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   feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 05:14:32 JST feld

   • mekka okereke :verified:
   @mekkaokereke This was a Republican ploy to bail out farmers with socialism but not call it socialism. The farmers who grew too much corn should have failed, but instead we encouraged them and they're also destroying all our topsoil as a consequence.
   
   We have too much corn. We need to stop. No, we do not need corn for PLA plastics. That's just another lie to keep them producing corn.
   
   I corn't take it anymore
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 05:27:25 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     @mekkaokereke You know that old trope they like to pull out: "If you ate today, thank a farmer"?
     
     I got a response to that:
     
     "If you sold your corn this year, thank a taxpayer"
   • Embed this notice
     Michael Busch (michael_w_busch@mastodon.online)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 06:23:58 JST Michael Busch

     in reply to

     • Sarah Taber
     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @feld @mekkaokereke On this I have lately learned from @sarahtaber , who is also running for North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner to address some of it.

     (And good luck to her and everyone else in the state right now.)

     feld likes this.
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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:08:43 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @Jonricha @mekkaokereke No they are the villains and every family farm barely hanging on due to government subsidies should be wiped out, not strung along for decades causing only further debt and misery. A farm is a business and if you're bad at business you deserve the consequences.
     
     e.g., This is not WW2. My grandfather was told to go home and farm to serve the war effort. That's not where we are today.
     
     Instead we are paying millions of farmers to grow crops we don't need and the results are disastrous to our economy and our health. That's how we got HFCS. That's how we got ethanol (which destroys cars -- another burden on the taxpayer). That's how we get our terrible quality meat that everyone eats. The fertilizer we're paying them to use is destroying our environment. Almost all the corn not being used for those purposes goes to feed animals, not humans. They grow food to feed our cattle as cheap as possible, not to feed us. It subsidizes factory farms that we all detest!
     
     The Farm Bill exists only to protect "farming culture" in America. That's it. Imagine if we did the same for any other cultural group in America. It would be absolute outrage.
   • Embed this notice
     Jon (spelled the cool way) (jonricha@hoosier.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:08:55 JST Jon (spelled the cool way)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @mekkaokereke @feld I don’t think the farmers are the villains here. They’re trying to keep their eyeballs above the waterline by growing whatever will pay the bills. Bad policy didn’t “bail the farmers out” from poor decisions; it drove, indeed pretty much forced, the decisions.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:23:52 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @MichaelTBacon @mekkaokereke @Jonricha most of the corn grown is not for human consumption. I'll give the farmers growing potatoes, broccoli, and beans a break but the big farms in the Midwest are almost all corn and it is a net negative on society
     
     https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/time-to-rethink-corn/
   • Embed this notice
     Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D. (michaeltbacon@social.coop)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:23:54 JST Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)

     @feld @mekkaokereke @Jonricha

     Ooft. There's a lot to unpack in there.

     We subsidize farms because the world needs food. It's a good thing to do.

     We subsidize all the wrong farms, because that's how we roll.

     "A farm is a business" is a gross oversimplification. Some farms are hobbies. Some farms are labors of love. Some "farmers" are landowners who pay poverty wages. Some "farmers" are landless skilled workers making poverty wages.

     It's not helpful to attack "farmers." Be specific.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:27:57 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @MichaelTBacon @Jonricha @mekkaokereke let me put it another way as this will resonate with a lot of people:
     
     corn is the AI of farming
   • Embed this notice
     Donald Ball (donaldball@triangletoot.party)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:30:28 JST Donald Ball

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)

     @feld @mekkaokereke @Jonricha Corn production in the US is quite a different thing, of course. It’s basically an industrial commodity produced by agricorps.

     feld likes this.
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     Donald Ball (donaldball@triangletoot.party)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:30:29 JST Donald Ball

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)

     @feld @mekkaokereke @Jonricha Eerrrrrmmmmm farming, produce farming in particular, is highly variable with constant risks of catastrophic losses, and utterly necessary for a healthy, stable population. While government food production supports are often a source of graft and corruption, basically every viable state in history has provided it in some form or another for good reason.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:38:03 JST feld

     in reply to

     • SlicerDicer
     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @donaldball @mekkaokereke @Jonricha we have the technology to begin moving to giant indoor environmentally controlled grow operations. They require far less land than outdoor farming. They require no topsoil. They will not need to constantly consume water. There will be no nutrients flushed out in wastewater. There will be no such thing as "seasons". The crops can grow 24/7 with specific pulsed light cycles so they never shut off their growth. They'll grow even faster with controlled, elevated co2 and increased atmospheric pressure. Entire trees that take years to mature and fruit can be done in months.
     
     Doing this removes the variable of weather destroying your yields.
     
     All of this exists. We just aren't using it. If you want to chat with an expert on it reach out to @SlicerDicer
   • Embed this notice
     The Animal and the Machine (taatm@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:38:09 JST The Animal and the Machine

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @feld @mekkaokereke
     Given that corn syrup is bad for you, a lot of US products can’t be sold here in the UK. The only reason they are legal in America is that you made them.

     feld likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:39:00 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • The Animal and the Machine
     @taatm @mekkaokereke it's disgusting, I have been intentionally avoiding all products with it for years now. Once you start looking it's very eye-opening how many products it's in. 🤮
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     old white dude (jyeo18@mstdn.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:39:04 JST old white dude

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @feld @mekkaokereke 17 years later and nothing’s changed. Having Iowa choose our leaders is madness.

     https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/kingcorn/

     feld likes this.
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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 07:39:36 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • old white dude
     @JYeo18 @mekkaokereke King Corn is a must watch for anyone reading this thread.
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 08:51:09 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @Jonricha @donaldball @mekkaokereke “Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” – Paul Harvey
     
     That's a core part of the problem: we don't have the topsoil anymore.
     
     https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/967376880/new-evidence-shows-fertile-soil-gone-from-midwestern-farms
     Sick Sun likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jon (spelled the cool way) (jonricha@hoosier.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 08:51:10 JST Jon (spelled the cool way)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball

     @feld @donaldball @mekkaokereke We have a perfectly good planet with soil in which plants just naturally grow, you know? If we can find the collective will to use it sensibly, we don’t need giant hydroponic warehouses to grow our food, and if we can’t find that collective will, I doubt that there’s any technology that will save our asses.

   • Embed this notice
     Jon (spelled the cool way) (jonricha@hoosier.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 08:51:11 JST Jon (spelled the cool way)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball

     @donaldball @feld @mekkaokereke I’m not up on the technology you describe but I do know some thing about farming, and what you’re saying sounds pretty Silicon Valley fever dream to me. We don’t need new technologies to make our agriculture sustainable. We’ve had the necessary technologies for several centuries, we just don’t have the economic incentives to use them as global capitalism works.

   • Embed this notice
     Jon (spelled the cool way) (jonricha@hoosier.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 09:07:29 JST Jon (spelled the cool way)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball

     @donaldball @feld @mekkaokereke The Amish for example were getting good crops out of shit soil three centuries ago in France, with careful management. Plenty of other people groups have already solved this problem too, for various climate and soil types. Our economic system just isn’t set up to encourage it. It encouraged global commodity agriculture instead.

     feld likes this.
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     Jon (spelled the cool way) (jonricha@hoosier.social)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 09:07:30 JST Jon (spelled the cool way)

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball

     @feld @mekkaokereke @donaldball It’s dumb that we lost our best topsoil, but Midwestern soil is still plenty good enough to grow food. Conventional agriculture is optimized to produce maximum profit per dollar input. We can produce massively more food per acre of land with other methods and other crops, and we can still do it in fairly poor soil, if each farmer is working a few acres rather than tens of thousands.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 09:13:24 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Donald Ball
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @Jonricha @donaldball @mekkaokereke You're right, the incentives are not aligned. Unfortunately for us in America, we have to work within the system we've got. I don't see any kind of revolution coming in my lifetime without a civil war or catastrophic economic collapse.
     
     It seems every major change we've had in America is reactionary.
     
     You know the old trope, "Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”... sad but true
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 11:24:03 JST feld

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)
     @MichaelTBacon @mekkaokereke @Jonricha check the Criticisms of the 2002 farm bill section on Wikipedia, it sums it up better than I'll regurgitate it here anyway. This is where it went off the rails.
     
     
     
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm_Security_and_Rural_Investment_Act_of_2002
   • Embed this notice
     Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D. (michaeltbacon@social.coop)'s status on Sunday, 29-Sep-2024 11:24:04 JST Michael T. Bacon, Ph.D.

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:
     • Jon (spelled the cool way)

     @feld @mekkaokereke @Jonricha

     I get it. But while a gigantic amount of acreage is corn in the US, in terms of number of farms it's a much smaller percentage.

     Farms are complicated!

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Monday, 30-Sep-2024 02:37:37 JST feld

     in reply to

     • RetTeacher
     @mthierry this discussion is heavily focused on corn (a bit under 100M acres), which is a direct result of the policies we put into the 2002 farm bill which is being carried forward. You may have missed those details in the thread.
     
     See, the Dems can't really fight this because the farm bill also includes the food stamps program. But we now have 20+ years of massive subsidies which is essentially buying the votes of all those farmers...
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     RetTeacher (mthierry@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 30-Sep-2024 02:37:39 JST RetTeacher

     in reply to

     • mekka okereke :verified:

     @feld @mekkaokereke My Dad, a farmer, got a grand total of $1,500 from the government not to farm a parcel of land. Had to take out loans for seeds and fixed old equipment long past it's useful date. He raised flax and soybeans and lots of garden food for us and the neighbors, but do tell me more.