Item — HN Reader

That's not totally true. I remember as a kid going to my grandfather's farm in Iowa and there would be an alfalfa rotation every 6 years I believe. Now they don't bother with that anymore since the fertilizers/seeds and other treatments mean that the low value alfalfa no longer needs to be in the mix.

Fertilizer is like doping. It works! But it comes at a long term cost. Anyway, now we can go down two paths, hyper-modern indoor farming which is expanding in Europe and organic farming that is growing in the US and Europe. Conventional industrial farming is going to get hit from both sides.

Also, the big things keeping corn going is sugar duties and ethanol subsidies. Without those, alot of the crop would disappear.

1 comments

I have no idea how old you are but the truth is farming techniques have changed significantly, even in the last 20 years. Nowdays if you don't consider yourself a steward of the land then you aren't doing the right thing by it.

My family are farmers in Australia. We are currently going through the worst drought we have ever had. We've had 7 inches of rain this year vs our annual rainfall of 26 inches. We are still growing a (very small) crop. This is possible because of soil conservation, no-till agriculture, and having healthy soil that conserves moisture.

Farmers who haven't adopted these techniques are bankrupt.

in the US and Europe, it is possible to not engage in best practice farming techniques, because government subsidies (20 Bn USD in America, 59 Bn Euro in the EU) remove the competitive pressures that that force best practice (it really isn't as simple as 'just forcing more production out of the soil by adding more fertilizer_.

Yes, of course there are still farmers not following best practice. It's a normal distribution

> Farmers who haven't adopted these techniques are bankrupt.

If only the world were just. As you say, countries with legislature captured by farming lobbies are no longer subject to survival pressures.