Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Agree again, no alternative in sight. Not that they don't make good points
throughout the Food First article and they highlight the myth. But just
comparing "organic" and "conventional" misses way too much, pH.d
nothwithstanding.  They do mention small-scale and family agriculture and
get in a plug for food sovereignty.  But they apparently see no difference
in efficiency between industrial farming methods for organic and more
sustainable methods for organic. 

In my own small scale work I try to adapt the best methods from several
sources, and it's easy to produce far more than others in the same space.
(a lady at the market asked "how many acres do you have to grow all this?"
Uh ... one sixth of an acre ... ) And with only a little more startup
capital and better water supply I could certainly scale up production and
get a higher net profit than the area pinto bean farmers with hundreds of
acres, and produce more food per hectare in a fraction of the space they
take. Many industrial style farmers actually average a crippling 2% return
on investment. Not hard to beat when it's that bad. 

We can do the math. They have high input costs and heavy debt loads for
machinery, and sell wholesale to middlemen (who also happen to be setting
the input prices). My inputs costs are a far lower percentage of gross
sales by comparison; I have no debt for machinery or land to pay off since
it came with the house, and I retail to get the whole dollar. If my net is
above 90% of gross, then scale it up to, say, $20,000 or $40,000 gross or
higher, and then what's the net profit? And how much food per hectare
compared to industrial farming methods? No comparison. So that "scientific"
study stopped short of showing how "organic" - if we get away from
industrial methods - can do far better than just feed the world. 

True, most investment and labor fall in the initial setup first year, but
from then on annual costs, gross and net profit play out this way. Not that
my way is the only way, or that I invented the methods. Far from it. The
people I've learned from have demonstrated and documented how to do it for
years. I just didn't listen in the past, and had no clue about no-till.
There are no secrets in it. I don't have a green thumb either. Anybody can
do it if they have space to grow. 

The world could be fed with half the land we use now. IF we're way beyond
simple organic here. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/15/2008 at 4:06 PM Mike wrote:

>The question posed by the headline is a nonsense in itself. It HAS to 
>feed the world. There is no other alternative. If it can't then we will 
>run out of earth. Only the timeframe is up for discussion.
>
>Or the size of the world has to reduce.
>
>Do the words goose and golden egg mean anything to these people?
>
>Mike
>
>TradingPostPaul wrote:
>> What is this report missing completely that would improve the outlook
>> further?
>>
>> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>> -------------
>>
>> Shattering Myths: ?Can sustainable agriculture feed the world?
>> http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1778
>> By M. Jahi Chappell, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan Department of
>> Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
>> Fall 2007
>>