Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>]

What kept us alive as a farming family was that we were very nearly self 
sufficient food wise. We bake our own bread from self made meal and 
flour, with our own milk and eggs. We have all our own meat and 
vegetables and fruit even wine, beer and honey. If we had concentrated 
on selling all that we would have gone down the tube long ago. Food is 
too cheap by far especially since you would have to compete against 
industrial, chemical "products".
Mind you, most of what we did was against rules and regulations if not 
illegal. The only way in fact to keep going is not to sell and attract 
undue attention from you know who.
John

On 14/12/14 23:45, Dan Conine wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 21:02:44 +0000
> > From: John D'hondt<dhondt@eircom.net>
> > To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing
> >     <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Thanks to meat, farming emissions set
> >     for 80% rise
> > Message-ID:<548611F4.2010002@eircom.net>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> > I think the real reason farmers were forced to go this way was to get
> > rid of the small ones and to aim for more industrial farming. After all,
> > a cow bedded down on fresh straw in a stable can be kept clean with a 4
> > pronged fork and a wheelbarrow.
> Here in the U.S. Midwest, the "problem" farmers have been the 
> middle-sized ones that grew to a profitable size by simply expanding 
> the methods of their fathers with machinery.
> The small farmers (a wheelbarrow and a cow or 5) were already gone or 
> ignored by the government, and the industrial farms are 
> "government-friendly" because they are easy to monitor and inspect.
> Legislation was often instituted by environmentally concerned people 
> because of what they call "non-point" pollution sources. These are the 
> farms that are big enough to spread manure every day with a small or 
> medium tractor, and not big enough to be concerned with their own 
> pollution run-off on frozen ground or in wet seasons. These are what 
> typically are now called "family farms", but most have become small 
> corporations unto themselves.
> They get under the radar of the LAU count (large animal units), but 
> don't individually scare people, and command the sympathies of their 
> neighbors who are just one generation off those same farms themselves.
>
> In these cases, there are a lot of issues that contend for attention: 
> should farmers make enough money to send their kids to college (and 
> usually leave town anyway, causing brain drain)? Should such small 
> farmers be subsidized to install million-dollar slurry tanks? Should 
> they be allowed to sell raw milk?
>
> The bottom line seems to be the problem that food is too cheap for the 
> really small farms to make a living, but not cheap enough yet to 
> eliminate the mid-sized farms.
>
> The current state of the Boomer population means that a large number 
> of these farmers will be selling out soon, with little chance of 
> passing the farm down to a farming member of the family, and many will 
> once again consolidate into factory-size farms, as they did during the 
> family farm crisis of the 70s and 80s that gave rise to Farm-Aid, 
> which is trying very hard to perpetuate the falsehood that these mid 
> to large farms are "family" farms and should be protected somehow, 
> even to the detriment of those small organic farmers who are 
> struggling to establish niche markets (some struggle less than others, 
> but in general, they aren't living at any level of income near what a 
> non-farm middle-income earner does).
>
> I suspect that much of the environmental regulatory practice transfers 
> back and forth between Europe and the U.S., as scientists and 
> politicians and economists fight over who gets to control their 
> country's facade of "doing something".
>
> Dan C.
> Belgium, Wisconsin
>
>
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