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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Richard Heinberg: Fifty Million Farmers

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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Richard Heinberg: Fifty Million Farmers
  • Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:26:56 -0700


Fascinating and new to me, Pete, totally. When I took Frontier History I
never saw anything on the effects of government policy and speculation on the
land itself.

But Heinberg:
>The Mechanization Period (1920 to 1970): In this half-century,
>technological advances issuing from cheap, abundant fossil-fuel energy
>resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity (output per worker hour).
>Meanwhile, farm machinery, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, new hybrid
>crops, and synthetic fertilizers allowed for the doubling and tripling of
>crop production.

The huge jump in "productivity" per farmer is huge misleading. Why? Behind
every corporate farm are hundreds of other people making it possible. It
leaves out the millions of workers in our industrial food network needed to
transport, process, distribute and sell food products, and more in the
manufacture of farm machinery, farm chemicals and fertilizers. Without them,
nowhere for the production to go, no chemical, mechanized farming in the
first place. All we see is the guy on the tractor, the rest of them are
invisible. The farm family of bygone days produced a lot less, but it was
ready to eat or store right then, right there on the homestead. No army of
middlemen between the field and the kitchen table.

His second claim is troubling, moreso because it's also unquestioned dogma.
Does it mean per worker, per acre, or just more land brought into production
by industrial methods? In fact studies have shown that small farms are
considerably more productive *per acre* than the large megafarms. The
machinery, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, new hybrid crops, and
synthetic fertilizers have multiplied *overall* production in the short term
(not per acre) but at terrible cost over time (not even getting into the
fossil fuel thing). The hybrid grains demand more water and fertilizers and
deplete aquifers (such as the Ogallah Aquifer midwest). The chemicals' cost
is enormous and they spike production at the cost of tasteless crops with
depleted minerals which can never get replaced on megafarms. We can all taste
the difference in homegrown and storebought that's bred and raised for
mechanical handling. And the cost to the land itself, of plowing and
compaction from all those passes with heavy machinery and chemicals, may be
irreversible for decades. Taking the long view, soil depletion has demanded
more and more fertilizer and pesticide over the years just to keep up
declining production.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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On 10/28/2009 at 1:25 AM Pete Vukovich wrote:






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