Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Simply Cooking Nonna <simplycookingnonna@gmail.com>]

Why not share equipment like farmers have been doing for centuries?
There are all kinds of farm coops where things are shared and
utilized.Small Farm Cooperative: Quality and Innovation
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat -
http://agmarketing.extension.psu.edu/begfrmrs/OptStratSmlFrms/CoopArrngmntEquipShar/SmlFrmCoop.pdf
Small Farms Coop rents a freezer from Kevin, and pays a fee to power
the unit. Without the equipment and cost sharing arrangements that ...
Of course, you also have the "old fashioned" way. Borrowing the use
and then giving some of the crop in return. It's done locally here .
This is a big bean growing area, but picking and shelling machinery
(like everything else) costs way too much. The farmer with the
equipment shares the use in return for some of the crop. It may be
hard to fathom in this "leave me alone to do my own thing society",but
there are actually many who still practice this "arcane ritual". It's
called getting along with your neighbors. There have also been
creative people who will buy the equipment and then hire themselves
out to do harvesting or plowing etc..There are many options out there
but it does take a return to cooperation and working with people.and
sharing.
nonna


his farm.*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 1/13/2011 at 12:40 PM paul@oneseedling.com wrote:

>This encoded message has been converted to an attachment.
>
>I totally agree that we need to get away from large scale agriculture.
>
Having said that how are you going to get past the fact that the small
>farmer has to buy the machinery (tractors, combines etc) to make a farm
>pay for itself.
Now the simple fact is that one man can only physically
>harvest so much wheat using hand tools such as scythes etc. This amount
>generally equates to enough to feed family, livestock and a little left
>for sale. Certainly not enough to pay off a mortgage. The have stopped
>making small tractor towed combines so that leave only larger machines
>that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. See where this is going??
In
>order to pay off those loans and mortgages you have to have more land and
>bigger machinery.
It takes the same size machinery to farm 200 acres as
>it does 10,000.
This is the reason small farms have failed.
Doesn't make
>it right, just the way it is. Here, we use hand tools for harvest and it
>supplies our needs. However, we are not dependent on this to pay off the
>farm as we have outside income.
No easy answers.
Paul the Skeptic
>

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 13, 2011, at 11:53 AM, "Tradingpost"
><tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

>
> (finally, somebody gets it ...)
>
>
>World Hunger Best Cured by Small-Scale Agriculture: Report
> Thursday,
>January 13, 2011 by The Guardian/UK  by Nidhi Prakash
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/world-hunger-small-scale-agriculture
>