You've surely been aware of the uneasiness, particularly on the left, over the growth of factory farming methods. And there are reasons to be concerned. Some more urgent than others. But even the low urgency items are important.
But one reason that I haven't gotten too involved over the matter is the feeling that we have no choice. If there are things such as (genuine) free-range chickens and organic produce, I won't be able to afford them. Not everyday, anyway. And how do you expand production of these to feed seven billion people? I suppose we'd get right back to factory farms.
Occasionally I'll hear it said that the stereotypical American farmer is extinct. I think that's an exaggeration. At least there are still some small, independent hog producers raising livestock in ways that would remind us more of small farming. Still, you gotta imagine that they are being squeezed more and more by the economies of scale helping their larger competition. Extinction probably is inevitable.
One upside to factory farms is that food really is pretty inexpensive for us. I'm a baby boomer. Shadow boomer, to be a bit more precise. And I've never known genuine food anxiety. Even when I was raising children on pretty paltry wages. Those times that I was reduced to subsisting on ramen and macaroni and cheese, it was due more to my own irresponsibility than to the fact that I truly lacked opportunity to earn enough to eat fairly properly. (To be sure, there've been times when opportunities did become somewhat limited. But not to the extent of an emergency.)
A similar situation occurs with our much-expanded trade with China in consumer goods: these consumer goods are much less expensive than they used to be.
But it seems that one result is the fact that that damned 'job creator' class has more reason to squeeze wages lower and lower. They might or might not be individually aware that less expensive food and consumer goods gives them space to convert what would be costs into 'return on investment', but this still is one result of lower retail prices. It works just fine for them. It just screws us.
So what might be done about it? We might mandate, for instance, that these hog producers have a certain amount of land per hog devoted to processing these feces into material that is no more biologically active than the soil. This might sound daunting. But I'm not sure that it has to be.
I once worked in a mobile home park that had it's own sewage waste treatment plant. It wasn't huge and it wasn't all that complex. It consisted of a few open top tanks made out of cinder blocks. Each one had only the 'footprint' of a small house. They were filled with gravel to about five feet above ground level. Were they excavated beneath so that the gravel was actually deeper than that? I don't recall ever learning that. But it doesn't matter much. They had a water feed. The sewage and fresh water would flow in and the gravel would filter it. By the time that material got back into the environment at large it was no longer so biologically dangerous. The whole thing, including buffer space between it and the nearest trailers, took up only a small corner of the property.
I'm no expert, but I doubt if something similar for these factory type farms would be such a terrible, terrible burden on these businesses. And if there is some factor I've not considered that would make it economically unworkable, then these are non-viable businesses.
Mandating something like this must have the effect, I suppose, of either raising the retail price of pork a bit or squeezing 'shareholder value' a bit. The same principle spread through our economy would have to have the net effect of squeezing shareholder value if our ability to purchase food and products is to be preserved. The alternatives would seem to be either an environmentally destructive economy or commerce shrunk to 'dark ages' type size.
But when 84% of the nation's stock is owned by 10% of the people, and when half the world's wealth is owned by something like thirty families, then it looks to me as though that job creating investor class hasn't been doing so terribly badly. Can they take some moderate and reasonable 'hit for the team'?
I think they can take it and I think they'll still be pretty well off.
I wonder if one reason the working class doesn't get too excited about reigning in factory farms or other types of environmentalism is the feeling that they (we) will be abandoned after regulations that force retail prices up go into effect? The conservatives encourage us to think this way by arguing that regulation is 'business killing'. But it doesn't have to be.
Maybe we need to make some sacrifices as well. Always keeping in mind, though, that we don't have a whole lot to sacrifice. But something reasonable is okay. If our reward is a more sustainable economy and reasonable assurance that the world won't be destroyed while we live next to a hog crap lake, then wouldn't it be worth some sacrifice?
And now we......finally........are getting closer to the thought that inspired this diary. Maybe we make a mistake when we start moveon petitions and such that are just too narrow. People might shy away from a position such as; "We need to clean up factory hog farms" because of fear that that might raise the price of pork unacceptably. We can't accept very much of that, after all.
But they might respond better to something like; "We need to clean up these factory hog farms plus we need to make sure that working folks can still afford to buy the product".
If people trusted that the 'equation' would be 'balanced' in the end, they might be more enthusiastic.
The political parties recognized this principle, to some extent anyway, long ago in the form of party platforms. But those platforms seem to have degenerated into little more than window dressing with dubious sincerity.
Are there any new political parties, or coalitions of fragments of old political parties, who are willing to take up ideas such as this?
If you do it well, then you might do well with it.