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Comment by TN1ck | Hacker News Reader

> While I wish organically growing food and conservation was the answer, its unfortunately not.

I recently had a lengthy discussion with some friends about their support of a solidary organic farm, where you pay a flat fee per month and get a box of whatever they have in that week. It's really hard for most people to understand that things like these are not sustainable and that it's purely a luxury product. Terms like "organic", "no GMO", "local" sound sustainable as you imagine going back to "the good old days", but it's just impossible to feed the world. Even after I quoted some facts about the needed land usage for organic, it was not really possible to convince them, that it's not sustainable.

If anybody has some good articles / studies about sustainable farming for the future, I would love to read them.

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I think there are confused definitions for "sustainable."

There's "sustains the land," which is food that can be grown this way indefinitely, which is what most people mean when they say "sustainable agriculture." To be more specific, "meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs."

You're saying sustainable as in "can sustain the future diets of 10 billion people."

They don't map 1:1.

TBH I think you're right. "Sustainable agriculture" isn't scalable to 2050 populations.

Cuba has already shown the World the way forward with their Green Revolution.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-good-l...

It absolutely does. Do not bet against agriculture innovation. We have a comfortable head start and plenty in the pipe. The problem isn't exactly a secret. Multiple decade research projects focus on this and only this problem. We'll be okay (and sustainable too boot).

You are right, I was focused on the sustainability to feed all the people with that method. From the comments here it seems I was a bit too pessimistic and that there are some working examples, pretty exciting! Probably have to get back to my friends, after I looked through the material.

The organic movement doesn't have to end with the whole world eating certified organic food to be successful. It can still serve as a standard bearer, leading a charge on a different way to do things- and industrial agriculture can take up some of its best ideas.

There aren't any articles I can point you to, but I live in Portland, Ore., and between here and Vancouver and Camas, WA, there are a number of collectives that are doing exactly this. They don't publicize, it is word of mouth. They primarily focus on raising chickens and pigs, and butchering them for the members. All members participate somehow. Some members host the animals, others who cannot, contribute for feed and vet bills or participate in the slaughter days since it is a lot of work a few times a year.

They are successful but are not capable of replacing 100% of the grocery needs. And vegetables only appear in the summer and can be subject to infestations or random die offs... although there is significant canning that takes place throughout the summer for the winter months. Growing a diverse amount vegetables to support 25-50 people is surprisingly more complex than raising livestock (unless you just want to eat lots of zucchini and squash ;-).

However, there are many well documented small co-ops in Portland that I can refer you to if you want to ask them questions. These are very small farms, and in many cases people buy their shares of well in advance, and some have even become store-fronts rather than pickups.

Here are examples of places within a 15 minute drive of where I live:

When I used to eat meat I would buy half a cow with some friends friends. You could go visit the cow throughout the year:

https://www.foodbevg.com/US/Scappoose/393417489771/All-Natur...

This place exploded in popularity in the past 7 years. It used to be two guys and you would order chickens months in advance and pick them up a day after the slaughter, now I can just walk into their store and they have a growing staff:

https://www.marionacres.com/order

Similarly:

https://www.kookoolanfarms.com/

This dairy was a kickstarter, and I get milk, cream, and eggs from them year round, its fantastic.

http://schochfamilyfarm.com/

Lastly, Sauvie Island just outside portland has an enormous farm community where half of the year one can purchase all manner of fruits vegetables through multiple farmers market stands.

Again though: it is only for part of the year, year round veggies are damn hard without large industrial apparatus. Unless you like pickled things.

It can be done, but it takes a village. Seriously.

Oh, I forgot to mention one other weird thing: this isn't just liberals. There is a frightening large contingency of white supremacists who are into this, and a few showed up at Portland farmers market until they were outed. Regardless of how you feel about having racist nationalists selling next to hippies, self-sufficiency is quite a thing up here.

This non-american finds it amusing that the only two categories of people in Portland are liberals and white supremacists.

Hah! No, it's not. I was playing on stereotypes. There is a stereotype that local farmers-markets are for "liberal hippie" people (see: the television sitcom "Portlandia").

Based on my travels to other countries, local farmers markets are simply called "markets" and there is nothing unusual about them. In the USA, small local markets and co-ops are a fringe thing because we are fed almost entirely by industrial farming through vast supply chains that terminate at enormous multi-purpose grocery stores.

I may have a few facts wrong, but this consolidation started after WWII, and local food co-ops were considered liberal operations because it was "liberal hippies" who were opposed to the industrialization of food.

Seeing extremely far right subsets embracing what has generally been considered far left behavior is just amusing.

Hope this clarifies!

This comment made me realize the original Portlandia episode with Colin the Chicken is a decade old already.

Surprising to me that year-round veggies is so hard even with modern methods/greenhouses.

> Surprising to me that year-round veggies is so hard even with modern methods/greenhouses.

You are correct: it is not so hard with modern methods, but none of the small communities I know of (15-50 people) have invested in a greenhouse of sufficient size. And even the local farms here don't have greenhouses, not that I am aware of. That seems odd to me, perhaps I am missing something because that seems unlikely now that I think about it...

Having seen the transformation of Medford/Ashland to MJ and hemp greenhouses I'd think at least some people would be as fanatical about their vegetables/fruits.

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