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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Pastoral ideas and Dead Cow Walking

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  • From: "Barbara Fischer" <cen12205@centurytel.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Pastoral ideas and Dead Cow Walking
  • Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:53:39 -0500

My family has owned a farm in central Ill for generations. It is farmed by
a neighboring farmer. Until the last couple of years it was farmed by the
man who lived in the house up there. Now I have a tenant family, but they
do not farm the land. It still makes money for me every year, as it always
has. My cousins own another two 80 acre pieces. They have a different
farmer.....but they live FAR away and are not too involved....just like the
checks. I am involved with mine and go up there often from my home in AR.
There is still money to be made in farming by the little guy if you are not
greedy.

Barbara


----- Original Message -----
From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Pastoral ideas and Dead Cow Walking


>
> 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
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> >> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland
> >>
> >
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>
>
>
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