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livingontheland - [Livingontheland] been out of pocket two days

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] been out of pocket two days
  • Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:09:41 -0700


Barb and I spent two days at the state conference for farmers market
managers in Santa Fe, so didn't get to tend the list. A really interesting
and friendly collection of people from all over NM, maybe 200. The
information was useful but mostly about dealing with red tape, local and
federal. We saw a lot of agreement and support for local, sustainable food
among the participants and state organization. One thing we noticed was
lack of emphasis on improving growing methods to make growers more
profitable and attract more growers to expand markets. Presenters barely
mentioned the key challenge to get more growers and more production, and no
one thought to discuss how to do better in that key area. How to get more
grants for the organization seemed to take center stage. Obviously growers
believe in what they're doing, but to attract a lot more new growers in
todays sinking economy it must be worth their time and investment. It must
be profitable to attract others. Just believing in local, sustainable food
won't pay the bills.

On this list however, we've gone over combinations of best practices to cut
costs and raise production while conserving water and fossil fuels and
rebuilding depleted soil - all using far less land than normally needed for
food production. Nothing else meets the ecological and economic challenges
like this. And it's as urgent for home growers as market growers. How to
get these solutions discussed in many states will be the real challenge.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net






  • [Livingontheland] been out of pocket two days, Tradingpost, 02/03/2008

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