[silentplummet]

Do the prices of industrial farm produce include the cost of cleaning up industrial farm pollution such as nitrate fertilizers, organophosphate biocide, and airborne products of fossil fuel combustion? What about the inefficiency caused by the entire massive pyramid of the attendant industries: transportation, chemical manufacture, distribution, marketing? And the cherry on top: the health care burden due to epidemic diabetes and obesity?

Think carefully before you decide what is cheaper.

[readams]

You're presenting a false dichotomy. It's entirely possible to believe that large-scale farming should be made more sustainable without believing that local, small-scale farming is an improvement.

You're also assuming that local, small-scale farming has no impact. In fact to produce the same amount of calories requires vastly more land and more energy and the total impact is larger. Organic farmers also use pesticides and fertilizers; they just use different ones. It's not at all clear they result in less environmental damage. Is spraying a vast amount of nicitinoids over a larger area better than a smaller amount of organophosphates? Not at all clear.