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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

The detailed descriptions of the process in this article make for a sort of fascinating train wreck. On the one hand, the sheer scale of the operation is impressive. On the other hand, it seems to have this strange air of shoddiness. When I think of factory farming, I tend to think of a future age of hyperefficient farming, with cows milked by machines and everything precisely regulated. But this seems more like an age of very dense farming that is held together with duct tape and rusting bailing wire, not much of a sci-fi vision. I mean, huge lagoons of pig excrement with trucks falling into them?

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Absolutely. I think forcing these factory farms into more wholesome practices might accomplish a few things:

1) More research into sustainable farming techniques 2) More research into automation that makes these sustainable techniques feasible at a market cost

Unfortunately, the companies that can afford to do that research are too busy using their money to genetically modify their crops and pump their livestock full of drugs.

If the government forced these guys to cut back through sanctions, the cheapest food might not be the most unhealthy anymore. Issues of environmental and public health concerns are one area where I actually agree with stronger governmental powers vs corporations - people won't vote with the dollars because it's a) necessary to live and b) they usually live so far away from the heinous conditions that they don't even know about it - or worse, don't care.

"Forced through sanctions" sounds pretty harsh when all the government would have to do to seriously change factory farming practices is reduce the subsidies on their inputs.

I'm not sure it's possible for factory farms to change, especially when raising animals. If you talk to someone who raises animals in a sustainable way (if you don't personally know a farmer, read Joel Salatin), they will tell you there is absolutely an upper limit to what can be produced sustainably. I purchase all of the meat my family eats from a local farmer (who only sells directly to consumers) and he said while he could easily double the number of customers, he wouldn't be able to maintain the same practices (this includes everything to what the animals eat--grass only in the case of ruminants--to where the animals actually lived--all are pastured in the style popularized by Salatin).

I could be old-fashioned and myopic, though. Maybe someone can figure out a way to have the best of both worlds.

Regarding cost, I no longer worry about the amount of money my family spends on groceries. Yes, we spend $5/pound for beef, and $2.50/pound for chicken, but this is stuff we are putting in our bodies--it's what keeps us alive. I feel that price shouldn't be the driving factor in what we eat.

You are forgetting the huge subsidies that further hide the real cost of meat from the consumer.

Raising animals is such an inefficiant way to farm food, people seldom question this. Unless you can't use the land for anything else. There simply isn't enough land to go around.

Agreed, and such subsidies tend to prop up factory farming operations, not small operations. In fact, the government makes life quite difficult for small farmers (again, read Salatin).

I know this is the situation in some fertile & densely populated countries, such as the Netherlands.

In other places, such as here in Austria for example, nobody is going to use the alpine pastures that cows graze on for growing anything else.

I am pretty sure it is the same in Switzerland and Bavaria, and probably other mountainous regions such as in Japan and Greece (although the grazing livestock in these places might not be cattle).

Said alpine pastures don't allow for a large quantity of cows, though.

And you Austrians really have to care for the cows in winter (prepare some sheltered and warm barns, with feed - I've been there, and was surprised at how easy we Uruguayans have it with our cows)

If he could easily double the number of customers, it means the current price is below equilibrium.

Why doesn't he charge more?

I think it goes beyond pure numbers when dealing with a small business. There are personal relationships at stake. Overestimating the price risks alienating regular customers and that could kill a small business.

That train wreck has already happened to North Carolina once. Hurricane Floyd. The great pig feces flood. Only cat 2 winds but 20 inches of rain.

    *  51 storm-related deaths in North Carolina, 90 on the East Coast, making this the deadliest storm sinceHurricane Agnes in 1972, where 122 died.

    * 30,500 hogs, 2,000 cattle, 250 horses, 2.1 million chickens, and 737,000 turkeys lost in North Carolina.

    * Four hog waste lagoons burst and 47 overflowed; 24 water treatment plants flooded.

    * Over 7,000 homes were destroyed; 17,000 rendered uninhabitable, and at least 10,000 people were displaced in NC alone. Almost 70,000 people in the state applied for emergency assistance.

    * Overall damage in NC exceeded six billion dollars, making it NC's most costly natural disaster ever, exceeding Hurricane Fran in 1997. New Jersey also listed Floyd as its worst natural disaster.

    * Thirty-seven counties in eastern NC with a combined area of 18,000 square miles (an area twice the size of Vermont) flooded.

    * Ten states were declared disaster areas...."

http://www.cfspress.com/overwhelmedbyfloyd.htm

Written mostly based on some old research gathered from this piece (also based on the parent article):

"A Few Good Reasons to Not Partake of the Swine": http://indiejade.livejournal.com/23835.html

Ergo: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124822

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