Sincer the era of converting petroleum into food is coming to an end that will undoubtbly come about. Industrial agriculture isn't sustainable into the rather near future.
Currently the average distance food travels from farm to table is about 1,200 miles. Farms areas adjacent to cities have been turned into shopping malls and real estate development.That isn't sustainable either. .Univ.o fColo. lecture:
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?"
For some it may be a fad... for those who wish to keep eating and surviving it is probably the future....
If more people were made aware of where their food came from and under what conditions... even their produce... it would cease being a fad in no time at all......
unless a significant portion of the population ceases to live, breathe and eat, industrial food production will continue well into the future. Half of the world's population now live in urban areas and simply cannot grow their own food. Technology really does contribute to quality and quantity of life. There won't be too many people willing to give it up just for naive retro-romantic ideas.
With that said, I will acknowledge that we aren't living in sustainable ways. The logical conclusions dont look pretty.
People tend to forget that soils are alive. Life converts life into another life form. That's just how the planet functions..Einstein illustrated that very simply,. "Energy doesn't disappear, it transforms".
Industrial agriculture not only kills that life, it's currently losing enough top soil in the U.S. to fill a freight train 125,000 miles long...every year.
Industrial agriculture for higher profit ultimately leads to no food production at all. Let that sink in. We aren't the first society to destroy its food producing capacity. When societies do that, they tend to disappear.
When I talk about economic, resource, environmental collapse merging...that's a part of it. When I suggest people take up gardening, understanding soils and how eco-systems function is a vital part of it. You'll either destroy your backyard garden within a few years...or not.
The global fossil fuel energy based system has only been in place for less than a century. But now we can see, if we choose to look, that it grew like a cancer on the planet earth, while the self centered, aggressive, warlike homo sapiens economicus sub species "evolved" to shove aside with derision it's wiser cousins, homo sapiens sapiens as it progressed to become cyber machine like organisms, leaving the humane wisdom of those who cautioned against this path "behind" in a pile of debris, in the belief that they could create utopia, as if they were gods, ignoring their mortality, and the connection of that mortality to the planet itself. Some even imagined taking over the universe with their advancements in technology, perhaps even leaving the "Mother Planet" behind in a smoking ruins.
If this recently-created "advanced" system does not destroy the very life itself that makes a human species as well as all the others around us today possible on this planet, a new vision that incorporates the understanding of the principles of sustainability will inevitably come about and become a way of life. If it does not, well....
Jerry Brown recently vetoed the "Fair Treatment for Farmworkers Act" which would have allowed for card-check among CA farmworkers. According to a writer at the Huffington Post the AFL-CIO hoped this would be a step toward passage of the "Employee Free-Choice Act."
Well, if its more "profitable" for an individual to spend their time growing higher quality food than slave away in pesticide-ridden fields for sub-minimum wage, then its a question of who has access to even the relatively small amount of property and water needed to produce a meaningful amount of produce.
I once read a chapter in a book centered around "environmental justice" about communities of mexicans who established small communities in the woods of Montana and engaged in small agriculture until they were routed. That was during the "bracero" times. I read some articles in the Sierra Club magazine about how small farmers protested against logging that was ruining the hillsides they used to grow on and of course NAFTA generally brings disaster to small farming, one of the things that manufacturing-centered discussions omit since labor in the U.S. during the 20th cent. was industrial based while even when large agribiz dominated Latin America via U.S. "foreign policy" campesinos managed to survive in many places. I'm guessing that juicing originated in Latin America. There are lots of produce stands in the Mission District of S.F. and the small farm seems to be in the cultural memory of a lot of Mexicans and Latin Americans based on murals even if land reforms never completely transformed the agricultural market from one based on the latifundia although I think its still law in Mexico as it has been in many parts of Latin America that if you squat a piece of land long enough you own it as long as you do the paperwork. Like in Argentina when the workers took over the factories. I think that if small ag. is the wave of the future some kind of process of land and water rights redistribution has to occur. Also to an extent I took Thom's thoughts about cities in "Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" which I just read to be anti-city when there are people working on integrating socioeconomic classes in the same area so it will be less distance to where you work and also where you buy your food which means less oil consumption in transportation and maybe humane use of donkeys. I think in Latin America when people squatted in the favelas then the government came along because of population growth of the cities especially recently with the trend of people moving from the countryside to the city it created some sympathetic attitutes towards libertarianismo because the government imposed property taxes on people who couldn't afford it so they had to move. Than makes me think we should watch out for eminent domain, even though that's a right-wing talking point, unless we can use it to give people small farms instead of welfare. Not that there's anything wrong with welfare. Or moving to a different planet for that matter except probably only the rich could do that, but maybe that would be a good thing.
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?"
For some it may be a fad... for those who wish to keep eating and surviving it is probably the future....
If more people were made aware of where their food came from and under what conditions... even their produce... it would cease being a fad in no time at all......
polyreplies: Some are beginning to understand that. They'll eat. Others are working to maintain the unstainable for as long as possible. They won't. It's probably best to learn how to garden before a crop failure from inexperience becomes a critical matter. Once it does, it's too late
Zucchini squash makes a beautiful foundation planting next to a house.. Fruit trees are delightful ornamentals. The flowers on peas or beans can have a really nice scent..Red-runner beans on a trellis give a splash of brilliant color, and the beans dry well.
Nearly 50% of U.S. food that is consumed annually comes from California's Central Valley. It's irrigation source (Sierra snowfall) is drying up from global warming. That's just one developing problem with U.S. agriculture. It takes enormous amounts of petroleum to grow it and ship it. That's just another impending problem.with peak oil costs.
The average trip from industrial farm to table is 1,200 miles.
Energy is not the problem. There is vastly more energy available to humans than hydrocarbons.
The problem is potable water. Water availability will certainly be affected by global warming (yes, I said "warming," not "climate change"). Precisely how global warming will affect the availability of potable water in particular places in the world is anybody's guess.
Actually, you can track changes in percipitation patterns if you're interested in doing that.
You can write off most of Texas, portions of the Great Plains and the irrigated valleys of Calif. in the long-term. Those changes are a direct result of global warming and a warmer, moister atmosphere...that can retain more water before it falls as rain. It falls further north now, including over northerly latitude ocean waters in our hemisphere. Disruptions are also occurring in the S. Hemisphere.
A widening of the hot easterly wind belt doesn't help either hemisphere. It changes where warm air meets cool air...and triggers rain. Rainfalls will become unseasonal. Deluges altered with drought.
As to hydrocarbons, affordable use of remaining resources will end in the not too distant future. Univ. of Colo. lecture:
Chris Hedges notes a merging of economic and environmental collapse. I'd add resource collapse to that. It won't be pleasant. In the meantime, there are profits to be made and fiddles to be played.
A few wise souls may take up gardening and learn how to utilize rainbarrels and mulch. Some might even move from flood plains.
A friend of mine from high school has created the nation's largest worm farm. He knows about soils being alive.
I speculate that there will be a dramatic increase in the quantity of insects that humanity will be eating in the future. We're too spoiled for industrial production of such, for now.
It's industrial production that's mainly resposible for killing our soils. Dead soil can't support living plants. Plants require living soils in order to absorb nutrients from the soil Industrial farming kills the micro-organisms we don't see ...right along with the earthworms that we do see.
Wonderingaloud: Thanks for the links. Nice to see that some are aware of precipitation fall changes and their impact. If Congress Critters could get it, perhaps they'd stop denying a severe impending problem.
Polycarp2 -- I hear you. When it comes to sustaining life on this planet few things are as essential as good science. Politics is a necessary means but inept on many fronts if not informed by science, and the same can be said about industry, especially the agricultural industries. So I'm all for getting good information out there, and a couple of other favored sources are the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), which in its own words "advocates for public policy and legislative action that is based upon quality science" http://www.aibs.org/home/index.html, and Skeptical Science is good too http://www.skepticalscience.com/
MEJ -- I appreciate the link to the worm farm. Worms are great.
Hey poly, do you think that the term "industrial production" could be a form of ideology?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the present industrial food production styles. Acouple of weeks ago I went on a food documentary binge and viewed: Food Inc., The World According to Monsanto, and some others. Yeah, it's horrifying, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Industrial scale food production could be okay if practiced in a sustainable way.
Industrial production relies on synthetic fertilizers....from petroleum. Mono-culture of crops requires heavy use of pesticides. Both are ecologically destructive.
Fertilities of the soil are shipped to feed lots in the form of grains. The waste products required by plants (manure) are shipped to the sea from feed lots....destroying fish hatcheries along the coast lines.
The U.S. currently loses enough top soil per year to fill a freight train 125,000 miles long. That probably isn't sustainable agriculture.
Industrial agriculture relies on a heavy use of fossil fuels. As Dr. Bartlett (Univ. of Colorado) noted, "Our agricutural system can be defined as converting petroleum into food.". It's fossil fuels and fossil fuels alone that have enabled agriculture to keep pace with a growing world population. That isn't sustainable into the near future. "Arithmetic, Population and Energy", Univ. of Colo. lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
A return to smaller, more labor intensive and environmentally sound farms is probably in the cards. There are probably lessons to be learned from the Amish of Ohio and Penn.
"That which is unsustainable won't be sustained". - Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate, economics.
Sustainable is something that be be maintained indefinately...not just decades. The "decades" of industrial, petroleum-based , environmentally destructive agriculture are about up.
Was that a yes or a no? Industrial scale does not necessarily equate to present corpratized industrial agricultural practices. The term, industrial agriculture, seems to have illicted a knee-jerk reaction from you, surely a sign of ideological bias. That was my intended although clumsy point....at least with this many or more people on the planet.
Industrial scale and sustainable small farm scale are very, very different operations.
Amish farms are productive, and not on an industrial scale. Maximum production/profit regardless of ecological damage just isn't a part of non-industrial farming. There is a "personal interest" in maintaining the soil for family inheritors of the soil.
Industrial farming can move on, as in Brazil. Destroy the land with agrictulural "mining" and move on to the next plot or country. The motive is as large a profit as possible...not sustaining the enterprise for the next generation,
U.S. agriculture is as productive as it is because of long-term destructive practices. Soils are being "mined". When something is mined, it's depleted whether water, silver or fertility.
Water is "mined" in U.S. desert areas. It's being pumped from wells quicker than nature replenishes it. It's being depleted. Ditto our soils.
I had an uncle who ran a sustainable farm. His main crop was corn. HOWEVER, he alternated the corn plot with a grazing plot for cattle. The "corn" soils were sustained by cattle and a rotation of corn plot/pasture plot. Industrial farming would see that as a loss of quick, potential profit. Sustainable agriculture isn't as profitable in the short-term as industrial agriculture is.
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?
Honestly I think it is great that people start to really care about the environment they live in on the other hand I wonder if it is really necessary to make everything around us sustainable all of a sudden. I mean, it sure is nice to have sustainalbe flowers uk at home or food you know where it comes from and that it was properly and sustainably produce but on the other hand I wonder if we really need to wear sustainable clothes and bags? Or if we need sustainable Phones or Computers that are made off sustainable products. Is that necessary at all? I think that is another leap the society overdos
Comments
Sincer the era of converting petroleum into food is coming to an end that will undoubtbly come about. Industrial agriculture isn't sustainable into the rather near future.
Currently the average distance food travels from farm to table is about 1,200 miles. Farms areas adjacent to cities have been turned into shopping malls and real estate development.That isn't sustainable either. .Univ.o fColo. lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?"
For some it may be a fad... for those who wish to keep eating and surviving it is probably the future....
If more people were made aware of where their food came from and under what conditions... even their produce... it would cease being a fad in no time at all......
unless a significant portion of the population ceases to live, breathe and eat, industrial food production will continue well into the future. Half of the world's population now live in urban areas and simply cannot grow their own food. Technology really does contribute to quality and quantity of life. There won't be too many people willing to give it up just for naive retro-romantic ideas.
With that said, I will acknowledge that we aren't living in sustainable ways. The logical conclusions dont look pretty.
An interesting perspective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtl09VZiSU
People tend to forget that soils are alive. Life converts life into another life form. That's just how the planet functions..Einstein illustrated that very simply,. "Energy doesn't disappear, it transforms".
Industrial agriculture not only kills that life, it's currently losing enough top soil in the U.S. to fill a freight train 125,000 miles long...every year.
Industrial agriculture for higher profit ultimately leads to no food production at all. Let that sink in. We aren't the first society to destroy its food producing capacity. When societies do that, they tend to disappear.
When I talk about economic, resource, environmental collapse merging...that's a part of it. When I suggest people take up gardening, understanding soils and how eco-systems function is a vital part of it. You'll either destroy your backyard garden within a few years...or not.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
The global fossil fuel energy based system has only been in place for less than a century. But now we can see, if we choose to look, that it grew like a cancer on the planet earth, while the self centered, aggressive, warlike homo sapiens economicus sub species "evolved" to shove aside with derision it's wiser cousins, homo sapiens sapiens as it progressed to become cyber machine like organisms, leaving the humane wisdom of those who cautioned against this path "behind" in a pile of debris, in the belief that they could create utopia, as if they were gods, ignoring their mortality, and the connection of that mortality to the planet itself. Some even imagined taking over the universe with their advancements in technology, perhaps even leaving the "Mother Planet" behind in a smoking ruins.
If this recently-created "advanced" system does not destroy the very life itself that makes a human species as well as all the others around us today possible on this planet, a new vision that incorporates the understanding of the principles of sustainability will inevitably come about and become a way of life. If it does not, well....
Jerry Brown recently vetoed the "Fair Treatment for Farmworkers Act" which would have allowed for card-check among CA farmworkers. According to a writer at the Huffington Post the AFL-CIO hoped this would be a step toward passage of the "Employee Free-Choice Act."
Well, if its more "profitable" for an individual to spend their time growing higher quality food than slave away in pesticide-ridden fields for sub-minimum wage, then its a question of who has access to even the relatively small amount of property and water needed to produce a meaningful amount of produce.
I once read a chapter in a book centered around "environmental justice" about communities of mexicans who established small communities in the woods of Montana and engaged in small agriculture until they were routed. That was during the "bracero" times. I read some articles in the Sierra Club magazine about how small farmers protested against logging that was ruining the hillsides they used to grow on and of course NAFTA generally brings disaster to small farming, one of the things that manufacturing-centered discussions omit since labor in the U.S. during the 20th cent. was industrial based while even when large agribiz dominated Latin America via U.S. "foreign policy" campesinos managed to survive in many places. I'm guessing that juicing originated in Latin America. There are lots of produce stands in the Mission District of S.F. and the small farm seems to be in the cultural memory of a lot of Mexicans and Latin Americans based on murals even if land reforms never completely transformed the agricultural market from one based on the latifundia although I think its still law in Mexico as it has been in many parts of Latin America that if you squat a piece of land long enough you own it as long as you do the paperwork. Like in Argentina when the workers took over the factories. I think that if small ag. is the wave of the future some kind of process of land and water rights redistribution has to occur. Also to an extent I took Thom's thoughts about cities in "Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" which I just read to be anti-city when there are people working on integrating socioeconomic classes in the same area so it will be less distance to where you work and also where you buy your food which means less oil consumption in transportation and maybe humane use of donkeys. I think in Latin America when people squatted in the favelas then the government came along because of population growth of the cities especially recently with the trend of people moving from the countryside to the city it created some sympathetic attitutes towards libertarianismo because the government imposed property taxes on people who couldn't afford it so they had to move. Than makes me think we should watch out for eminent domain, even though that's a right-wing talking point, unless we can use it to give people small farms instead of welfare. Not that there's anything wrong with welfare. Or moving to a different planet for that matter except probably only the rich could do that, but maybe that would be a good thing.
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?"
For some it may be a fad... for those who wish to keep eating and surviving it is probably the future....
If more people were made aware of where their food came from and under what conditions... even their produce... it would cease being a fad in no time at all......
polyreplies: Some are beginning to understand that. They'll eat. Others are working to maintain the unstainable for as long as possible. They won't. It's probably best to learn how to garden before a crop failure from inexperience becomes a critical matter. Once it does, it's too late
Zucchini squash makes a beautiful foundation planting next to a house.. Fruit trees are delightful ornamentals. The flowers on peas or beans can have a really nice scent..Red-runner beans on a trellis give a splash of brilliant color, and the beans dry well.
Nearly 50% of U.S. food that is consumed annually comes from California's Central Valley. It's irrigation source (Sierra snowfall) is drying up from global warming. That's just one developing problem with U.S. agriculture. It takes enormous amounts of petroleum to grow it and ship it. That's just another impending problem.with peak oil costs.
The average trip from industrial farm to table is 1,200 miles.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease
Energy is not the problem. There is vastly more energy available to humans than hydrocarbons.
The problem is potable water. Water availability will certainly be affected by global warming (yes, I said "warming," not "climate change"). Precisely how global warming will affect the availability of potable water in particular places in the world is anybody's guess.
Actually, you can track changes in percipitation patterns if you're interested in doing that.
You can write off most of Texas, portions of the Great Plains and the irrigated valleys of Calif. in the long-term. Those changes are a direct result of global warming and a warmer, moister atmosphere...that can retain more water before it falls as rain. It falls further north now, including over northerly latitude ocean waters in our hemisphere. Disruptions are also occurring in the S. Hemisphere.
A widening of the hot easterly wind belt doesn't help either hemisphere. It changes where warm air meets cool air...and triggers rain. Rainfalls will become unseasonal. Deluges altered with drought.
As to hydrocarbons, affordable use of remaining resources will end in the not too distant future. Univ. of Colo. lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Chris Hedges notes a merging of economic and environmental collapse. I'd add resource collapse to that. It won't be pleasant. In the meantime, there are profits to be made and fiddles to be played.
A few wise souls may take up gardening and learn how to utilize rainbarrels and mulch. Some might even move from flood plains.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
A couple of resources of possible interest.
Articles on the global water crisis from the Pacific Institute:
http://pacinst.org/topics/water_and_sustainability/global_water_crisis/
A report on potable water research from the AWWA:
http://www.waterrf.org/thefoundation/PressRoom/Brochures/Brochures/Speci...
A friend of mine from high school has created the nation's largest worm farm. He knows about soils being alive.
I speculate that there will be a dramatic increase in the quantity of insects that humanity will be eating in the future. We're too spoiled for industrial production of such, for now.
It's industrial production that's mainly resposible for killing our soils. Dead soil can't support living plants. Plants require living soils in order to absorb nutrients from the soil Industrial farming kills the micro-organisms we don't see ...right along with the earthworms that we do see.
Wonderingaloud: Thanks for the links. Nice to see that some are aware of precipitation fall changes and their impact. If Congress Critters could get it, perhaps they'd stop denying a severe impending problem.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
Polycarp2 -- I hear you. When it comes to sustaining life on this planet few things are as essential as good science. Politics is a necessary means but inept on many fronts if not informed by science, and the same can be said about industry, especially the agricultural industries. So I'm all for getting good information out there, and a couple of other favored sources are the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), which in its own words "advocates for public policy and legislative action that is based upon quality science" http://www.aibs.org/home/index.html, and Skeptical Science is good too http://www.skepticalscience.com/
MEJ -- I appreciate the link to the worm farm. Worms are great.
Hey poly, do you think that the term "industrial production" could be a form of ideology?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the present industrial food production styles. Acouple of weeks ago I went on a food documentary binge and viewed: Food Inc., The World According to Monsanto, and some others. Yeah, it's horrifying, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Industrial scale food production could be okay if practiced in a sustainable way.
Industrial production relies on synthetic fertilizers....from petroleum. Mono-culture of crops requires heavy use of pesticides. Both are ecologically destructive.
Fertilities of the soil are shipped to feed lots in the form of grains. The waste products required by plants (manure) are shipped to the sea from feed lots....destroying fish hatcheries along the coast lines.
The U.S. currently loses enough top soil per year to fill a freight train 125,000 miles long. That probably isn't sustainable agriculture.
Industrial agriculture relies on a heavy use of fossil fuels. As Dr. Bartlett (Univ. of Colorado) noted, "Our agricutural system can be defined as converting petroleum into food.". It's fossil fuels and fossil fuels alone that have enabled agriculture to keep pace with a growing world population. That isn't sustainable into the near future. "Arithmetic, Population and Energy", Univ. of Colo. lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
A return to smaller, more labor intensive and environmentally sound farms is probably in the cards. There are probably lessons to be learned from the Amish of Ohio and Penn.
"That which is unsustainable won't be sustained". - Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate, economics.
Sustainable is something that be be maintained indefinately...not just decades. The "decades" of industrial, petroleum-based , environmentally destructive agriculture are about up.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
Was that a yes or a no? Industrial scale does not necessarily equate to present corpratized industrial agricultural practices. The term, industrial agriculture, seems to have illicted a knee-jerk reaction from you, surely a sign of ideological bias. That was my intended although clumsy point....at least with this many or more people on the planet.
Industrial scale and sustainable small farm scale are very, very different operations.
Amish farms are productive, and not on an industrial scale. Maximum production/profit regardless of ecological damage just isn't a part of non-industrial farming. There is a "personal interest" in maintaining the soil for family inheritors of the soil.
Industrial farming can move on, as in Brazil. Destroy the land with agrictulural "mining" and move on to the next plot or country. The motive is as large a profit as possible...not sustaining the enterprise for the next generation,
U.S. agriculture is as productive as it is because of long-term destructive practices. Soils are being "mined". When something is mined, it's depleted whether water, silver or fertility.
Water is "mined" in U.S. desert areas. It's being pumped from wells quicker than nature replenishes it. It's being depleted. Ditto our soils.
I had an uncle who ran a sustainable farm. His main crop was corn. HOWEVER, he alternated the corn plot with a grazing plot for cattle. The "corn" soils were sustained by cattle and a rotation of corn plot/pasture plot. Industrial farming would see that as a loss of quick, potential profit. Sustainable agriculture isn't as profitable in the short-term as industrial agriculture is.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
"The new Sustainable agriculture/local food/small farm movement fad or future?
Honestly I think it is great that people start to really care about the environment they live in on the other hand I wonder if it is really necessary to make everything around us sustainable all of a sudden. I mean, it sure is nice to have sustainalbe flowers uk at home or food you know where it comes from and that it was properly and sustainably produce but on the other hand I wonder if we really need to wear sustainable clothes and bags? Or if we need sustainable Phones or Computers that are made off sustainable products. Is that necessary at all? I think that is another leap the society overdos