Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>]

New Scientist had an article last week about Evolutionary Traps: where a 
species adapts to something that is killing it.

Humanity has adapted to perpetual growth and perpetually lowering prices 
(Consumerism as religion, action and addiction).
The stories say that a raccoon will stick its hand into a jar if it sees 
a shiny object, but won't let go of the shiny rock to get its hand out 
of the jar. The more clever the raccoon, the more places it can find 
jars to reach into, but they just don't let go. Humanity isn't really 
any smarter. We just write more stories about ourselves and turn the 
idiotic behavior into a tragedy or a comedy.

As a general rule, the people who have enough money to buy good food 
will buy the most convenient good food, and the people without enough 
money are forced to buy what they can get, and few are lucky (or 
unlucky..;) enough to have access to the resources for producing their 
own. The System of systems works very hard to convince people they have 
to buy everything they need using money.
The money flows uphill to the people who manipulate the money, and the 
violence flows downhill from them to keep it that way.

The rest is timing and circumstance unless one is locked out of the 
mechanism or leaves it, but most of the coming and going is manipulated 
by the Economic Hit Men who buy and sell countries in accordance with 
the money's wishes.

The two dominant species on the planet are cars and banks. People are 
just the raccoons that scavenge for food among them, trying not to get 
run over. If we're very lucky, there will be enough of us building nests 
in the machinery that it stops from the corrosion or collapses under its 
own weight.

Dan C.
Belgium, WI

> From: "John D'hondt"<dhondt@eircom.net>
> To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing"
>         <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Why industrial farming may be the
>         mostINefficient farming method
> Message-ID: <111896EBFD9A4403AFC67C598D0AB050@Targadc5fefe82d>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Very interesting mails Paul. but the situation is much more complex than even 
> this good article shows I fear.
>
> For instance, I am reading that  the tar sands in Alberta use enormous amounts of 
> natural gas to extract that heavy bituminous oil and heat it enough to make it 
> "flow" through a pipe line. Sources differ but I think it is generally 
> accepted that 2.5 times more energy from gas is used than comes out in the oil. This is 
> still profitable because gas prices are much lower than oil prices.
>
> More or less the same is true for fracking although it is again the cost and profit that are the 
> driving factors and not the energy difference between production cost and product extracted. I 
> have for a few years been following a web site "Capital and energy" that is really 
> there to "advise" investors of where to put their money. Usually they advise to invest 
> in very small companies that are about to strike gold with oil production, rare earth metal finds 
> and gmo's. A self fulfilling prophecy since if their readers do invest in the companies they push 
> forwards then these stocks are bound to go up.
> Anyway, in recent weeks this website has been warning that many fracking 
> companies are loosing money. Put the fever to drill more is still there.
>
> Another point that I find dangerous in the article is that it seems to take 
> for granted that nuclear will take over from oil. I most sincerely hope that 
> this will not be the case after quite a few nuclear disasters in recent years 
> that will have enormous effects on all life on earth.  What is happening in 
> Fukushima alone could well sterilise the planet.
>
> As to you own reply, I think that big oil companies, the military industrial 
> complex and almost all big food companies are owned by the same small group 
> of extremely rich people. We see that small group getting ever richer and the 
> 99 % of all the rest of the world population get ever poorer and that is not 
> by accident. It is this flow from poor to rich that drives the whole economy.
> And of course this can not keep going and it will probably all fall over the 
> cliff as you say.
>
> The thing with big agriculture is that since the end of WW2 food prices have 
> steadily dropped and are still dropping. No matter what you produce, milk or 
> meat of plant crops, the profit margin per unit is ridiculously small. You 
> need to sell hundreds of 80 kilo pigs per week to make some sort of a living 
> income. You need to produce thousands of gallons of milk per week or your 
> cost will be higher than your profit.
>
> One of the main effects has been that many small producers have been forced out. And 
> this too is still going on today. We here in Ireland on our 75 acre farm are under 
> enormous pressure to become part of the "green revolution" right now. It is 
> illegal now to bed animals down on straw and wood shavings and we really should have a 
> slurry tank to catch the watery wastes. It is also illegal to have a compost heap for a 
> large part of the year. And it is also illegal to use compost on most of our land.
> Solid manure with straw we can handle with a few hand tools and a wheelbarrow 
> but that toxic liquid slurry can only be handled by big machines.
>
> Anyway, I got that $ 150 for a barrel of crude from several different 
> articles. In the first place there is really no alternative to oil to run all 
> these big ag machines. Completely impractical to let them run on their own 
> mini nuclear plant. A solar roof on a tractor would do absolutely nothing. 
> Hydrogen gas (made via alternative energy) could possibly be used but 
> hydrogen is enormously unsafe and you need a volume at least 28 times higher 
> than for the same energy content of oil.
> Further I understood that when oil goes over $150 that then even small 
> profits per product unit would no longer be achievable. Seems that then 
> King's law starts playing and food prices would at least have to quintuple 
> from one day to the next to make it worth while for a farmer/farm worker to 
> start up an oil guzzling tractor. Who amongst common people will be able to 
> pay those prices? And what farmer will be able to take the risk that he will 
> get rid of his harvest?
>
> I agree with you completely that it is wise to stay away from oil as a 
> production factor. And yes, the downside looks like a steep cliff.
> I have said it before, as far as I am concerned it would be good to reach 
> that cliff fairly soon for otherwise we are bound to loose the war against 
> all these new regulations that demand big machines and the use of roundup and 
> the extermination of all that is left of our wildlife.
>
> John