Comment by hiQloIQ
1 month ago
No reason to believe their numbers either given the shenanigans they have engaged in.
We need to be smart and not knee jerk into feel good memes though. Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops. Commercial farm infrastructure is far more resilient and lasts longer while consumer gardening gear is cheap and disposable. Consumer gardening gear manufacturers factories burn tons of resources to crank out tons of low quality kit, consumers burn through piles of it. That's not sustainable either.
Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Americans need to find common ground on the path forward not fragment into tens of millions of little resource intensive potato farmers
> Local gardens and community gardens have higher resource use per acre than large farm ops.
It amazes me how few people are cognisant of this very obvious and important fact.
> Plus you really want the average American dumping chemicals in community ground water to grow the biggest pumpkin in the zip code?
Just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Industrial farming and specially animal farming is one of the most polluting industries, subsidized to produce environmental damage, population diseases and animal abuse.
The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed. Many are federally funded at schools, community centers, or local libraries to serve as outdoor classrooms.
> The value of smaller gardens are not measured in the produce harvested but the knowledge sowed
No, it should be measured in terms of amount of input relative to the amount of output. It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
> It’s almost never the case that small farms is going to be more efficient—not only cost wise, but for the environment—than large scale farming.
I can relate: Our SIL gave my wife a countertop gadget that holds six little cups into which you drop pre-packaged paper cups of seeds and soil. (You order them online.) The gadget has a grow light. You have to water the cups periodically My ux uses the gadget to grow basil and parsley, and snips off bits of leaves as needed for cooking. All-in, the crops cost probably 5-10X what we'd pay for fresh herbs at a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, let alone at an Aldi's or H-E-B. Ah, well: Signaling love and appreciation is important ....
That's great, but they cannot feed a nation 100% or even close for long periods of time.
They can help educate a nation on which are the healthiest foods to eat, how to prepare them, what they taste like, etc. That may allow us to more healthily feed a nation 100%, while also using fewer resources.
That's how Japan works...how horrendous ?
Japan is not a model to follow.
Been doing it the same way for centuries so, care to elaborate on what's wrong with how they farm?
Also, just because their setup isn't optimal, doesn't mean it's the cause for some ecological crisis like you seem to be implying. I live in Japan, I watch people farm every year, there is very little going on that makes me suspect there is some wide-spread ecological damage being done by people who want to grow massive pumpkins, even though, people do grow massive pumpkins.
You telling everyone that gardening is bad for the environment is interesting because I absolutely cannot imagine what is worse for the environment than the industrial scale monocrop style farming that goes on most developed countries. Like, holy shit...
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