U.S. Farm Bureau Declares War on Sustainable Food

[seedcorn]

seedcorn, here is what I worry about, the sort of thing that keeps me and DH up at night: You know a LOT of modern ag is dependent on cheap oil. Oil to run the tractors, oil to make the fertilizers, oil to make the pesticide. Lotsa oil. Cheap oil tends to come from insane despots where terrorists are their #2 export, like Saudi Arabia.

There are other sources of oil, but even the petroleum company experts say it will take a few decades to build the specialized refineries required to process the different types of oil (heavy sour & tar sand oil is more difficult to process than light sweet). Converting coal to diesel is possible, but it's going to take a loooooong time to build enough commercial-scale refineries that can do that process in order to re-supply what we use today. And it is dirty, it produces a lot of mercury waste (the mercury is mostly, but not completely redistilled), and as many West Virginian towns can tell you, the slurry and slag that results from extraction is hazardous in its own right--creates mudslides, poisons the water. You can throw all the money you want at building specialized refineries, but it doesn't magically make them faster to build.

Politically, can we afford to hand over increasing amounts of money to states that are known to create, foster and supply terrorists? Is it wise to allow such complete control of the US economy to rest in the hands of a monarchy that is, arguably, off its rocker? All they have to do to reduce us to developing-world status is to jack the prices, which they can do arbitrarily whenever they feel like it. Which they have done in the recent past, more than once, and they don't much care who is in the White House when they do it.

The only reason they don't do it now is because they're a bit busy feuding with the Russian Mafia's plan to build a NG pipeline. The day that China (who now has most of our nice middle-class jobs) decides to outbid us as OPEC's #1 customer, is the day our modern food system cracks.

It's not that I want that to happen, I realize lots of people would end up starving. It's that I worry that it WILL happen, regardless of what you or I want.

1) Ag does use a lot of oil products. So are we to drop everything that uses lots of oil? How about John Q Citizen? How much energy (really what we're talking about now) does each household misuse? Do they really need 2+ cars(make people use bikes, walk, horses like they did in 40's), TV's, gas powered mowers, snowblowers, 4 wheelers, tillers, etc???

2) China is already outbidding USA for key products. Personnally, I'd only allow meat products to be exported from USA in Ag.

3) Ag will change as the economics of the industry changes. The end user controlls how we do business. As an input gets out of control, changes will be met. As the end uses pays for what they want, Ag will change.

4) Regardless what is preached by a few uninformed, there is more genetic diversity in modern Ag. You the consumer don't see them because in some cases they aren't viable now but they may be in future so the genetics are propogated.

Look, I get it, you want things like you think they were in the 40's. What you don't think about is the poverty, hunger, diseases from bad nutrients, etc we had.

Some of you love to quote a certain pair of people that say you can't eat corn but my folks were raised on corn for b'fast as well as other meals. That was a basic food group through the 50's. Still is in central america.

 

[Rosalind]

1) Ag does use a lot of oil products. So are we to drop everything that uses lots of oil? How about John Q Citizen? How much energy (really what we're talking about now) does each household misuse? Do they really need 2+ cars, TV's, gas powered mowers, snowblowers, 4 wheelers, tillers, etc???

I agree we waste a lot of energy in a lot of ways. However, for economic reasons, people are already getting rid of the second car, landscaping service, snowblowers, 4 wheelers etc. And I still think you are missing my point--I didn't say that giving up oil was going to be a *voluntary* exercise, I am saying that in your lifetime and mine, it will likely become unaffordable for the vast majority of people, including farmers. Wishing that people would stop wasting a resource is not going to make it so, and I suspect you are old enough to recall that the USSR rationing method did not work.

2) China is already outbidding USA for key products. Personnally, I'd only allow meat products to be exported from USA in Ag.

I agree 100%.

3) Ag will change as the economics of the industry changes. The end user controlls how we do business. As an input gets out of control, changes will be met. As the end uses pays for what they want, Ag will change.

Will it be able to change fast enough, though? That is really what I am saying--can the entire industry be completely re-worked and re-organized in the short amount of time that even the most optimistic projections from Exxon, BP et al. say we have left before we can expect major price hikes? Or will the industry, like the vast majority of very big industries where there are a handful of major players running the show, limp along making incremental changes that aren't enough to save it or make its products available to the majority of people who need them?

Look, I get it, you want things like you think they were in the 40's. What you don't think about is the poverty, hunger, diseases from bad nutrients, etc we had.

I take it you're talking about the Dust Bowl? Because my parents grew up in the 1930s-1940s too, and hunger/malnutrition was really not a problem for them. Their friends and family mostly died of polio, scarlet fever, measles encephalitis, flu, other infectious diseases that now are treated with antibiotics and vaccines. But Pennsylvania (where I grew up) and New England (where I live now) did not suffer food shortages the way the Midwest, Southwest and California did. There are several very good reasons for that, but none of them happened to be due to the lack of modern farming techniques.

In any case, people go hungry and are malnourished with vitamin deficiencies in modern times too. They mostly live in cities, in areas where the only "grocery stores" available are the 7/11 type that sell Twinkies and chips with the occasional bruised apple for $1 each. What I'd wish for is that farmers' markets could be set up to reach these areas, so that the farmers themselves could charge retail prices in order to make a decent profit, and so that people in cities could have healthy fresh food they could afford. How is that elitist?

 

[seedcorn]

Will it be able to change fast enough, though?

Yes, simple answer.

take it you're talking about the Dust Bowl?

No, America starved in the 30-40's. Corn (that some say is inedible) was American staple. Most common diseases that people died from were enhanced from lack of food. I remember people being hungry in the 50-60's when I was a kid--Illinois. What I find encouraging is that as we enhance the quality/quantity of food to people, the less disease issues we deal with.

How is that elitist?

That is not. What is, is to suggest that food can only be raised in such short supply (40's type of technology did not produce the supply we're so used to) that only the wealthy can afford meat, vegetables, fruit, etc. We take for granted so many food items that were not available even in the 60's let alone the 40's.

 

[Ladyhawke1]

Lets see if I can make this succinct.

If Iraq's biggest export were say.teapots, do you think we would have invaded this country and that the US GOVT. would have colonized it and Afghanistan?

How would we take occupation of our country? Just ask Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. One of his best known works is a book called: WAR IS A RACKET (1935)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

One of the best kept secrets is that globally oil production has been going down since the seventies. The era of cheap oil is over. You and I have to start thinking differently about things.

Where do you think the interests of the elite in this country then lie. I would say it lies in the sands of OTHER peoples countries and that these elite want to secure this resource as soon as possible. That is what the war is.....because I personally am not shaking in my boots worrying about some poor guy over there coming over here wanting to kill me. What if I were to bring food and healthcare and a rebuilding of infrastructure to them. What would there be to fight about.

Ifour taxes were going for the real needs of the people in our own country, things like food and healthcare would be an afterthought. Our taxes are wasted on war.

However, I have never in my life ever seen such a selfish society as in this country. People are being pitted against each other. They are being told it's that guy over there...or that immigrant...they are taking all of your resources. DO NOT LOOK AT THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

But I think that that is being manufactured by the BS on talk radio and TV. This trash masks itself as real news and most people do not do their homework. They just listen and get their information from the shock jocks. I heard a good one the other day..that Medicare and Social Security are just entitlement programs and need to be scraped. Excuse me! !@#$%^&*&^%$#@!

 

[wifezilla]

there is more genetic diversity in modern Ag. You the consumer don't see them because in some cases they aren't viable now but they may be in future so the genetics are propogated.

" Monsanto's patented genes are inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S."
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20100114&ID=10987624&Symbol=MS

Ag will change as the economics of the industry changes. The end user controlls how we do business.

Exactly. We are end users telling you what we don't like about current agriculture. I don't know about the rest of the people, but it doesn't seem to me like consumer input is welcomed. There seems to be a certain hostility to the consumer's wants.

 

[seedcorn]

Exactly. We are end users telling you what we don't like about current agriculture. I don't know about the rest of the people, but it doesn't seem to me like consumer input is welcomed. There seems to be a certain hostility to the consumer's wants.

In some cases, you are correct. There are too many reasons why to go into here but quick analogy would be, how would you like it if I came to your house/job and started telling you how to do it and then control your income when I have no experience in that area? Welcome to Ag.

Very few are telling Ag they don't like it, just a few. For the few that don't like it, there are alternatives, use them, support that part of the food industry and it'll thrive. I wish you well.

FYI, I wish people of your ilk would be successful because then those of us in Ag would have a job that pays a whole lot more w/benefits. Of course those of you w/town jobs would then pay 40% of your salary for food but I'm OK w/that.

 

[seedcorn]

You and I have to start thinking differently about things.

Ag is looking into better ways to do things all the time. Those of you not in Ag have no idea of the changes we've seen. It is changing so fast that if you blink, you are left behind. All of it good? Don't make me laugh but in general, yes.....

We've taken the animals out of the dirt, insects, diseases, inclement weather, animals lost to birthing problems, we've increases FE in all animals, learned how to better utilize manure (don't get me started w/the manure abuses on small farms, especially Amish--go get a soil sample and look at P and K levels, run off in ditches). Are we done? Just getting started.
Ag is conserving soils better than ever. With today's technology the dust bowl would never have happened. Ditches no longer have to be dipped because of field run offs. The P/K in the lakes/rivers are now from city yards/gardens/golf courses and no longer from farmer fields.

The amount of pesticides in the soils are almost eliminated and yet we are growing the greatest amount of crops ever to feed the people of the world.

Change??? New ways of thinking??? Welcome to Ag in America.

I'll get off of my soap box, sorry....

I agree on oil/war and why/who controls what.

 

[Rosalind]

There seems to be a certain hostility to the consumer's wants.

You know where business executive folk learn that hostility? It's from the following "rule": The market is efficient.

What that is supposed to mean is that if someone wants to buy an item, any item, for some price, someone will be there to sell it to them as long as raw materials are available. Also that any item for sale is worth exactly what people are willing to pay for it, not a penny more or less.

It's not actually true. You can tell that the very professors and analysts who say such nonsense don't believe it either, because they all still try to "game" the market and pick the very best stocks, and most of those stocks are things that are not manufactured goods with resource constraints. But they still intone it to university students like it is meaningful.

Here's a simple, less controversial example: The fashion recently is for women's clothing to be quite revealing, making women of any age (but especially young girls) look like streetwalkers. Now, the vast majority of women with disposable income to spend on non-functional clothing are old farts like me who wish to, shall we say, dress appropriately for our age. You know, as if we had a shred of dignity and wished the colour of our undergarments not to be generally known. If the market were efficient, it should not take very long for more modest and classy garments to come back in style after the initial batch of 2000 pink hot pants with an uncouth word emblazoned on the buttocks sold merely two pairs.

Have more sensible clothes suddenly made a return to the shelves, clothes that do not reveal one's behind? Heck no, despite the longing of many. If anything, I see many of my colleagues taking up sewing and having their old clothes repaired because they can't get adequate replacements for worn yet professionally-appropriate clothing. I see women who used to insist on at least a business casual atmosphere suddenly allowing their staff to wear jeans because they readily acknowledge that if the alternative is to see more of their colleagues than they ever wanted to, they'll take the jeans, thanks.

The market is not efficient, the corporations do not care what we want because they reckon with adequate marketing we can be persuaded to want the garbage they happen to be selling--"ladies, you are empowered by looking like a $20 exotic dancer!" It's not even a matter of having a certain economic threshold of demand, because that already exists and they ignore that too.

 

[seedcorn]

Hey Rosalind, come to Indiana to shop for clothes. My wife and daughter have no problem getting decent clothes. Must be that liberal east coast thing......

Or I can get you in touch w/my wife and she can shop and send the clothes to you....for a price of course.......... or you could dress like the 40's and buy online from an Amish store....... I tease.....

If the merchants can't sell it, they won't stock it. If they do stock it, they'll be out of business.

 

[wifezilla]

I own a business. I don't have the luxury of being a snot towards my customers. I have to actually listen to them and give them what they need at a reasonable price or I go out of business.