Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Maybe Farming Isn't Supposed To Make Money

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Maybe Farming Isn't Supposed To Make Money
  • Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:38:55 -0700


Maybe Farming Isn't Supposed To Make Money
by Gene Logsdon
http://energybulletin.net/50550
Published Oct 29 2009 by The Contrary Farmer, Archived Oct 29 2009

Talk about heresy. What if food production should not be part of either a
capitalistic or a socialistic economy. The first commandment of agriculture
states that you must put back into the soil the fertility you take out of it.
That being so, the only real profit from food production is how good the food
tastes and how well it sustains health and well-being. Any actual money
profit beyond that might simply be a sign that the farming is flawed. Failed
civilization on top of failed civilization suggests that idea, but every new
civilization that flourishes for awhile believes it can beat the system.

Farming has to be subsidized in modern economies because nature can’t compete
with money interest. An ear of corn, even the record-shattering 15-inch ear I
found in my field yesterday, has never heard of six percent interest. An ear
of corn grows at its own sweet pace, come recession or inflation, which is
the modern version of hell or high water. Every attempt to make it grow at a
pace that matches the way we can manipulate paper money growth, results in
some downside. (Eventually it happens with money too.) GMO scientists crow
about their new seeds but there is little significant increase in yield from
them, in fact in some cases, documented decreases. When an increase does
occur it usually comes from lack of weed competition not an actual genetic
increase in yield. Most above average increases in crop yields come from good
weather. Monsanto and Dupont are trying to take the credit for the big corn
crop this year when their very same seeds that produce a good crop on one
farm result in only half a crop two miles down the road where timely rains
did not fall.

Every time a new variety of corn is hailed as producing higher yields, it
takes a higher amount of inputs to get it. Increased yields invariably mean
decreased food nutrients in the crop too. Increases in food nutrient value in
a new variety, especially protein, invariably result in yield decreases.
That’s why high protein corn varieties haven’t yet been largely accepted.
They mean less yield. The increases in total crop production that we have
gotten over the past fifty years come more from getting all farmers to follow
the good management practices of the best farmers. There is irony in that
too. The “good” practices of the “best” farmers are often the worst practices
in terms of extracting wealth from the soil and not returning enough of it.
Some of those “poor” farmers, by their very ineptness, could be rated as the
best farmers environmentally because they are mining the soil the least. True
story: One of my neighbors, gone now, made a living working in a factory and
farming on the side. His crops were so poor that he could rarely be accused
of mining the soil. One year his tractor quit on him while he was cultivating
corn. He just left it set there and walked away. In the fall, the farmer who
harvested the scraggly crop for him was surprised to find the abandoned
tractor rusting away among the giant ragweeds.

Last week I wrote about how I made, by my own goofy way of calculating, $550
an acre on the measly little bit of corn I grew while the big producers were
in danger of barely breaking even on their thousands of acres. Obviously, if
there were a hundred million people raising gardens of corn the way I do,
there would be plenty of corn for everyone but no one would make any cash
profit on it to speak of. So? How’s that any different from what’s happening
right now. And if cash profit is made today, how much of that is canceled out
by the social costs of a hundred million people unable to grow their own food?

When I brag about my 15-inch ear of record-breaking yellow dent corn, I am no
different than Monsanto bragging about how it will feed the world with GMO
crops. Nature rules not Monsanto nor I. The only reason a stalk of my corn
grew such a gigantic ear is that there was not another stalk closer than 20
inches on either side of it. Had there been stalks closer, that ear would
have been more like eight to ten inches long. Decreasing plant population to
get fewer but bigger ears does not increase total yield any more than
increasing plant population with resultant shorter ears.

That’s a reflection of the second law of the land: There is a limit on how
much food an acre will produce. No civilization has learned how to get around
that law so far. Trying to do so leads to a constant round of environmental
collapse and starting over again.

Let us contemplate an awesomely scary thought. Humans seem to be genetically
incapable of limiting their desires to fit the laws of nature. So can farming
ever be truly sustainable? I have been studying the rise and fall of
civilizations on the American continent over the past 12,000 years or so, (an
awesome book, “1491” by Charles C. Mann) and what archaeologists have learned
so far is that the answer is no.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page