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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] synthesis[29][12.04.04]

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  • From: Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] synthesis[29][12.04.04]
  • Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2004 09:51:52 -0700

Lawrence F. London, Jr. wrote:

John Schinnerer wrote:

Case in point - the only "small" farmers in the USA who are not only not going broke and losing their farms but actually doing pretty well are the Amish. They keep it small; they keep it relatively low-tech; they choose not to farm more than they can handle with some (locally sustainable) draft animals and their own community resources; they produce top-quality products that fetch premium prices. And, not least, they support each other in communal ways that the rest of us have mostly abandoned.


I really hope noone paid any attention to what you wrote here. You have no clue to
what is actually going on in small to medium scale agriculture im the US, what those farmers are doing
and their hopes and aspirations for the future. Do you work for a living? Do you do anything ag-related?
I didn't think so. I wish you would quit trying to jack this project around with your negativism and apathy
about uses for PIW in the field of farming and gardening, topics you obviously know little or nothing about
and have even less interest in. Stick to the contributions you offered to make toward software development.

LL

Whoaa there nellie!!!

I don't see anything in John's email that is that offensive or incorrect. I agree that a lot of small to medium (100 -200 acre) farms are doing well through CSA structures, farmer's market, and direct market. What I referred to in my email was that large (500+ acres) farms are always extractive not sustainable. It doesn't matter if you are organic, biodynamic, or baptist just because you are those things doesn't mean that the agriculture you practice is sustainable.
The larger you are the more concerned you are with efficiency and cutting costs, while increasing the market share. In order to do this your methodology is to decrease human labor, increase mechanical (petro based) technology. More compaction, more equipment to ease compaction, soil erosion, more inputs to replace lost nutrient (doesn't matter that those inputs are imported from fisheries around the world, or phosphate mining in Florida and Idaho) and away we go with another industrial model except this one is certified organic. Just as I think that Bill Gates is an obscenity of hoarding the commons in his bank account, because of scale, so do I think that, because of scale the mega farmer is looting the commons, and both are depriving the majority of a chance to earn a decent living either in the software world or the ag. world. I would love for someone to show me a human ag. system that is sustainable over twenty years that is more than five hundred acres.
True sustainable farming must be a messy conglomerate of perennial and annual cultivation which does not always conform to the height, width, length demands of mechanical technology. Why is it that studies have shown that the small family run farm is far more productive and sustainable than the mega-farms that are displacing them?? I think it is because they are stewards and connected to the land rather than their bank account.

Speaking of crop rotation, this is pretty much a phenomena of annual cropping, are we identifying guilds of the annuals as well as the perennials? This increases the task geometrically! Never the less it occurs to me that our guild just got extended to the micro organisms. What are the root associates that keep a plant free of nematodes, fungi, and other disease? Going from the mega to the micro and searching the micro for those guild characteristics is a very exciting, if daunting task. Gil Carandang has some wonderful techniques for collecting and multiplying the beneficial micro organisms that are indigenous to the site where they are collected

I think it is wistful thinking that we can continue our industrial model of agriculture if we only change the inputs and incorporate no-till as part of our farming regimine. The system is flawed from the beginning, from step one, as is our transportation system, marketing system, and etc. ad nauseum..

Scott




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