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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Thanks to meat, farming emissions set for 80% rise

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: herb farmer <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Thanks to meat, farming emissions set for 80% rise
  • Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 18:31:13 -0700


Hi Dan. You show three different levels of farming there, corporate industrial, mid sized, & small niche growers of various kinds. We know who has the lobbyists & clout. Ever since Earl Butz warned the little people to "get big or get out". Years ago Sec. of Ag under Ike I believe.

Our own market niche seems to be going nowhere fast. Most local growers around here still ape the big boys mechanical methods & crops, & I suspect some don't even know they aren't even breaking even. We're different with methods & crops also, but we have access to some upscale or health conscious clientele markets & can get top dollar for best flavor (UNcertified) organic produce. But even with rock bottom costs, it's still a lot of work year round for low profit if we do the math. We are demonstrating that with good markets, good water & cutting edge techniques you can profit with almost no land, capital, & equipment, but it's not enough profit margin to lure millions more into sustainable growing. Should mention also that well known figures with brilliant growing techniques like Eliot Coleman, John Jeavons, etc never seem to get into the little matter of making it pay. Of course I support growing for home use but few can be !00% self sufficient in food. Certainly a fraction of population has enough land, water, & time on  their hands to grow a lot of their own food. But then they hit the old learning curve.

The day must come, sooner than later, when a lot of people everywhere are forced to learn to make their own food. Don't want to live to see it. This writer John Weber is worth reading but 3yrs ago wasn't even taking into account the  newfound urgency of climate change.

"We will go kicking and screaming down the path to the new Middle Ages as fossil fuels desert us"  
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-middle-ages.html

But don't forget to laugh...

On 12/14/2014 4:45 PM, Dan Conine wrote:
548E212F.7000306@bertramwireless.com" type="cite">
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"><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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