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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] US dairy crisis, message from Willie Nelson & Farm Aid
  • Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:16:07 -0600


Yes, Harvey, how we feed ourselves has everything to do with how we live on
the land.

And while we're on the subject -- where am I going, and why am I in this
handbasket? ..........;-(


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 6/29/2009 at 8:32 AM Harvey Ussery wrote:

>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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