Small farms are good; big farms are evil
The conventional green wisdom on farms is smaller is better. We've been told repeatedly by passionate activists and persuasive literature that smaller, independent farms are preferable to those owned by giant corporations, but is that sentiment always true? Not always. Occasionally big farms are better than the little guy. Freelance journalist Tracie McMillan found that some workers prefer the benefits and consistency of a larger operation. Big farms are also more likely to be visited by government inspectors, and there is something to be said for the efficiency gained from a large-scale operation. We certainly need to support small farms, but we shouldn't dismiss all big farms as evil.
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Comments
So which Big Ag farm does this writer work for?
Facile nonsense. Doesn't even get to the issue about why 'big farmer' may be an issue. This debunks nothing and makes no valid argument other than to cite a freelance journo whose credibility has otherwise not been established here anyway. Of course workers may prefer the notional stability of employment with a big farm -- this has no bearing on the environmental soundness of the modern farming approach! A waste of 'column inches' -- must try harder.
This one is also not true. Farm inspectors in most States and countries are assigned to the factory farm itself, who do self monitoring. Look at the pig farms in Canada and the US that pour several hundred tons of waste into holding ponds that pollute the ground water. This fact is so biased that it needs to be removed.
This might be the dumbest statement I have read on a "nature" site. Just because government inspector visits a farm does not make it better (in some cases it makes it worse). Monoculture is rampant at large farms (as others have mentioned) plus they are more likely to use GM crops and large quantities of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides. Sure some small farms do this but they are the exception.
When growing the same crop over and over, it loses it's nutritional value because the same vitamins and minerals
are absorbed faster than the earth can reproduce. Most foods now have less than half the nutrients than they did 50 years ago.
Local farms tend to rotate crops on a regular basis. Buy local, stay healthy!
Without citations, this photo essay does nothing to "debunk" any myths. Instead it simply appeals to the same "argument by authority" that every other psuedo-environmental outfit does.
Big farms tend to be monoculture (that’s not to say a small farm won’t be). What caused the Irish potato famine? Monoculture. What ate up the “Big Mike” variety of bananas? Monoculture. Well, technically it was an overactive fungus in both cases; but we know that a diverse culture is more likely to withstand these attacks. The Inca empire grew many cultivars of potatoes on the same hillside; red ones, blue ones, yellow ones, white ones, etc. Some could withstand cooler shady.... More
Large farms are more likely to be monocultures, i.e. growing only one crop. This is not good for wildlife diversity. nor when a disease comes along specific to the one crop.
Small farms also provide more stability for human food systems. There is strength in numbers. Also remember that transportation from local farms is reduced, making them greener from that standpoint.
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