Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Why industrial farming may be the most INefficient farming method

Reading this good article 
http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/10/only-organics-can-feed-the-hungry-world-heres-why/ 
something bothered me. I've thought it over for a very long time, but 
just now it hit me.

They always stress how modern farming allows one man to farm hundreds of 
acres. This is completely false.

That claim simply ignores all the workers who manufacture all the kinds 
of farm machinery needed, who produce the raw materials that go into the 
machinery, who sell or transport machinery or build the facilities for 
their manufacture - a very long supply chain. It ignores the source of 
fossil fuels that power the monster tractors and other equipment., or 
that's used in the manufacture, or that goes into manufacturing the 
fertilizer and pesticides used in ever greater amounts. From drilling to 
refining to storing and transporting, hundreds more workers are involved 
with the energy required. None of the practices of industrial farming 
can take place without first the work of many hundreds of others.

I can buy some seeds and hand tools and gather some organic amendments, 
take water from a household well, and with my work alone supply three 
farmers markets a week for six-eight months, all from part of the acre I 
live on. Millions of other people are better able to do that than I. 
When all the work and costs are compared this seems pretty efficient to me.

paul, on a line between extreme and exceptional drought areas.