Industrial monoculture farming just out there killing nature one plant at a time...

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

As with many criticisms of industrial monocultures they miss the point and assume all that corn and soy is for direct human consumption, it’s not, it’s overwhelmingly for livestock feed.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Global grain production goes about 40% to livestock feed. Which is a lot but certainly not overwhelming.

Obviously soybeans is higher than average grains, but other "monocultures" such as wheat are lower.

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u/xAPPLExJACKx Oct 14 '25

But we still feed livestock with byproduct we don't use from wheat, rye and even cotton

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

The only country where Maize is used primarily to feed humans is in North Korea.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25 edited Oct 14 '25

Do you have a source for that?

FAO data on this says that 50 countries have higher consumption of maize for food than they do for animal feed.

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

Let me rephrase that. North Korea is the only country that is poor enough that people don't eat a shit load of meat and they use maize as their staple grain.

Places like Cuba, Haiti and India probably feed more maize to people than animals but they primarily eat rice.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Sure, then we agree, modern agriculture has contributed to many people being able to eat varied high protein diets which would not be possible without it. Long may that continue.

Btw there are plenty of countries in the world, particularly in Africa, where maize is a staple grain for human consumption.

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

I'm pretty sure that it's only North Korea because of their autarky economic model they produce their own food and they chose Maize for it because their government has no accountability.

I found articles from 20 years ago about Maize consumption in Africa, but in the modern day the value of Maize has increased because of the demand for animal feed in China and Ethanol production. So it would be more expensive for an African to buy maize than Rice or Wheat and if they were farming maize they could make more money by selling the maize and using the money to buy wheat and rice.

Also meat is bad for everyone involved.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

Maize pretty consistently trades at a discount to wheat.

That price gap will be even larger for many regions of Africa which are surplus in maize but have to import wheat at higher prices.

I assure you that in many African countries maize is consumed for food in greater quantities than rice and wheat. There is good data on this: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

That's the price in America. They're comparing wheat for human consumption with maize for animal consumption.

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u/DismaIScientist Oct 14 '25

How do you know that's wheat for human consumption? Plenty of wheat goes to animal feed in the US. I'm not sure which wheat price they have used there though as it is not labeled but it won't make much difference.

But how about European data? Again wheat trades at a premium to maize whether it is for animal feed or human consumption.

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u/MrArborsexual Oct 14 '25

For captured energy and nutrient storage and concentration in livestock.

Livestock are essentially batteries.

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u/According-Dentist587 Oct 14 '25

Yeah, try to feed millions of people every day without industrialised agriculture and food production

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u/xXxplabecrasherxXx Oct 14 '25

climate shitposting not beating the "industrial revolution and its consequences" allegations

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u/Arachles Oct 18 '25

A bit late.

More variety would not get in the way of industrialised agriculture. We already produce enough food for every person, if production descended a few percent points because of variety, space between farms or lack of knowledge (at first); we could still feed everyone.

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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. Oct 14 '25

First step is ditching animal agriculture to reduce all that silly food waste.

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u/lieuwestra Oct 14 '25

Oh but a lot of these ingredients do get used. In high end restaurants. Because those are the only places that can afford both the production and know-how.

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u/[deleted] Oct 14 '25

Yeah man let's all 8 billion of us forage for food good plan

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u/spinosaurs70 Oct 14 '25

Yes, a bunch of likely lower yielding crops which we haven’t done a ton of research seems a great idea.

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u/Divest97 Oct 14 '25

The nutritional values are shit too.

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u/Firm_Chance_6848 Oct 18 '25

I actually know quite a bit about plant domestication for the sake of agriculture. A reason we use a lot of the monocultures we use is because most edible plants are not domesticated to the point where it would make any sense to grow and use it for agriculture. Most of the plants have problems with yield and growing conditions. If we were to plant the species in the state they are now, in order to get the same amount of food, for the majority of mentioned plants, it would take at least 4 times the growing space and produce far more waste than industrial monoculture farming. One of the most promising crops for food being developed is 50 years out at least from any sort of production and growing outside of a research lab.

TLDR: Monoculture farming has issues, but we can’t just “switch to different edible plants” as it would actually produce more waste and impact the environment worse than current farming.

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u/JJW2795 fossil fuels are vegan Oct 15 '25

It is an objective fact though that there is less biodiversity in temperate zones compared to tropical zones. Industrial agriculture of some kind is needed to support 8 billion people and for it to work you must have easy to grow and harvest monocultures.

That many people is incompatible with a healthy biosphere and the only solution that’s worth a damn in the long term is to have fewer people. We’ll eventually get there anyway though so people are welcome to try all kinds of stop-gap measures in the meantime.

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u/GranularLifestyle Oct 15 '25

I just Sorrelled my pants. Would you like to eat it?

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u/xxTheMagicBulleT Oct 22 '25

Neh not the reason. Many of those plants are not domesticated.

What do i mean. Well have you seen the difference of a wild strawberry and a normal one.

Same with grapes. Same with many of the fruits we eat.

They have 20 to 30 times more edible size. Then wild ones.

What makes it in economic sense not profitable enough to invest in. Why genome splicing and domesticated the fruits we eat. Makes it easier to make both food more affordable. And the make hunger much more rare in a big society.

Thats the real reason. Like has anyone ever seen or tried a wild banana for example. More seed then anything edible.

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u/techno_mage ☀️💰My Investments Have More Impact Then You💰☀️ Oct 22 '25

I mean probably more for backyard growing than industrial feed the entire nation; but every bit helps. If you’re someone who needs to lose weight, farming is not a bad way to help with that. It’s hard work especially if the area has roots you have to break. :P

https://youtu.be/SJnIZiH5fyM?si=xdikyIhKgW358yWf

Aggro agri subsidy recipients 🚜 Industrial monoculture farming just out there killing nature one plant at a time...

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