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Small farms produce less pollution per kg of meat? Sounds unbelievable.
It sounds unbelievable because it's just simply wrong.
Larger farms are more efficient. Each cow will always produce the same amount of manure, where you put the fence between them doesn't really matter. If there's 2 million cows in the state you get 2 million cows worth of manure to deal with, you can't gerrymander that away.
Economies of scale apply to farms, but the waste they produce isn't going to change much.
There are a lot of valid reasons to prefer small farms to large ones. The animals generally get better treatment on small farms, you get a better quality product from smaller farms. But the reality is the average age of farmers in this country is approaching retirement. Meaning a fair number of farmers are over that age. We don't have the labor in this country to manage a lot of small farms, and that's before we forcibly deported the people doing 90% of the labor.
Upstate NY and pretty much everywhere outside of developed metropolitan areas have gone MAGA and have been voting Republican against their own interests for years.
This is what they voted for- to shoot themselves in the foot.
I'm not sure I see your logic here. The bill is sponsored by two Democrats from NYC.
Just commenting re: the manufactured shortage of labor. I don't disagree that nearly all agricultural industries will be affected, but this result seems like the outcome of short-sighted voters, more than anything else.
It depends if there is any regulation on manure treatment. If there isn't any regulation, it is possible that spreading the pollution around may allow for the local environment to absorb and process it better.
If there was actual regulations on runoff, larger facilities would likely produce less pollution per unit of meat.
Sounds very believable. Large operations don't give a fuck.
Waste is always easier to manage in smaller amounts.
I would suggest a sewer system and waste management might be evidence to the contrary. Most things have an economy of scale and waste tends to go down and efficiency goes up in larger scale operations. That's one reason wealth is concentrated In and generated by cities.
That said, disease spreads easier in larger populations, so it's a mixed bag.
Hundreds of years ago they were a mixed bag, but with the advent of germ theory (and fire codes) cities rock and like 95% of humans should live in one
But that doesn't mean CAFOs are a good idea, because their number one economy of scale trick is a) ignore all the environmental regulations to create more profit per unit b) have enough units makes the cost of fines/litigation/lobbying a manageable business expense
Not this one. Way too expensive for zero net benefit, louder, busier and more competitive. You can keep it. Cities are overrated.
And avoiding regulations isn't the only reason big farms are more efficient nor do small farms always comply with every regulation, escaping by being too small to notice.
Regulations are orthogonal to the question of efficiency. Regulations don't exist to affect efficiency, they exist to enforce the common good at any scale.
So I'm not defending mega farms. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone should avoid regulation. I'm just saying economy of scale applies to farms and to suggest otherwise undermines any other argument one might make—if one argument in your quiver comes from a place of ignorance, what might that say about the rest?
Regulate farms. Examine the subsidies. Target the abuses. By all means, there is nothing morally good about mega farms. It's just that I'm yet to see a good argument against them on the basis of efficiency.
The argument against here should be, "any gains in efficiency are overshadowed by unethical treatment of animals, risk of population collapse due to rampant infections, and regulatory capture by farm lobbies." Or some such.
All IMO, of course. Fight your battles as you will. But I will call out fallacies of friends and foes alike because I don't think they serve anyone.