In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations.
I am not so sure "a farm-free future with food primarily manufactured via precision fermentation and other scientific processes" is going to feed the hungry masses.
Why not? We already do a lot of processing even just to turn wheat into bread, all beer is fermented, and “other scientific processes” is what let us feed more than 790 million people worldwide. Feeding the masses this way seems at least plausible to me, even if it might turn out too expensive to bother.
(Of course, for something this important it makes a lot of sense to be slow to change so you can spot any mistakes before they’re important; doing it fast and only then finding out you made a huge mistake will make all the pandemic deaths seem like “the good old days” in comparison).
Like nearly all social engineering/behavioral economics theories, they fail the moment they're exposed to reality. So while Monibot et. al. can make a fine caloric calculation, they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat.
So you and I agree in that it'd be too expensive to bother – namely that you'd be attempting to erase some of the most important cultural traditions 'for the greater good'.
> they fail to imagine what'd happen when you start telling cultures with millennia of food traditions what they can and can't eat.
McDonalds exists and is popular, so traditions are not why I think it might be expensive.
Also traditional food is mostly much younger than it seems. Old World dishes involving tomatoes or potatoes or maize or chillies or chocolate, not possible before trade with the Americas.
I'm not talking about expensive in terms of currency, I'm talking about it in terms of human cost. Many, many wars have been fought over attempts to control food, and the lives lost can be counted in the hundreds of millions.
Yet this is exactly what the article's argument amounts to. There is simply no way to feed 8B with cozy 'holistic regenerative' approaches to farming.
We're barely capable of doing it with the current rapacious mega-conglomerate chemical-soaked system. To go beyond it, and scale back the damage, we're going to need fermented foods, indoor fish races, synthetic juices/pulps/flours, proteins/meats, etc, etc. There's still a place for 'premium' food from local farms, etc. 'Cake' as you put it.
Ugh. Gross article. I hate SV dystopia-food dorks as much as anyone, but this sucks.
> The holistic approach, typified by Savory, sees human beings as stewards of the Earth, a force for good when guided by the right principles.
Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. Any plans for dealing with the resulting higher costs for staple foods, using these approaches? What's the rate of voluntary adoption look like? On track to account for a majority of food production within the next couple decades, say?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
> Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. In argument with advocates of holistic agriculture, this leads to all sorts of name-calling—“pseudoscience,” “greenwash,” “climate denial”
> Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money.
You seem to have seen the word 'conservative' in the URL and somehow drawn some conclusion that the author – having followed her work for some years now – actually has a wildly different perspective on.
> Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding.
No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption.
To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
This author agrees with the possibility of that and so do I, which is why I'm such a big fan of localism (as opposed to further industrialization – of food even further removed from the human experience)
> You seem to have seen the word 'conservative' in the URL and somehow drawn some conclusion that the author – having followed her work for some years now – actually has a wildly different perspective on.
I'm familiar with the publication, I didn't just guess based on a word. In this venue, the article comes off as the typical "... so we'd better do nothing" sort of deflection-focused piece one would expect on this topic. Some actual vision of how this other approach can address the same problems would be great... but then she'd have had to shop it to The Nation or something, instead of The American Conservative.
> No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption.
> To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
Yeah, the broader problem with the article is that it comes from a very-online bubble where any of that seems like it might really happen.
There are as many "we" as there are audiences. "We'd better do something" can be both true and false at the same time and for a single something, depending on the audience.
Sure, my point is that "we" is presumptive, as in "what do you mean 'we', white man?"
The neoliberal instinct to assume 'we' and then decide 'we' 'must do something' from atop our ivory towers is why we have industrial ag robbing the future to pay the present. 'We' were better off when centralization was limited to the distance you could walk in a day.
> 'We' were better off when centralization was limited to the distance you could walk in a day.
When centralisation was genuinely that limited, ploughs were drawn by animals rather than engines, something like 90% of us lived in conditions comparable to the modern idea of extreme poverty (up to $2.47 per day in 2022 dollars), we hadn't yet invented synthetic fertiliser (and of the immediate predecessor, the Guano Era[0] hadn't even yet started), and the world population was 750 million or so.
The only "we" that were in any sense better off back then were the aristocrats, and even then only in very limited dimensions like relative (but not absolute) power.
Even the worst-off places today that are still on $2.47 per day in 2022 dollars, are at least no worse off than that era, and there's fewer such people now than then even in absolute terms let alone as a percentage of the world population.
> neoliberal instinct
That feels like you're mistaking political punditry for a point. This kind of thought process works just as well with proud card-carrying Communists, Whigs, old-school (rather than neo-) liberals, Monarchists, the literal Mussolini National Fascist Party of Italy, big-C Conservatives, little-c conservatives, … basically everyone except the various flavours of anarchism. Even Thatcher's famous quote "there's no such thing as society" still came with the practice of doing things about issues, she was trying to assert that people couldn't just expect a government to solve all their ills as the government could only do things through the hands of the very people who were complaining.
You've actually picked up on the point I'm making, but drawn the wrong conclusions.
The ideologies you've listed work in some ways, fail in others – namely that every time they decide that 'we know best' they crumble – especially when it comes to trying to force change in behaviors deeply ingrained in our culture.
Trying to peanut-butter a solution as deeply-rooted as food – across an entire society – is (thankfully and rightly) bound to fail, regardless of how altruistic 'we' are being.
> The ideologies you've listed work in some ways, fail in others – namely that every time they decide that 'we know best' they crumble – especially when it comes to trying to force change in behaviors deeply ingrained in our culture.
I was attempting to list all the ideologies I could remember the names of.
That things eventually fail is only trivially correct because all empires eventually fail, except for the ones which still exist, which is tautologically always true from the point of view of any finite observer.
But it is absolutely 100% false to say that their failures occur "every time they decide that 'we know best'", as this is not only what it even means to have laws (and thus will happen instantly regardless of how long a nation state or empire lasts), it is even demonstrated by the internal group dynamics in various primates and wolf packs.
> In an effort to make diets and agriculture “sustainable,” urban bureaucrats make policy based on industrial agricultural data, completely ignoring experience and practices coming out of holistically managed operations.
A general irritation I have with conservatives, and this article is a perfect example, is when they don't know-- or pretend not to know-- who actually pulls the levers of power. American agricultural policy is set first by mega-agribusinesses, and second by politicians in Midwestern states cynically pandering to the dwindling number of family farms that still remain. The sorts of vegan activists this author is panicking about are concentrated in coastal states who have little to no ability to influence the Farm Bill. They simply don't matter.
> Chief among these “farm-free” advocates is George Monbiot, a vegan activist and, naturally, a Guardian columnist.
Come the fuck on. A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.
Sorry, I'm trying to understand your comment. The author's position is that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy, and then refute her position by pointing out that bureaucrats ignorantly shape policy?
> A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.
27 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] threadEDIT: Would love to know why this article got flagged since its a response to this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38050236
(Of course, for something this important it makes a lot of sense to be slow to change so you can spot any mistakes before they’re important; doing it fast and only then finding out you made a huge mistake will make all the pandemic deaths seem like “the good old days” in comparison).
So you and I agree in that it'd be too expensive to bother – namely that you'd be attempting to erase some of the most important cultural traditions 'for the greater good'.
McDonalds exists and is popular, so traditions are not why I think it might be expensive.
Also traditional food is mostly much younger than it seems. Old World dishes involving tomatoes or potatoes or maize or chillies or chocolate, not possible before trade with the Americas.
We're barely capable of doing it with the current rapacious mega-conglomerate chemical-soaked system. To go beyond it, and scale back the damage, we're going to need fermented foods, indoor fish races, synthetic juices/pulps/flours, proteins/meats, etc, etc. There's still a place for 'premium' food from local farms, etc. 'Cake' as you put it.
This is exactly wrong. I highly recommend you dig deeper, start with Wendell Berry and then into the authors and scientists in his orbit.
> The holistic approach, typified by Savory, sees human beings as stewards of the Earth, a force for good when guided by the right principles.
Where's The American Conservative stand on regulation to guide agribusiness by those "right principles"? Since, you know, otherwise they'll just keep doing whatever makes the most money. Any plans for dealing with the resulting higher costs for staple foods, using these approaches? What's the rate of voluntary adoption look like? On track to account for a majority of food production within the next couple decades, say?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
> Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding. In argument with advocates of holistic agriculture, this leads to all sorts of name-calling—“pseudoscience,” “greenwash,” “climate denial”
OMG.
Waste of ink/pixels.
You seem to have seen the word 'conservative' in the URL and somehow drawn some conclusion that the author – having followed her work for some years now – actually has a wildly different perspective on.
> Monbiot and his fellow Cartesian rationalists handicap their ability to understand complex ecological systems as soon as they make measurement of inert nature, out of context, a condition for understanding.
No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption.
To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
I'm familiar with the publication, I didn't just guess based on a word. In this venue, the article comes off as the typical "... so we'd better do nothing" sort of deflection-focused piece one would expect on this topic. Some actual vision of how this other approach can address the same problems would be great... but then she'd have had to shop it to The Nation or something, instead of The American Conservative.
> No, the article is a fair critique of Monibot et. al.'s behavior in the context of this topic, who often have fine theoretical frameworks that completely ignore the ideological, cultural, and otherwise vitally important social aspects inherent to food production and consumption.
> To wit, you're not going to get the population of, say, Mexico or France to eat fermented protein paste with out a) becoming a tyrant or b) erasing some of the most important traditions of the cultures in those countries.
Yeah, the broader problem with the article is that it comes from a very-online bubble where any of that seems like it might really happen.
The SV dystopia-food dorks don't actually matter.
The idea that there is a 'we' and that 'we' 'better do something' is the very ideology that got us here in the first place.
The neoliberal instinct to assume 'we' and then decide 'we' 'must do something' from atop our ivory towers is why we have industrial ag robbing the future to pay the present. 'We' were better off when centralization was limited to the distance you could walk in a day.
When centralisation was genuinely that limited, ploughs were drawn by animals rather than engines, something like 90% of us lived in conditions comparable to the modern idea of extreme poverty (up to $2.47 per day in 2022 dollars), we hadn't yet invented synthetic fertiliser (and of the immediate predecessor, the Guano Era[0] hadn't even yet started), and the world population was 750 million or so.
The only "we" that were in any sense better off back then were the aristocrats, and even then only in very limited dimensions like relative (but not absolute) power.
Even the worst-off places today that are still on $2.47 per day in 2022 dollars, are at least no worse off than that era, and there's fewer such people now than then even in absolute terms let alone as a percentage of the world population.
> neoliberal instinct
That feels like you're mistaking political punditry for a point. This kind of thought process works just as well with proud card-carrying Communists, Whigs, old-school (rather than neo-) liberals, Monarchists, the literal Mussolini National Fascist Party of Italy, big-C Conservatives, little-c conservatives, … basically everyone except the various flavours of anarchism. Even Thatcher's famous quote "there's no such thing as society" still came with the practice of doing things about issues, she was trying to assert that people couldn't just expect a government to solve all their ills as the government could only do things through the hands of the very people who were complaining.
[0] With a big G, the actual stuff was known since antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Era
The ideologies you've listed work in some ways, fail in others – namely that every time they decide that 'we know best' they crumble – especially when it comes to trying to force change in behaviors deeply ingrained in our culture.
Trying to peanut-butter a solution as deeply-rooted as food – across an entire society – is (thankfully and rightly) bound to fail, regardless of how altruistic 'we' are being.
I was attempting to list all the ideologies I could remember the names of.
That things eventually fail is only trivially correct because all empires eventually fail, except for the ones which still exist, which is tautologically always true from the point of view of any finite observer.
But it is absolutely 100% false to say that their failures occur "every time they decide that 'we know best'", as this is not only what it even means to have laws (and thus will happen instantly regardless of how long a nation state or empire lasts), it is even demonstrated by the internal group dynamics in various primates and wolf packs.
If you disagree, rephrase your point, because if I'm missing it here then I never knew what it was in the first place.
A general irritation I have with conservatives, and this article is a perfect example, is when they don't know-- or pretend not to know-- who actually pulls the levers of power. American agricultural policy is set first by mega-agribusinesses, and second by politicians in Midwestern states cynically pandering to the dwindling number of family farms that still remain. The sorts of vegan activists this author is panicking about are concentrated in coastal states who have little to no ability to influence the Farm Bill. They simply don't matter.
> Chief among these “farm-free” advocates is George Monbiot, a vegan activist and, naturally, a Guardian columnist.
Come the fuck on. A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.
> A Guardian columnist has about as much influence on American ag policy as my cat.
Same with a HN commentator, yet here we are.