Like everything there are costs and benefits; sometimes people only focus on the benefits of "modern" practices and forget the costs associated with them, like stripping the soil, and the expense and side effects of chemicals. Finding a better approach means taking risks and trying new ideas. This applies to programming as well as growing food.
Correct, but the current economic incentive structure is set up for short term profits and nobody really cares about the soil quality (except perhaps farmers that own the ground they farm; which even then they are to survive long enough to adapt soil-healthy practices).
Right now, farmers (corn/soy/wheat/cotton) are reward on quantity, so they need to increase production and keep costs down. Rightly or wrongly, the prevailing thought is to increase yields rather than cuts costs.
There are news systems thinking approaches slowly gaining steam (as the original article is about), but the reality is these things are economically risky. This is why the government needs to divert agricultural subsidy money from its existing criteria to one that requires practices like cover cropping. Importantly the money is already there, we just need to shift how its disbursed and start incentivizing more sustainable practices
Yes, words are contextual and don't always mean the same things every time they're used.
I had zero difficulty understanding the post you're replying to— and neither did you. It doesn't even annoy me any more, probably because, as a chemist, I got it out of my system years ago.
The time one of my second cousins responded to my telling her my major by making a face and saying "I don't like chemicals" does kind of stand out...
From context I’d say they mean fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides.
Edit: you will probably find that many words have multiple meanings, and it is not hard to find words that have one specific technical meaning and a different one in colloquial usage. Organic is another common one.
