Answering "we cannot support feeding everyone w/ small farms"

[crunchy_mama]

What's the best ammunition anyone has on this?

On another forum I am on a lady is of course making a charge that small family farms are nice and quaint but we cannot feed everyone on them- so we need these big factory farms- ie so they were put in place out of necessity(you know nothing to do w/ greed and such).

[Alyantavid]

No we don't. The majority of the grain raised in this country goes to feedlots or to other countries.

These farms/feedlots weren't born out of necessity, they were born out of greed. People realized they could make much more money, much faster by feeding animals grains. They found their grain crops could do much better with genetically modified seeds and pesticides (which also work together).

If the feedlots went away, the huge grain fields would go away. The small farmers could get more money for the sustainable work they do. People would be healthier and healthcare costs would be much lower because people would be eating meat and vegetables in their natural form, not some lab experiment that worked out right.

[pixiepunk]

have you read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan? the whole book is basically a response to that question.

i think the first question to ask back is, how did people used to survive? not like a thousand years ago, i mean like less than 100 years ago before all this factory farming became so epidemic. it really wasn't what it is today until the 1970's, and people weren't exactly starving in the streets prior to that. Americans were perfectly well-fed, though not nearly as obese as they are now. the truth of the matter is that we could feed everyone just fine - we just couldn't gorge ourselves on 8,000 calorie a day diets with meat at every meal like we (americans) do now. and we might actually have to cook food from scratch (gasp!) instead of just opening up a box and popping in the microwave. but it is arguable that most of the food in grocery stores these days is even food, it is so heavily processed and full of chemicals. we might also have to "suffer" with what's actually in season, and spend some elbow grease canning and freezing the seasonal fruits and veggies so you can eat them in the winter. and we might not have so many people suffering simultaneously from malnutrition and obesity at the same time (what a bizarre paradox that our current way of feeding ourselves has created, when you can eat yourself silly and still remain malnourished).

one interesting tidbit i like to throw out is that if you calculate energy into calories, it takes more calories of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn than actually exists in said bushel of corn (by quite a significant margin... can't remember the numbers off the top of my head). and that's to say nothing of the processing of said corn, which uses quite a lot more fossil fuel. and that's to say nothing of using the processed corn to make 'food' products, which uses quite a lot more fossil fuel. and that's to say nothing of the fossil fuel required to truck said "food" products all over the country and fly it and sail it all over the world. if even a fraction of that energy were put towards something more local and sustainable, imagine what the results might be!

farms like Polyface farm also put to rest those kinds of questions, because they are vastly more diverse and productive on their tiny 100 acres of pasture than factory farms on similar sized lots. the reason is that they practice sustainable agriculture. factory farming isn't sustainable - that's why it requires so much interference and management - from the GMO crops to the chemical fertilizers, from the hormones and antibiotics in the animal feed to the irradation of the meat and the ultrapasteurization of the milk to kill all the bacteria that arises from the unhealthy and unsustainable living conditions the animals exist in.

[chaoticzenmom]

Have you watched Food Inc? It's out on dvd now. It addresses this very thing. There are basicly 4 crops in the states. The system that they big companies use strips our soils and create big problems for farmers. Watch the movie...it's a real eye opener. The system now is unsustainable. No rotating of crops, lots of waste, underpaid farmers, animals fed cheap stuff they can't properly digest, poisons and genetic modifications. The average farmer now is 57 years old. Farmers are opting out of the business because signing up to farm is like signing up for slavery. Farmers don't have anyone to hand their land down to because their children don't want it. Monsanto controls large farmers and financially kills small farmers with lawsuits.

I grew up in a farm town. Large scale farming with pesticide airplanes constantly flying overhead spraying crops and on windy days, spraying everywhere. People there are poor and sick. There are no jobs in the town, hardly any dr's, people are dying of cancers in record numbers. It's really sad.

[crunchy_mama]

Thanks for the talking points. I have watched Food Inc and read Omnivore's Dilemma- I am familiar w/ all these ideas, but looking for the best arguments to give to someone who doesn't see a problem w/ the current system.

[chaoticzenmom]

Then, why do you need ammunition, but they don't.

How about "we cannot support feeding everyone w/small farms"
"yes we can."
or
"what makes you think that?"

You don't need ammunition, just ask questions and let that person give you all the ammunition you could ever want.

[Pepper44]

Originally Posted by chaoticzenmom

Then, why do you need ammunition, but they don't.

How about "we cannot support feeding everyone w/small farms"
"yes we can."
or
"what makes you think that?"

You don't need ammunition, just ask questions and let that person give you all the ammunition you could ever want.

That's what I would do too! I am curious to know what their answer would be.

Food Inc. just came in the mail from Netflix today...I can't wait to watch it tonight.

[mamadelbosque]

This argument is fascniating to me. Because the answer to it depends on whether we're talking about feeding the world the standard american diet which is super high in animal products and long-term totally unsutainable or something else.

Could we feed the world with small family farms, with everyone eating the SAD? No. Of course not, but do we really *want* to?? The SAD sure isn't making for healthy people here in the US!! If we went back to family farms then yeah, we'd all have to cut back on how much meat & dairy we eat, but you know, that'd be a GOOD thing.

TBH though all the US government needs to do is eliminate all farm subsidies. If we just stopped subsidizing corn, wheat, & soy soo freaking heavily food would cost what it actually should - soda pop & HFCS & processed foods in general would rise hugely. As would meat & dairy while most of the rest would stay at about the same price. And people would then start eating more fruits & veggies cause' tehy'd be a better 'buy' overall....

[mapleleaf]

Originally Posted by pixiepunk

the truth of the matter is that we could feed everyone just fine - we just couldn't gorge ourselves on 8,000 calorie a day diets with meat at every meal like we (americans) do now. and we might actually have to cook food from scratch (gasp!) instead of just opening up a box and popping in the microwave. but it is arguable that most of the food in grocery stores these days is even food, it is so heavily processed and full of chemicals. we might also have to "suffer" with what's actually in season, and spend some elbow grease canning and freezing the seasonal fruits and veggies so you can eat them in the winter. and we might not have so many people suffering simultaneously from malnutrition and obesity at the same time (what a bizarre paradox that our current way of feeding ourselves has created, when you can eat yourself silly and still remain malnourished).

I agree with this completely. More home cooking, less fast food; more whole foods, less synthetic processed crap...it's not the amount of people that local farms need to feed, it's the lifestyle those people are living.

"If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases"-David Suzuki

People need to think and care about where their food is coming from, and they don't. Ask that lady "if we could support eating of our population locally ONLY if people started to eat less processed food and make home cooked meals more often, shop from local farms and can/freeze your own food......would she do it?" I bet many people wouldn't

[Alyantavid]

Originally Posted by mapleleaf

People need to think and care about where their food is coming from, and they don't. Ask that lady "if we could support eating of our population locally ONLY if people started to eat less processed food and make home cooked meals more often, shop from local farms and can/freeze your own food......would she do it?" I bet many people wouldn't

I really don't think alot of people care where their food comes from. I have a friend who is repulsed by me raising my own meat. Her meat "comes from the grocery store." No amount of arguing has convinced her it's better to eat meat that had a nice, healthy life instead of half-dead in a feedlot.

[crunchy_mama]

Thanks so much for the discussion guys- I am soaking it in best I can- I am losing massive amounts of brain cells right now to pregnancy and cannot think for anything!

[mapleleaf]

Originally Posted by Alyantavid

I really don't think alot of people care where their food comes from. I have a friend who is repulsed by me raising my own meat. Her meat "comes from the grocery store." No amount of arguing has convinced her it's better to eat meat that had a nice, healthy life instead of half-dead in a feedlot.

I completely agree, people don't care. People like what's easiest for them and should instead be thinking about what's best for them.

The best we could so for the next generation is raise them in a society that is aware of the fact: the diet you eat, anything you consume, directly affects the state of your health. And that does not mean just reading the calories or carbs, any health claims food products make. It's really knowing where your food comes from; the farm it was raised on, what it was fed, where it was grown, etc.

Also, I believe the less travel time the food does to get to your mouth, the healthier it is. When food ripens on trucks it does not have the same nutritional value than something that has ripened in the sun on a plant. Not to mention the fuel it takes to get to your door.

[Pepper44]

Thinking about it, there is no reason that people could not eat from small local farms all over the USA and survive just fine. (With exception of areas like the desert maybe.)

One 300 acre dairy farm that puts its cows out to pasture can grow enough hay and grain to supplement the cows' diet during the winter, and those cows will provide plenty of milk. If you have 300 head of cattle, and they each produce at least 2 gallons of milk a day...that's a lot of gallons of milk. (My grandparents ran a dairy farm that did this--grew their own feed and had lots of grazing land.)

If each person has a garden in their backyard it will produce plenty of food. My small backyard garden made more food than we could eat or give away, and I live in a suburb not somewhere with tons of space.

My small flock of chickens lays not only enough eggs for us to eat, but also enough eggs to supply several other families weekly. If every person had a few chickens in their backyard they would have perfectly fertilized gardens and plenty of eggs. Someone just outside of the city with a few acres could easily have a very large flock of free range chickens for meat that would supply many families.

It might be more difficult for those in cities where there are a lot of high rise apartments and no personal growing space, but I doubt it would be impossible to work out if people ate whole foods rather than over processed crap.

[elanorh]

Our resources of petroleum are finite and some experts believe we are at or near "peak" which means that they are going to become more and more expensive to extract, and more and more scarce as well.

When large-scale farming is so dependent on a finite natural resource which is either in decline or declining -- whether you believe that the chemicals used to maintain the factory farms harm the environment or not, you must admit that they are dependent on a resource which is going away.

Therefore it's imperative for us to work to become more organic and self-sufficient in terms of how we manage agriculture. And as others have said, farms like Polyface prove that it can and will work in all but the most urban areas -- at the very least, no matter how urban, the options of community gardens and container gardening are both ways that people can grow and have sustainable locally grown food, even if it's not a large amount.

If your friend thinks about it, among other things, we have a tremendous wasted monoculture in the USA -- our lawns. That's a lot of agricultural land which could be partially or wholly converted to gardening fruits and vegetables. And why not plant fruit trees instead of 'landscape' trees, in our yards? If my four apple trees produce as much as they're capable of, we will have so many apples that we'll have to sell or give them away. It will be more apples than we can eat, store, and can for the winter. Just in my small yard.

[sunnysandiegan]

I am just starting down this path of learning exactly where my food is grown or where it comes from. I have been avoiding fast food for many years and most processed foods for almost as long, but it has been a drastic change from how I was raised and what I knew. It has been very gradual as my exposure has been broadened in gentle ways. I suggest a heavy dose of kindness in discussing these issues with folks.

Meanwhile, another few good resources (in addition to the above-mentioned):
Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel - available at libraries
Fatland by Greg Critser - available in libraries
The Real Dirt on Farmer John - available on netflix
Good Food - I saw this at a local lecture series, but I don't know how just anyone could view it. It is excellent specifically because it shows how small farms are creating entire communities of healthy food in Washington and Oregon (from sustainable growing to restaurants to farmer's markets to grocery stores and so on).

Since urban areas were discussed a few times in this thread as potentially not viable locations for supporting these concepts, I thought I would share some great things happening in my urban area (San Diego - very large city located in basically a desert by the ocean).

~ We have a number of colleges in this city and many of them are now growing food on campus and selling it directly to students and the general public through farm stands and farmer's markets. City College and UC San Diego have been doing it for awhile, but I recently learned of a handful more and, additionally, others who are just getting started. This is excellent for many reasons, but the most compelling is we need young people to take an interest in their food because they are the future of our country. Like it or not, change is often a slow process.

~ And not just colleges, but my DD's elementary school has had a school garden for 2-3 years now and we got the idea from other elementary schools in town. At this age, obviously the focus is a bit different but it is the beginning of the education process.

~ One of the local churches (a half-mile from my house) has a large community garden and they feed homeless people with the produce along with having a few plots for families without gardening spaces to grow some food.

~ On a larger scale, we have several large communities who have banded together to grow food and sell it through local farmer's markets in their low economic neighborhoods. This is particularly important due to the social injustices for low income families and (limited) access to healthy food.

~ Like other places, we have CSAs and co-ops, too. I recently discovered a pastured meat CSA that has drop-offs in our city. We are also getting old-fashioned butcher shops back (slowly).

~ A local news weatherman has a real passion for sustainable agriculture and he has written at least one book and is spearheading a local movement to educate the public on these issues. I'm attending a year-long lecture series titled Sustainable Planet: Food that is drawing hundreds of people every single month and the speakers are coming from all over the world with a common theme: local, sustainable food systems can and do exist.... with the underlying theme that we need to take political action to ensure they can continue in this country and, more importantly, so that we can change the current food system in order to enable more of these sustainable systems to come about. It is a rather daunting prospect in many ways when one is presented with all the legal obstacles thrown in the path by large corporations controlling both ends of the current food system (farmers through seed control etc and consumers through marketing and supermarket choices) and paying large amounts of money to government to keep things the way they are.

From what I have read, our current food system started not because of greed (at least not from the same corporations that are exhibiting it now) but because of out of control food prices back in the 70s due to the oil crisis. The government needed a way to provide cheaper food for Americans and the folks in power back then acted quickly without thinking through the full ramifications of their policies. Going a bit further back, though, the end of WWII left a lot of empty facilities and unemployed people, which started this country down the industrial revolution path. Food was no exception. It has been a slow and insidious change with a few landmark actions and has snowballed into the highly polluting mess that it is today. Polluting in many ways: health and environment and social and so on....