[Homestead] Food prices and farming
Lynda
lurine at softcom.net
Sun May 4 13:50:23 EDT 2008
And the comments section shows even more Monsantonistas marching in lockset
like good little sheople faithly repeating the mantra they've been taught!
Lynda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Bowen" <don.bowen at earthlink.net>
> As we all know the price of food is rising faster than at any time in
> recent memory. We all know the reasons, increasing oil costs cause rising
> prices in growing, processing, and delivering food, world wide climate
> change causing droughts in food producing areas, increasing incomes in
> developing nations changing eating habits, and the criminal act of putting
> food in our fuel tanks. Two articles I read this last week, one in Time
> Magazine, and one at
> http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/05/paul-collier-re.html,
> portend a trend that we should be wary of.
>
> Both give accurate reasons for the problem but support the wrong fix.
> They push for more fertilizer, higher yielding seeds, and more water.
> Neither advocate better farming using less energy intensive methods. Both
> articles push for business as usual and more of the same and neither looks
> at alternate methods.
>
> Iowa farmers are complaining about the rising costs of fertilizer and
> Asian Rice farmers are having problems getting fertilizer. The Iowa
> farmer was worried that the current high prices he was getting for corn
> were not sustainable and that when things settled he would be in financial
> difficulty. The Vietnam farmer was worried about feeding his family.
> Fertilizer is made mostly from Natural Gas and is transported long
> distances so there will be little relief there in the future.
>
> Higher yielding seeds come from research into plant genetics. Starting
> with the studies by Mendel on peas and on to genetic manipulation by using
> viri to transport genes from jellyfish into plants. Hybridization has
> reached a peak and leaves whole plant families vulnerable to pathogens.
> Direct genetic manipulation is fraught with danger and has not lived up to
> promise except to allow sales of more chemicals.
>
> More water is a real problem in many parts of the world. Climate change
> is changing rainfall patterns and population growth and shift is placing
> heavy strains on existing water supplies. To increase water to crops is
> to increase irrigation from deep aquifers and distant surface water, both
> requiring expensive pumping energy.
>
> The answer is not bigger farms using expensive patented seeds with more
> chemical and energy inputs. There are many answers but with the constant
> noise from the established farming system those methods will have problems
> getting aired.
>
> Don Bowen KI6DIU
> http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html
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