Small artisanal farms might not be our environmental salvation

farm table
[Cricket flour] was the first note of a dinner set up by the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-technology environmental think tank, in order to showcase sustainable farming.

When I started out writing about food and the environment 15 years ago, I assumed that big, industrial farms were the problem and that the answer was to pay more for artisanal production. … As Breakthrough Institute Director Ted Nordhaus explained to some three dozen people crowded into a San Francisco restaurant, recent studies suggest that conventional wisdom has it mostly backward: Industrial farms tend to have a smaller environmental footprint than organic ones.

Food is flavored by its story, and for the last decade, we’ve been hearing a story about how intensively farmed food is inferior in every way. Breakthrough is trying to rewrite that narrative. Environmentally, they’ve got a point: Big ag often produces less pollution than the locally sourced, artisanal fare I’d fetishized for more than a decade. But I’m skeptical that industrial farming will ever become the darling of fine dining.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Small artisanal farms might not be our environmental salvation

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