[alecco]

What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks.

One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all the topsoil.

Somehow journalists and people from the city know better than people risking their family's worth every year and working 12 hours a day on this. Every day. And even on weekends and holidays. You have no idea how hard it is.

[pessimizer]

I'm pretty sure farming is as efficient as it is now because farmers listened to technicians who weren't working in the fields all day, and were helped to break out of local maxima. Also - you don't think farmers' kids go to college and end up studying and writing about regenerative agriculture? Are you yourself a farmer's kid who went to college and became a techie?

[alecco]

This is a simplistic analysis. Farmers have to time things around season, weather events, water availability (e.g. almost dry wells), floods, and many other variables changing all the time. For example, after heavy rains machines can't get into the field because they get stuck. And if you plant right before rains then when the mud dries it becomes too hard for seedlings to break it. Making all this work is very hard.

Of course, many places are out of control blindly dumping fertilizer and herbicides. But that's mostly China and Third World countries. It would be smart to focus first on fixing things there. It's the same as with CO2 emissions. Don't put unrealistic demands in developed countries while leaving the rest to do whatever.

[pessimizer]

Are you replying the the right comment? I offered no analysis. I'm just not into Lysenkoism or generalized anti-intellectualism on principle. I don't think it is productive to attack the people making an argument instead of the argument itself, especially when you make the most negative assumptions about who they are.

I'm sure that there is merit in what you say and that you probably have experience. My only experience in farming was directly in the fields, none in any sort of decision-making.

[seunosewa]

Do you really think that farmers in developing countries have it easier than those in developed countries? That they can more easily afford the cost of environmental regulation?

The carbon footprint of the average American or Canadian is about 14 tones per year. For India, Indonesia, and Brazil it's about 2 tons per year. Thus it is fair to expect developed countries to do more to tackle climate change.

Having said that, industrial agriculture done right is better for the environment because it's more efficient. The amount of land needed to feed an average person is minimised, thus there's less pressure to convert forests, grasslands and peat bogs to farmland.

[CuriouslyC]

You sound like you don't know a lot of farmers then. Most farmers these days inherited their farms, and run it mostly the same way their parents did, with a little input from local AG programs. For the most part, farmers are some of the most conservative, stick with what worked in the past people I've ever met.

Joel Salatin talks a lot of shit about the typical farmer too, and with good reason. The difference there is that he's way more profitable than your average farmer on a per acre basis. He's documented everything he does at Polyface, and others have duplicated his success, yet hyper conservative farmers are still trying to farm the same broke ass way and complaining they can't make a living.