Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 02:14 PM 8/29/2007, you wrote:

> "A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering
> force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price
> rises."

Perhaps I'm in the minority in seeing a silver lining to this cloud, 
but one problem for decades has been the diversion of corn to beef 
production rather than the direct consumption of it by people. If the 
use of corn for ethanol (which of course has its own ecological 
issues) causes people to look at other food sources than 
feedlot-produced beef, maybe the balance of corn usage can be tilted 
back at least a little toward more direct consumption.

What concerns me more is that with increasing corn production comes 
increasing use of pesticides and GMO varieties (if the corn isn't 
going to be eaten anyway, I can hear people saying, what does it 
matter if it's GMO?). Increasing soil erosion, increasing machinery 
and fewer people, increasing run-off into streams and rivers, 
increasingly powerful pesticides because, again, if it's not being 
grown for food, it doesn't matter what we put on it.

Whatever individual mechanisms enter into the equation, switching to 
a less meat-dependent diet may become a necessity rather than a choice.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com