Fuck (space inefficient) monoculture
All my homies do permaculture
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Yeah, it's great. Farmers need to use pesticides and monocultures to stay competitive, since other farmers are using them. Also, pesticides and monocultures kill the ecosystems that provide things like natural pest control, pollination and humus. So, you probably don't get an increased yield from pesticides and monocultures when they're employed in wide areas, while you do still get the destruction of ecosystems.
Going organic and plant-based would be such a massive improvement.
People have been saying this for at least 40 years.
Going organic and half of the world starves.
Yeah, only half of that statement is correct. Organic is overall more damaging to the environment for most species. The lower yields = more acres needed for cultivation.
'more damaging' is unfortunately not a simple linear scale. One requires more space, the other releases more poisons into the environment. Both suck. But if production becomes plant based at the same time as organic, there'll still be way less space used overall. Cursory searx tells me 3/4 of agricultural land is used for animal agriculture (including growing feed). Horribly inefficient.
Organic farming releases as much or more "poisons" than conventional. Just because those poisons "natural" doesn't mean they are not harmful. Coppersulfate, pyrethrins, spinosad, neem etc are all indesciminate killers. Rotenone is a banned organic pesticide because it's linked to Parkinson's.
The 3/4 number gets a lot worse when you know we really don't need to farm as much land as we do. If we stopped subsidizing idiotic farming practices and invested heavily in infrastructure, we only need to use 1/4 of the land we do. That includes feeding all the animals. If we migrated to a plant based diet it would be around 1/10th the current land usage.
Also, many GMOs were engineered to be more resistant to pests and thus need fewer pesticides
And the absolute majority of GMO plants are not even food.
GMO are a tool.
Some GMO's are a good idea. Virus resistance for example was the first GMO I worked with in the 90's. Papaya ringspotvirus is an excellent example.
Some GMO's were a mediocre idea and an overall failure. Like all the efforts with SAMase for improving shelflife. Aka the GMO tomato.
Some GMO's are downright stupid and irresponsible. Like the RR in corn, soy, alfalfa, etc. Its lead to a massive over-application of one chemistry. Creating resistant weeds in all production zones. Or dicamba resistance is soybeans that's fucking up all the remaining trees, shrubs, and forbs.
Let's be fair, 9 billion of people living on Earth is already just too much and we are projected to peak at 11 billion apparently.
Oh no, not this again... There's enough food for everyone and we throw most of it away. Farming can be improved, and we also need to change our diets and how we distribute food. Water is equally abundant, but we can't have huge cities in the desert. That sort of stuff.
Calling people existing a problem is itself problematic. It's a step on the way to socially pressure or outright forbid people from having children, which makes existing power dynamics super creepy. Like, you think the rich and powerful will ever be denied this right? It's always some nebulous other or people generally who should stop existing or having babies. Dystopian rhetoric if you ask me. The road to eugenics, fascism, genocide is paved with green liberals concerned about overpopulation.
'I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled.'
There's always too many people when you ask a person like this about the population, but never enough people when you ask the same person the same question but include skin color in the question. F everyone who whines about population.
Please tell me why everyone is so concerned about declining birth rates*. Please.
*Without mentioning industry
Because it means there will be a larger burden on (smaller) younger generations to look after the aging ones.
Instead of 6 kids and 30 grandkids, you maybe have 2 kids and 1 grandkid, if you're lucky.
as a society there's more than enough to take care of a disproportionate amount of "non-workers" but instead we make up fake bullshit jobs and force people to work 40 hour weeks so a tiny fraction of us can send their second plane to pick up their girlfriend to go on a date in Italy
They're concerned about "their" people, because it's declining only in rich countries and those tend to see themselves as "better" and don"t like "unregulated immigration" (while the regulated one costs shit tons of money). Also those who bring thst up are usually right-wingers.
Or to say it bluntly: Xenophobia and racism.
it's declining only in rich countries
Yeah that's not true at all lol
Because we're anxious about our investments in soylent green.