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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] The looming food crisis

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Liz <liz@allslash.org>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] The looming food crisis
  • Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:21:36 -0400

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




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