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0 pointsjfengel5y ago0 comments

Right now we over-feed the world, especially ourselves in the West. We produce an enormous amount of low-quality food, and malnutrition is driven more by external interference (misgovernment, wars) than by agriculture. Food is, as a percentage of people's budgets, cheaper than it has ever been.

That suggests that there's a middle ground, where we shift to more labor-intensive practices to grow some more expensive but better produce that's less hard on the environment, without dismantling the entire industrial system. People could introduce more fresher foods, while still growing vast amounts of highly-processed-maize-and-soybeans for people who can only afford that.

There are a lot of dimensions to that. It's not easy to prove that eating this way is necessarily healthier or easier on the environment. But we do know that the Western diet is bad for people's health, and we do know that it's hard on the environment, so it's worth considering alternatives.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

searine5y ago· 4 in thread

>Food is, as a percentage of people's budgets, cheaper than it has ever been

This is a good thing. Let's not screw it up, but rather improve on it.

>where we shift to more labor-intensive practices

Who is going to do the work? We already struggle filling these jobs. Those jobs that are filled are unsafe and low-paying.

jfengelOP5y ago

There's no reason we have to make farm work unsafe or low-paying. It's a consequence of the state of agriculture a century ago, when we were constantly afraid of running out of food. We put into place a lot of systems to drive down the price of food and increase the quantity.

So yes, we should improve it. This is one suggestion for how to do so. It costs more money, but we no longer have to make price the #1 objective, not in a world where people are willing to spend $4 and up on a cup of coffee or pay a 50-100% premium for a dubious "organic" label (a term that has drifted very, very far from what it meant when Rodale coined it).

That makes more money available for farm labor, to improve safety and pay workers better. It would take only a small increase in costs to make a large increase in wages: they receive only a few percent of the final consumer cost of the product.

searine5y ago

>There's no reason we have to make farm work unsafe or low-paying.

Okay. Who is paying for it?

Farming is razor thin margins already. Most people aren't on techie salaries that can afford organic food. Raising the price is just a tax on the poor.

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modo_mario5y ago

Most of those razer thin margins come from stuff like monopsonies they might push down prices on behest of the consumer but obviously also will run with as much of the profits as they can.

tastyfreeze5y ago

Dont forget government subsidies for corn and soybeans that drive prices stupid low and trap farmers in corn and soybeans. Some farmers would gladly shift to more profitable crops but are stuck on corn and soybeans.

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easytiger5y ago

I agree to some extent, except that lower cost food means access to higher quality lower cost food. That's a good thing.

Growing up in the UK in the 80s most people were eating a post war inspired limited diet.

> But we do know that the Western diet is bad for people's health, and we do know that it's hard on the environment, so it's worth considering alternatives.

The western diet is all things to all men. In my circle the "Mediterranean" diet is largely what people aspire to on a daily basis with everything else enriching their food experience on a less frequent basis.

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