Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

I'm not splitting hairs on this but we see what's happening with corporate
corruption of organics. As Dan put it
>The "Organic" certification, then, becomes more of a tool of the
>corporatist philosophy than the localist one, since it allows exploitation
>of regulations by remote control to market products with no consideration
>of
>the individuals affected; only what the groups agree to (customer groups,
>business groups, and now, the USDA group).

I wouldn't be quick to chalk up negative views to irrational reasons like a
bad experience. Objective evidence shows the problems with corporate
everything.  And the heavy hand of industrial agribusiness is easy to see
behind the "organic" standards. The sad trend has been growing "remote
control" of farm production, where the typical large farmer today is only
working for the absentee landlord, on contract with the corporate bank or
corporate middleman, ADM, Cargill, Tyson, Campbell Soup and so forth. It's
a far cry from the bucolic scene of a farm family living on the land - land
they inherited and pass on to their offspring. The actual percent of
farmer-owned and worked land has dwindled to a small fraction of what it
used to be, and that's under pressure from corporate monopoly and corporate
corruption of extension advice and agricultural colleges. The advice for
decades was "get big or get out". But it was more than advice; it was a
clear threat directed against the little guy. Go in debt every year for
seed, fertilizer, and big equipment. Buy or lease more land. Heavy
equipment meant having to work more land to justify it. At the same time
they would get caught in the squeeze between high costs and low prices for
crops sold to the middleman. Literally millions went under. 

Right here near my home, we saw farmers losing their butts this year from
excessive late summer rains and early frost. Why? Lack of diversity, the
same old monoculture. They either raise pinto beans, corn, or alfalfa. A
local weekly explained they can't specialize in more than one crop however,
because of the cost of (corporate) harvesting equipment. A friend of ours
lost 70% of their pinto and bolita beans. And they had little else to sell
to make up the difference. Fortunately they salvaged most of their corn to
sell retail. But this is no way to live and farm. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 10/10/2006 at 7:49 AM Barbara Fischer wrote:

>I definitely do not agree with your very negative view of corporate.  I
>have
>lived 77 years so do have some past experience.  You really have had some
>bad experiences i guess.  Sorry
>
>Barbara
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Dan Conine" <dconine@dotnet.com>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 7:37 PM
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Pastoral ideas and Dead Cow Walking
>
>
>> > "Local" isn't necessiarily the opposite of "corporate".....depends on
>where
>> > you live.
>> >
>> > Barbara
>> I think it is. If corporation is defined by "incorporation", then a
>corporation is any group that is joined together in order to exploit
people
>through the use of regulations, coercion, deception, or marketing, and
>"local" at it's most basic level is the individual. Therefore,
>"Corporatist"
>is a "groupist" philosophy, and "local" is the individualist philosophy.
>Individualists often form groups, families, and communities, but
>communities
>and companies can never form individuals.
>>
>> It only works one way. The violence has to flow downhill from that.
>Localists conduct their affairs in the opposite direction from
>Corporatists.
>>
>> The "Organic" certification, then, becomes more of a tool of the
>corporatist philosophy than the localist one, since it allows exploitation
>of regulations by remote control to market products with no consideration
>of
>the individuals affected; only what the groups agree to (customer groups,
>business groups, and now, the USDA group).
>>
>> Groups and systems aren't all bad, they just have to be kept at the
mercy
>of the individual, not the other way around. That's why there was a Bill
of
>Rights. The good of the many does not outweigh the needs of the one if the
>many are no longer allowed to be separate units. There is no "I" in
"Team",
>but without "ME", there is no "meat" in it.
>>
>> The story of the organic vs. conventional dairy also has a link to the
>story of two
>cows:http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_42/b4005006.htm?champa
i
>gn_id=msnbc_organic
>> This is a classic example of how to think of what I'm saying. If you
only
>look at the numbers, you see a bunch of averages, statistics, etc. When
you
>think about the individual cows, you see that when you subtract out the 30
>months that it takes to mature and give birth, then the resulting MILKING
>lifespan becomes: (conventional) 1 1/2 years (organic) 15 years (yes, my
>father even had cows that were 17 1/2 years old) That is a multiple of 10.
>>
>> When you buy milk from the conventional process, you are buying milk
from
>dead cows which haven't had the grace to fall over yet.
>>
>> Let's put it in a catch phrase: "It takes 10 times as long to kill a cow
>organically."
>>
>> Economists will always look at a herd of cows. Farmers look at their
cows
>as individuals. Once they stop treating them as individuals, they aren't
>farming, they are 'producing'. That's when a farm turns into a city.
>Welcome
>to Futureland.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Livingontheland mailing list
>> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Livingontheland mailing list
>Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland