Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Always appropriate, isn't it. As for us here we grow for markets on less
than a quarter acre. It's not a living of course, and with a short
frost-free season, poor soil to start with and very low rainfall it's too
much work for us. But at least by holding costs down, recycling free
amendments, and doing without chemical inputs or tiller etc. it's 90%
profit. We believe that if all these conditions were better (and us
physically) we could actually make a living on less than an acre.
Demonstrating the viability of this for ourselves has been immensely
rewarding. It's also nice to hear customers say they haven't tasted
anything like this since their grandmother had a garden. 

All of us exist in an economy where awful food is heavily subsidized in
many ways, and makes up a very low percentage of the average household
budget - compared to a century ago. Mass production from far away, fresh
everything out of season, absurdly cheap - it's all uphill for local
producers of real food at prices people can afford these days. Too many
local growers are aping the methods of industrial agribusiness - and hardly
know if they're even turning a profit. The industrial food system is just
getting too expensive and wasteful, with no end in sight. The forces behind
that are finally changing. Chemical inputs, gas and diesel, and machinery
aren't getting any cheaper, and people are afraid of the stuff in
supermarkets. Kids go deep into debt for degrees with no jobs to go to. Add
to that the fact that more millions are out of work and those jobs aren't
coming back, and you have a strange situation where people and land are
both idle and not producing the necessities of life - food, shelter, etc. 

What's wrong with this picture? When will hard times force a massive back
to the land movement?  How long will people do without to avoid actual
manual labor? 


paul tradingpost@lobo.net


Many types of jobs will cease to exist: public relations executive, 
marketing directors, et cetera. I think work will be very hands-on, 
and a lot of it will revolve around food production.
    -- James Howard Kunstler, 2003

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

On 10/9/2009 at 4:48 PM dan conine wrote:

>I found this quote in my archives. Seems appropriate.--Dan
>
>"The ambition for broad acres leads to poor farming, even with men of
>energy. I scarcely ever knew a mammoth farm to sustain itself; much less
to
>return a profit upon the outlay. I have more than once known a man to
spend
>a respectable fortune upon one; fail and leave it; and then some man of
>more modest aims, get a small fraction of the ground, and make a good
>living upon it. Mammoth farms are like tools or weapons, which are too
>heavy to be handled. Ere long they are thrown aside, at a great loss."
>
>Source: Abraham Lincoln, Sept 30, 1859, Wisconsin State Fair
>
>
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