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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] To eat . . . . or to drive?

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] To eat . . . . or to drive?
  • Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:07:33 -0400


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. ~Paul

Paul,

Thanks for a most interesting take on this often noted problem (of the way the table and the SUV are increasingly competing for agricultural production). Actually, as you point out, it is highly commoditized--and heavily subsidized--foodstuffs that are going to see the steepest rises in cost as the ethanol idiocy spreads. If cost of more sustainability produced foods does *not* go up, for the reasons you mention, then that could give a boost to the latter.

A silver lining in every cloud.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our
deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner
sense of justice than we do. ~Wendell Berry





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