Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 08:39 AM 5/21/2008, you wrote:

> So many clueless columnists, so little time.

I was going to respond in much the same vein, but you said it better.

I did note one thing. The article said that a short term rise in 
prices wouldn't motivate entrepreneurial activity. That might be true 
for large scale farms, but it sure isn't true for individuals and 
small businesses. I stopped to buy tomatoes from the back of a truck 
parked on the shoulder of the road recently. When I asked the elderly 
proprietor where he'd gotten such beautiful tomatoes this time of 
year, he said and his wife had driven to Florida and picked them from 
the fields. He said they loaded up as much as their pickup would 
carry, drove back, sold it all (usually within a couple of days), 
then went back for more. Now this was surely not locally grown, and 
the transportation cost per tomato was probably more than if a 
commercial trucker had brought them from Florida. But he was selling 
a basket of tomatoes for $3.00, and when I weighed them at home, I 
found I had almost 5 pounds of tomatoes. That's half what the grocery 
stores are selling them for, and by buying from him, I was supporting 
local business, if not local farmers. Entrepreneurial activity is 
alive and well.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com