The Grind

[Demolition Squid]

Small farms work, DS. They work because farmers actually love to farm, and because local food stimulates the local economy, and because most factory farms are actually conglomerates of former small farmers who have been coerced into contract with the agricorporations, at tremendous cost to not only their individual profitability but also their way of life. The idea that we HAVE to have large-scale farming operations in order to feed the starving masses is a straight-up myth. It's a lie, invented by corporate giants to justify the ever-increasing profitability of warehousing food and people.

Really?

I'm sceptical that there's enough capacity for small farms to take up the slack of food production, because the big traditional bread baskets have been drying up and we've been seeing food costs increase as a result - I attended a lecture on the environmental impact of food production which basically concluded that we have to use those areas of the globe where conditions are best because the impact of transporting them is tiny compared to the lengths you'd have to go through to make places like the UK produce their own food would be extreme and damaging both environmentally and economically.

I'd love for this to be the case, though. It'd completely reshape how I think about food security issues.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Small farms work, DS. They work because farmers actually love to farm, and because local food stimulates the local economy, and because most factory farms are actually conglomerates of former small farmers who have been coerced into contract with the agricorporations, at tremendous cost to not only their individual profitability but also their way of life. The idea that we HAVE to have large-scale farming operations in order to feed the starving masses is a straight-up myth. It's a lie, invented by corporate giants to justify the ever-increasing profitability of warehousing food and people.

Really?

I'm sceptical that there's enough capacity for small farms to take up the slack of food production, because the big traditional bread baskets have been drying up and we've been seeing food costs increase as a result - I attended a lecture on the environmental impact of food production which basically concluded that we have to use those areas of the globe where conditions are best because the impact of transporting them is tiny compared to the lengths you'd have to go through to make places like the UK produce their own food would be extreme and damaging both environmentally and economically.

I'd love for this to be the case, though. It'd completely reshape how I think about food security issues.

Who lectured, and where? There are a lot of arguments on either side of the issue, but one of the most compelling arguments against centralizing food production, IMO, IS environmental vulnerability, and centralized food production in combination with environmental vulnerability is the reason behind the spikes in food prices.

http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/policy_research/community_control.html

However, a lower price of commodity food on the international market can have devastating effects on local farming economies, resulting in greater net hunger. The solution is most likely to diversify and support the small farm model wherever possible, abandon subsidies that encourage monoculture and which flood the global market with commodity foods at such a low price that local farmers cannot compete, and to teach sustainable farming methods in areas that are not currently using them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I've heard the argument that you can't feed cities with small farms.  From an anthropologist, of all things.

But the fact is, you CAN.  The Canadians do it all the time, using co-ops to reduce transportation costs and the burden of capital investment for equipment.

And there are more huge corporate farms now than ever...And food prices are INCREASING.  Not to mention that cost-cutting measures have released salmonella all over the place (Foster Farms, for example), among other things.

Something tells me that I know who pays for the research that says you need huge farms.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I've heard the argument that you can't feed cities with small farms.  From an anthropologist, of all things.

But the fact is, you CAN.  The Canadians do it all the time, using co-ops to reduce transportation costs and the burden of capital investment for equipment.

And there are more huge corporate farms now than ever...And food prices are INCREASING.  Not to mention that cost-cutting measures have released salmonella all over the place (Foster Farms, for example), among other things.

Something tells me that I know who pays for the research that says you need huge farms.

There is quite a bit of evidence that the problem is not a lack of farmland, but the economic, procurement, and distribution system that overwhelmingly favors large-scale farming. India is one really overwhelming example, with thousands of farms abandoned, thousands of tons of grain rotting due to inadequate storage, and an epidemic of farmer suicides as they are forced out of the market by lower-priced (subsidized) imports from the US. http://www.changemakers.com/blog/small-farmers-willing-quit-jeopardizing-india%E2%80%99s-food-se

And then there's this: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/06/how-africa-could-feed-the-world/

And this: http://www.ucmerced.edu/news/grad-student%E2%80%99s-farmland-mapping-project-gets-prestigious-publisher

[Demolition Squid]

Boy, is my face red.

I thought it was Tim Lang - I can't find my lecture notes from back then, but google helped me find out that he gave a lecture with a similar theme at around the same time in the same place (Birmingham).

Then I found this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/food-prices-doubling

And it seems like even if that was the line of thought when I heard it in 2008-2009, by 2011 it had changed. Those links of yours are also fascinating, Nigel.

So it seems like the argument I heard was - at best - misguided and doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

I don't know whether to be relieved or furious. On the one hand, fantastic! That means one of the major issues I thought existed to balancing world poverty doesn't actually exist.

On the other, why the fuck isn't this information being thrown up over and over again when people talk about food security? There have been two debates in the mass media I've heard of this year about how moving to be self-reliant in food would take decades, billions of investment and require at least a doubling or tripling of the cost of food.

Yet another instance where it seems like vested interests control the debate in order to hide the truth and maintain their profits. God damnit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

On the other, why the fuck isn't this information being thrown up over and over again when people talk about food security?

Because evil people have other agendas, and both the will and the means to see them through.  And of what use is information when there are only 5 media corporations left in the whole world?

The truth is buried under a host of lies, and people starve so that rich people get richer.

It's really just that simple. 

[Reginald Ret]

Honestly I think the problem is that we have an economy where "what you do for a living" and "what you do for fun" are almost always in completely separate domains. Obviously, someone's got to clean toilets and there probably aren't many people for whom that qualifies as a dream job, but there's no really compelling reason why hundreds of millions of people should have to spend their best years churning out sprockets or tinkering with things just to pay the bills.

Maybe the Grind would feel less grinding if we had universal education, guaranteed health care, and an absolute promise that no matter who you are, where you come from, or what you choose to do for work, you will not starve to death, die of a treatable illness, or have to live in poverty. If we were free to experiment and find what really inspires us without the fear of "failing" and being destitute, I think a lot more people would end up happy and we might be surprised at the kinds of jobs that still get done.

Amen. Not to mention the kind of brilliant innovation that would arise.

Aristotle Divides activities in three groups¹, I think that brilliant innovation requires a mix of all three.

¹

In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾶξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action.

What seems wrong with our current economy is that it is completely focussed on poiesis. We apparently need to consume more so we can produce more ¹⁰so we can consume more so we can produce more ^GOTO10 Leaving us too little time for activities that have as their goal the activity itself (leisure) and/or the pursuit of Truth (a few examples: Science, self-reflection, figuring out how to not be a fat bastard).
Production should be a means to an end. The workweek, as long as it is defined by unpleasant production, should forever be getting shorter. What is the point of technological innovation if it does not give us more time to enjoy life?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Boy, is my face red.

I thought it was Tim Lang - I can't find my lecture notes from back then, but google helped me find out that he gave a lecture with a similar theme at around the same time in the same place (Birmingham).

Then I found this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/food-prices-doubling

And it seems like even if that was the line of thought when I heard it in 2008-2009, by 2011 it had changed. Those links of yours are also fascinating, Nigel.

So it seems like the argument I heard was - at best - misguided and doesn't seem to hold up to scrutiny.

I don't know whether to be relieved or furious. On the one hand, fantastic! That means one of the major issues I thought existed to balancing world poverty doesn't actually exist.

On the other, why the fuck isn't this information being thrown up over and over again when people talk about food security? There have been two debates in the mass media I've heard of this year about how moving to be self-reliant in food would take decades, billions of investment and require at least a doubling or tripling of the cost of food.

Yet another instance where it seems like vested interests control the debate in order to hide the truth and maintain their profits. God damnit.

Don't be embarrassed, it's an incredibly common misconception. Really, it's because there is very little small interests can do to propagate information when the overwhelming majority of information is propagated by very very large and wealthy and efficient interests. The information is out there, but it's so drowned out by what the large interests want you to believe, under the guise of "feeding the world", that it's actually not so easy to come by.

It's also important to remember that sometimes facts change, and in 2008 we were projecting a world in which population growth would not slow down. And then it did, but fueled by both the misinformation spread by corporate interests (who have the money and the access to media) about the necessity of centralizing and making farming more efficient, and by the belief in the myth of dwindling farmlands, we have continued rushing apace into concentrating as much food production as possible into the smallest space (and ownership) possible, with devastating effects on small farmers and their local economies.


Now, I have no idea what the current numbers and theories say, but last year a number of sociologists were projecting that we have passed peak population growth and are now heading into a slowing arc that will gradually flatten out and decline as the global population continues to urbanize. That also makes the food production situation vastly, vastly different.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Honestly I think the problem is that we have an economy where "what you do for a living" and "what you do for fun" are almost always in completely separate domains. Obviously, someone's got to clean toilets and there probably aren't many people for whom that qualifies as a dream job, but there's no really compelling reason why hundreds of millions of people should have to spend their best years churning out sprockets or tinkering with things just to pay the bills.

Maybe the Grind would feel less grinding if we had universal education, guaranteed health care, and an absolute promise that no matter who you are, where you come from, or what you choose to do for work, you will not starve to death, die of a treatable illness, or have to live in poverty. If we were free to experiment and find what really inspires us without the fear of "failing" and being destitute, I think a lot more people would end up happy and we might be surprised at the kinds of jobs that still get done.

Amen. Not to mention the kind of brilliant innovation that would arise.

Aristotle Divides activities in three groups¹, I think that brilliant innovation requires a mix of all three.

¹

In Ancient Greek the word praxis (πρᾶξις) referred to activity engaged in by free men. Aristotle held that there were three basic activities of man: theoria, poiesis and praxis. There corresponded to these kinds of activity three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action.

What seems wrong with our current economy is that it is completely focussed on poiesis. We apparently need to consume more so we can produce more ¹⁰so we can consume more so we can produce more ^GOTO10 Leaving us too little time for activities that have as their goal the activity itself (leisure) and/or the pursuit of Truth (a few examples: Science, self-reflection, figuring out how to not be a fat bastard).
Production should be a means to an end. The workweek, as long as it is defined by unpleasant production, should forever be getting shorter. What is the point of technological innovation if it does not give us more time to enjoy life?

I started reading that post with the Roger face, thinking "what a pretentious load of shit".  But then I realized that it's fucking brilliant.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

RELEVANT.

http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever



Yeah, it's alternet, but they link to the original paper.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

RELEVANT.

http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever



Yeah, it's alternet, but they link to the original paper.

Haha, yeah, I saw that. It ties into several other studies, for example the ones that show that debunking beliefs just reinforces them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh also LOL my mentor is giving a talk on numeracy and decision-making in health care, and showing her film, on my campus... during a time when I'm in lab. :meh: That relates to this article because political beliefs absolutely destroy people's ability to interpret numbers in a way that makes them able to make effective health-care decisions for themselves and their children, as I found on a small but alarming scale over the summer with my research that I'm presenting at the conference in Nashville next week.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

RELEVANT.

http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever



Yeah, it's alternet, but they link to the original paper.

Haha, yeah, I saw that. It ties into several other studies, for example the ones that show that debunking beliefs just reinforces them.

I'm going to drop that on every hipster I see on Facebook, who's "getting the word out".

But they won't get it. 

[Reginald Ret]

RELEVANT.

http://www.alternet.org/media/most-depressing-discovery-about-brain-ever



Yeah, it's alternet, but they link to the original paper.

Haha, yeah, I saw that. It ties into several other studies, for example the ones that show that debunking beliefs just reinforces them.

I'm going to drop that on every hipster I see on Facebook, who's "getting the word out".

But they won't get it. 

Hee hee hee, please xpost or link to any fun reactions.

[Dildo Argentino]

Two things come to mind. One of them is this:

http://basicincome2013.eu/

I've signed, and if you are a citizen of the EU, so should you. Cyprus and Switzerland (predictably, but still) have legislated to introduce it (as far as I know) beginning next year.

The other one is that while I agree with Nigel that employment is de facto in most cases a form of exploitation, I'm not sure to what extent it is an essential feature. To my mind, the essentials of employment are as follows: some projects are not single person projects, and all projects carry risk: when I cooperate with others on the basis that I (voluntarily) take most or all of the risk involved (generally by providing most or all of the resources required) for the project, I can be said to be employing those others to work for me. It is also fair, in that setup, for me to get a larger share of the value generated by the project (if it is a success) than the others do. The question of whether I am exploiting them or not is a different question, which depends, largely, on the working conditions I provide (using the resources I have), the share they get of the value we generate together, and, in the wider context, of the extent to which they are forced to accept unfair offers by the economic landscape.

I realise that this may sound entitled and that I am in a privileged situation, but still, it seems to me the best way to work towards shifting the behemoth just a little bit is to stay away from exploitative relationships. And while I am fully aware that the great majority have little choice in the matter, when I look around in my hood, I see quite a few people who complain at having to work too many hours under a bad boss, but would not dream of accepting a reduction of monetary income in return for more time and better work relationships. Which is sad.