Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by makerofspoons 2710 days ago
There are solutions to this- driving through eastern Colorado and west Kansas you'll find many farmers using no-till techniques and planting winter cover-crops that create topsoil and increase soil quality. Farmers have a vested economic interest in keeping the soil productive.

Meanwhile from what I understand from talking with some friends in agricultural engineering in places like California where farmers expect to be pushed off their land eventually by rising land prices they are using destructive practices to extract as much as they can before they go defunct.

The USDA is offering incentives for good soil stewardship and the 2018 Farm Bill featured a number of soil health policies, such as restrictions on pesticides and a soil carbon pilot program: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/mae-wu/final-farm-bill-blossoms...
2 comments
kbenson 2710 days ago
> in places like California where farmers expect to be pushed off their land eventually by rising land prices they are using destructive practices to extract as much as they can before they go defunct.

Assuming the land is going to be used for non-agricultural uses (residential/commercia, covered in some material in some way) and "destructive practices" means over-farming, but not otherwise polluting or causing damage, I'm not sure I see a problem with that (but I may not be thinking of some consequences).

Then again, that's a lot of assumptions...

link
kevinskii 2710 days ago
There may be a tiny minority of farms in pristine locations that will eventually get pushed off their land, but I suspect the vast majority are in areas where the land is absolutely undesirable for anything besides farming. If you've ever driven across California's central valley you'll know what I mean.
link
JustSomeNobody 2710 days ago
California will one day be uninhabitable by 99.999% of the population. The rich will have to fly in day workers. It would be a good time to start investing in drone taxis, I suppose.
link
Balero 2710 days ago
Downvoted for hyperbole.

Current world population about 7B, 0.001 of that is 700,000. That's less than the population of San Francisco.

If we do this with just the US population, you get about 3000.

link