The answer to bad industrial agriculture isn't non-industrial agriculture. It's better industrial agriculture. @mikegrunwald.bsky.social in the @nytimes.com. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/o... - ThreadSky

tamarhaspel.bsky.social • 77 days ago

The answer to bad industrial agriculture isn't non-industrial agriculture.

It's better industrial agriculture.

@mikegrunwald.bsky.social in the @nytimes.com.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/opinion/food-agriculture-factory-farms-climate-change.html

Comments

glorcasboy.bsky.social•76 days ago

Of course, this sees everything from the supply side. If we look at it from the consumption side everything looks different and we can take a different perspective on the answers, both long and short term.

seldoncrisis.bsky.social•77 days ago

Tamar, I'd love to hear what you think of the conversation I just had with my next guest on #SeldonCrisis. He's a proponent of #sentientism, essentially humanism extended to all sentient creatures. Lots to say on animal agriculture.

I'll ping you when it's up.

willmasters.bsky.social•77 days ago

Yes! And also:

bimblinghill.bsky.social•76 days ago

Seeing the picture I feel compelled to say - raising cattle is bad whether it's done intensively or small-scale. Almost any other source of calories would be better.

robertferry.bsky.social•77 days ago

Is this true? "Storing more carbon in soils turns out to require adding more nitrogen to soils — and adding nitrogen usually warms the climate."

robertferry.bsky.social•77 days ago

This article was uncomfortable for me to read as a vegetarian. Are we really that incapable of saving ourselves by changing our diets even slightly? Are we powerless in the face of fast food advertising budgets and lobbyists? What is the root cause of our collective insanity around meat production?

jeremyfarr.bsky.social•77 days ago

This article is using emergency framing to corral it's readership into thinking there is only one narrow set of solutions. Changing diets and our relationship with food is absolutely on the table. It's fair to be sceptical about the motives of this sort of rhetoric.

christosilvia.bsky.social•77 days ago

The solution to the harms of eating meat is not eating meat

christosilvia.bsky.social•77 days ago

I support industrial agriculture for plants, but the meat issue has a simple solution - just say no!

modmagus.bsky.social•76 days ago

I understand that emotions run high here and read that you are a vegetarian, but for most of us (and for eternity), humans have eaten animals. The difficulty for those like me that do eat meat is making sure that we can afford the less industrial approaches which probably means eating less meat.

carolalejandra-22.bsky.social•76 days ago

I was born in Chile, grew up in a meat and potatoes environment. Loved eating beef all my life, and became vegan almost two years ago. I simply couldn’t enjoy eating it anymore knowing the harm it causes. Happy to say I haven’t missed it at all. Still shocked with myself.

wahooticketyboo17.bsky.social•75 days ago

Evolution of human hands, nails and teeth shows that we mostly followed a frugivorous diet. Also, eternity is a very, very long time and we as a species have only been around for roughly 300’000 years.

kedawson.bsky.social•77 days ago

Can't read this subscription only article but violently disagree with the premise. Industrial farming is what's damaging the environment - we need to consider all species' survival in the production of food - we don't live in silos. Enough food is produced - change distribution & unnecessary waste.

modmagus.bsky.social•76 days ago

Yet:
Global population prognoses are falling with some suggesting we'll never reach 10 billion.
We already have enough food, but poor distribution and food waste means we don't optimise what we produce.
About 8% of the world's 1.4 billion hectares of cropland goes to biofuel feedstock production!

modmagus.bsky.social•76 days ago

Needing 50% more calories sounds like a truism but it's speculative and unlikely. That's why reports such as EAT_Lancet which start with a false premise (need to feed 10 billion by 2050) are flawed. I do agree that for optimum health, we will need more protein sources - that's a separate discussion.

tilmane.bsky.social•76 days ago

Sorry, important debate, yes, we need more efficient food production, and big isn't always bad

However, we don't need to double food output, that is just crazy (and outdated source!)

Already today we have 1.6bn Obese, vs 0.8 bn undernutritioned

We need to move away from "More is a must" to better

modmagus.bsky.social•76 days ago

Just want to add that you are quite right and thanks for pointing this out.

dustinwing.bsky.social•77 days ago

The world grows 9,747 kilocalories (kcal) of crops per person per day. The solution is not more agriculture.

suesustainable.bsky.social•76 days ago

Ably set out in Colin Tudge's book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feeding-People-Easy-Colin-Tudge/dp/8890196084

dustinwing.bsky.social•77 days ago

Food for thought, the biomass of bison prior to being nearly eliminated was approximately 10% more than the current cattle herd. Imagine what could have been achieved with science based range management.

waiterich.bsky.social•77 days ago

Do you have links/sources for the stats in your above two posts?

dustinwing.bsky.social•77 days ago

Berners-Lee, et al, 2018

The second I calculated using estimated bison herd size of 60million prior to "The Great Slaughter" and what I remembered the USDA figure to be for cattle of 90millon head (currently 87.2million). I'm sure there are more precise calculations out there.

waiterich.bsky.social•77 days ago

Berners-Lee paper is helpful but it’s not 9747 kcal/capita/day of crops. 3812 is grass and other inedible plants and only 5935 is crops.

There will be 20% more people on the planet in 2050 so you are down to 4758 kcal/capita/day which sounds like a lot. But: 1/
https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.1525/elementa.310/112838/Current-global-food-production-is-sufficient-to

waiterich.bsky.social•77 days ago

25% of kcal are lost/wasted which reduces it to 3561 kcal/capita/day. We should reduce food waste, but global rate not going down yet.

Keeping proportion same, 1390 would feed animals, leaving only 2171 for humans, below the requirement. We should eat less meat but meat consumption still rising. 2/

tilmane.bsky.social•75 days ago

Thanks, very interesting read

russconser.com•76 days ago

Sorry to distract w minor N point. Your point sound. Most don't realize feedlots have lower footprint due to productivity. Most cattle GHG's upstream in cow-calf pastures (~80%). Regen upstream connected to better feeding likely better than either end member. Many ideas for "better industrial."

russconser.com•76 days ago

Agree. Too many caught up in a false binary choice. A few details off here (e.g. adding soil carbon does not require adding nitrogen), but gist and point is solid. Is possible to apply regenerative principles to industrial scale, and is the imperative IMO, too.

soilsteward.bsky.social•76 days ago

Russ, I think you make a great point. This piece confuses scale with practice and farms of “yesteryear” with regenerative farms. When in reality, most farms are operating in between the two extremes.

Also, no till and reduced till are conservation practices that are employed by all types of farms.

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•76 days ago

I haven't spent a lot of time on the N issue, but I've certainly read that soil N facilitates C sequestration - is that not the case?

EG: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969723040536

soilsteward.bsky.social•76 days ago

These are two different things. Adding N can increase SOM, which can increase SOC, that seems to be true.

But increasing SOM or increasing SOC does not require N as an external input to grow crops. Which is what the author states.

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•76 days ago

To be fair, he said "adding more nitrogen to soils" which can certainly be read as actually getting the N into the soil, not just fertilizing. And since I know @mikegrunwald.bsky.social I will bet that he understands all this, and that's what he meant.

soilsteward.bsky.social•76 days ago

That’s fair. But cover cropping and reduced or no till are basic conservation practices currently being utilized at industrial scales and would be key tools for making industrial ag “less messy”

soilsteward.bsky.social•76 days ago

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/NRCS%20and%20the%20Inflation%20Reduction%20Act%20Fiscal%20Year%202024.pdf

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•76 days ago

Yes, but the focus of the piece was mostly climate, and those tools - while excellent! - don't seem to sequester C.

russconser.com•76 days ago

Again - a small point on N, but a common myth still widely held even by researchers, so no big fault. Mostly a pet peeve as sets expectation of a required tradeoff that isn't' real. Central point of @mikegrunwald.bsky.social article is very good and welcome contribution to discussion.

mikegrunwald.bsky.social•76 days ago

Thanks! There’s some discussion of this here: https://www.wri.org/technical-perspectives/insider-further-explanation-potential-contribution-soil-carbon-sequestration-working - bottom line is there’s no magic N or C solution.

russconser.com•76 days ago

For example, in our AMP study in SE USA, Dr Samantha Mosier and team from CSU found both soil C and N stocks higher on AMP farms where no N was added: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301479721004710

russconser.com•76 days ago

One of those myths. N of course must come from somewhere to grow plants. But added synthetic N can lead to *decline* of soil carbon as seen in Univ Illinois "Morrow" plots (below). Best soil carbon growers often add no N (soil biology harvests). https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2134/jeq2007.0099

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•76 days ago

Yes, I get that. Fertilization with N doesn't necessary lead to soil N, and the part that doesn't get sequestered can increase CO2. But the part about soil N? Doesn't increased soil N increase C sequestration?

frankreif.bsky.social•76 days ago

George Monbiot did an excellent job in Regenesis describing this very topic. Have you read it?

tamarhaspel.bsky.social•76 days ago

Why yes, yes I have.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/07/31/regenesis-book-farming-environment-george-monbiot/&ved=2ahUKEwiFr8-cv6iKAxVEEVkFHQ1FA8kQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1vdwrScxDLfaycutyAQFcA

frankreif.bsky.social•76 days ago

Nice! I'm a vegan, but I don't count oysters/mussels :)

I had a similar impression to precision fermentation. Recently, there's been talk of artificial photosynthesis along the same lines. It's not my field, so I allowed myself to hope!

Why perennial grains haven't been developed is beyond me.

drkimm.bsky.social•74 days ago

if we change our diets to free range protein we can convert farmland to grassland.

laurentia.place•77 days ago

Great op-ed, but it doesn’t seem like all the gains in yields over the past 60 years have produced a well-fed society, here (in the U.S.) or elsewhere. What’s the point of reaching a projected calorie count if the approach leaves most people sick?

modmagus.bsky.social•76 days ago

That's why the article is fundamentally flawed.

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply