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I've never worked in the industry but I've been casually studying about it for the last 10 years or so. I'm well aware of the roots of our current agriculture system stemming from the dust bowl. I've spent a good amount of time trying to understand the history of the subsidies that shaped the Ag industry.

The fact of the matter is that our modern farming practices are way too short sighted. Topsoil erosion is the easiest thing to point to to identify that something needs to change. Things like monoculture issues, herbicide issues, pollinator health, are all things we should take more seriously but nothing is as concrete as the argument that we need to maintain our soil better.

Small scale forest farming practices have shown that there's alternative methods to produce high yields off the same land with better practices. There's a multitude of simple techniques like hugelkultur that seem like amazingly efficient ways to improve yields. Salatin's work has highlighted some potential ways to incorporate more biodiversity on the farm to maintain a healthier long term ecosystem. There's been meaningful traction with hydroponic and vertical farming practices.

I'm certainly no expert in what the actual solution is but whatever we're doing now is unsustainable. Much of it originates from the abused and malformed subsidies that over-emphasize food security over health or environmental issues. High Fructose corn syrup and ethanol being perfect examples of the stupidity of our current strategy around agricultural subsidies.

The government already pumps a tremendous amount of money into the agriculture industry. We should just do it more deliberately and thoughtfully.

Sure, prices or taxes will likely go up. By how much is the real debate but ultimately I'd say whatever the change is it's probably going to be worth it. Modern farming practices is right up there with climate change as an existential threat that we should not neglect and saddle future generations with.

I agree with much of what you're saying.

It feels like part of the problem is one of wording. 'Modern farming' sounds very positive -- who doesn't like modern things? I suggest that 'industrial farming' would be a better description, and invoke a more realistic mental image of what it involves.

Holmgren & Mollison formulated a more recent answer to the problems of sustainable food production than Haber & Bosch. So perhaps a system that doesn't rapidly render the land unproductive, and does not requiring an energy input roughly the same as the (food) energy output, could be considered more 'modern'.

Monocropping field corn to feed cattle has always stood out to me as a big one. Monocrops are inherently vulnerable, beef is a luxury good not a necessity, and the total input for a pound of beef is extremely high compared to most other food items. I haven't personally done the math, but I understand beef production enjoys significant subsidies at multiple steps.

Another topic, a common desire among ecologists is to incentivize more natural habitat at the margins to support native plants, insects, and birds. It's fairly simple, easy to measure the cost & implementation, and the goal would be it would ultimately be better for everyone, with healthy predator populations and so forth.

Ranching is way better for natural habitat than cropping. Cattle in the North American prairies graze on native grasses where on cultivated land (in Saskatchewan, for peas, wheat and canola) all native grasses are ripped up for crop and riparian and wetland areas are destroyed to increase acreage.

Yes, however last I heard, ranched cattle represents something like 1% of the beef market.

Exactly. Meat produced from grazing animals is not neccesarily a bad thing -- many fields are simply not suited for farming, and grazing animals may be able to produce more food per square metre compared to withering crops.

Problem is that most meat simply isn't produced that way.

Edit: just wanted to add, the vast majority of all corn grown in the US is field corn for cattle, we're not talking some small portion of US agriculture.

Indeed--for example around 70% of the corn grown in Illinois, one of the top corn-producing states, goes directly to Illinois hogs.

>Until you've seen what pests can do to a field that hasn't been treated with fertilizer or say herbicide, its really hard to understand why they get used. It is the difference between having a crop to sell, and going out of business and selling off your farm.

In my meager attempts at a backyard garden, I have lost entire "crops" of vegetables due to insects. From the slugs eating the young/new growth, grasshoppers eating the leafy plants, birds/insects eating the fruit, and just neighborhood stray cats using the loose soil as litter box digging up the plants. Then there's the squirrels and possums or raccoons that come along digging up plants looking for food. I just want to nuke the whole place from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

With all of that, it's just a hobby to "keep me off the streets", but damn those pesky pests. I have often said that I'm really lucky/thankful that my livelihood does not depend on me being able to successfully grow food. Oh, and before you get to the stage of pests, it has to rain just the right amount. Not enough, and nothing grows. Too much, and everything drowns and rots. None of these things are in the farmer's control.

Farmers irrigate heavily. That's why groundwater is in crisis around the globe.

On average, Dutch farmers tend to use the least water per mass of product sold.

Depends strongly on location. In the western US farmers irrigate heavily. The eastern US doesn't irrigate at all.

Farmers who irrigate are very concerned about ground water because they know when it is gone so is their profits.

> It is the difference between having a crop to sell, and going out of business and selling off your farm.

Thinking outside of the box, I think this is the problem we should aim to fix.

A simple out of the box solution is intercropping. The loss of a single crop in a multi-crop system is not a ruinous loss compared to monocropping. It also reduces the requirements for pesticides and fertilizers if done well.

Yep. See Sepp Holzer's mountain farm for an egregious example of this.

I'm not a native speaker, but generally "egregious" means "particularly bad", is that what you meant?

Is this solution compatible with contemporary mechanized agriculture ? Seeding, spraying, harvesting by machines ?

Otherwise, it's like finding an automobile manufacturing improvement that can only be used with hand assembly. Besides Rolls-Royce, it won't help anyone.

Yes, depending on the particular intercrop. It's an area that could benefit from the application of robotics.

Somewhat, but 180 bushels of corn at $3.50/bushel is worth more than 60 bushels soybeans at $10/bushel. Farmers only grow soybeans because they are a source of fertilizer for their corn and so it works out in the long run.

This is why farmers spend so much money on insurance.

I’m no subject matter expert, but I think what brd was saying is that farm subsidies are hugely distorting to the agricultural commodities market, and that leads to inefficient capital and resource allocation, which in turn causes misalignments between overall consumer wealfare beyond monitary means and spills over to hurting the health of the general public.

How much of this is true I do not know, but based on economic theory such negative externalities are possible.

You can’t ignore at the fact that the US is much more libertarian than Canada and the EU when it comes to business regulations. And we all know what happens when governments are too business friendly and not addressing market failures or safeguarding public interest.

Ask yourself this, what percentage of your operational best practices are invented/peddled by the industry vs truly independent research?

Canada, EU and the U.S. all have massive agriculture subsidies. This article was actually about Canada, you realize?

The EU subsidies for Iberian fisherman to allow them to catch and catch regardless of economics have been the prime mover in destroying fisheries up and down the North American and African coasts. It was, and is, one of the worst environmental crimes of the last century, perhaps only matched by the EU subsidies for diesel vehicles that have contributed so much to climate change and point-source pollution.

> what percentage of your operational best practices are invented/peddled by the industry vs truly independent research?

It would be helpful to define “independent” because there is an “industry” of anti-GMO advocates that produce research to support their views and, compared to a Cargill-sponsored study, they’d be viewed as “independent.”

I think we ascribe too much credibility to non-profit corporations. As an example, we routinely dismiss an Exxon climate study as “biased” or “corrupt” but a Greenpeace study is somehow more noble or accurate? Greenpeace lives and dies from donations — donations that would disappear if the threats they purport to care about are diminished. Greenpeace type organizations have just as much at relative stake as “industry” and thus studies they sponsor ought to be held to similar levels of skepticism as “industry” studies. Climate change is an industry with just as much as stake as fossil fuels. Al Gore, as an example, became a billionaire from the climate change issue. It would be difficult to argue that research promoted by a guy like him are independent considering he has gotten ultra wealthy from peddling climate alarmism just as Exxon gets rich from promoting studies rife with skepticism. Truly independent studies are extremely rare — everyone has an agenda.

We don’t necessarily need more independent studies because even independent studies are funded by someone with an agenda, what we need are more reproducible studies that can be analyzed objectively. A reproducible Exxon study is more valid than an in-reproducible study from the Sierra Club (and vice-versa

The problem is that an Cargill study is immediately dismissed as corrupt, but some non-profit study is given the benefit of the doubt.. I propose that all studies should be viewed with skepticism until their results are reproduced and corroborated.

I completely agree that the reality is far more nuanced.

Have you questioned your assumptions yourself that food cost has to go up using alternative approaches? There is research out there painting a different picture[1].

[1] https://rodaleinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/RI-FST-Brochu...

> As someone that grew up on a farm, can you explain why?

One reason is sheer hypocrisy of the country to force developing or under-developed countries to stop subsidizing _their own_ farming.