Adam
Genuine question, spurred by this article: is a return to smaller farms actually more sustainable?
Holistic farming, where all the inputs and outputs work together (pigs root at the soil, turning it naturally; use of permaculture), seems ideal, but don't economies of scale apply here somewhat? Are 20 small farms really creating fewer emissions than one factory farm that produces the same or more food?
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2019/01/toward-climate-friendly-farms-eu-protesters-demand-action
Adam
From a food security perspective, the smaller farms seem better -- one can go down without threatening the whole food supply. But from a carbon footprint perspective, are several small farms actually better than one large one?
JessSloan
I think the issue is how we farm rather than how many farms there are: group animals in large herds and leave them in one spot for long periods, grow entire crops of food to feed animals rather than them eating what’s natural, planting entire fields with one kind of plant, planting more than needed and wasting a lot of it. All of that contributes to the negative impact. If we went back to small farms, and changed how we farmed, I think it would be a positive change. @ink_slinger
Jonkman Microblog is a social network, courtesy of SOBAC Microcomputer Services. It runs on GNU social, version 1.2.0-beta5, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All Jonkman Microblog content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.