Why are so many people against modern farming?

you like too many people do not think about where your food comes from or how it is grown. You assume that big Ag has your best interests in mind but they do not. they have the best interests of the stock holders in mind. that can be dangerous when we are talking about food because one tends to make a lot more profit by raising poor quality food than by raising high quality food. So the US eater gets to eat a lot of poor quality food.

Factory farms do indeed that the animals badly. they feed them the cheapest forms of protein they can get. This includes feces of other species (it is illegal to feed the feces of the same species), cardboard, dead animals from shelters (and this meat is often fed to animals that are normally vegetarian), garbage, etc.. The animals have very little space, often not enough to lie down or turn around. the animals never ever get outside or exposed to sunlight (which is incredibly important to good health). they must be fed antibiotics so the animals stay alive until slaughter. But hey if you don't think about such things when eating your bacon than its all good isn't it.

As far as crops are concerned. Green revolution big ag is indeed effecient but it is not cheap. Our cheap food is based on the trillions in subsidies given out to the Big time industrial farmers who grow commodity crops (but not fruits and vegetables). without the subsidies (paid by our taxes) food would be many times more expensive. Our agirculture grows a lot of GMO foods which have not been proven to use less pesticides/herbicides, are not yielding any better than non GMO crops or organic crops (as a matter of fact they tend to yield less than either). they are not more nutritious nor have they been engineered to be (except in one case of Golden Rice which has a bit more Vit A in it than regular white rice).

fertilizers. chemical fertilizers are full of salts and after several decades of use will destroy the soil. we getting close to that threshold. despite rumors to the contrary organic farmers do indeed use fertilizers. As a matter of fact, the soil and it's care are the most important thing to a good organic farmer. Soil is the most important crop that a farmer can grow. organic farmers just don't use chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia (which is also a powerful explosive and was used to blow up the Murrow Building in Oklahoma City. It can also destroy ones lungs if exposed to it for more than 3 seconds). Instead they use composts, crop rotation, raw manure (but unlike conventional farms organic standards restrict when and how this is used so that crops are not contaminated by pathogens such as e-coli), green manures, rock powders, kelp, etc.. to get really nice healthy soil that peer reviewed science is showing will out produce conventional agriculture up to 5x.

I know what is going on with farming because it is what I do. Would I eat locally grown and raised? yes as that has made up over 90% of my diet for the past 10 years. I like knowing who grew my food and where it came from. I like not having to depend on the USDA and FDA to police my food for me as they do such a bad job and allow tens of thousands of people to be sickened by food each and every year.

Madd texan, we have not been eating GMO tomatoes for 20 years. the Flavr Savr tomato was the only GMO mater commercially produced and it was taken off store shelves within a year because it tasted so bad that no one would buy it. GMO's are not made by selective breeding, GMO's are a product of gene splicing, often two unrelated genuses or even families. This cannot be done by sexual breeding. I assume the GMO tomatoes you refer to are in reality hybrid tomatoes with no foreign genetics in each cell. It is sad when farmers who grow GMO's do not know exactly what they are

Well there's a couple of reasons.

First really is advertising works. There are a lot of groups that spend a lot of time and money advertising against agriculture. Just like what happens when every politician advertises that his opponent is a crook after awhile the message gets through to the public that all politicians are crooks.

So too it is with ag. People aren't on farms anymore, when a farm makes the news, it's not generally good. So what is seen is the abuses. And there are honestly abuses. But then like the all politicians are crooks broad brush, a lot of people get painted with the ag is bad brush who don't deserve it.

You may notice that people will often claim they don't use chemicals say in their garden. But then if you watch them they are using vinegar,soaps and so on. They are actually using chemicals and often a lot of them they just don't think of what they are using as chemicals.

You maybe notice how many are painting "factory" farms as the great evil of the world. Well it's mostly public relations. Why not just get rid of all factories everywhere? If one is against eating food grown on a large farm then I would think you wouldn't wear clothes from a large factory, drive a car from a large factory and certainly not use a computer or music playing device from a large factory. But people don't think that way because they think of a farm as a fictional idyllic place. If farming was done the way people think it should be, it would be worse than slavery. There's a reason all those people left the farms and moved to cities.

One of the biggest problems agriculture has in public relations is elementary school teachers. There's actually been studies done on it. The typical member of these groups that spend money advertising farming is evil are single female elementary school teachers. I don't know why, but it's striking when one sees the research. They of course are now passing this on to the next generation, only they often don't know what they are talking about but are parrots for the groups.

Let's take an easy example. McDonald's awhile back went from styrofoam to waxed paper for their food. Styrofoam is easily recyclable, waxed paper is not, and waxed paper actually uses more hydrocarbons than styrofoam. So you could use less fossil fuels and recycle Styrofoam containers yet McDonalds got wonderful environmental hugs for being so green and converting. It's because they advertised how good they were and most people don't bother to do any real research, they try to figure out complicated things intuitively. Unfortunately, they don't know enough actual facts to be able to figure it out.

But this isn't about facts, it's about partial facts and public relations. About giving people a good feeling about themselves even if it isn't true. That's the real reason.

Marv

My view is that the organic movement is an over-reaction to the problems of the Green Revolution (post-WWII). The Green Revolution had many problems, but true modern farming, as you said, with proper management is quite safe and sustainable. Still, organic proponents identify "conventional farming" as the industrial farming of the 50s and 60s, without really understanding how far we've moved beyond that. The organic industry (which ironically has become its own industrial complex) is now sustained by the higher prices they fetch on the market.

That said, something our modern system often fails to do is differentiate between quality of foodstuffs that come out, overemphasizing yield. (E.g. Yield is negatively correlated with protein/oil.) So I give organic some credit for their intentions, though they have it all wrong.

As for factory farming of animals...the raising and processing of animals are pretty gruesome by any standards. But likewise, a lot of the marketed solutions aren't really better. I remember reading open-caged chickens end up killing and cannibalizing each other.

I think the biggest reason is misunderstanding. Years and years ago, more people were raised on and near farms, so they had better understanding. That has really changed in recent years.

Now, many people are so far removed from the ag industry that they do not really understand where there food comes from. They are not raised in it or near it. They only know what they see or hear through the media. They have probably also never gone hungry...truly hungry... so they take our abundant food supply for granted.

There was a a study done in 2002 or 2003 (I tried to find it online but could not) with school children in large cities. Most kids answered a question of where does your food come from with "the grocery store." Some could not even identify the actual source of the food (corn being in cereal, or that hamburger comes from cattle).

I think that Farm Bureau, Extension Service, individual producers and businesses, and other advocates in the ag industry have their work cut out for them in trying to educate the average consumer in a non-rural area.

Most people only know what they hear groups like PETA and the Sierra Club say about modern farming. You raise a good point. A good portion of the "fertilizer and chemical runoff" comes from homeowners "doing it themselves" when fertilizing their lawns and gardens. Contrary to popular belief, farmers have no desire to over fertilize their crops. It doesn't make economic sense. Fertilizers and chemicals are VERY expensive.

The thing about GMO's is very miss-understood.By using GMO's, the farmer reduces the amount of pesticide used to produce/protect his crop. Most people don't know that they have been eating genetically modified tomatoes for over 20 years. Selective/cross breeding IS genetic modification, it just takes longer than using a gene gun.

As for the miss treatment of animals, here's an example. 5% of dog owners miss treat dog's. Should we condemn ALL dog owners because a small percentage of @$$'s abuse their dogs? The overwhelming majority of livestock owners treat their livestock VERY well, because it doesn't make economic sense to abuse them. Abused animals don't gain weight as fast and aren't healthy. Un-healthy animals cost money to get healthy and cost more money if they die.

Why are they against modern farming? Because they have no conception of the operational nuances of even simple farming. Ask someone why a cow gives milk or what the planting time is for cotton. Ask them how much a 100 HP tractor costs, or an air planter. Ask them how much nitrogen it takes to grow an acre of wheat and how it's produced.

because people are tree huggers, dirt huggers, water huggers, and animal huggers and must not care anything about what they put the poor farmers throught who produce the food they eat every day!