BF2S Forums Animal Rights

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

the point is it's not impossible for people who have a little bit of green-space to grow some fucking vegetables. it's not beyond the ken of most able-bodied human beings. i'm not suggesting everyone go and plough a hectare and grow their own rapeseed for oil. i'm suggesting having a 2 metre squared vegetable patch.  i'm talking about planting an apple tree. i'm talking about having a few tomato plants. whatever your local soil/climate can sustain, with minimal effort, really. maybe if one in 20 families in the countryside/suburbs decided to keep chickens, they could provide for their local community. small things like this. anything to take away the lazy effects of mass-produced, supermarket-sourced everything. it's bad for local economies and its bad for the environment. not to even mention the grey and thorny area of mass farm/industrial agri's animal ethics.

It IS impossible because no one wants to fucking do it, thus they never will, thus the possibility of it happening is precisely 0% making it a fucking impossibility.

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

i think you need to check a dictionary definition of 'impossible'.

I did and it said, "reverting to an agrarian society".

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

you are hopeless. for someone that carps on about reading comprehension, deploying the rhetorical tact of a 12 year old, you sure do have a passion for reading incomprehension and hyperbole. yes, encouraging people with adequate means to grow a few tomatoes a year really is fucking "reverting to an agrarian society". you absolute derpsicle.

Right.


I should have listened to whoever left me the karma message that insisted that arguing with you was like arguing with a bag of dogshit and I shouldn't waste my time.

DesertFox- wrote:

Winston_Churchill wrote:

Your research is a little outdated actually.

More recent studies have shown that GMOs are most certainly needed for future growth of the human population, but organic farming is superior to conventional farming in almost every way.  Organic farming is simply a technique for farming.  Organic farming techniques have consistently shown increased output using the same amount of land as conventional farming, but with significantly decreased energy usage and waste.

The best solution would be GMO seeds and eventually animals using organic techniques, but that's still a little ways away for the general public to accept.

e: I really recommend Thompson's Agro-Technology or McKibben's Deep Economy for more into this kind of stuff

Are you sure you don't have that backwards? Organic yields are on average lower than those that use GMOs/other chemicals to grow, and they require a lot more energy input to acheive that, but aren't proven to be any healthier for you either.

You didnt fully read what I said though.  Properly using organic techniques generally gives better output per square metre, obviously none of them are on the same scale of massive farms so they dont have near the total output.  And I'm talking conventional farming without GMOs.  The best solution is using organic techniques that recycle animal wastes (fertilizer), use soils and water effectively, etc along with GMO crops that require basically less of everything with greater output and resistances.  I never said anything about 'healthiness' since I agree, that's never been proven.

My minor basically revolves around these kinds of things and I've had to do tons of research into it - those books I mentioned above are great starting places into reading into it.  They give pretty good, balanced views on farming techniques.  Though McKibben is a little too wishful thinking by thinking people in large cities will have home gardens and the like.

Yup.  Outside of universities and art buildings I've never seen rooftop gardens.  The concept has been around, and doesnt look bad http://inhabitat.com/sky-garden-skyscra … libeskind/ but I realistically dont see it catching on.

I've read a little into it starting to work in Detroit however, in areas that were more or less abandoned from crime (iirc).  Like this http://www.hantzfarmsdetroit.com/

Last edited by Winston_Churchill (2013-05-08 13:30:48)

Yeah I saw that, wasnt it a crowdfunded kickstarter project?  Cool concept but I havent heard much from it since. NY does have a pretty massive greenspace... I wonder if some of it could be used as a small field.  A good portion of the science (biology and engineering especially) buildings have greenhouses and rooftop gardens here and one of the labs I worked at previously was in an arty building which had a huge rooftop garden.  It actually makes sense too, people loved going up there for lunch so much when I worked there they had to close it off from people who didnt work in the building since it got so crowded.

Extra Medium wrote:

On the topic of slaughterhouses and factory farming:

Remember that these methods are akin to mass production farming that is also unpopular where farmers and scientists use genetically enhanced seeds and industrial fertilizers and pesticides and the such.  While unpopular, they are completely necessary.   Organic farming and "organic" meat, i.e. free range etc, are noble concepts and if you can do it good for you.  However, the fact is that the food supply for the world cannot be maintained by these methods and leading economist, scientists and other generally smart people have overwhelmingly agreed that 1/3rd to 1/5th of the worlds population would starve to death if these methods where used exclusively.

So, you decide which 1/5th of the population of the world you want to starve to death and YOU can go tell them that they and their families WILL starve to death because we don't want to be mean to chickens and cows and we don't want to eat trace amounts of pesticides on our caeser salads.

You're taking a fairly black and white view of things. "Organic produce is hard to do so let's toss it out the window and force ourselves to buy from hive farms instead." Give me one reason I should eat pesticide-laced iceburg lettuce imported from halfway across the country over freshly-harvested, locally grown spinach. Should I just tear out my grapes, berries and tomatoes and replace it all with inedible grass and gravel like a good suburbanite? There are entire books that cover using small areas of space to produce a surprising (to people who think they can only ever be supported by megafarms) amount of food every year.

But, you know, effort. OH NO!

were always giving away tomatoes and strawberries.

Winston_Churchill wrote:

Yup.  Outside of universities and art buildings I've never seen rooftop gardens.  The concept has been around, and doesnt look bad http://inhabitat.com/sky-garden-skyscra … libeskind/ but I realistically dont see it catching on.

I've read a little into it starting to work in Detroit however, in areas that were more or less abandoned from crime (iirc).  Like this http://www.hantzfarmsdetroit.com/

There's quite a few rooftop/backyard gardens in Brooklyn that sell to local restaurants. It will catch on as long as people see a benefit to it, and in this case people benefit by turning their backyard into a source of income to offset their ridiculous rent.

Personally, I grow herbs in my apartment with one of these things:

99% sure that's one of the main areas the hipsters hang out in lower Manhattan.

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

desert, i hope your father realizes he is accomplishing an impossible feat.

You're are taking my quote out of context and you know it.

What I was referring to was the fact that you seem to think that the world can be fed with organic food by everyone simply starting an organic farm in their backyards.  This is in fact "impossible".  Why?

1. Most people on Earth don't give a shit, by in large, about organic food.
2. Most people on Earth can't be bothered to fuck with a garden.
3. A lot of people are to stupid to grow a garden.
4. A lot of people live in places that cannot sustain a garden of any real sustenance.
5. It's fucking unnecessary for everyone that can read this fucking post seeing as how the western world has mastered mass food production.
6. Organic food is bullshit anyways.  It's been scientifically proven that organic food contains no more nutrients, vitamins or fiber than regualr store bought food and the taste difference is negligible.  Therefor the only reason to eat organically is because you WANT too or you live in a place like central fucking Zimbabwe where you HAVE too.
7. Implying that people should plant there own gardens to sustain themselves henceforth is not only implausible its fucking impossible.  WHY?  Because the majority of people on Earth DON'T FUCKING WANT TO OR THEY WOULD DOING IT ALREADY!


Organic food will NEVER feed the world.  EVER.

I have decided that if I am too lazy or too indifferent to do something then it is impossible.

Apparently people who are able and have adequate means can't because taking two minutes to plant a fucking tomato takes valuable TV/internet time out of our lives.