Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>]

> 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