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by elago 2964 days ago
"* the parts of our food supply that are heavily dependent on pollinating agents rely entirely on commercial pollination services, not native ambient pollinating species."

So the orchards that cultivate a healthy ecosystem through a diversity of species, and care given to soil health, which grow, produce, and sell fruit for only slightly above factory farming rates aren't part of the food supply?

If you only define food supply = factory farming monoculture, then absolutely the "least bad herbicides and pesticides" are the best thing possible.

Eating almost entirely locally costs far less per year than the difference between and entry level vs top of the line laptop. Eating from nearby food producers who take care of the land is not very expensive relative to other luxuries people invest in. Habitat loss may be inevitable, but factory scale, chemical based monoculture does not implicate all of us, and personal action is quite reasonable.

It's probably less effort than changing your diet for other reasons, but people seem to be more motivated to change their diet for body image reasons, or the soylent-esque lifestyle optimization, etc.

It baffles me that more people aren't raging environmentalist lunatics as I am.

FYI if you think this is bullshit, here's a public demonstration of an alternative to factory farming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3riW_yiCN5E There's a free hour long video that's more in depth but I realize even expecting 10 more minutes of anyone's attention is asking a lot.

1 comments

And an argument for the importance of this pesticide issue that would be persuasive for people who aren't generally inclined to entertain restructuring all of modern agriculture would be...?
I don't have one. The pesticide issue and species collapse is one of many entry points to get people to entertain (or better participate) in restructuring all of modern agriculture.

There are other reasons too (resilience, independence, better economics for small communities) and the common response of "bigger must be better because thats what the free market has produced" is invalid when there has been so much government intervention that has given and continues to give much advantage to the existing system.

So basically I implore you to entertain the idea of restructuring agriculture even though you implied you aren't inclined to :)

I'm fine listening to the arguments of people who believe we need to restructure all of commercial agriculture. That's a coherent perspective.

What I'm not fine with are people pretending that a bee-pocalypse threatens commercial agriculture as it exists today as a stalking horse argument. I'm not saying that's what you were doing.

Well I hope we meet again on a thread that's a more appropriate platform to spread my lunatic gardener beliefs.

I enjoyed the discussion and learned something new about the honey bee.