Is it possible for an econ professor to commit malpractice?

[regexcellent]

So. you admit to coming unarmed to the gun fight you called for? OK.

I didn't expect this much opposition to an idea that is obviously true. It's as if I posted about getting my kid vaccinated against chicken pox, only to have half the forum tell me that he's going to get autism because of it.

[regexcellent]

The fact that people with zero understanding of agriculture are telling an educated person, who is doing the deed in the third world and is clearly quite knowledgable from education and experience, he doesn't know what he's talking about is quite comical

Becoming a subsistence farmer in a 3rd world country doesn't make you good at economics. If that were true, the University of Chicago would be recruiting from East Africa.

[Jaguar]

Aeson: How many people could you feed, total, with your farming?

[notyoueither]

Civ 3? Did they run him off, or did he simply grow bored and leave?

I shouldn't have said what I did. Discussing someone in this fasion over the internet is worse than a waste of time, even if it does seem to be a large part of what Poly has become. It's not something I wish to do.

That said, I was referring to the demo game specifically, not civ 3 on the whole. Yes, by now most people have moved on.

[notyoueither]

Also,



IIUC, the question here is not third-world agriculture but the efficiency of different food distribution systems in the USA or other developed countries. Does the Philippines feed its people as effectively as the U.S. feeds its own?

I believe that the answer to your question is no, and I think that is also what Aeson has said.

That does not mean that the way food gets to the table in the US is the best of all possible worlds. I believe that Aeson is pointing out possibilities and that some are rejecting them outright because what he is telling them disrupts their views of what agriculture looks like or should look like.

[notyoueither]

I didn't expect this much opposition to an idea that is obviously true. It's as if I posted about getting my kid vaccinated against chicken pox, only to have half the forum tell me that he's going to get autism because of it.

My take away from the discussion is that:

Seriously now? Locally grown food? That's ridiculous even if you're not an economist.

isn't as ridiculous as many wish to believe.

Maybe some things should be locally grown, maybe some things should be shipped in. It's not either or.

It has been an instructive thread.

Becoming a subsistence farmer in a 3rd world country doesn't make you good at economics. If that were true, the University of Chicago would be recruiting from East Africa.

What a person chooses to do from a life-style POV does not shed light on other abilities. Also, I would bet Aeson is doing more than subsistence farming.

[Fake Boris]

Q: What is the most cultivated crop in the world?

A: Grass.

Keep on claiming local is not possible.

[Fake Boris]

Okra is one of those things I just can't stand.

This thread has become a monstrosity, and Aeson's posts are pretty much tl;dr, but I'd like to call a round of applause for Jaguar for roflstomping the pro-locavore folks.

Hahaha.

Aeson completely owned you.

[Aeson]

Aeson: How many people could you feed, total, with your farming?

That would depend on how much land is being farmed, how many workers I am able to employ, what crops we are growing, and how much food we are allotting per person.

Right now I wouldn't feed anyone. I was in the US until mid-May and when I got back I was too ill and ill-financed to reliably get a crop in and established enough before the rainy season (end of June). Here the rainy season isn't too bad, but working the soil during it is still a surefire way of causing lots of unnecessary erosion. It's turned out to be a rather un-rainy rainy season so we probably could have gotten away with it this year ... but I'm not going to gamble like that. I hope we can get a crop in on about 1000sq m in this October. I don't have the money right now to start up anything more than that.

As for what we realistically can do on a per unit of area basis ... a good average across all vegetable/fruit crops would be 5kg/sq m per 120 days. We have already achieved that on many smaller test plantings across many crops. Here we have a year round growing season so we can get close to 3 times that in a year. (Not necessarily 3 plantings a year. For some crops rotations we'd be getting 5-6, for others only 2-3.) Slightly more if we relay crop, but I'm not sure yet on whether that is more efficient than simply buying more land. We've tested it somewhat with eggplant providing lots of shade for young onions and lettuce, and it seems to work out pretty well. (No negative impact on either crop, and a net benefit for getting the next crop established.) Identifying potential like that is one of the things we've been focusing on.

But 5kg/sq m/120 days is what we are shooting for, what we have demonstrated possible in this area on small test plantings, and similar to the first world averages across those crops. That would be about 150,000kg/ha/year, so we could "feed" about 150 people per hectare given a comparable weight of food as US diets average. (That 66.66sq m/p is pretty close to the 50 number I used in this thread.) In general the highest value crops we have (peppers, garlic, onions, ginger) are not really something you'd want to base a diet around. The most productive crop so far (radishes) isn't either. It is something of a staple for the poorest people in some areas here because of it's productivity. There is not much of a local market for radishes. It's been the only thing we've grown that didn't sell out for higher prices than we were expecting before coming over here. (I know in other provinces it's a very important part of cuisine, but we're not to the point where we can market to other provinces yet.)

I'm not exactly sure how that fresh weight would compare to the average ton of food from the US from a nutrient and calorie standpoint. It's just far more research than I'm willing to do at this point to answer a question with no real world implications on my activities (for now). I would guess that nutrient wise it would favor our ton over the US ton, but calorie wise would favor the US ton over ours. In any case a ton of food per year isn't necessary to feed a person, and is probably unhealthy, especially given what it's comprised of in the US.

I still have quite a lot of possibility for improvement in my impact on the operations here. I'm still learning a lot about how to achieve those "average" yields consistently (adapting known techniques to less well known climates), and still looking forward to the time I can concentrate on the farming rather than working at other things to finance it and other personal projects/expenses.

[Aeson]

Aeson: How many people could you feed, total, with your farming?

That would depend on how much land is being farmed, how many workers I am able to employ, what crops we are growing, and how much food we are allotting per person.

Right now I wouldn't feed anyone. I was in the US until mid-May and when I got back I was too ill and ill-financed to reliably get a crop in and established enough before the rainy season (end of June). Here the rainy season isn't too bad, but working the soil during it is still a surefire way of causing lots of unnecessary erosion. It's turned out to be a rather un-rainy rainy season so we probably could have gotten away with it this year ... but I'm not going to gamble like that. I hope we can get a crop in on about 1000sq m in this October. I don't have the money right now to start up anything more than that.

As for what we realistically can do on a per unit of area basis ... a good average across all vegetable/fruit crops would be 5kg/sq m per 120 days. We have already achieved that on many smaller test plantings across many crops. Here we have a year round growing season so we can get close to 3 times that in a year. (Not necessarily 3 plantings a year. For some crops rotations we'd be getting 5-6, for others only 2-3.) Slightly more if we relay crop, but I'm not sure yet on whether that is more efficient than simply buying more land. We've tested it somewhat with eggplant providing lots of shade for young onions and lettuce, and it seems to work out pretty well. (No negative impact on either crop, and a net benefit for getting the next crop established.) Identifying potential like that is one of the things we've been focusing on.

But 5kg/sq m/120 days is what we are shooting for, what we have demonstrated possible in this area on small test plantings, and similar to the first world averages across those crops. That would be about 150,000kg/ha/year, so we could "feed" about 150 people per hectare given a comparable weight of food as US diets average. (That 66.66sq m/p is pretty close to the 50 number I used in this thread.) In general the highest value crops we have (peppers, garlic, onions, ginger) are not really something you'd want to base a diet around. The most productive crop so far (radishes) isn't either. It is something of a staple for the poorest people in some areas here because of it's productivity. There is not much of a local market for radishes. It's been the only thing we've grown that didn't sell out for higher prices than we were expecting before coming over here. (I know in other provinces it's a very important part of cuisine, but we're not to the point where we can market to other provinces yet.)

I'm not exactly sure how that fresh weight would compare to the average ton of food from the US from a nutrient and calorie standpoint. It's just far more research than I'm willing to do at this point to answer a question with no real world implications on my activities (for now). I would guess that nutrient wise it would favor our ton over the US ton, but calorie wise would favor the US ton over ours. In any case a ton of food per year isn't necessary to feed a person, and is probably unhealthy, especially given what it's comprised of in the US.

I still have quite a lot of possibility for improvement in my impact on the operations here. I'm still learning a lot about how to achieve those "average" yields consistently (adapting known techniques to less well known climates), and still looking forward to the time I can concentrate on the farming rather than working at other things to finance it and other personal projects/expenses.

[Aeson]

Becoming a subsistence farmer in a 3rd world country doesn't make you good at economics. If that were true, the University of Chicago would be recruiting from East Africa.

Being a farmer (both in the US and 3rd world) may have given me some insights into agricultural production though

That knowledge is integral to the debate of how much produce can be produced from a unit of area. That being one of the major points of discussion between Jaguar (who you've been blindly cheerleading for) and I.

Of course you admit you didn't actually read what you were cheerleading for, so it's understandable you're ignorant in that regard.

[Aeson]

Something I forgot to add about the comparison between the tons of food. Our production isn't designed to give a full spectrum of amino acids. (It may accidentally do so from time to time.) That is one area where it is clearly deficient from a nutrient standpoint. There are several ways I've looked into that it could offer a complete spectrum of amino acids without affecting yields too much, but such measures are not necessary yet (and probably won't ever be).

[Kidlicious]

Q: What is the most cultivated crop in the world?

A: Grass.

Keep on claiming local is not possible.

Grass is illegal.

[notyoueither]

Explain that to the people who mow the lawn at the White House.

Reference to the White House! Canadians win!

[DaShi]

That would depend on how much land is being farmed, how many workers I am able to employ, what crops we are growing, and how much food we are allotting per person.

Right now I wouldn't feed anyone. I was in the US until mid-May and when I got back I was too ill and ill-financed to reliably get a crop in and established enough before the rainy season (end of June). Here the rainy season isn't too bad, but working the soil during it is still a surefire way of causing lots of unnecessary erosion. It's turned out to be a rather un-rainy rainy season so we probably could have gotten away with it this year ... but I'm not going to gamble like that. I hope we can get a crop in on about 1000sq m in this October. I don't have the money right now to start up anything more than that.

As for what we realistically can do on a per unit of area basis ... a good average across all vegetable/fruit crops would be 5kg/sq m per 120 days. We have already achieved that on many smaller test plantings across many crops. Here we have a year round growing season so we can get close to 3 times that in a year. (Not necessarily 3 plantings a year. For some crops rotations we'd be getting 5-6, for others only 2-3.) Slightly more if we relay crop, but I'm not sure yet on whether that is more efficient than simply buying more land. We've tested it somewhat with eggplant providing lots of shade for young onions and lettuce, and it seems to work out pretty well. (No negative impact on either crop, and a net benefit for getting the next crop established.) Identifying potential like that is one of the things we've been focusing on.

But 5kg/sq m/120 days is what we are shooting for, what we have demonstrated possible in this area on small test plantings, and similar to the first world averages across those crops. That would be about 150,000kg/ha/year, so we could "feed" about 150 people per hectare given a comparable weight of food as US diets average. (That 66.66sq m/p is pretty close to the 50 number I used in this thread.) In general the highest value crops we have (peppers, garlic, onions, ginger) are not really something you'd want to base a diet around. The most productive crop so far (radishes) isn't either. It is something of a staple for the poorest people in some areas here because of it's productivity. There is not much of a local market for radishes. It's been the only thing we've grown that didn't sell out for higher prices than we were expecting before coming over here. (I know in other provinces it's a very important part of cuisine, but we're not to the point where we can market to other provinces yet.)

I'm not exactly sure how that fresh weight would compare to the average ton of food from the US from a nutrient and calorie standpoint. It's just far more research than I'm willing to do at this point to answer a question with no real world implications on my activities (for now). I would guess that nutrient wise it would favor our ton over the US ton, but calorie wise would favor the US ton over ours. In any case a ton of food per year isn't necessary to feed a person, and is probably unhealthy, especially given what it's comprised of in the US.

I still have quite a lot of possibility for improvement in my impact on the operations here. I'm still learning a lot about how to achieve those "average" yields consistently (adapting known techniques to less well known climates), and still looking forward to the time I can concentrate on the farming rather than working at other things to finance it and other personal projects/expenses.

Job creator.