Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

My answer is, there is the populist, agrarian angle to it, which is highly
political if you think about it. But if it's not more financially
rewarding, we'll never have enough of our agriculture done sustainably, and
time is running out for our soil depletion and water waste. As for land
prices, you can go broke on a thousand acres or make a good living on two
to five. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 2/3/2007 at 5:16 PM yarrow@sfo.com wrote:

>paul wrote,
>>Yet I've read the typical farmer's return on investment today is about
2%.
>>You get a better return on a savings account.
>
>I agree about the need to spread intensive organic no-till and 
>rebuild soil, but ....
>
>I've heard that grocery stores net only 2 percent profit. Most things 
>I do make no profit, and in fact "cost," and I don't really take ROI 
>(in terms of dollars, that is) into account when I decide to do 
>anything that I can think of. Perhaps I'm an outlier, though.
>
>In any case, I think the way to make farming appealing to the next 
>generation is to promote the positive aspects of the lifestyle, 
>harken back to Jeffersonian democracy and the agrarian ideal (need 
>background music here). I'd guess that anyone who cares about ROI 
>wouldn't be interested in farming anyway.
>
>Oh, and outlaw land speculation so that those of us who don't care 
>mostly about profit and ROI can afford to buy land.
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