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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Seems some small farmers disagree with your "facts" 1&2:

Joel Salatin of polyface farms makes more than his neighbors (particularly on a per acre basis) by throwing away "big agribusiness" truisms like single purpose machinery, monocultures, and chemical stimulants for the land. He uses symbiosis instead, creates a premium product that his customers are willing to pay a premium for, all without subsidization (iirc).

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There is a small market for specialization; my parents did it well. But the bulk of food comes from the farm rmason is talking about, the massive amounts of grain, vegetables, and meat that feeds America. The plural of anecdote isn't data.

Also, dont believe that just because lots of people are fed by the kind of farming that rmason talks about that the "older" ways are no viable. Supposedly the old ways were far more resource efficient in every variable except human time.

The plural of snark isn't intelligence, either.

If your parent's post ruffled your snark-feathers, your sensibilities may be... overly sensitive.

You can not feed a nation on "a premium product" that you have to "pay a premium for"

Which is not to say I have any strong investment in the belief that current large scale farming is optimal however I'm poor but inconveniently need food from time to time, so unfortunately I've gotta throw my weight in with the "what ever gets me rock bottom grains and legumes" camp.

We are already paying a premium for subsidized food. From what I understand Big agri is very subsidized and smaller producers are not. That means a portion of the price premium (the spread) is not a real production cost, but just a lack of subsidies that competitors receive.

If BigAgriBusinesA receives more $ (on a per unit produced basis) than SmallAgriBusinessB , then there is a price spread that is not due to efficiency, but due to meddling by the gov't in the market.

Also, if premium food does in fact lead to premium health, then one might argue its cheaper to eat premium food than the total bill of cheaper food + additional health costs. This may not work for organic kale vs reg kale, but just might for potato chips vs reg kale.

"You can not feed a nation on "a premium product" that you have to "pay a premium for""

Yes you can. You just need fewer people to feed.

Well that's easy then. What says we have to feed everyone?

Monsanto is working on that with their GM program.

https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+sterilization

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2249_kissinger_food.ht...

You are making an emotional and anti-science argument. Even having to quote from a Lyndon LaRouche website.

Here's a few articles that counter your argument:

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/bad-s...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

People have done seed breeding since the days of Mendel. The only difference today is that we have better tools.

I know. We have excellent tools. And Monsanto is using them to create corn that sterilizes humans.

It's not emotional or anti-science. It's just the cold hard truth.

https://www.google.com/search?q=monsanto+corn+sterilizes+peo...

It is patently impossible to discuss social engineering or the automation of a society, i.e., the engineering of social automation systems (silent weapons) on a national or worldwide scale without implying extensive objectives of social control and destruction of human life, i.e., slavery and genocide.

The solution of today's problems requires an approach which is ruthlessly candid, with no agonizing over religious, moral or cultural values.

Not to nitpick but artificial selection in plants started a lot earlier than Mendel[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture#Developm...

You have no idea how comforting it is to see a Google search link that doesn't have a bunch bullshit parameters at the end of it.

A typical dryland farmer can produce a bushel of wheat (60 pounds) for less than $3/bushel, assuming typical weather. That's all that 99% of consumers care about. Everything else is niche.

Universities are working hard to bring these techniques to the mass-market farmers. GPS-enabled equipment has already let farmers massively reduce the amount of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers they use. Machine vision technology shows great promise in bringing the rest.

By my math, that comes out to a nickle a pound. Great that we can be that efficient, but it seems to me there should be a fair number of people who are rich enough and picky enough that they would be willing to pay a little extra for a premium product.

Of course there are. It's called "Whole Foods Market".

The sad humor is the real profit is to be had when you can sell people nickle-a-pound wheat, and make them think it's premium product.

Consumers in the first world wouldn't care if they're paying 5 cents or 6 cents for a pound of wheat. But consumers don't buy wheat. They buy sandwhiches from companies who buy bread who buy from companies that make flour from wheat they buy from grain companies who buy wheat from flours. All those companies in the chain care greatly about the cost of product they buy.

His yields are also almost certainly less than his neighbors, as well. I love what Salatin is doing, but there are tradeoffs, one being that it probably doesn't scale that well.

There's a premium market for almost anything, and it almost always is an exception to whatever runs the non-premium side of the market. TBH I don't think this has any effect on what the root comment said.

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