Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

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