Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Laying aside the issue of all that injustice - that's just one more reason
to expect food production to become more profitable. But not all food
production. As supermarket food rises from higher production costs and
transportation fuel costs, the sustainable small grower will find his/her
costs staying level while the retail price of food keeps going up. If
you're not shelling out more and more for fossil fuel-based fertilizers and
pesticides and heavy farm equipment, your costs don't go up. If you're
growing on small acreage or less, the rising cost of land for ethanol or
development won't affect you. Meantime, food price inflation has started
creeping up and will keep going up. Several factors are now driving up
prices. There's a good reason why food (and energy) prices are
intentionally left out of the government's "core inflation" figures. 

Growing for local sale is becoming more attractive and more welcome in the
community. I'm starting to really enjoy the market days. People get out in
this heat to see what we've got, when they can buy all they want in the
supermarket. They come back for more of those tomatoes that taste like
tomatoes and carrots that taste like carrots. And they're happy to pay us a
little more for it. 

How are we doing? Well, recouping our investment in greenhouse and fencing
etc. our first year at this, having relocated last year. Sustainable soil
building and intensive beds, plus what we've learned this year should put
us way ahead next year. We're learning what we can do to keep raising
production on part of our one acre, double cropping, starter plants in the
greenhouse, spring and fall crops like snow peas, vertical growing on the
fence lines, and so forth. Our varieties have been more limited this year
but we've managed to keep quality up with European heirlooms. Still
learning from mistakes of course. Right now it's time to get ready for the
Monday market. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 8/27/2007 at 10:10 AM Douglas  Willhite wrote:

>To eat . . . . or to drive?
>Leo Lewis,, UK Times 
>Farmers all over the world are finding a sudden boom in demand for their
>crops - but as fuel for cars rather than as food
>---
>...The economics of food - what is affordable, what it costs, and what
>that money buys - are creating unprecedented waves through all continents.
>From nut plantations in Indonesia to barley fields along the Rhine,
>farmers are all adjusting to this new world.
>
>Part of the result is tortilla riots in Mexico, the astonishing leap in
>Brazilian chicken leg prices and mayonnaise price spikes in Western
Europe.
>
>These, say industry insiders, are the first skirmishes of a conflict that
>could soon dominate geopolitics: the war for resources between the world's
>800 million cars and its six billion stomachs. In the developed world, the
>war will come down to price and choice; in the developing world it could
>come down to survival.
>
>The war centers largely on global demand for biofuels - "green"
>replacements for petrol, such as ethanol, that can be produced from sugar,
>corn and other agricultural products rather than fossil fuels.
>
>Farmers are making a perfectly rational economic choice. With the price of
>crude oil high, they are planting crops to meet demand for cheaper
>biofuels. But converting more crops into energy means there is less to go
>into foodstuffs. And so the price of those foodstuffs rise.
>(24 August 2007)
>
>