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livingontheland - [Livingontheland] The answers are in the land/ We have a lot farther to fall than Cuba

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: activism98201@verizon.net, livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] The answers are in the land/ We have a lot farther to fall than Cuba
  • Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:29:08 -0700


As I like to remind us, in the Depression of the 30's farm families fared
better with food than their city cousins, and half the population was still
rural then. My grandparents in rural Kansas had no money but the kids never
missed a meal. Today we count less than a million farm families and most of
them have only cash crops and raise no food for the family. They don't know
how.

Back to the Cuba thing, for anyone who assumes we can just easily "go
organic" and feed ourselves as Cuba did when they had to do without foreign
oil. In the first place, they didn't have it easy. But there are bigger
differences.

"The richest one-fifth of the world's humans consume 58% of total
energy, use 74% of all telephone lines, consume 84% of all paper, and
own 87% of all vehicles. The poorest one-fifth of the world's humans
consume less than 4% of total energy, use 1.1% of all telephone
lines, consume less than 1% of all paper, and own less than 1% of all
vehicles."
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061128173336710

My point was simply that we are a far more technological, energy dependent
society than Cuba was when their Soviet oil and aid stopped coming. And
technology costs money and enormous amounts of energy. It's not about guilt
or politics but obvious reality. Cuba has a year-round growing season and
plenty of rainfall. They don't have to heat their homes in winter. A lot
more ride bicycles. A lot more Cubans were used to manual labor and living
more simply than most of us today. As economic contraction takes hold and
oil keeps rising every year, we have a lot farther to fall.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 11/29/2006 at 2:38 PM Mark Nagel wrote:

>"It means large amounts of money must be spent to do it."
>
>And though money is a but an abstract, it nonetheless does have some sense
>of connection to work. And work means energy; therefore, money equals
>energy. What I'm wanting to point out here is that it's an energy
>problem; and, as noted, innovation doesn't create energy (it can only
>improve efficiency; the problem here is that, as noted by Jevons Paradox,
>efficiency always means faster depletion of a given resource).
>
>We must lay down the burden of expecting technology to save us. It won't.
> The answers are in the land, not in our minds...
>
>
>-Mark Nagel
>Everett, WA







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