The Next American Farm Bust Is Upon Us | Hacker News Reader

The Next American Farm Bust Is Upon Us

wsj.com

Non paywall version of this article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-next-american-fa...

Whatever else about paywalls, they don't work well for a social news site. ...oh and thanks :)

The economics of farming now suggests to me to go smaller..to control costs. [..]“You keep pinching and pinching and pretty soon there’s nothing left to pinch,” said Craig Scott, a fifth-generation farmer in this Western Kansas town. [...] this is why farm's have to become smaller and diverse. Focus on self sufficiency..and not export.

The only way that can work is if you switch to a niche market (organics, fad produce) with higher margins. When those cease to be niche the margins shrink and you have to find something else to grow. Much easier to just scale up and make the difference in volume.

I don't think it works like that.

Agriculture can't just un-commodify itself. A large portion of agricultural output is always going to be commodity-market goods. Even on a local scale, this lends to price volatility. Global prices will always have an effect, but even if they didn't farming would still be risky.

It's worthwhile looking at Cuba as a model. I am not saying that we should mimic their model nor am I claiming that they enjoyed complete and total sufficiency, but there is a certain lesson there about sustainable systems.

Also..if we are to prepare to colonize space or think about creating closed loop living systems, we will have to start thinking about those models anyways.

could you provide the source for the info about Cuba?

so far, I have had a strong impression agriculture is not doing well there.

My impression is based purely on surprisingly bad food served in all-inclusive Cuban hotels. Normally, all-inclusive hotel food should attract tourists not scare them away. Even local fruits are not good/ripe not mentioning main dishes - it's not sophisticated and more on repetitive side.

Well..I am not sure Cuba is terribly effective with sustainability but there was some pressure to be sustainable and self contained. We could certainly do better if forced to be under such constrained circumstances.

we might end up in the same situation as Cuba...without the ability to import food or have unfettered access to resources and fossil fuel and cheap energy. Not to mention unrealistic demand for food and not enough human labour force or expertise. What then?

We have to automate agriculture. But modern automation should veer in a slightly different direction to minimize and mitigate invisible environmental damage. But we have to do

It's a little bit of bizarro world right now re how we tackle our problems. Somehow the solutions to ag problems only seems to compound it higher.

What got me thinking about Cuba: http://theconversation.com/cubas-sustainable-agriculture-at-...

I must stress that..I do not think we must follow cuba's footsteps but we must study it as a cautionary tale but with a smattering of hope and use our existing system in an advantageous way.

True. Many grains, oil etc have to be processed before it reaches consumers. However, many agricultural products can be sold direct to consumer that simply doesn't justify the carbon footprint. We have to consider alfalfa..corn grown for hogs etc. proper stewardship of land and considering/acknowledging the labour problem would go a long way in assessing the true nature of our ag situation.

anyone have the article without the paywall?

Click the "Web" link, then copy and paste it into an incognito window or private browsing tab (anything without the same cookie session), click the first link on google.

You also need to enable the referer header, if you've disabled transmitting that.

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