If western farming methods have dire heath consequences then why do we have the longest life spans?

Also, if our methods cause massive dislocation and poverty than why are we the richest and safest countries?

Hmm, me thinks that the author might not be telling the truth.

I think that "thinkabit" should think a bit more.
*richest and safest countries?*

really? When the rate for cancer is now 1 in every 2 people ( it was 1 in 500 in 1900).
When we have an epidemic of Alzheimer's.
Yes people are living longer but that is partly because of the advances in medicine that is keeping them alive longer albeit not in the best of health.

Safer? Have you checked the rate of murders , road deaths, child molestation, rape and homelessness lately?

Robert LePage: Has it ever occurred to you that we have high cancer rates *because* we live longer?
We live longer because we have a cheap, clean and constant food supply and that we live in clean safe cities/towns. (In fact one of the biggest single health problems and the cause of many others is that we have too much food-- eg. obesity is a cause of cancer)

"Safer? Have you checked the rate of murders , road deaths, child molestation, rape and homelessness lately?"-- you're kidding right if you are trying to say that living in Australia is less safe than just about anywhere in Africa and most of the Middle East or Asia? Either that or you are very, very, very ignorant of how good you've got it here in the west (and Japan).

I am surprised that the author isn't railing against "those awful" GM crops that our farmers are now growing. As a result of GM we are now using much less dangerous pesticides than before and as a consequence we are ingesting fewer toxins in our food. Not all the increase in diseases can be attributed to food. There is an increasing body of opinion that thinks it can be partly attributed to our increasing subjection to electromagnetic radiation from devices including mobile phones.
Don't blame big agriculture for all the world's ills.
David

Small family farms are still far and away, more energy efficient than large farms run by parasitic corporations; and from (free extended lunches) often obscenely obese (Palmer, Hancock?) boardrooms, all of which, along with buy and sell, profit demanding paper shuffling middlemen, add exponentially to the cost of producing food.
We were much better off every which way, when most of our food markets were farmers markets, and sold seasonal food direct to the end user!
Or run by hands on co-ops, that allowed small productive farms to remain small and consequently, more productive.
And the bugs that infest crops are more the result of broad scale mono-culture, than anything else!
GM crops may well be the price we pay to reduce infestation! I'd prefer that smaller much more cooperative family run farms and their highly varied crops were separated by belts of neem trees, oleander hedges, and alternative crops like soil improving salt, frost and drought tolerant native wisteria; all of which tend to be naturally poisonous to most infestive predations.
However, reversing any of these destructive trends may well be nigh on impossible, or as long as pollies are in bed with big business!?
I'd imagine current farm bills rerouted in full into economic growth, via assisted discretionary spending, (improved welfare and or full cost of living scholarships, for the genuinely needy) would do far more for the respective American or European economies; than any of the subsidies, (welfare for the rich) that simply propagate this very destructive economy killing behavior, we called broad scale farming/overproduction!
An oxymoron if ever there was one!?
Rhrosty.

GM crops have led to a massive increase in pesticide use. See Benbrook "Impacts of GM crops on pesticide use in the US, the first 16 years."

Most GM crops are designed to be sprayed with weedkillers (pesticides). The idea is that the GM crop survives and the weeds die. The weeds have evolved so that they are no longer being killed.These 'superweeds' are currently on 50% of US farms. The answer? New GM crops have been designed to be sprayed with 2,4-D (an ingredient in Agent Orange) as well as Roundup and other pesticides.

The other main type of GM crops are designed to produce their own toxin that kills certain insects that eat them. The result is that the bugs are no longer killed by the plant produced toxin. Now GM seeds are often coated with neonicotinoids. These are systemic pesticides that spread through the plant. These have been linked with colony collapse disorder in bees.

In Latin America rates of cancer and birth defects have sky-rocketed in the areas near where monocultures of GM soy (sprayed with chemicals) have replaced small farms.

It is incredible that growing 'food' involves vast amounts of toxic chemicals. The industrial food chain uses 70% of resources (land, water, oil, chemicals) to produce 30% of the food. The peasant food web uses 30% of resources to produce 70% of the food. Time to ditch poisonous food production and feed us all healthily.

Rhrosty do step back from your ideology & take a proper look at things. While I agree completely, emotionally, to your preference to small family farms, I can't agree in practice.

We had a small orchard in Young during my last high school years. Now if you consider me, after school, stirring up some Bordeau mix on an old 44 gallon drum, ladling it into a knapsack spray, & going around sort of spraying the grapes & cherries is efficient, I'm afraid I don't. Loved it though, & the money. Dad paid me a bob an hour for my efforts. I saved enough for my bike from that.

Like most small orchards, the men were at work, as the farms just didn't earn a living, & us kids did the pruning, spraying & much of the picking. None of them exist today, they were amalgamated into bigger holdings or died from lack of care & fertiliser.

Even the bigger holdings, 20 acres of trees was big back then, only required one bad hail season, & they could not service the debt on the equipment & machinery they had bought to handle the "big" acreage, & went broke.

Farmers markets work well for unit dwellers, with weekends to fill, & retired farmers picking up some pin money, but they are not efficient. I agree it is great to get fresh fruit, rather than stuff after a year or more in controlled atmosphere storage, but it is time consuming shopping for the busy.

A hundred utes & small trucks all bringing small quantities to a central area is bad economics when one large truck could have brought it all.

I have watched them come & go around here, mostly go of course. The Hydroponics bloke is up for a mortgagee sale this month. A couple of unusual sever frosts put him out of production for about 5 weeks, & cost him a critical contract I think. Where the hell is that damn global warming when you need it?

The farmer's markets are great for the hobby farmer but are generally a rip off for the customers who really pay through the nose for a lot of the home made produce, particularly the organic stuff.
David

I wasn't talking about hobby farms Hasbeen, but something quite a lot larger.
And yes, plenty of over-leveraged farmers went broke due to sudden adverse conditions! And part of the risk when buying out the neighbors, via an increase in personal debt!
Dairy and wool farmers, largely due to government interference, [removing the guaranteed floor price], or stupidly selling out to foreign interests, for a once only fast buck!
Or because they were poorly advised!
I mean, go to any wind up sale, and there's usually half a dozen tractors etc, with the oldest still perfectly serviceable.
Had they been better advised, they would have paid some tax; soldiered on with still serviceable equipment; and then with the balance of the bounty, bought a few off farm investments.
Far better use of literal millions tied up in depreciating farm machinery. I mean, how many $40,000.00 rental houses, would a couple of million bought?
As for ideology Hasbeen, that's your bag mate; and has basically ruled your life, and made it impossible for you to adapt to changed circumstances!
All according to you and your focus on me, me, me, race horses and a triple bypass, life story!
And as always with poor ickle diddums, the common wage earner is to blame for asking too much, which is (according to you) why you went broke.
Others would have tried something else; like say, manufacturing made to order parts, for vintage cars, trucks and tractors etc; and sold via the direct market/internet.
There's an increasing market for made to order parts, and many can now be printed by (a) 3D printer(s)!
A mate bought a parts transference book, and found that just by looking it up, he could substitute, other manufacturer's parts, in most older american cars, which were once the most popular in the Antipodes.
And I'm sure a determined search with the offer of money, would turn up the specs for many older engine etc parts, enough that any so called engineer, could re-manufacture them.
Rhrosty.

This article is drivel. Modern agricultural techniques have contributed enormously to rising living standards in both the developed and the developing world, both by sustaining increases in food production ahead of the rate of population growth, and by driving down the relative price of food.

Thinkabit is right – improving life expectancy and the comfort and security of the modern western lifestyle disprove any claim that we are poisoning or malnourishing ourselves.

From Wikipedia:

‘Between 1950 and 2000, during the so-called "second agricultural revolution of modern times", U.S. agricultural productivity rose fast, especially due to the development of new technologies. For example, the average amount of milk produced per cow increased from 5,314 pounds to 18,201 pounds per year (+242%), the average yield of corn rose from 39 bushels to 153 bushels per acre (+292%), and each farmer in 2000 produced on average 12 times as much farm output per hour worked as a farmer did in 1950.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity

Great stuff! The thesis and information is so self-evidently true I find it hard to believe that anyone can argue against it.

Meanwhile why not check out a report titled:
Risk Expert: GMO's Could Destroy The Global Ecosystem.
It is a report on a new prediction made by the author of the intriguing book The Black Swan:The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Taleb is both a an essayist/philosopher and a statistician.

Plus check out these two sites which provide leading edge information on the obviously inevitable negative effects of GMO "foods" and the herbdicides etc that go with them - especially Roundup.

http://gmo.mercola.com
http://www.i-sis.org.uk

Various people rail against the obvious threat of big government, but dont seem to mind the fact that the global food system either now is, or is rapidly becoming under the control of a handful of private corporations. Most of which actively sponsor ALEC, the activities of which are revealed on this site: http://www.alecexposed.org

Anyone who pretends that these outfits are in any way interested in feeding the billions of mal-nourished and starving human beings on this planet is seriously deluded.

Rhrosty you have the totally wrong idea about me. The most I have ever earned is the average wage. I had some great, very serious & interesting development jobs in the plastic industry as a young bloke, but they weren't all that well paid. I thought I was doing pretty well, until I actually discovered what the average wage was.

I went into my own business to give me the time for motor racing, not because it was terribly profitable. At no stage have I ever gone broke, although I have salvaged a couple of companies that were broke.

Interestingly it was similar to what you were recommending, except it was in the latest technology, which no one else was servicing. I offered exchange, McPherson struts, hydraulic power steering, steering racks, & power brakes, when all these were new.

I had to build up a huge stock of stuff to exchange, so that is where any profits went. It was a horrible business, & I was glad to get out of it, but the stock I'd built up did buy the yacht. Like my cars, it was worn out & cheap, & I spent 2 years rebuilding it too.

After work I averaged 5 hours a night, 4 nights a week building & maintaining my racing cars, until I became good enough to be given drives in top cars. I could never afford to pay for the work.

Unlike today, that was not paid. I did earn bonuses for success, shared with all the team. The year I took second at Bathurst for the Holden Dealer team, my share of prize money & bonuses was $50.00. I also finished second in the Gold Star, our Formula 1 championship that year, winning quite a few races, including the Bathurst F1 Race. My racing earnings were $1,100. The F1 cars mechanic was paid just over $3,500.

Continued

Continued.

Fortunately money has never interested me. I could have earned much more money driving trains or busses. To day I have a fantastic life on my 20 acres in the sticks, with a menagerie of totally useless animals, pets & wild, my old stallion & even older sports cars, all on less than $400 a week. Any pensioner can live as well, which is why I get very sick of whingers.

More dismal drivel brought to you by those who have blocked Golden Rice (Vitamin A). Millions blind and more do so annually because of opposition to scientific development by such poseurs. There is only one arms race in food since the time of Malthus, and it has largely succeeded in defeating this scourge. Far more of a risk to ordinary people is the highly Toxic output of BAs, or Bugger Alls as they were called by real students.

There are pensioners and pensioners Has. Former public servants do reasonably well as do self funded retirees, doing it tough, collecting up to a $100,000.00 a year; and possibly eking out an existence on a well watered 5 acre farm; replete with a couple of glass and or shade houses, that not only feeds them but provides a sizable salable surplus.
And lets not discount still working wives or partners, who bring in a substantial off farm income!
Twenty acres and a freehold home is what many would settle for.
But particularly many deserted widowed sacrificing stay at home mums, trying to survive in a Sydney bedsit, costing more to rent than the average single pension!
And you accuse me of being an Ideologue!
I'm not the one full of self satisfied, blame the victim smugness, and turning a completely blind eye to others far worse off; and through no fault of their own!
And no I don't think you've managed to create a false impression in my mind, just enabled me to get a crystal clear picture of you and what you represent!
A very narrow view of the world that rarely if ever extends beyond the farm gate and the family?
I've also been in business, and understand there are times when the worker takes home more money than the boss!
Arguably that's just the price one pays in business, when building it up!
I also understand that good workers are the very life blood of any business.
And something that invariably escapes the very rare rogue employer!
On a positive side; I'm glad you had the courage to follow your dreams, and set sail on your own personal adventure!
Something that very few of the pensioners you invariably critique could ever actually afford; as opposed to the self funded retiree, (conservatives one and all) apparently earning your ire?
Pulling a life away, at the handle of a one armed bandit!?
There are pensioners, and then there are pensioners!
And then there is complete lack of normal human empathy Has!
Rhrosty.

Hasbeen,

An off topic bit.
I used to work at a place on Mt Panorama, just below the Esses (on the right) and on the days that I drove my 1926 Alvis "Duck's Back" Super Sport to work (big port head and a straight through outside exhaust (with chicken wire gas obstruction!) I would drive around the circuit to work.
Great fun but I had to curb my enthusiastic driving if anyone was following me into the Esses after a modern car (1970s) nearly came to grief because the driver didn't realize just how fast the old car that he was following was going.
This also happened to me and other vintage Alvis drivers on 'the open road' at various locations.

Would that be the Light car Club Is Mise? If so I had dinner there once at a Morgan Club Reunion about 12 years ago. It was my Morgan & the Morgan club full of enthusiasts that started me racing, all those years ago.

Yes very few realise just how much of the performance of any car is down to the loose nut behind the wheel.

I had a couple of years at school at Bathurst, & sold programs at the Easter races in 52 & 3. It never occurred to me that I would ever be able to race myself. Only been back that once since my last race in 69.

How would you know how much empathy I have for real people Rhrosty? My characteristic is I loathe wingers, but will help anyone who tries, & have helped heaps.

However, if I had a dollar for every person who told me I was lucky, I'd be a multimillionaire. That annoys me.

It was not luck that I was prepared, with a few others, to spend most lunch hours, & many afternoons at school studying. All the class was welcome, & could have done it.

It was not luck I achieved the education I wanted, anyone could have done it. I earned a company scholarship.

It was not luck I managed to buy the oldest Brabham alive. It was broken, very cheap & no one wanted it. Anyone on a tradesman's wage could have done it.

It was not luck that a mate & I built it an engine, & turned it into the quickest & most reliable Formula 2 car in the country. Anyone who had bothered to get our educations, & develop our skills, & had 700 hours to spare could have done it.

We were not professionals, he was an accountant & I was a plastics specialist. If anyone wanted it as much, they could have done it.

It was not luck it was voted the best, & most reliable car in Oz by the motor racing mechanics club, we had built it that way, but anyone could have done it.

It was not luck I was offered a Formula 1 drive, I was unbeaten in F2 for 20 months, but anyone could have done it.

The sale of the Brabham bought me an old tired yacht. I lived on it, [always was a cheapskate], & did it up while still racing, & running my business, before sailing it around the Pacific. Anyone could have done it. [In fact I have a few dozen friends who did it].

Hasbeen,

Not the LCC but the Church of England Conference Centre, where I was officially the Maintenance Fitter but 90% of my time was spent in the Mining Museum, where I was Tour Guide, stamping battery operator, machinery restorer and blacksmith; duties that I shared with the Manager of the conference centre.

The conference centre is now the Bathurst Goldfields Education and Function Centre.

I didn't even know they existed Is Mise. The only times I have been back to Bathurst since 1953 was to race, or for that reunion. They kept us so busy at that, there was no time to wander around town, or the mountain.

I even used to stay out at the Perthville pub for racing weekends, it was quieter than town.

I loved Bathurst both as a kid, playing cowboy down the river, rounding up the stock people had put out on the river for a bit of free grazing, & for Mount Panorama. I don't think there is anything quite like the drive across the top of the mountain in a quick car.

What a sad, simplistic piece of writing.

Vallianatos is another in the long-line of well-fed first world authors who write about how wonderful it was in the days before the industrial revolution. The days when no matter how intelligent or gifted you were, as a peasant you were doomed to a short hard life full of hunger, injury and disease. They really were wonderful times.

I don't know why it is that some people have a hankering for other people to spend their lives hand-weeding. Anyone who has had to put in days of hand-weeding on small acreages knows they would rather be doing something else.

That is not to say that modern agriculture cannot be improved, it surely can. But forcing people to be peasants again is not an improvement. The advances will come from the careful use of new technologies as can be seen with the adoption of Bt cotton in Australia.