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re: Many food and agricultural varieties going "extinct"?
Posted on 4/2/14 at 9:41 am to LSUballs
Posted on 4/2/14 at 9:41 am to LSUballs
The notion that we've outgrown our ability to produce quality food is simply false. I can go on and on, but I'll only attempt to make a few points.
1.) Only 2-3% of US farmland is growing fruits and vegetables; and about 60% is growing commodity crops. Much of the later is animal feed, which is a poor substitute for ruminants. It would be more efficient to simply let grazing animals graze, instead of using a ton of synthetic nitrogen to fertilize commodity crops and then shipping them to feed lots.
2.) Quality farmland and pasture is being used, increasingly, to build Mcmansions.
3.) Who even attempts to grown food anymore? Sadly few people. Instead, people obsess over lawns and flower beds. If the average household just planted some lettuce, etc think of how far we could stretch the food supply. As recent as WW2 a great deal of produce was produced in home/community gardens. Now we have huge sections of quality land producing nothing. This was once considered a sin in America, akin to draft-dodging.
There are a ton of options to produce enough quality food. But when we accept the premise that we are supposed to rely on mass agriculture produced 1000's of miles away, we create our own fate.
Rant ended. TLDR.
1.) Only 2-3% of US farmland is growing fruits and vegetables; and about 60% is growing commodity crops. Much of the later is animal feed, which is a poor substitute for ruminants. It would be more efficient to simply let grazing animals graze, instead of using a ton of synthetic nitrogen to fertilize commodity crops and then shipping them to feed lots.
2.) Quality farmland and pasture is being used, increasingly, to build Mcmansions.
3.) Who even attempts to grown food anymore? Sadly few people. Instead, people obsess over lawns and flower beds. If the average household just planted some lettuce, etc think of how far we could stretch the food supply. As recent as WW2 a great deal of produce was produced in home/community gardens. Now we have huge sections of quality land producing nothing. This was once considered a sin in America, akin to draft-dodging.
There are a ton of options to produce enough quality food. But when we accept the premise that we are supposed to rely on mass agriculture produced 1000's of miles away, we create our own fate.
Rant ended. TLDR.
Posted on 4/2/14 at 9:45 am to LSUfan20005
quote:
Who even attempts to grown food anymore?
Posted on 4/2/14 at 10:10 am to LSUfan20005
quote:
Rant ended. TLDR.
Far from it. Rant at will. Excellent points, and I couldn't agree more. When we talk of the dependent classes, it's actually what America has become over the short years since this corporate mindset has taken over our food. I'm probably on the tail end of the years where gardening and buying local product was more the norm than the exception, so I understand how those in their 30's and under, or aren't involved in localized small sustainable farms and techniques as old as the hills themselves may have difficulty in relating to this, but what you're saying is fact. And, I can't help but be very uneasy in being so joined at the hip to outside sources that we put all our eggs in one basket and are a serious drought or disease away from being taken out..
Posted on 4/2/14 at 10:40 am to LSUfan20005
quote:
There are a ton of options to produce enough quality food
Who determines what are "quality" foods?
Posted on 4/2/14 at 11:32 am to LSUfan20005
quote:
Rant ended. TLDR.
Here's is another factoid. The majority of fertile topsoil in the world is located in North America. It's because Asia and Europe were tilling their soil for 1,000s of years while the American Indians were not.
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