Sorry, but an overwhelming amount of people commenting in here are extremely ignorant of the modern agri-food system.
The notion that robots and drones will eliminate monocultures and chemical inputs is wildly untrue. In some minor cases they will reduce the need.
It amazes me that software engineers think they have the panacea for whatever faults they see in our food system without a full understanding and history of it.
That's false. Homogeneity makes it easier to harvest, process, and store crops. It also drives perfect competition which brings cost down on the commodity market.
Yes, the GP’s reasoning is faulty (actually, “imperfect” would be a better term), but things aren’t as clear as you put it either.
Homogeneity helps with trading commodities, no question. And commodities reduce risk by allowing a very wide fan out on both sides of a two sided market…which has advantages and disadvantages for all participants.
More along your argument, it also lets the farmer use capital better in the short term (you buy the equipment you need for your monocrop).
But if you have multimodal devices you have the opportunity to take advantage of more flexibility. You can do crop rotation to use less chemicals or to take advantage of trends in the commodity market. You can have a different mix of crops for the same reason (half corn, half row crops, though they re typically worth less). You have more flexibility to adapt to climate change. The commodity markets can handle all this, in fact they help enable it.
This isn’t magic wand — crop rotation doesn’t make sense if, say, you have an orchard. But mechanization also caused us to abandon growing multiple crops in the same field, which can have benefits and improve yield. It was just way too labor intensive. If we go back to individual “labor” (automated in this case) it could be worthwhile.
But there are also costs considered: no flexibility, thus no way to hedge risk. Think weather, plagues and diseases, funghi whatever: If you single crop is vulnerable, now all of it is affected. The use of pesticides and fertiliser is also not free, and monocultures need a lot more of that. Furthermore the giant tractors needed for monoculture tend to damage the soil they drive on, and require the ground water table to be fairly low.
Certainly the logistical challenge of multiple small harvests of varying products is there, but this is definitely more manageable with robots and computers than without.
And for a small close to population centers, if they can supply multiple kinds of produce reliably, they might be able to make orders of magnitude more money on the local market than on the commodities market.
We're not moving away from nitrogen fertilizers. Ever. Why?
Look at the following three graphs: global population, staple crop yield, and nitrogen fertilizer application.
Now overlay them. That's why.
Also, there are myriad chemical inputs that cannot be removed simply due to free labor. Sure, a robot can pluck weeds, but what about fungal and bacterial diseases?
There are absolutely automated systems out there to handle recognition and application of whatever fertiliser/fungicide is needed. Not cheap of course, but prices will come down.
I'm not supporting the parasitic nature of landlords.
But the right to own land is an essential part of a functioning society. The idea that no one should be able to own land is ridiculous and does not work. There are plenty of examples of this all across the globe.
What’s that statement based on? Ownership doesn’t exist in nature, it’s a concept humans have invented and enforce through cultural and legal means. Ownership is just one method of providing occupation, but occupation can be achieved through other means: for example, guaranteed leases for a fixed period. There’s various countries that have models beyond just simple private ownership. Even in countries like the US where land ownership is considered sacrosanct, the government will still take it away if you don’t pay taxes — it’s not ownership in the truest sense.
What do you call the territorial animals then? A tiger will chase other tigers from the area it considers its own. Same as wolves and many other species. It's not exactly property in the sense that it cannot be traded but it is indeed the ownership. Without property rights humans would have had the same: the strong chase the weak off their land or force them to pay for being on the land.
> Without property rights humans would have had the same: the strong chase the weak off their land or force them to pay for being on the land.
That's precisely what property rights are: "the strong [...] forc[ing the weak ...] to pay for being on the land". That's what property taxes are. To "have rights" is to be paid up with a protection racket. Yet as depressing as that is, it beats the alternative! In many places it's not a bad deal!
This works, ultimately, because the frail old lady can call the police, who outnumber and outgun the strong young men.
There is admittedly also an element of magic here: People generally view property rights as legitimate, and the police who enforce them as legitimate, and so on. But when that belief system fails, it's ultimately the State's ability to deploy force that reestablishes the faith.
Even other animals have the concept of land ownership. They might not use our words, but see what happen when you take resources from the territory of a bear or other territorial animal.
Even trees do that. Eucalyptus literally poisons land near it to kill competition.
That’s occupation, not ownership. Ownership can’t exist without a legal or cultural structure to enforce it. A human can occupy land and defend that occupation with violence but that does not mean they own the land. A society can exist without ownership.
> Ownership is just one method of providing occupation, but occupation can be achieved through other means: for example, guaranteed leases for a fixed period
In practice, with housing, such leases are effectively ownership. The terms on these are often 100 years or more, and when they come to term, since there are often significant improvements built in the land, the terms can't be renegotiated since the lessor can't force the sale or relocation of the improvements.
If no one individual or company can own land, then, by definition, the governing body that created the rule owns the land.
Since governments are in the business of governing, not real estate, they'll almost definitely outsource that work (or big parts of it) to private contractors like they do for defense.
The end result is that your landlord is now an even bigger private entity (that might be a conglomerate of smaller entities, which might or might not look like the institutional landlords that exist today) with the near-infinite financial backing of the government and the insanely slow processes that come with that (such as having to go through an intermediate to get that Tesla Powerwall you want to install approved, only to be told that Tesla isn't an approved supplier and that you should use this battery from $VENDOR_THAT_WE_DONT_HAVE_RELATIONSHIPS_WITH_WE_PROMISE).
so for most of recorded human history society did not function?
the only reason we're allowed to buy land is because it was commodified during the industrial revolution as the process of capital extraction from labor had moved from the land to the factories.
Land ownership is an important element of long term sustainability, as in farmers carrying for their soil in order to keep it viable for their descendants.
But land ownership as in subletting and sub-subletting and sub-sub who knows how many levels up, that is not a necessary consequence of the concept of land ownership. What if only personal use was allowed? Sure, you would definitely see hoarding and countermeasures would not be without their own problems, but there is definitely room between unbounded capitalism and "property does not exist" level socialism.
Except astroturfing is coordinated. It's not a conspiracy. The shills you mention are just people who are well-informed on nuanced topic. A topic that that seemingly affects everyone (because food), and therefore everyone chimes in.
Except most people don't know jack about modern food systems and its history. All they know is: big pharma bad, big ag bad, big food bad.
I disagree that these are just people who are well-informed. The frequency and rapid follow up comments by these shills/power users make it nearly impossible for these people to be doing anything else--it's clearly their full-time job. More likely, it's a shared account that some public affairs/relations company shares and they get alerts via keywords and immediately reply. It's very clearly a highly organized machine.
Let's just take a pause and consider some key information:
-This is an association study
-If we CTLR+F "cause", "causing", "causal", etc, the only mention of causation is with extremely high levels of flouride and another mention with extremely high levels of glyphosate and zebrafish
Now let's zoom way out, and consider the use of glyphosate in general. If you plot grain yields over time compared to herbicide use over time and fertilizer use over time, you can see one thing quite clearly. The use of synthetic inputs, along with plant breeding and genetic engineering, has saved humanity from starvation and allowed unhindered growth.
Any experienced agriculturalist knows this. Any experienced commodity trader knows this. All this talk about commercial farming needing to be eradicated is fantasy talk. There are trade-offs to everything.
When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel.
When you look back into the history of herbicides, you can consider glyphosate to be way better than many of the past options. So things are definitely getting better.
As for the demonization of glyphosate, I would say that most of this literature is just provocative headlines for the sake of grant funding. It's very trendy to claim that glyphosate is causing X,Y, and Z. We saw the same thing with MSG as a food additive, and are still dealing with the proliferation of bad science, bad messaging, and a sticky belief system within genpop.
> When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel.
Modern farming seems optimized for the wrong thing all too often: cheap calories. Calories are important (for basic metabolic needs) but not the whole story. Nutrient density and sustainable practices are worth promoting.
It's easy to be picky about nutrient density and sustainable farming when you have a full belly. Modern farming techniques have saved the lives of millions of people who would otherwise starve to death.
The only problem is (can’t tell if you intend it) an implied false dichotomy. Why do we have to pick abundant calories or nutritious food? This is a false choice. In the short term, it is a tradeoff given a particular set of technological and economic constraints.
Over the medium and long-term, the constraints change.
If people were wiser, {technological development, economics, and policy} could have led us to a better place.
Perhaps one with a better mix of agricultural offerings: a range of calorie dense & nutrient dense & combinations of both. All at prices that people are willing to pay, which of course depends on subsidies, earning power, and personal values.
Forgive me, but I’m going to preempt one kind of knee-jerk response someone might feel they need to write next: I’m describing a range of possible future outcomes, not a particular political philosophy.
Remember, my point is to reject the false choice. The tiresome (but classic) “next move” for someone would be to move the goalposts and criticize some particular policy they think I’m recommending. I’m not recommending a particular policy. I’m simply saying there are other possible futures that are available to us.
I challenge everyone on (and off) Hacker News to not fall into the obvious ‘debate’ patterns that add minimal value. I’m done with debate. I want to learn, and I want to teach. I’m not here to score points.
Synthesize. Be curious.
What do you all think are the most likely technological advancements that could revolutionize food?
If there was no modern industrial agricultural, probably fewer people would have been born to be at risk of starving to death.
When the synthetic inputs disappear (due to, say, war or supply chain disruption) or the soil is simply too exhausted & eroded altogether, lots of people starve.
People want "sustainable" agriculture so that the system is resilient to shocks. It's possible to have this and feed the same amount of people. Maybe even for a lower percentage of GDP. But it requires a drastically different approach to the problem.
But it seems to me that the populations of those who oppose herbicides like glyphosate, and those who oppose genetically modified crops with say extra niacin or vitamin D, overlap very heavily.
We have a new mental illness, generalized antiscience disorder. Motto: "It is better that a hundred million die of famine or epidemic disease than one person die of cancer."
Why don't you want agribusiness to create patented crops? Nobody's making you plant them. The stories of people unwittingly or unwillingly planting Roundup-Ready crops are easily debunked.
Applied science is all about the balance of harms.
In the paper we have a tenuous chain of correlations with no causal mechanism described.
Glyphosate has unambiguously improved crop yields and quality for decades. The causal mechanism is well understood: it kills weeds that would otherwise outcompete crop plants.
I don't care what other reasons there might be for not wanting GM crops; I was making an observation about populations.
I’m not confident that you see the purpose of my comment in the context it was offered. My point was that “anti-science” is not the sole nor best description for people that have differing viewpoints w.r.t. modern agricultural practices.
Part of the problem more generally is that people literally lose the thread, but another part of the problem is that Hacker News doesn’t really encourage it nor design for it.
Lumping anti-vax people with people that have rational anti-big-agricultural perspectives is muddled thinking. There may be some similarities, but it is an overreach to claim these are the “exact same” principles.
I’d suggest reading some argumentation (such as policy proposals from think-tanks) by rational, pro-science people who criticize the current state of agriculture. After you do this, unless you select some obviously flawed example or fall prey to confirmation bias, you will learn they are _quite_ different than the prototypical anti-vaxxer.
The argument you are making suffers from the false equivalence fallacy. This is the kind of thing that Monsanto would do (and probably does, but I’d need to find proof). By conflating an extreme, poorly-supported viewpoint (anti-vax) with a reasonable one (rational concerns about the state of modern agribusiness), an instigator creates confusion and muddies the waters of public debate.
Tell me you've never had trouble affording enough calories to survive without telling me you've never had trouble affording enough calories to survive.
"Cheap calories" are what keeps the world from starving to death, and incidentally what allows some of us to be software engineers, novelists, and YouTube "influencers", rather than 95% of us being either agricultural serfs or foot soldiers.
That comment doesn't really say anything other than that you believe cost vs. calories is a false dichotomy, but since that's an extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence.
> That comment doesn't really say anything other than that you believe cost vs. calories is a false dichotomy, but since that's an extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence.
Let's start with this part:
> That comment doesn't really say anything other than
Three things. / First, this comes across as dismissive to many readers. I hope you are aware of this, and I hope you would choose different phrasing next time. / Second, it is a mischaracterization of my comment -- my comment isn't a mere statement of what I believe. There is considerable support for my claims about the _reality_ of how the world works (technological changes, economics, values, etc). / Third, writing one sentence in reply doesn't seem like a good way to make discussion more substantive as it progresses (per HN guidelines).
Now on to this part:
> but since that's an extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to provide evidence.
I get your reference to Russell's tea pot; it is unfortunate you went there; I'm not foisting some made-up thing as real. Nor am I positing some vague extraordinary belief.
Let's me flip this part of your comment on its head:
> the onus is on you to provide evidence.
My comment was lengthy and substantive. As such, it contains plenty of material to dig into. Have you dug into the area I discuss? If so, tell me what you've learned. In particular, why would there be a hard rule across all history and future states suggesting calories and cost are "at odds" with each other? When I state it this way, I think you can see your claim is the harder one to believe.
Also, why is the onus on me to write more? Why is not the onus on you to research more? Or at least write more?
I have one more thing to say about this pazt:
> but since that's an extraordinary claim
You've got it backward. Broadly, it is a much stronger claim to say "X and Y" are mutually exclusive than to say "over the long run, with technological changes, they don't have to be." That's what my comment said.
Again, to drive the point home, I'll state it a slightly different way: given many possible universes with various configurations, consider two quantities X and Y, it would be _much_ less likely for "X and Y" to be mutually exclusive. Do you understand what I'm getting at? This is a fundamental thought experiment based on probabilities.
If you can comment in detail and turn down the dismissiveness, I think a better discussion is possible.
Can you vouch that you have no ulterior motive or conflict of interest on this topic? I have no conflict of interest. My primary goal is rational, high quality, substantive discussion. My ulterior motive, so to speak, is that I believe people don't have to agree, but at the very least we can try to share and maybe even learn from each other.
No, I'm being sincere: you write long responses, which is fine, but they're full of abstractions, and when I tried to make one of them concrete (about patented crops), you fled back into the abstraction rather than confronting and resolving the issue into a concrete position. You're not making substantive points about the topic, just lengthy ones.
I believe you are sincere. One can be both sincere and insulting. Also, I've found your comments to be rather uncharitable and unkind. If I've come across that way to you, I apologize. I was hoping for a better conversation.
Your argument falls apart when you realise that grains are not in any way shape or form part of a proper human diet.
All those bellies that are filled with grains may feel full and therefore won't likely cause much trouble for the elites, but they are really just slowly rotting away and dying (and generating even more income streams for big pharma, owned by the... elites).
If you merely observe thermometers and which days feel hot, you'll see a link but won't be able to tell which way causality goes. If you set the thermometer to a high value in a cold room and notice that you don't get any warmer, you'll quickly realize which way causality flows.
So I agree with the GP post, I want to see them modeling & testing causality here.
Furthermore, evidence from recent studies shows a possible association between chronic pesticide exposure and an increased prevalence of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia.
They aren't "kafkaesque political redefinitions". You are just choosing to use an overly simple definition because it supports your argument. The NBER determines recession based on a sophisticated methodology. One that considers the holistic status of the economy. This whole "two quarters of negative growth" is unga bunga economics
So then it's not a recession solely according to NBER - and this departs from their characterizations for the last 60 years before this last election cycle.
"A recession is a significant, widespread, and prolonged downturn in economic activity. A common rule of thumb is that two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth mean recession, although more complex formulas are also used."
I wonder how much of this is just due to education. I know several people who make good money, but carry over absurd amounts on their cards each month, losing hundreds of dollars.
These same people have tens of thousands, probably more, in their savings. But for some reason they can't bring themselves to pulling a chunk of their savings out and zero-ing the debt.
I think they were taught that savings should only go up, but don't realize they're being totally fleeced by 20% interest rates.
Or another pattern, which I presume CC companies bank on : People forget to pay in the grace window and hence get charged _some_ interest, and often get into a pattern where they pay off the wrong debts first etc.
So they're earning upto 4.5% on their savings, and then paying out like 20-25% on the debt.
I think there's just a statistically reliable number of people who will carry X balance at Y interest rate, and card companies use perks as product differentiation so they can attract more users. If the perks somehow get even more people to ignore their balances, that's just a bonus. At the end of the day the card companies are competing against each other.
And credit card companies make money on usage -- they charge the retailer something like 3% on purchases meaning they make money on the transaction volume regardless of carried balance.
The relationship between certain endurance training and arrhythmia seems to follow a J-curve.
No activity = higher risk //
Moderate activity = lowest risk //
Extreme activity = higher risk that increases with # of training hours
There's a few mechanisms: cardiac remodeling due to pressure and load, fibrosis, and vagal tone
This happened to me after years of 60-100 mile weeks combined with competitive weightlifting and rock climbing. Symptoms showed up, I got diagnosed, then received an ablation which solved the issue. I'm back to a high level but don't push it like I used to. Was probably doing >1500 training hours/year. Now I'm closer to 800-1000/year
Think of it this way. We are all accumulating plaque. Three things play a large role in the rate at which we accumulate plaque: bodyweight, diet, activity level. (Yes, I'm aware there are more variables, but these are most pervasive and influential)
It used to be that we managed these variables quite well until middle age. Now, we flout them at an early age, setting the course for early heart attacks.
Through the maintenance of ideal CV risk factors and lifestyle behaviors. Once the atherosclerosis advances to the point of being fibrotic or scarred, it becomes harder/perhaps impossible to reverse that physical condition, but even then, if you can't quite restore the tissue damage, you can restore your health back to previous levels as your body adapts to its new form.
Very similar possibilites/outcomes are also observed in lungs when people quit smoking, and in the liver when people change their lifestyle or stop drinking.
The notion that robots and drones will eliminate monocultures and chemical inputs is wildly untrue. In some minor cases they will reduce the need.
It amazes me that software engineers think they have the panacea for whatever faults they see in our food system without a full understanding and history of it.