Is "local and sustainable" agriculture sustainable?

[Digital_Stimulus]

I just came across an op-ed piece in the NYTimes that might be of interest in this discussion: My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables). A brief cut & paste summarization:

@Jack Hedin

…the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding…this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started…The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables…Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence…Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.

So, this expands the question of organic and local agriculture feasibility/sustainability into the political realm, providing at least one (possibly minor, possibly huge) reason why industrial agriculture is so advantageous (relative to organic/local).

Again, I’d like to note that I’ve not really got a set position in this, but am just picking up information and trying to absorb the discussion.

[SuaSponte]

@Digital Stimulus

I just came across an op-ed piece in the NYTimes that might be of interest in this discussion: My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables). A brief cut & paste summarization:

So, this expands the question of organic and local agriculture feasibility/sustainability into the political realm, providing at least one (possibly minor, possibly huge) reason why industrial agriculture is so advantageous (relative to organic/local).

Again, I’d like to note that I’ve not really got a set position in this, but am just picking up information and trying to absorb the discussion.

Weeeel, I’m having a hard time taking NYT Op-ed bits on agriculture seriously these days, after a recent piece on agriculture and NAFTA suggested that Mexican farmers threatened by corn imports should be helped to switch to other crops “more suited to [Mexico’s] arid and moutainous terrain.” Fer chrissakes, corn developed in that very same arid and mountainous terrain more than 5000 years ago, and is uniquely well-adapted to it.

Sorry about that - that piece of tripe has been bothering me for weeks. Anyway, the author of the Op-ed piece is paranoid. He is not a threat to Big Agro - he’s not big enough. Hell, the whole organic industry isn’t big enough to be a threat and, given that “local and sustainable” probably cannot replace Big Agro, it will remain a niche.

Sua

[Digital_Stimulus]

@SuaSponte

Sorry about that

No, no – no apology necessary. In fact, your point is welcome to me, as I have little basis for determining the substance of items like that.

At the same time, certainly there are lots of rumblings about the faults of the farm subsidy program (from all sides, from what I can tell), which is one reason I included that “possibly major, possibly minor” qualifier.

The way I choose to gain some knowledge and understanding is just to add to the discussion (which, hopefully, I do) and elicit responses.

[Shalmanese]

@Phlosphr

Pesticide cite, [from Panna].

Dietary Pesticides (99.99% All Natural)

We calculate that 99.99% (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves. […] We conclude that natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests. We also conclude that at the low doses of most human exposures the comparative hazards of synthetic pesticide residues are insignificant.

[John_Mace]

@Cervaise

A piece of information that hasn’t yet been mentioned but that should be taken into consideration: There is a growing body of research that industrially produced comestibles are nutritionally inferior to “naturally” grown plants and animals, and that our reliance on an industrial diet is a major contributor to our significant and increasing health problems.

How much is a healthy population worth?

Can you flesh that out a bit? When you say “industrially produced comestibles”, do you mean processed food or just industrially grown food? What MP is recommending, and which a number of medical doctors favor, is the eating of whole foods as much as possible and minimizing the consumption of processed foods, especially those high in high fructose corn syrup (read: cheap sugar).

I heard MP interviewed the other day, and he was quite clear that you should try and eat organic as much as possible, but the important thing is to eat whole foods. He actually had some rather humorous advice: Don’t eat anything that you don’t, or wouldn’t, make yourself. Want a twinkie? Have as many as you want, but make them yourself. Twinkies are really hard to make. Want some french fries? No biggie. Have them as often as you are willing to make them yourself-- that’ll be maybe once a month instead of 5 times a week.

[Cervaise]

Industrially grown food. The reductionist approach to fertilizer (the “NPK” model) apparently produces plants with truncated nutritional profiles. Apparently, when you grow plants in simplified soil, you get simplified plants. Go figure.