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  • From: Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Global food (was: Meat prices rise as East turns West for food)
  • Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:38:56 -0400


He said that the changing global patterns of demand as China, India and
other developing nations compete for food supplies, is likely to be a
factor that will force up prices long term. ~Quoted from an article posted
by Paul

Making the food supply global--what an incredibly stupid, and destructive, idea.

The above brought to mind a visit to a farm in Norway owned by very distant relatives (of my then wife), many years ago. A micro-farm by today's standards, hemmed in by close-to-vertical ridges on either side of a meandering stream. The bottom land itself, though narrow, meandered along with the stream, well-watered and incredibly fertile. The grass was lush, and as beautiful a banquet for a ruminant as I've ever seen.

We were told by the three surviving family members (then in their eighties) that at one time this was considered the best farm--best endowed by nature, most profitable, easiest to make a living from its ample bosom--anywhere in that corner of sourthern Norway. But there came a time when farmers on big tractors in France and Great Britain and Germany redefined what profitable farming means, even in this hidden backwater. It could no longer compete with big agriculture elsewhere, or the flood of cheap commodity foods coming into the country. And so it ceased being a vital part of an intensely local economy, and was only the mainstay for three old people still living the life they'd always known.

Doubtless that property is now the summer retreat for a well-to-do Oslo family, who love its quaintness and its authentic historical ambiance. This in our day is progress.

~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




  • [Livingontheland] Global food (was: Meat prices rise as East turns West for food), Harvey Ussery, 08/30/2007

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