gross productivity divided by the number of laborers per captia in agriculture is not the only metric when it comes to actually feeding people. if the russians manage to produce sufficient food to feed their people while not killing their bees and deadening their seas they are not failures
tsinava posted:American agriculture is the worst system of food production in existence. So that's a pretty easy choice Swampman.
Except for every other one that's been tried. Lol, I'm just joshin ya. I think that both of you are getting too bogged down in the science of production. I think we need to be more concerned with material conditions. How many Russians are hungry compared to America? What is the rate of malnutrition? What percentage of a Russian's budget is spent on food? How exhaustive is their method of farming to the soil? I think "labor saving" in agriculture can become a pointless obsession. Labor intensive methods that result in sustainable and secure food production are obviously preferable to labor-saving methods that lead eventually to famine. It wouldn't bother me if Russian agriculture was more labor intensive for less yield if the effective result is a well-fed Russia with a "positive" outlook on the agricultural future (as positive that can be had at the close of the holocene anyway)
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swiss chard, sugar snap peas in the background.
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corn. i planted three varieties this year: bloody butcher, a red dent corn for roasting and grinding into meal; cherokee gourdseed for hominy and nixtamal, and a multicolored popcorn.
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potatoes
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onions (left, center) and garlic (right)
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fava beans
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peas with intercropped lettuce
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that harvest, son. butternut squash seedlings in the top of the frame.
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the peas have been insanely prolific. we've been picking way more than we can eat, and even though they're delicious we're kinda getting tired of them. there were about 1 1/2 gallons of peas in the photo above, i froze most of them.
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The shelves are not in correct order while we wait for more beetles to hatch, but this is the tower