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market-farming - social issues (long, personal)

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  • From: Victoria Mundy Bhavsar <toria AT pop.uky.edu>
  • To: iffs AT nal.usda.gov, market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu, sanet-mg AT lists.ifas.ufl.edu
  • Subject: social issues (long, personal)
  • Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:50:44 -0400


Hi everyone,
Wow, thanks for all the responses on my questions of social issues! There
was quite a lot of overlap but also lots of unique ideas. I'll put the
ideas together and send out a summary. To the people who asked me not to
send out works in progress, thank you; and of course, I won't.

In this class, we've talked a lot about various production practices, and
in fact some people on the lists were kind enough to talk to us over the
telephone. I really appreciate your time. We've touched on social issues
often -- things like the connection between farmer and eater, urban food
security, farmer independence from corporate control, etc., have come up
many times. I wanted to give a full class period to social issues just so
that we could pull it all together.

What I've decided to do -- hopefully fun, creative, educational,
multidisciplinary, and useful -- is to read short excerpts from two books:
_Imperial Earth_, by Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer; and _The
Good Earth_ by Pearl S. Buck. This is my favorite book of all time and
probably is partially responsible for my becoming an agronomist. Read it,
if you haven't. These books present polar views of agriculture's place in
society.

So what I want the students to do is to ask themselves -- *why* in fact,
*is* it important that we have farms? In _Imperial Earth_, life is
perfectly good without them. In _The Good Earth_, Wang Lung's entire being
is centered in his farm. We take farms for granted on these listservs, and
that's okay, but at some point it is good to stop and reconsider and
articulate why. After they ponder that, I'll list the issues that you all
have suggested, and we will talk about the ways in which organic farming
can address the issues, support society, or even -- heretically -- harm us
if we do it wrong. I'll finish up by a short lecture on social capital,
something I actually know a little about!

Thanks again for your help.
Victoria
*************************************
Victoria Mundy Bhavsar
Dept. of Agronomy, N106R Ag. Sci. North, UK
Lexington, KY 40546-0091 606/257-2103
...But other seed fell into good soil and brought
forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold,
some thirtyfold... St. Matthew 13:8
*************************************



  • social issues (long, personal), Victoria Mundy Bhavsar, 04/11/2001

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