Can we end factory farming?

[warpus]

I paid $18 for a hamburger 2 nights ago, at The Keg. And that was before taxes and tip. Mind you CAD, but still

 

[Ryika]

YOU'RE A MADMAN!

I once paid 4€ for Popcorn at a cinema, but that's about as high as I'm willing to go.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I paid $18 for a hamburger 2 nights ago, at The Keg. And that was before taxes and tip. Mind you CAD, but still

That had better been a 4-pounder burger......

 

[Snerk]

Never move to Norway, Ryika

 

[Zkribbler]

$11 for a Hamburger? Who's supposed to buy THAT?

I spent a few thousand on a TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack, which had 4k RAM.
The first Teslas cost $100,000.
Burger prices will come down.

 

[Ryika]

I'm not so sure they will. That's a pretty large price gap that needs to be jumped for it to become an everyday alternative to normal meat, how do they go from A to B when market B is saturated with products already?

 

[Synobun]

I'm not so sure they will.

The price has already gone down. A lab-grown burger used to cost over $300,000. $11 is great. It'll get lower as time goes by and public opinion shifts.

Side note: $11 for a burger is pretty standard fare for a burger in Canada. Even a Big Mac is $6.

 

[Ryika]

Will come down to a price point where people are willing to use it as their regular meat I mean.

 

[innonimatu]

Seems to me that if we got rid of all factory farms, there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone. I could be completely wrong about that. If I'm not though, the solution to get rid of them would have to include replacements of some sort.

I do believe we could have highly productive agriculture (and husbandry) without factory farming. Compare France and the US: both produce far more than they consume. France has less "factory farming", a greater population density, and still exports piles of food.

I even suspect it would not have much impact on prices, might raise them a little. The preference for factory farming is economic, not structural. Which means it's political. Small producers, who do not need factory farming methods, have little negotiating power in the commodity markers for produce. This has been made worse by the proliferation of large supermarket chains with centralized procurement: they want large quantities, and have more negotiating power than any small seller.

This market structure favors the large agribusinesses, and over time they expand to occupy more and more land as the smaller farmers go bankrupt or quit. But big agrobusiness, in order to better match this market, "needs" factory farming methods: standardized products, meeting dates for harvesting, mechanizing operations in order to better control workers, etc.

Factory farming is not an inevitability. It arises from a specific market structure: namely, one that allows monopolies (or oligopolies, near enough). Bust those and factory farming would be much reduced.

 

[warpus]

Doesn't factory farming also lead to cheaper food? Then again food could be so cheap in the U.S. due to government subsidies (of things like corn, etc.). I assume food is also more expensive here in Canada due to the increase in regulations we have, but also in that we have far less people, so harder to take advantage of economies of scale.

That had better been a 4-pounder burger......

It was.. a 503g burger. which might or might not include the fries. That's 1.1lbs.

Keg’s own fresh blend of chuck, brisket and sirloin. Crisp lettuce, tomato, red onions, pickles, jalapeño maple aioli, applewood smoked bacon and cheddar cheese. Served with Keg fries.

It was actually a really good burger. Probably not worth that much, but it's the keg, stuff is pricy there. They do their beef right

Mind you other gourmet burger places charge $15-$20 a burger, so with that in mind and how good the burger was, I'd say the pricing is on point.

 

[innonimatu]

I think this opinion piece may be interesting to those who discussed on this thread. Some quotes:

Historically, political colonialism was defended by the ethnocentric belief that the moral values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized – that those colonized ultimately would benefit from the process of civilization. Today, rural economic colonialization is defended by the urban-centric belief that rural people are incapable of developing their own economies and must rely on outside investment for rural economic development. That corporate investments will bring badly needed jobs and local income and will expand local tax bases. That economically depressed rural communities will be afforded the opportunity for better schools, better health care, and expanded social services, and will attract a greater variety of retail businesses. These are the same basic promises made to previous political colonies.

Many people in rural America are led to believe they have been left behind by the rest of society, and accepting outside corporate investments are the only means by which they can hope to catch up. In cases where such promises of prosperity have failed to persuade the people, corporations have resorted to economic favors promised to local leaders or outright “bribery.” If all else fails, they simply use interstate commerce or free trade laws to claim the economic right to force their way into communities where they are unwanted. These are the same basic strategies colonial empires have used with the indigenous peoples of their colonies throughout history. As with political and economic colonies of the past, the promises of economic development are soon replaced with the reality of economic extraction and exploitation.

Whether intentional or coincidental, industrial agriculture has been a primary means of colonizing rural America. As with other industries, the industrial practices of large-scale, corporate agriculture are extractive and exploitation. Industrial farming operations erode the fertility of the soil and pollute the air and water with chemical and biological wastes—more like mining operations than traditional farming. Comprehensive corporate contractual arrangement have replaced thinking, caring family farmers with far fewer “farm workers.” Communities are supported by people, not simply production. It takes people not only to buy farm supplies and equipment at local dealers but also to shop for clothes, cars, and haircuts on Main Street, to fill desks in local schools, pews in local churches, and seats on town councils and school boards.

Most rural kids today grow up, leave, and don’t come back. Those who choose to “stay home” are labeled as not being among the “best or brightest.” Some are “bribed” by parents who help them get long term loans they must stay to repay. New rural residents are more likely to be immigrants desperate for work or people fleeing the cities for cheaper places to live. The sense of community is lost. When the sense of community is lost, the sense of common commitment and shared hope for the future is lost. A recent Wall Street Journal article calls “Rural America the New Inner City.” The article documents that levels of unemployment, chronic illness, teen pregnancy, crime, and drug abuse in many rural areas now exceed those of inner cities.

[...]

The quest for livability in rural America has been replaced by a quest for economic, social, and cultural survival. What went wrong? I think the futurists failed to realize the economic and political power of the corporate defenders of the economic status quo. The industrial economy was not going to voluntarily reverse course to make way for a new sustainable economy—simply because economic growth was creating more environmental and societal problems than economic benefits. Industrialization had evolved from a means of manufacturing to become the conventional “way of thinking.” The industrial mindset of specialization, standardization, and consolidation of control now permeates virtually all aspects of American society.

Corporate consolidation has allowed economic power to be transformed into political power. In today’s large, publicly-traded corporations corporate profits take priority over the well-being of people—within or outside the corporation. The few livable communities that have escaped colonization are being acquired and reserved as havens for the “rich and famous,” not places for ordinary people to work and live. Wealth has become synonymous with quality of life. Economic growth has replaced the pursuit of happiness.

The root cause for this change taking such a bad turn was, it seems to me, the development of monopolies or oligopolies by big corporations. The old trust-busting politicians retired (or were forced to retire) during the big political shift in the late 1970s. They were "outdated", "limiting economic development", etc. Then the US developed an exceedingly greedy corporate culture based on the excuse of "maximizing shareholder value", which was a new thing. And proceeded to export it worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s. Leading to today's world.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I 110% support warpus view that 20 bucks for a burger is not a problem at all. In the end it all comes down to ingredient quality. If that beef is worth its price, if the buns are homemade brioches, if the restaurant makes its own pickles, sauces, and buys good cheese then paying good money for that is not only appropriate, but necessarily.

Infact the opposite mentality is what I think is ****** up. The sort of entitlement that food, especially meat, should be cheap and readily available is what got us in this whole factory farming mess in the first place. It's completely absurd and perfectly reflects not just how humans act in a capitalist system, but rather how the constant availability of cheap foods has given our minds unhealthy expectations.

While our buying decisions are molding the system as we speak, we are being molded as well.