Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - Re: [permaculture] America: Becoming a Land Without Farmers

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] America: Becoming a Land Without Farmers
  • Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2015 02:32:54 -0400

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 2:23 AM, Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
wrote:

> America: Becoming a Land Without Farmers
> September 10, 2012
>
> Evaggelos Vallianatos (Photo Credit: Homini:))
>
>
> http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/


Comments on this article from the Independent Science News website [I
thought these were especially
interesting and accurate. LL]


1. Josef Hoppichler <http://www.berggebiete.at> says:
September 10, 2012 at 2:50 pm

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/#comment-4249>

I am reflecting on this article from the middle of Europe, to say it
exact from Austria. What Evaggelos Vallianatos is demonstrating according
to the 20th century history of US-agriculture is mainly a global
phenomenon. With the industrialization family farm systems were/are more
and more transformed to industry-adjusted structures. May be the scales are
a little bit different between the global regions, but you find this
transformation in all the western (northern) countries and for sure also
more and more also in the South and East, especially in Africa and Asia
(South America is to some extend a little bit different.)
The rural agricultural and forestry areas are not any more community
land but industrial land. The countryside is more and more transformed to
something like a surface-reactor or a ‘machine’ of chemical- and
bioengineering companies. It is just a place of raw materials for
agrobusiness . There is no need and no labor for rural communities anymore.
What we see are more and more engineers, enterpreneurs, investors and new
landlords who take over the land, whereas all other people have to make a
living in huge agglomerations and large cities.
It will be a question whether modern industrialized and transformed
societies will be able to stabilize the metropoles. But there are a lot of
signs that this dichotomous structure cannot be stabilized, that poverty,
injustice, exploitation and oppression
for the majority of people on the one side and enormous concentration of
wealth and power for the minority on the other side will create an
explosive society with explosive political situations.
A wise politician would think about programs of repopulating the rural
areas and to start with land reforms. And it is good that a lot of young
people think besides organic farming about city agriculture, subsistence
farming and self-supporting agriculture, community based and supported
agriculture, new cooperatives a.s.o. We just have to reinvent, to reuse and
to re-apropriate land resources. Maybe the US have a great tradition in
re-inventing ……
All together it is a great article…..
2. Gunnar Rundgren <http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/> says:
September 10, 2012 at 5:39 pm

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/#comment-4250>

Great article. I have recently made visits to farms in Africa, US,
Brazil, India, Holland and Sweden for a book,
http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/p/keep-your-ear-to-ground.html
and i concur with most of the analysis. Where I differ is that this is a
result of some kind of conspiration of Agri-business. I visited 8,000 acres
family farms in Illinois and 14 hectares of glass-housed in the Netherlands
producing 30 million paprikas also family business. Farmers, also family
farmers, are competing with each other and the more successful win, become
double the size. Then ten years later, someone else outcompete them. It is
a direct logic of global competition and capital accumulation. Which I also
analyse in depth in other book, Garden Earth,
http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/p/garden-earth.html . The depopulation of
the rural areas has now also reached some of the poorer countries, see
http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/2012/08/will-there-be-farmers.html
3. Auntiegrav says:
September 15, 2012 at 1:59 pm

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/#comment-4256>

What is really at issue is not the size of farms, or whether they are
“family” farms or industrial powerhouses. What we need to ask (for our
future’s sake) is whether the process of agriculture is improving that land
or extracting resources from it. If people are necessary to improve the
land (stabilize the soil life, the physical structure of lakes and streams,
the biodiversity, etc), then we need to put more people on that land. If
the land is better tended by no-till practices with a little pesticide
(instead of plowing), then we need to be sure the pesticides are
bio-compatible with the natural processes we need for the future (rather
than plowing and losing soil or using broad spectrum death juice). What are
people FOR? Until you answer that question, the rest is just arguing over
petty economic questions, which are inherently contrived from petty
property ownership beliefs.
- jrlatham <http://www.bioscienceresource.org/> says:
September 16, 2012 at 12:36 am

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/#comment-4257>

I think that is an excellent point. The point about family farms is
that farming ought to be on a human scale. They could be
co-operatives, for
example.
Reply

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/?replytocom=4257#respond>
- Gunnar Rundgren <http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/> says:
September 16, 2012 at 9:02 am

<http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/america-becoming-a-land-without-farmers/#comment-4259>

I do agree, my point was about how “those petty economic
considerations” forces everybody, family farmer, cooperatives or big
companies to submit not to the logic of the land or the planet,
but to the
market. And the market forces, capitalism if you prefer, are not going
to
transform agriculture to the better, rather the opposite. They
are not even
effective in distributing a huge surplus of food to 1 billion
hungry, even
less effective in managing the environment at large. As you rightly
point
out also not its own resource base, the land and the soil and the
people.




--
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/ <http://www.avantgeared.com>
https://plus.google.com/+Avantgeared
Ello: https://ello.co/ecoponderosa <https://ello.co/ecoponderosa>
Twitter: @ecoponderosa <https://twitter.com/ecoponderosa>
Reddit: ecoponderosa
Cellphone: lfljcell@gmail.com




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page