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Re:Farms, More Productive Than Ever, Are Poisoning Drinking ... by wwweston on Saturday January 19, 2019 @01:31AM (#18945656)
If there's an oversupply problem, that suggests that perhaps the point where further industrialization was necessary in order to support the population is somewhere in the rear view mirror.

And if the economics of megaproduction involve externalizing costs of dealing with waste, then somewhere we've broken something about pricing and/or regulation.

Re:Farms, More Productive Than Ever, Are Poisoning Drinking ... by Latteland on Tuesday January 22, 2019 @01:26PM (#18970806)
There's been an oversupply of consumption in the US of most foods grown in the US for decades of course (witness the endless media stories of giant stocks of us govt cheese surplus). With exports we have soaked up much of that oversupply. There are some years when there is less production but generally we have too much; milk seems to be especially bad. My uncle is a farmer and works for the us govt somehow administering crop price supports. A few years ago, he told me that the price supports mostly guarantee that there is a stable supply for food, almost pushing for greater production, thus keeping us close to oversupply (which keeps the prices lower).

I'm not a farmer, I wonder if this idea that us govt price supports for farming leads us to have constant oversupply? And then what if they went away?