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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] US dairy crisis, message from Willie Nelson & Farm Aid

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] US dairy crisis, message from Willie Nelson & Farm Aid
  • Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:32:47 -0400

Excellent sketch of the problem at the global level, Pete. Truly frightening that we can be so stupid, undercutting the foundations of agriculture for quick 'n dirty profits--with our eyes wide open to the consequences.

Wendell Berry's observation has been reverberating in my head a lot lately: "How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." We produce our food stupidly, in the process we wreck the ecology and eventually completely erode the foundations of our civilization--it's as simple as that.

Anyone read Lierre Keith's THE VEGETARIAN MYTH yet? She's writing at the heart of this problem: How we choose to feed ourselves is part and parcel with our impact on not only our health (going to hell in a handbasket because of the crap we eat) but on all natural systems. We are strip-mining the world, and for what--Cocoa Puffs? Twinkies? Veggie burgers?

~Harvey


New day same pattern in my opinion. Ok so the trend for big dairy is the same as big grain, etc, offshore operations for cheaper labor in an environment that regulates them less, recreate the same industrial model, and then when it fails move on to exploit the next spot.

The problem is they are running out of spots to exploit. China is a prime example, its running out of land (ok , so now they confinement feed/ and house, and the runoff from the confinement starts becoming even more of a toxic mess than it is here), its running out of water (there will be a tipping point soon where water becomes more valuable than milk domestically), and you can't confinement house feed, so feed becomes even less cheap more rapidly. In the end, the only thing proping up your operation is the government of china, and it has its own interests to consider not to mention more than a billion of its own people to feed.

So you move to india, same problems, albeit a little more land. Now they've started offshoring to pakistan which will wreck havoc on its domestic production (nestle's already contracts for significant amounts of milk there). I'm sure there are folks at dean looking at eastern european export growth to europe right now, thinking maybe we should talk with some of the 'stans' , or poland, or lithuania next. Others wondering what sort of genetic modifications would be required to adapt and scale dairy to central and west africa, given that the much of the east is likely to become a desert.

From a business perspective alone this process is dauntingly stupid, every 10-20 years you have to pick up and move somewhere else leaving local agriculture in a mess, bootstrapping yourself on domestic production and relative local poverty, with greater and greater out of pocket expenses to conform local domestic production to your industrial model. It takes special people to want to do that sort of work, basically you have to commit to failure (you're bad at what you do) and develop some pretty bizarre myths about food that don't bear out in the world (nature just produces so much, and cant sustain or self limit itself systemically).

I'm all in favor of trading excesses, but whats happened with gatt and the like is no different than handing a dangerous weapon to a child. If most of the proponents of it came forward and said 'Were pretty bad at what we do we fail at it regularly, and we'd like to do that more rapidly more places' I sort of doubt there would be confirmed globalists trying to explain how globalism didn't contribute to a global recession today. Can't imagine a kid explaining to its parent "I'm real clumsy and I don't know anything about combustion , so would it be alright if I borrowed your lighter?"

--
Harvey in northern Virginia
www.themodernhomestead.us

We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course
we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would
we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all— by proxies we have
given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians— be participating in its
destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we
allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in
fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
~Wendell Berry





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