Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

That simple truth is so radical.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 5/12/2008 at 12:59 PM Dan Conine wrote:

>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
>
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