Farms that create habitat key to food security and biodiversity
(I can only speak to the US, though I expect it&#x27;s similar in many other western countries as well)<p>The unfortunate truth is that we have so heavily subsidized and centralized food production that anyone focusing on biodiversity, sustainability, or even animal welfare can compete economically.<p>If we care at all about any of these goals, let alone all three, the only solution seems to be a much more localized food system. Large-scale ranching and farming is heavily dependent on monoculture, i.e. growing only one type of crop or raising only one type of animal. Without this a farmer has a much harder time mechanising the process with heavy equipment, and that&#x27;s a must give that exceedingly few people are willing to work on a farm. Even then, most farmers eek out a living based heavily on government subsidies and crop insurance.<p>I&#x27;m raising a small herd of cattle on pasture, I don&#x27;t have as much experience farming crops so I&#x27;ll stick with ranching here. Our cows are entirely grass fed and we don&#x27;t use pesticides, herbicides, or antibiotics. We don&#x27;t even own a tractor because it&#x27;s not economically viable to take on the upfront or maintenance costs of modern tractors. No matter how I do the math I could never sell meat or dairy at prices that come close to grocery store prices.<p>And no, scale wouldn&#x27;t solve the financial challenge. Raising healthy cattle on pasture requires much more land per head than industrial cattle production offers. Fertilizers, antibiotics, and pesticides are all additional inputs that require expensive equipment to apply properly and ultimately are just bandaids attempting to squeeze out more head per acre than the land can actually support. At the end of the day we would end up raising more cattle, but our expenses and risk would continue to grow at least as fast and we&#x27;d end up working harder and stressing out more just to make sure something doesn&#x27;t go wrong and bring the entire house of cards down.