotics becuz the unnatrual diet it was forced to eat made it sick. (Actually, it's illegal to treat chicken with hormones. But growth hormone can be legally used in cattle, sheep & pigs. Antibiotics can be fed to all types of livestock -- even to farmed fish.) So it's not just a question of 'organic' once you get past fruits & veggies. What the meat & fish & poultry you eat was eating before it go to you & the conditions yr food was raised under make all the difference how healthful a meal you'll be getting. So is a buck for a sandwich really a bargain in the long run? What I pay for groceries is prolly what most folks spend on their car note every month. But I eat better than people who make 10x as much money a I do. I'm 47, not on any Rx meds & not feeling old yet. 95% of what I eat is food I cook myself, so I know exactly what's in it. And I know that eating right, more than any other factor, will keep a person healthy for a long time. - RC |
Back to the topic, has anyone read The Omnivore's Dilemma? It hits on a lot of the points RC raised, and has a great section on a family farm in Vermont that has a philosophy of raising animals in a system that results in a healthy farm, healthy animals, and healthy food. Check it out. |
|
hey RC! righteous of you to show up for this thread. and i completely agree. the topic of food production is currently near the top of my OH MY GOD THE APOCALYPSE IS UPON US list. i've not read Omnivore's Dilemma, but i've got on hold at the library his newest book "In defense of food : an eater's manifesto". though it sounds as if it's going to be a lot like his other books and periodical publications. |
(HI RC!!!) |
The hormones they put in meat can't be a good thing,I see 8 or 9 year old girls with breasts and I was wearing a training bra at 13 and I really didn't need the bra,I had nothing,then. RC,where have you been? Glad to see you:) |