Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>]

It sounds like he cares, and its a summary, but there are some pretty large gaps that have to be contended with. Experience teaches us if it doesn't happen wholesale, it doesn't happen. If half the country decides agricultural mining is better than farming, we will end up mining. A wholesale transition to this sort of living requires an army of smart localized farmers which takes decades to enlist. Ok we may have started doing that, and maybe we haven't, judging by my neck of the country we haven't.

This sort of thinking presumes the community structure is there to support this way of living, and the damage that has been done is reversible which strikes me as wishful thinking. If such a culture exists or is beginning to, its more like a secret society. It also presumes an across the board shift in the way we do most everything, and an across the board shift in the way we think about everything. I can't claim I've seen everything, but I don't see it where I live or where I've traveled. What I see is things shutting down, and perhaps people will respond to a gradual collapse in the way he suggests. Its also possible that they will respond to gradual collapse with the next quick easy fix and go on accepting the next set of problems quick easy fixes create. I am not so good at predicting the future, but I'm pretty sure that stress creates change, and I know stress creates conflict. What it leads to seems rather incalculable.

I think most of the vehicles of mass culture he talks about, including universities have no vested interest in long term survival at this point. Their own places in an emergent world are still undefined or unmoved.  The fact that a university professor is writing from on high about how societies and people must change, instead of how universities much change is an example which illustrates my point. The fact that a dollar is still a university professors metric when he knows full well a dollar is just ink and paper with less inherent value than tree bark where calories are concerned, is perhaps a better illustration. The fact that he thinks a stabilized population will be ok without knowing the worlds 'carrying capacity', is perhaps the best illustration. The fact that he still forsees technology as playing a serious role in it, and believes it has global character is the same old arrogance with new wrapping paper regifted to be later added to the rubbish heap with the rest of technologies gifts.

 If there should no longer be a center by which knowledge and culture are dispersed, it seems the center will need to be the first accept that, or the first to be cut off and ignored.

Still it seems like he cares, and is probably a smart enough guy that one day he'll draw the conclusions he needs to, perhaps a long time after he no longer calls himself an economist.

--- On Thu, 2/3/11, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] 2050 in America, Food and Farms of the Future
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Thursday, February 3, 2011, 8:03 PM

Similar to Winona's lecture, Ikerd sums it all up for me. See his mountains of papers at the other link there.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
------------------------------------------

2050 in America, Food and Farms of the Future
(excerpts, citations on website)
By John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri Columbia College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Joliet%20JC%20--%202050%20-%20Econ-Food-Farms.htm
Many more papers and books http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/

A “food revolution” is erupting all across America. Last spring Jamie Oliver, an outspoken British chef turned activist, called for a “food revolution” in America.[1] The occasion was the premier of a six-episode reality show on ABC Television. The premise of the show was that our physical health is linked directly to the foods we eat. In the first episode, Oliver pointed out that today’s children are the first generation whose members are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. It’s not the kids’ fault; they eat what their parents and other adults choose to feed them, or at least allow them to eat. Too often, this means whatever is cheapest, quickest, and most convenient. In our pursuit of quick, convenient, cheap food we are destroying the health of our children and the future of our nation.