schmorpel comments on Just so you understand...

[–] schmorpel@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

While some of the feats of large scale agriculture seem impressive, the fossil fuel industry and those who sell the machinery seem to have inflated the numbers quite a lot.

Biodiverse landscapes grow a higher density of food with fewer pesticides and herbicides, and better soil health and water retention in the long term. The problem: you need those pesky people to maintain and harvest complex biodiverse systems, and they want livable wages! Best call them savages and uncivilized, drive them away in the name of progess and force everyone to use your machines, fertilizer, pesticides, machinery and fuels.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The problem: you need those pesky people to maintain and harvest complex biodiverse systems, and they want livable wages! Best call them savages and uncivilized, drive them away in the name of progess and force everyone to use your machines, fertilizer, pesticides, machinery and fuels.

Yeah, you can pretty much only do polyculture by hand, that's true. Are you suggesting we go back to unmechanized farming?

That would be super great for the planet, as it would cause the deaths by starvation of roughly 90% of the population, with the majority of the remaining humans forced into subsistence farming.

Neither corpses not subsistence farmers would cause much pollution. It might be somewhat hard to get volunteers for it though.

On the other hand, you can absolutely maintain a biodiverse landscape AND use mechanized monoculture fields. You just need to give nature time and space too, and that's something most farmers refuse to do. Which is why they should be forced to. I don't see why a factory gets banned from destroying biodiversity, but it's fine when farmers do it.

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[–] schmorpel@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

give nature time and space

That's what a biodiverse landscape does? I didn't say unmechanized - but there's a difference between running giant machines over 200ha of the same and running a small tractor over a 2ha field. For the landscape it makes all the difference: having 2ha of one thing, then a hedge (that can contain edible fruits and berries), then something else, maybe have pasture with nut and chestnut on it, instead of just pasture.

Even in a small vegetable garden planting different plants together is so much easier. Higher plants give shade to smaller ones, aromatic ones protect pest-endangered ones ... recreating an actual ecosystem is the real deal.

Todays' rural areas are empty of people. They were bought out by those people who consented to being enslaved by the machine and fuel complex. The ones who were forced to leave had to become wage slaves in the cities. The ones who run the system now don't even want to touch the soil anymore! They just send a fucking drone to analyze where to dump how much of their chemicals. It's not a sustainable way of managing soil and water.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago

That's what a biodiverse landscape does? I didn't say unmechanized - but there's a difference between running giant machines over 200ha of the same and running a small tractor over a 2ha field. For the landscape it makes all the difference: having 2ha of one thing, then a hedge (that can contain edible fruits and berries), then something else, maybe have pasture with nut and chestnut on it, instead of just pasture.

I agree entirely, with pretty much everything you posted, but that's still monoculture. One crop per field, only much more ecologically friendly.

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