Reply #14: While we are at it...

[hunter]

We should probably get rid of factory farmed cattle too.

I think the difference between you and me is that I see industrial agriculture as a neccessary evil that should be minimized.

An industrial corn or soybean field is to me a toxic wasteland. If the price of corn is low, farmers go out of business, and the land reverts to a natural state of forest or prairie, and that is a good thing.

I also think it would be a good thing if more people recognized the true horrors of industrial scale meat and dairy production.

If I'm comparing industrial agriculture to nuclear power on some arbitrary scale of good and evil, it's not hard to to see which is worse. It's pretty clear that if biomass is used to produce energy, it's going to kill and maim more people than nuclear power and cause far more damage to the environment.

There's some truly frightening data accumulating that links various sorts of mental deficiencies and disorders to prenatal and childhood exposure to low levels of the pesticides and herbicides used in agriculture. There are also some hints that high fructose corn syrup is causing obesity not simply because it is empty calories, but because the human physiological response to a diet high in fructose is passivity. The more fructose you eat, the more you feel like sitting around and not exercising.

I'm not at all swayed by any romantic notions that farming is a generally a good thing, or that land destroyed by intensive corn monoculture is any prettier than the ugliest suburban strip mall. In terms of biological diversity the field of corn ranks right down near the bottom, and far below some places that were once used as toxic waste dumps.

Oh well, I guess I'll never be elected to public office. People will say I hate farmers, and I find ugly strip malls and weedy fields contaminated by toxic wastes more interesting than amber waves of grain.

:shrug: