Guy, you're not alone

[giblets]

yet the big companies have achieved near total control of some markets and are constantly advancing in others. they are big and powerful, so much so that even very substantial commercial farmers are minnows compared to them. they clearly use this power to first control, then in effective terms eliminate, markets. and this is the problem with your (standard classical) analysis of the issue. you use words like 'choice' and 'better' as if they - even if we ignore the questions what they really mean - were the determining factor. words like 'power' and 'control' bring us far nearer to understanding what's going on.

What are they forcing farmers to do by exercising this 'control' aside from buying seeds that are more profitable than the older seed varieties?

[C0ckney]

that's certainly one approach, but i don't think the model of industrialised agriculture and monocultures that such companies promote and depend on is sustainable in the long run. i prefer to seek alternatives rather than push it to the nth degree.

x-post: ws responding to aeson.

[Aeson]

Industrialized agriculture and monoculture is definitely the way to go. What we are doing is already too little in that regard. There is going to be at least 9 billion people on this planet. Chopping down what remains of our forests to feed them via old low production per sq m farming methods is a horrible idea. Vertical greenhouses, LED grow lights, saltwater greenhouses ... that is the direction our food production needs to go in.

The future (and in far too limited cases present) of agriculture is awesome if kneejerk activism doesn't stop it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTikdxj8AI

GMO is in it's infancy, and already can give some great results, reducing pesticide and herbicide use, reducing tilling (and thus erosion and runoff), and reducing the footprint of any given yield. As the tech progresses we will see the further reduction or elimination of many of the natural restrictions (pests, yields, inputs) we have on growing our food. Stopping it from doing so would be a huge environmental harm in the long run.

[C0ckney]

i think we're using the terms to mean different things, and that may be my fault for using imprecise language. i'm certainly not against using greenhouses and suchlike.

[regexcellent]

Monsanto has been demonstrably better than communism or any government for that matter at solving world hunger.

[Aeson]

i think we're using the terms to mean different things, and that may be my fault for using imprecise language. i'm certainly not against using greenhouses and suchlike.

Greenhouses are just a step in the industrialization of agriculture, and on a commercial scale are generally monoculture because it makes the implemented tools more efficient due to specialization. It's all the same pursuit of growing the most produce in the most efficient way using better and better tech.

I believe you aren't against this step in principle, but in practice those who are anti-GM and anti-factory farming are railing against the process that makes these next steps possible. Greenhouses are very expensive, you can't jump from backyard and subsistance farming to a multi-billion dollar greenhouse project. GMOs are very expensive to develop already, and to make it expensive to keep legal just pushes the industry into the hands of a very select few corporations.

The near-future state of agriculture is one we should be pushing harder to reach, because undeniably it's more environmentally friendly. (As well as creates higher paying jobs.)

[Ben Kenobi]

It's terrible for companies, since it forces them to either cut costs or sink money into innovation

In the same way exercise is terrible for individuals. If a business isn't able to compete with smaller and leaner enterprises then time will bring that to a halt.