I think the real answer is to use farming practices that require less external inputs like chemical fertilizers. No till methods of farming may not scale to the same level of production, but there is a lot of waste in our existing system because of the way food is centrally distributed. More small scale local farms producing food stuffs for their own communities and less top down management (with less federal subsidies incentivizing bad practices) is probably the best course forward. It's probably also the exact opposite of the approach we'll actually take.

@thatguyoverthere @roboneko @MV2019 @bonifartius

Regionality does not seem to influence. Swiss production goes overall into Swiss stomachs (except cheese) but waste is as big as in the US...

Regionality alone wouldn't solve it. Another problem is subsidies allowing unprofitable practices to seem profitable

@thatguyoverthere @roboneko @MV2019 @bonifartius

Look at sugarbeets. Highly subsidized. Not so much waste in caloric terms.

Some unsubsidized produce has 50% waste...

subsidized sugar beet is a gmo crop with glysophate tolerance programmed in. Perhaps this reduces waste, but at what cost? Glysophate destroys the gut flora which are largely responsible for human immunity so in spite of it being labeled safe for use in food destined for human consumption I tend to try and avoid it.

Subsidies also result in people being told to destroy crops to help control prices. We literally pay people not to farm sometimes and call it farming subsidies.

@thatguyoverthere @roboneko @MV2019 @bonifartius
Another thing the screamers and moaners could change when they are the gov. Subsidies for vegetables instead of staples.

Personally I'd rather be able to choose which farms I support instead of having the government do it for me. If we look at vegetables for example. I prefer heirlooms in a lot of cases, but these are not the bulk of what you will find on the shelves because when you scale up all of a sudden you're picking the fruits based on shape and color consistency more than flavor and nutritional profile. Sure there will be a few heirloom varieties at some higher end stores, but if the government is going to subsidize tomatoes I suspect they will choose a few popular varieties and go all in just like they do with everything else.

At the end of the day, I think taking money from everybody and giving it to government approved businesses is wrong. It's market manipulation.

Everyone needs to eat. We're all going to subsidize farms on our own. I see no reason government needs to be involved at all. I think centralization creates other problems too like increasing risks from systemic breakdown leading widespread famine.

Feed Lots are far harsher on the environment then pasture raised cattle that are regularly rotated into new pasture, but you can't scale that to 10s of thousands of cattle in a single place very well. Sadly when you have 50k cattle on the wrong feed on a hot day you end up with situations like what we saw this month with 10k cattle dying in a single day. Think of how many people those 10k cattle could have fed. Instead it will just get buried and breakdown creating a lot of methane in the process.

I also don't see why anyone should have to go become a bureaucrat themselves in order to have the state stopping pulling dollars out of their pocket against their will.

@thatguyoverthere @roboneko @MV2019 @bonifartius

US Govs money is not your money. They print!

Just buy whatever you want. The market works.

Example: prospecierara.ch

If only printing had no effect on everyone else ☁️
Unfortunately every time the expand the money supply the money I have is worth less, and ultimately since it's the bank that's printing not the government it's a loan which they have no way to repay. At that point the money I pay in taxes is used to pay the debt they are building in my name.

I do buy whatever I want. I also grow a lot of my own food. That doesn't mean that subsidies and burdensome regulations don't harm the market.

@thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @CapitalB @bonifartius subsidies are complicated. you don't want volatile food prices yet demand and other factors are inevitably going to fluctuate. and crops have a lot of lag time

it's not good if prices collapse, places go out of business or switch to something else, and then the next year demand returns and prices skyrocket

so if your goal is to avoid that then some sort of subsidy scheme makes sense. doesn't mean current ones are necessarily run as well as they could be. and I realize they come out of your taxes and that's objectionable but stability is rather the whole point of having a government in the first place so at least personally I'm not bothered by it

@roboneko @thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @bonifartius
No it is simple

No corn subs
Less wheat subs
More alt grain subs
More vegetable subs

Bam 50% more healthy

@CapitalB @thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @bonifartius wonder what caloric density versus price looks like. although even if it cost twice as much or more it's difficult to see how we wouldn't come out ahead in the end once healthcare stuff was accounted for

btw are potatoes subsidized in the US or are they just that ridiculously cheap on their own?

Yes we do have potato subsidies in the US.

Food quality is kind of hard to objectively quantify since some of the attributes we use to consider quality are subjective (flavor, appearance, availability, etc). I think we should look at more than just calories when comparing though. It's possible (perhaps even likely) some of the staple crops we subsidize have higher caloric content, but calories doesn't account for the quality of nutrition. You have the macro nutrient profile (fat / carb / protein) and the micro nutrient profile (vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, etc) to consider.

@thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @CapitalB @bonifartius I didn't mean to imply that calories are a good metric for overall quality. vegetable subsidies came up and obviously that would be a win for health (and probably also flavor & etc). I just wonder how overall costs would compare. among other things, caloric density and spoilage come to mind. in terms of just "not starving" corn and potatoes are going to be really hard to beat cost wise

but being in the US I don't actually know how the real costs of any of it would compare in the absence of subsidies

My problem with the current paradigm has multiple facets. On the one hand I am unconvinced that central planning can be done well on such a large scale. I think if individual states or localities wanted to work out a scheme where farmers could receive a stipend to help from the local coffers that'd be something worth discussing.

I think subsidies remove competition for the recipients while creating an uneven competitive edge against non-subsidized farmers. I think in the US at least we have big business having their seeds and protocols subsidized which may produce more volume, but the quality is questionable.

I think subsidies allow farms to grow beyond their means. This results in larger businesses that fall harder when they fail, and I think it creates bottle necks where waste can be generated.

@thatguyoverthere @roboneko @MV2019 @bonifartius gmo?

Not here XD

@thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @CapitalB @bonifartius isn't glycophosphate (and everything else) removed by the refining process? or are sugar beets used for stuff other than refined sugar as well?

Unsure but wrt to sugar it's likely the refining process does remove it. Aside from our own consumption I don't think these chemicals are good for the earth either, but yeah with sugar we probably are not consuming it. They use it on other crops too, and the is government is fine with it regardless of whether it will be refined out or not.

@thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @CapitalB @bonifartius yeah some of the fruits worry me in terms of how much of various pesticides they might be retaining

yeah and the sad thing is that the government has a tendency to accept a product as "safe" without doing adequate testing.

"Waste" is a misleading term. Food that doesn't go into human stomachs doesn't just disappear, it normally gets used as animal feed or composted and fed back into the system. If there were no waste all of a sudden every livestock industry would be in trouble.

Also a certain amount of waste just isn't avoidable. Some products spoil easily and if you want them in your supermarket then you have to accept the cost of the ones that didn't end up in your basket.

sometimes waste can be reclaimed, but in a lot of cases it is not. Meat production often has bottlenecks that result in a lot of animals being culled and not added to the food supply. Disease, rot, and contamination also prevent food waste from being usable in a lot of cases. These things would happen in a smaller scale production system, but the impact would be far less reaching.

@Eiregoat @MV2019 @thatguyoverthere @bonifartius @roboneko
Animal products get incinerated bc of Prions...

That already exists: Organic farms usually do that kind of thing (and their produce costs 2-3 times the price).

Thing is, while there is a niche market for that most people have made it clear they don't care and/or can't afford it. I don't see why governments should be forcing them to triple part of their budget.

The "inflated" price is actually not "inflated" so much as "not subsidized". I don't know that people have "made it clear" they would prefer lower quality food stuffs. It's more like, the market has been manipulated and the real cost of some foods is obfuscated away. It will come back in taxes, environmental stress, and poor nutrition/health issues.

If you're arguing for ditching subsidies then you won't find any argument here. That said, organic farms are always going to be much less efficient than the big boys. That's just how it is.

I guess it's a question of what efficiency we're tuning for. I think these large farms are not sustainable for a number of reasons, and I think the subsidies allow those unsustainable practices to appear profitable. That is basically my argument. I don't think subsidies are a good thing on multiple levels. I think if someone wants to run a large high volume farm without getting the losses socialized that's fine, but they should be made to stand on their own.

@Eiregoat
idk if the big bois are terrible effective without being subsidized. guess they (or any farm) would be more effective in the long run without the whole patented-seeds/fertilizer/pesticide racket. also, if your soil is fucked because of 10 years corn&pesticides, it doesn't get magically unfucked over night and is effectively lost, requiring more fertilizer etc. those things need to be priced in, but are funded by subsidies e.g. my tax € at work.
@roboneko @thatguyoverthere @MV2019@freeatlantis.com

Again, fuck subsidies, but I don't think subsidies account for a 100-200% price difference.

@Eiregoat
i venture the guess that the "deplete the soil" approach isn't priced in correctly which will fuck everyone e.g. if (or once) fertilizer gets really scarce.

long term effects are never priced in for anything, especially in subsidized industries.
@roboneko @thatguyoverthere @MV2019@freeatlantis.com

@thatguyoverthere @MV2019 @Eiregoat @bonifartius the low quality worries me. particularly when subsidized stuff ends up in snack foods so those fairly unhealthy products are essentially being subsidized

I'm in favor of lowering the cost of basic necessities though. that stuff already isn't taxed (at least the places I've lived). I'd rather people didn't need to worry about affording thing like food

it's bothersome that in a sense we're inflicting poor health on them due to seemingly not fully thinking out the consequences of the subsidies

The low quality is something that bothers me too, especially since a lot of that snack food ends up in kids bellies. I am definitely in favor of lowing the cost of basic necessities. I guess I question whether or not the government succeeds in doing that. We get the impression they do because we have a lot of "cheap" stuff to choose from, but so much of it is of low quality. It's hard to say whether or not we would see massive hikes in costs without subsidies because at the end of the day if smaller localized farms were unable to sell their goods they'd need to lower the cost or end up with spoilage. Right now those small farms are competing in a manipulated market and have to charge more to make ends meet and compete with subsidized farmers, but if everyone was on an even playing field the costs should more or less balance out at a local level.