Have you ever been hungry in your life? And I don’t mean “I feel like a snack” hungry. I mean “going for a week without food as you cannot afford it” hungry?

Modern farming has allowed you to shitpost on d2jsp instead of dying in the field ploughing half-rotten potatoes to feed your malnourished family.
And yet you are here complaining about your cozy and sheltered life online. I strongly advise to visit some less fortunate countries like Chad or Sudan that have no access to modern farming methods or capital to deploy them and try to figure out how to get something to eat there. Its all organic and circular though, hand grown with no fertilizers or pesticides.
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
How are we still treating food as something only to be traded and profited on in 2023?
Because somebody needs to spend resources and time to produce it and deliver it to you as you are not growing your own food.
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
I’m sure many in this forum will squawk about how it isn’t feasible to provide food for everyone. The current system is unsustainable
Incredible progress in food production in the past 50 years has allowed astonishingly bigger yields and amounts of food to be produced by smaller and smaller amount of farmers using modern tech like tractors, fertilizers, crop rotation, pesticides, herbicides and so on. This has allowed the planet to sustain a population of 8bln that continues to grow
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
where large firms squeeze more profits out of poisoning our food because its cheaper to make.
If you believe your food is poisoned - prove it and sue the company that poisons it. Or ignore their products and let market forces force them out of business.
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
It is overly centralized and industrialized,
No - you simply cant centralize food production - its spread out around the globe and nobody owns it all. Yes there are big farmer cooperatives and landowners, but its still very very decentralized. You can argue the trade is overly controlled by ADCMs and to a bigger extend the likes of ADM and Cargill in the United States, however there are plenty of options if you shop and eat locally without relying on imported exotic foods.
There is nothing wrong with Industrialisation of food production. You wouldn't be able to afford eating even potatoes otherwise.
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, and fossil fuels.
Modern farming uses crop rotation. Pesticides are required to increase food yields and make your food cheaper. Fertilizers are basic chemistry - Phosphorus or Nitrate is the same Nitrate whether it came from a cow dung or was dug out from a mine. Chemical additives like preservatives DRASTICALLY reduce cost of transporting your food to you. GMOs arguably have allowed to increase yields HUNDRED FOLD to keep costs down. Factory farms are an essential source of protein to keep eg cost of chicken down (chicken is the cheapest, easiest and arguably the safest source of protein a human can find).
Fossil fuels? What do you suggest? Go back to ploughs?
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
Its low prices are an illusion.
Low prices of food has allowed majority of population take food safety for granted and focus on more "important" things like hating their neighbours, racism, gender studies and arts. It also enabled astonishing push forward in science and sociiety overall as more people can afford not to grow their own food, but dedicate their lives to something intellectual.
Quote (MildSambal @ 30 Jul 2023 06:32)
The real costs are much too high, and they are being imposed on mainly the middle class and the poorest and most vulnerable people in the United States.
Sucks to be them, but United States is ultimately still one of the few countries of the world with functioning societal vertical lifts. Especially these days with the age of internet where all knowledge is at your fingers - one just has no excuse to blame somebody else for their own misfortunes
This post was edited by Malopox on Jul 30 2023 02:21am