Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Food Riots: debate on how best to farm

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Food Riots: debate on how best to farm
  • Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 12:59:17 -0500

livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
"Small farms," he says, "are a sign that your agriculture is very inefficient.
As Wendell Berry would say, "What are people for?"
Until we decide how to treat people as though individuals have value to the universe (the land, other people, etc), then these types of statements about 'efficiency' will continue to rule how policies are made.
Our constitution was written to protect the individual from the bullies and mobs. Unfortunately, it didn't accommodate the effect of democracy, where the majority can be fooled enough of the time to think that humanity is what the majority says it is, rather than what its individuals do. Farming is a tool to feed people. The human species has to decide what their own purpose is so that they can then make decisions on how to achieve that purpose and how many should be around to do it, and how many resources they can consume or create. Basic needs first, THEN free choice.
Small farms create resources from mostly local labor, while large farms create 'food' from mostly outside resources of petroleum and machinery. 'Efficiency' is subjective to the environment it is measured in. As long as the measurement is based upon national currency and trading floors, then the comparison is unfairly weighted toward increased capital (and inflation), rather than any sustainable purpose of people. In some cases, large farms may be more efficient (places where it is too hot for hand labor or where there isn't enough labor to utilize vast amounts of land for commodities), but even these instances would probably be measured differently with a broader distribution of people on the land. Some areas should only be farmed on a permaculture/no-till basis due to terrain, and others should be quickly converted to minimal tillage or no-tillage types of farming.
Once we realize we have reached the point of no return with our Systems of Systems (they can't be 'fixed' any more than Iraq can be 'democratized by force'), it is time to turn to local systems and turn off the news because it is just going to be stories about people making up reasons why they can't fix what we already know can't be fixed. Time to let it fail and start over.

Dan C.
Belgium,WI





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page