Ah the good ol' days when farmers had 10+ kids.
Only 5 made it to adulthood due to diseases like measles, mumps, influenza, whooping cough etc. , poor and dangerous working conditions, and no healthcare. Of those 5 remaining, 1 of them died in childbirth, and 1 died in a random war and 3 went on to have kids of their own.
Like one that put Brazil as the leading exporter of a crop that the U.S. used to dominate.
What do they want to pay? Minimum wage for 60 hours per week with no overtime.
When your business requires the exploition of cheap labor, you deserve to go bankrupt.
Commodity crops prices often trend the inverse of the economy. The reason is simple; It is highly dependent on the export market.
When overall economy is strong, the dollar is strong versus other currencies. This makes importing easier and exporting harder. So prices for commodities in the U.S. fall.
When the overall economy is weak the dollar falls in value. This makes importing harder but exporting much easier. Prices for commodities rise rapidly and farmers make more gross money.
Even through they are making more gross income their cost skyrocket so their net returns are in general pretty average.
Farmers tend to make the most money when the economy is in recovery mode and commodity prices are still higher but input costs fall.
So here is the vicious cycle we have fallen into. Republicans get into power and crash the economy. When it crashes, farmers get high prices but low returns. Democrats come in, repair the economy but by the time elections come around, farmers have not made any money for a year or two. Rinse and repeat.
Now the orange moron adds a bit of a twist to it. Trade war: This can fuck the farmer up really bad as buyers are willing to pay a modest premium to minimize the impact of an unreliable trading partner. It reduces both the volume moved and prices offered from other countries for years.
has not been peer reviewed.
Then I read their methods ... It should not pass peer review. Their variable control is shit.
But..... we don't have unlimited hectares of suitable land for people to fuck up. That's the point.... A food forest concept would require every last bit of ariable land on the planet and still not provide enough food for everyone.
The entire idea shows a complete lack of understanding what it takes to feed people at the scale of billions.
We need food for billions not a small community.
Food forest = lower environmental impact per acre but a higher environmental cost per kg of production. It's also highly environmentally irresponsible to add in invasive species, disease, and pests into and established ecosystem. These are all spread by seed, soil, and plant tissue of the crops we grow.
The best thing for the environment and soil health is to not farm it. There is no such thing as environmentally friendly agriculture. It is always destructive.
We farm the land we do because it's profitable.
Irrigated acres make up less than 7% of the land area used for agriculture but produce 65% of the total yield.
Protected culture (greenhouses, high tunnels, etc) produce 10x to 20x more per acre than open field production.
Increasing our water storage and transport infrastructure on a massive scale, combined with expansion of protected culture could reduce our agricultural land requirements by as much as 80%. All wiithout changing our diets.
Imagine 80% of the farmland rewilded? Massive stretches of native ecosystems rebounding without fertilizer or sprays.
The worst nuclear disaster has led to 1,000sq miles of land being unsafe for human inhabitants.
Using fossil fuels for power is destroying of the entire planet.
It's really not that complicated.
Russia has a long history of open storage at these sites. They also lost a ton of bunkers a few months ago at other sites. So they likely did not have much of an option, and they chose open store it at their "best defended" base.
I personally would bet that site was overstocked as it was likely the primary ammo dump by default. All of the newly manufactured missiles and shells going there directly from the factories.