Contrary to popular dogma, industrial agriculture cannot "feed the world." Below are seven key takeaways from a report comparing the industrial food chain to the smallholder peasant food web.
Peasants are the main or sole food providers to more than 70% of the world’s people, and peasants produce this food with often much less than 25% of the resources — including land, water, fossil fuels — used to get all of the world’s food to the table.
The industrial food chain uses at least 75% of the world’s agricultural resources and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, but provides food to less than 30% of the world’s people.
For every $1 consumers pay to industrial food chain retailers, society pays another $2 for the industrial food chain’s health and environmental damages. The total bill for the industrial food chain's direct and indirect cost is 5 times governments’ annual military expenditure.
The industrial food chain lacks the agility to respond to climate change. Its research and development is not only distorted but also declining as it concentrates the global food market.
The peasant food web nurtures 9-100 times the biodiversity used by the industrial food chain, across plants, livestock, fish, and forests. Peasants have the knowledge, innovative energy and networks needed to respond to climate change; they have the operational scope and scale; and they are closest to the hungry and malnourished.
There is still much about our food systems that we don’t know we don’t know. Sometimes, the industrial food chain knows but isn’t telling. Other times, policymakers aren’t looking. Most often, we fail to consider the diverse knowledge systems in the peasant food web.
The bottom line: at least 3.9 billion people are either hungry or malnourished because the industrial food chain is too distorted, vastly too expensive, and — after 70 years of trying — just can’t scale up to feed the world.
I am not very well at the moment which I think I am mentioning as I believe it will excuse the gif below in some way, while knowing full well that anyone who is paying attention will have seen me post worse / sillier / more nonsensical when I'm not ill 🤧
First roast of our homegrown coffee for 2023. 60g green beans on the left; 55g roasted on the right. 3 minutes in the air popper; first crack at 1:45 or so; trying for a medium roast. Next we give it 72 hours to develop; tasting Thursday! #coffee#farming#kauai
Farmers who have their entire cropping land submerged underwater have found they are ineligible for a government flooding hardship fund – because their farms are too far from a major river. #Floods#ukpolitics#farming
Wisconsin’s #Dairy Industry Relies on #Undocumented Immigrants, but the State Won’t Let Them Legally Drive
Undocumented #immigrants in the state can own and register their vehicles, but they aren’t allowed to drive them, forcing many #farm workers to risk fines and #arrest.
“It’s a Catch-22 for a lot of folks,” advocates say.
Farmers have realised that Brexit has done them few favours (they were warned, of course) & now seek a solution that is popular on Mastodon: universal basic income.
It seems that farmers have hit on UBI as a form of funding that will replace the EU funding model they lost having (at least round here) deciding to bite the hand that fed them.
Q. would UBI for farmers help the more general case or provide evidence of its financial unsustainability?
BREAKING 🔥 Scientists from @ScientistRebellion and artists from @ExtinctionR and "Forfattere Ser Grønt" are occupying the biggest industrial #farming#lobby in #Denmark (Landbrug og Fødevarer) to demand an end to #lobbyism in food production, and an immediate transition away from the destructive, #colonial and undemocratic farming practices that prevail in Denmark, and which are responsible for ~30% of the country's #CO2#emissions. #TheScienceIsClear#BefriJorden (1/n)
Over the weekend we finished the upper pasture. About 1100 feet of fence, all held together with tiny fiddly bits of metal. Naturally the goats would prefer to eat the stuff on the other side. #kauai#farming#goats
Climate change is hitting Ontario’s farms hard. Why won’t the government talk about it?
Internal documents show Ontario asked researchers to downplay findings of report on how climate change will impact food, buildings and people. Now the government seems to be avoiding its suggested solutions
Put my hearing protection on, started my Mozart playlist and ground up all the tree limbs that came down in the last week to a nice pile of mulch to add to our sandy soil. I'll repeat that several times over the coming summer! #farming#storms#recycling
This could be a mere human error, but I suspect more as I've seen it too often.
The German supermarket chain #Rewe promotes their continual offers of regional goods, especially fruit and vegetables. Small signs tell customers that certain items are from the local area, and people seem to trust them.
An occasional check, though, and it is clear this is not the case. These potatoes are from #Egypt which, no matter how you fold the globe, is not regional to #Bremen. A second container had potatoes from Israel, also not local by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, none of the items marked as Regional goods on offer in Rewe Bremen yesterday were regional at all.
Time, perhaps, to give someone a geography lesson, or ask whether this is being done on purpose.
I’m so done with it being so humid now…. When are we actually gonna get this thunderstorm they have been threatening for the last 4 weeks! 🌧️ ⛈️ #rain#weather#summer#cornwall#uk#farming
Gardeners! How was your week?
Hello! How was your week and what progress did you see in your garden? What are you happy or unhappy with? Time to share your experiences!...