These two images are typical rural sprawl compared with Central Manhattan, on the exact same scale. Now I'm not an expert on these matters, but something tells me pollution, traffic and logistical problems would be much, much worse is everyone had their own plot of land.
"America would be so much better if everyone moved out of the cities and onto their own farm" feels ecofascist and settler-colonial at the same time
Yeah but it's also a strawman
Who in the hell is saying that everyone should live like that? I just want land reform so that anyone who wants to farm can and to decomodify housing in cities so that landlords aren't a thing anymore
Oh I'm not calling for everyone to be removed from the cities to the farms, just the people who went to college.
Can I qualify if I'm a college dropout?
Seriously though, farms for those who want them and rent free urban housing for everyone else
Why is this even a struggle session?
College dropouts will lead all. New society overseen by college dropouts
Take a photo of the areas that feed those areas, though. Extremely dense, biologically depauperate urban areas combined with large contiguous monocultures is essentially the worst of both worlds. The best is diversity of urban form - smaller, highly dense areas surrounded by a mixture of managed and unmanaged natural and agricultural areas with diverse polycultural cropping systems. See work by Marina Albierti , e.g.
Yeah, so just throwing out there almost all data shows that in general, people who live in cities have a greater carbon footprint than people who live in the country and have to have a car to drive everywhere. It's wild to think about.
Know why? People who are rich live in cities.
The negative outcomes of living in the country with literally no public transit are yes, bad and inefficient, but to make the biggest dent in the shortest amount of time we need to be targeting the excess wealth of the top 10% in the imperial core so they can't have huge homes, huge cars, private jets, yachts, helicopters, so they can't drive/fly as much as they want, eat as much beef as they want, consume as much product as they want, etc.
This story doesn't address the cost of all the transportation infrastructure to build out ot these towns in the first place. The cost of vertical farming greens/pigs near cities vs the cost of rural farming communities will reach a tipping point. At least at the level of lifestyle most Americans would be willing to accept with sprawling Walmarts and cheap fast food, some towns might become unviable to live in. Ghost towns can happen in any generation.
The whole rewilding thing might happen if urban areas start attracting even farming talent to the cities.
IDK comrade, the carbon cost of transport of food is not really that big in comparison other factors. The idea of increasing the capital intensity of farming by an order of magnitude (without, mind you, a commensurate decrease in labour requirements) by farming vertically doesn't really sound like a realistic goal in our lifetime we have other things to deal with that are more important.
Yeah, so just throwing out there almost all data shows that in general, people who live in cities have a greater carbon footprint than people who live in the country and have to have a car to drive everywhere. It’s wild to think about.
Citation?
cities are a key contributor to climate change, as urban activities are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Estimates suggest that cities are responsible for 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, with transport and buildings being among the largest contributors, while it's estimated that only 56% of people live in cities
It is really the suburbs that jack up the carbon footprint of urban living in "developed" countries, as actually living directly in the downtown core in an apartment with subways and no daily highway commutes is actually pretty good.
It is really the suburbs that jack up the carbon footprint of urban living in “developed” countries,
if you're counting suburbs the whole thing is garbage
This post feels unnecessarily hostile comrade. I didn't make suburbs cities I'm just sharing some studies on the subject
Small farmers, especially the old stubborn ones, can pollute the shit out of the local area.
Glyphosate used to reckless degrees. Old vehicles leaking oil into the ground. Burning garbage. That's just 3 off the top of my head.
Someone that lived near an older relative burned tires for heat in the winter and they said it turned the snow black everywhere nearby.
Yeah, but there's plenty of potential to redistribute farmland already in use by megacorporations to people who want it. Ofc it's not for everyone but there's nothing wrong with giving people the option.
If the farm was a Kolkhoz it might work. American agriculture just doesn't seem very sustainably organised
I think it's totally possible to accommodate both the people who want to live in the city and the people who want to live in rural areas, and even maintain freedom of movement between the two without breaking the environment. The problem is that the system we have that mediates that movement is capitalism, so most people don't live where they want, they live where they're stuck.
Imagine a centrally planned economy dealing with people migrating over time by moving production, building new housing and services, retiring old urban centers when occupancy drops below a certain threshold, etc. You can't do that unless you have a system capable of thinking ahead an entire generation, while our current system can only plan ahead a single quarter.
and even maintain freedom of movement between the two without breaking the environment.
How?`I'm not saying you can't have, like, villages with a frequent train to the next city or whatever, the Swiss already do this but that's about a thousand times denser than farm sprawl
Isn't farm sprawl uniquely American? I thought in other countries rural society consists of villages and towns surrounded by farmland instead.
Where's the town in the left side of the picture here?
You can redevelop towns along rail corridors and such, sure. Even getting to the train station here is gonna be a car ride for most people here, and the road network and assorted infrastructure to keep cars going, at which point, why not just take the car?
A 30 minute e-bike ride before you even get anywhere with the train doesn't really feel like retaining the freedom of movement here in a sense comparable to now.
I mean it's what I'd propose, but then I think if you live out in the boonies somewhere this spread out you kind of have to just eat the fact that you're gonna take a lot longer to get anywhere.
Why do I get the feeling that even if I had my own farm and was forced to live a boring, isolated life with nothing to do, that my land will eventually get invaded and stolen from me by some hog, claiming that he owns it actually because "me strong. You weak. Strong take from weak!"
That's why you need a strong commune with armed comrades who will defend one another
“me strong. You weak. Strong take from weak!”
wow chuds really are pakleds
My hope is to do the latter while holding down an actual job that pays the bills instead of having to rely on farmers markets, because small scale farming that supports a family is a pipe dream
Thats a good ass start tbh. I started on conservation work and moved to small scale organic agriculture. Biggest lessons I've learned is to work with and not against your natural environment and treat your whole operation holistically. Everything is interconnected and any tweak needs to consider every other input. Start small, learn what works, and seasons after season add one more operation. And honestly eat what grows easily, instead of killing yourself trying to grow what you think you want to eat. In the face of climate collapse we're all going to be eating whatever we can manage honestly
You may be able to partner with the Agrarian Trust. Also if you all around you may be able to find a book on ecological respiration for your region.
in my opinion, as some guy who worked in smaller scale, diversified ag for years before going back to school and getting a degree in agriculture and now working in conservation sort of stuff.... it probably sounds like bunk, but definitely consider a land grant school.
there are people in those institutions that are 100% against your ideas and values, but there are also very smart people who are going to be allies. the land grant institutions, as a whole, are Part of the Problem, and the academy has it's own shitheadery, but there are absolute weirdos in it that can teach a lot about specialized skills (like plant breeding, hybridization, tissue cultivation) that have become very uncommon on farms today. it is also a great vehicle for finding other weirdos, people you can turn into weirdos, and people with even weirder ideas than you have yet seen. i thought i was a radical before going to an ag school, but it exposed me to a lot of wild shit.
maybe i'm the starry-eyed baby, but the land grant system is also supposed to be OUR collective institution. it has been deeply influenced in its formation and execution by the forces of capital and they have their hooks in deep, but there are mechanisms and avenues that respond to democratic pressure and little pockets of committed resistance which are not hard to find.
i caught and still catch a ton of shit from my former associates that were purists and stayed away from the big ag schools... and you know what, they are invariably dependent like a serf on some megarich land owning asshole(s) doing some type of ecofascism now, while i get to connect actual broke/curious people with resources, be a part of worker organizations to pressure for reforms, and speak candidly with younger farm workers about who they should avoid working for.
i will never forget the reaction of the megarich, exploitative, lib-AF landowners i had been working for when they found out i was quitting to go attend the public ag school. they fucking hated it and school taught me why.
I agree that rural "suburbs" - where everyone has their own well (which they usually don't test and will be polluted with PFAS, radiation, and nitrates if they aren't already), their own huge propane tanks, gravel roads, huge pointless lawns, etc. are worse than almost any form of housing.
Suburbs are horrible, but driving through a pretty rural area where large areas of land that were previously undeveloped areas where farming wasn't feasible, or woodlands, are now turned into mcmansions with huge expanses of mowed grass, is depressing. Especially in the areas I used to walk around when I was younger.
Out of all the new homes I've seen built in rural areas, maybe 2% will plant more than a few trees and some native wildflowers. Meanwhile in cities, I have seen people replace their lawns with native plants much more often. Even some suburbanites have planted a decent amount of wildflowers or added a veggie garden recently.
TL;DR the people I've seen building houses in rural areas are horrible stewards of the land and actively want to replace nature with lawns.
Gravel roads are better than paved, I meant that this spread out housing also creates new gravel roads and driveways - which are usually very long and paved with asphalt for the biggest mcmansions.
The fact it isn't even being farmed pisses me off too. If that remnant prairie land was grazed rotationally it would mimic some of the natural processes like buffalo grazing it seasonally and be fine for the soil. Overgrazing cattle on the land is a travesty, but so is putting bermuda grass like you said.
i am in complete favour of people living in the arse of nowhere all they like, i am completely against them driving up and down, stinking, polluting and ultimately making the place where i am living less safe; i hope the sticks has a nice supermarket cause if you're entering the city residential areas with a car post-revolution i am fire-bombing it
That's why we need a more extensive rail system that makes it easy for rural comrades to drive to the nearest station and take the train into the cities
:train-shining:
