Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Well, Sue from Oklahoma, you hit on MY real issue, the hardest one for
farmers themselves to understand. Today the average farmer or farm family
is only a cog in the Machine, working for horrible wages, or even farming
at a loss. And they don't understand or see what's happened to farms in
this country. A large part of the farmers have lost their land, and to stay
on the land they have to work for the bank or whatever corporation owns it
now. Most of those who do own their land, or they're still paying for it,
must plant what their creditors tell them to plant, and grow the way
they're told to grow, which means herbicides, hybrid seed, monoculture,
bigger and bigger machinery and more lifetime debt. They have to go hat in
hand every spring to get credit to buy the year's seed and chemicals, and
you can bet their crop is the collateral - if not the farm itself. They
farm the conventional chemical way or they don't get credit to start the
year, and they're out of farming. The price they get for the crop is the
price set by the corporate middlemen, ADM, Cargill, or other transnational
corporations playing off cheap labor countries against our farmers. The
price they pay for their seed and chemicals is set by the same corporations
through interlocking boards of directors. The squeeze is on. They are
trapped, literally, in a system not of their making. And their kids don't
want to take over when their life on earth is done. Why would they? 

There was a movie back in the 80's if I recall, "Country". The farm family
was losing it. The county agent told the guy (Sam Shepard?) that his return
on investment was something like 2%. That's two percent. Told him he just
didn't know how to farm. Yet the poor guy was doing everything they'd told
him to do all along. And now working hundreds of acres for slave wages,
supporting the family on $10,000 a year - in a good year. 

We've talked about intelligent farming. But farmers trapped in the system
couldn't switch to the best practices now if they knew how. We can't help
them, and I hate it. It will be the New Farmers who know how and do it. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 5/24/2007 at 2:01 PM Harold and Sue Karber wrote:

>my two cents.....on Agribusiness...local supply.
>Agribusiness is when those who have no connection to the land suck value 
>from the land be it sustainability, pollutions of land, water and/or
>quality 
>of produced food value etc., degrades the infrastructure of the area.  
>The 
>tyranny of the system is those who direct the production use labor as a 
>machine which is disposable and replaceable thus those who work the 
>land/animals are disposable and are to produce at slave wages making none
>of 
>the decisions just act as a machine carrying out order to produce the most

>at the lowest cost regardless of the quality of the finished product.  
>Use 
>of chemicals or pollutants are not part of the workers thought process,
>they 
>are to just do it and not question the long term effect on the consumer, 
>land or water.   Decisions are made from far off and everyone and
>everything 
>is a commodity...period.   Much of our food is imported even with huge 
>transport costs the cost of the food is cheap because the labor is slave 
>labor and disposable.    To function at that level to produce more at
>lower 
>costs not caring about quality only quantity one must become cheaper than 
>slave labor and ignore the eventual cost to the food value itself, the 
>environment and the infrastructure of the community.    I am probably the 
>most conservative person on this group and that makes me KNOW that 
>agribusiness is economic and social suicide.   The short run is big pay
>off 
>economically for those far off managers/contractors/CAFO/Corporate Ag. but

>the long run is economic disaster and what we pay in the long run for 
>today's cheap food imports and destructive practices will make us either 
>dead from hunger eventually or slaves willing to work for a meal a day for

>ourselves and our children and grandchildren.   What does not get
>destroyed 
>with chemicals, pollutions will be moved to cheaper and cheaper labor
>areas 
>with the aftermath of American food supply being captive to the price 
>demanded by those who control the supply line from far off.   If you can
>pay 
>you can eat, if you can't pay you will sell your soul for a meal lowering 
>your economic stance to below slave labor.    Think about it.   Local
>Supply 
>and ability to feed ourselves is the only real security and that has to be

>sustainable or we are a captive people to those who can charge what they 
>want for bare existence nourishment.
>If you want real food security, real security then today is the day to
>start 
>feeding yourself and your local community and make the land better so 
>tomorrow will be more secure.
>Sue Karber  Oklahoma
>If you put someone down then put them down on your prayer list.
>No to NAIS
>The scariest thing isn't the daily news; it's our  food's lack of Country
>of 
>Origin Labels (COOL) and
> the horrid NAIS to make it worse with eliminating real food safety and 
>family farms for only factory farms.
>1% of imports inspected and how many have melamine in the meats/foods and 
>what other unknowns are we feeding our children?
>http://www.nonais.org/  technical documents and state groups located on 
>right side bar
>http://www.r-calfusa.com
>http://www.naissucks.com/  This my good friend Darol Dickerson's site not
>to 
>be missed. Read about Gun Toting number enforcers.
>www.tabletophomestead.org/NAIS.html   Oklahoma Cooperative Agreements
>http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com/
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Oklahomans_against_NAIS
>www.derrybrownfield.com  some of the best commentary and facts on NAIS in 
>the world
>http://www.oklahomaanimalproducers.com
>Email scanned by Norton Anti Virus
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
>To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
>Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 1:06 PM
>Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Market farming
>
>
>>