As someone who lived with actual subsistance farmers for a couple years, I have to roll my eyes at survivalists and other farm romanticizers who blithely talk about "we'll grow our own food!" as if that were the easier option than keeping our society's ship afloat.
Farming to feed yourself is hard. Really hard. Y'all have no idea.
@alexwild@nytpu People tend to have a weirdly hard time actually understanding the labor involved in many things and the benefits coordination & cooperation have.
There isn't actually that much of an excuse either in this case, because farming is probably one of the most documented examples as far as that goes.
It's a bit of a sleight of hand, that argument. It paints small scale farmers as naive nancies who have no grasp on reality outside of their chai latte. The reality is that large scale agribusiness does not work. It wastes fossil fuels and fertilizer, and requires big industrial machinery and trucking fleets, for no purpose other than to concentrate wealth. What we should be focusing on is the farm romanticizers who talk about permaculture and community gardens, and how to keep the means of production (of food) in the hands of the people actually eating the food. There's really important work being done here, and people who farm to feed themselves are the ignorant ones, struggling when they could look into all of human history and see us farming to feed ourselves together. We already do grow our own food. All of humanity does. The question is how to do it?
Moving away from massive farming oligarchies doesn't mean putting on leopard skins and going roaming around the grasslands with clubs.
It's interesting to me that people keep citing the Dust Bowl.
The Great Plains had some of the absolute best, richest topsoil on the planet. The Dust was that very topsoil blowing away because people had been degrading it instead of keeping it healthy.
A huge number of farmers all over the world throughout history have been using methods that make things much harder than they need to be in the long run.
Has, not had. They've since figured out how to not degrade their topsoil as badly, and to grow windbreaks. The drought that caused the Dust Bowl isn't something we can really deal with though. The way aquifers in the USA are being drained... it's worrying.
The tallgrass prairie probably dealt with plenty of droughts like that one over the millennia, without blowing away.
Methods have improved somewhat but soil science is still badly neglected by the agricultural industry in favor of outdated methods that keep us dependent on fertilizers etc that favor the interests of entrenched corporations. Very worrying-- we can do MUCH better.
As for the aquifers-- soil, again. Degraded soil doesn't store water. The chemical fertilizers are still running off and contaminating waterways, creating dead zones in the oceans instead of staying put where they're needed. And even off the farms, the whole landscape is degraded. Grazers once regulated by predators now destroy riperian zones, then there's the elimination of millions of beavers, the destruction of wetlands, all greatly impacting the landscape's ability to absorb rainfall and replenish groundwater.
We need major soil-building projects and beaver re-introduction across very large areas. It's amazing how fast degraded land can be turned green again with the right help.
@alexwild Everyone should experience growing some of their own food. If they realized how much work it is, maybe they would value food more and be willing to pay a decent amount for it, which is a real issue here in Germany. People are willing to pay for all sorts of nonsense, but God help you if you suggest that they spend more on food.
@Rjdlandscapes@alexwild it wasn’t even a storm that defeated me, it was squirrels taking single bites out of every single bit of produce that I grew. Furthermore I know I can’t live on zucchini and watermelon, and it would be ridiculous for me to pretend that I could.
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