Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

But surely they won't waste gas - if it's available at all - driving 10 to 
100 miles out of town for food. People will need growers of all kinds close 
enough to walk or ride or carpool, say, every 2 or 3 miles apart. And grow 
their own, if they can. I don't count Phoenix or Vegas because they're 
history - they just don't know it yet. But wherever there's water or enough 
rainwater to collect and store, they can garden and grow more in less space 
than commercial agribusiness would ever believe.

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our 
most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its 
renewal is our only hope.
   - Wendell Berry

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/11/2006 at 9:52 AM Marty Kraft wrote:

>I agree. Somehow we have to reduce our total fuel usage as we get food
>to people. That requires people to think of the whole instead of just
>themselves as they do when they respond to $3 gas. The time when we
>think of ourselves as individuals is past. The time of seeing
>competition as a virtue are past. It will be hard or easy depending how
>hard we hang on to the past. I feel some pain already.
>
>Marty Kraft
>On May 11, 2006, at 1:39 AM, Robert Norsen wrote:
>
>> The small scale farm - the buyers driving out to meet the farmer-  It
>> was that way on our farm when I was a kid.  Some of what we produced
>> was sold to "friends" who drove out from town to get farm fresh farm
>> grown stuff.   We didn't know it was organic - it was!
>> Picture the problem.  Half a million house wives driving out to the
>> farms 10 to 100 miles out of town to buy food.   Some how the small
>> scale farm still needs to market where the advantages are not
>> destroyed by the magnitude of the distribution costs.   1 chicken Fed
>> Ex would cost 100 times the present  cost of  shipping and handling in
>> terms of fuel and labor.  
>>  
>> One truck hauling a thousand dozen eggs is less of a problem than 500
>> cars driving out to get 2 dozen eggs apiece.   Then there is meat,
>> bananas, oranges, milk, flour, bread, on and on.  It sounds nice but
>> gonna have to organize something that will look much like the  market
>> we have.   I hope it can be grown organically just like the story
>> suggested. 
>>