Market Farming

["Kevin Ancell" <kancell AT goodearthgardens.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rainbow's End Farms & Orchards" rainbowsend AT swva.net

> Organic tobacco has absolutely GOT to be the
> greatest possible oxymoron's,

Really ?
How so ??
Are we conjoining contradictory terms here ???
Liz are you certified USDA Organic yet ????

> but it definitely
> belies the true values of those who would even
> remotely consider the growth of tobacco in any
> possible form...with or without allotment...burley
> or bright...with or without the facade of
> "organic".

I hate to disagree here but....

When was tobacco deemed an illegal or immoral substance ?

I didn't know anyone put a gun to the head of ANY smoker young or old. While
I'm only 35 years old and surely don't have near the collective wisdom
represented by the members of the list, I do know that people choose their
own destiny. I'm pretty sure that once people become adults they know what
is right and what is wrong, what is good for them and what is bad for them.
If you make a choice for good or bad that choice is yours to make. You can't
blame anyone but yourself (of course people try).

Most of the people who can be reached with the message that smoking is
dangerous have been reached.

Using the "Rainbow's End" logic here are we to castigate the Corn Farmer
who's corn winds up as Mash in Tennessee for Whiskey or the Rye Farmer or
the Potato Farmer or the Rice Farmer. Because Alcohol has to kill just as
many people as Tobacco. In fact if you think about it, how many innocent
lives are taken by drunk drivers every year... TOO MANY. Where does this
stop ? Are you going go after the farmer who's fertilizer winds up in Meth
Amphetamines ? But are you to correlate the legal manufacturing of these
base product with the deaths of innocents and idiots alike every year... I
don't think so.

And, of course, the tobacco industry becomes the pariah, a criminal element,
against which everything is possible.

Recently the EPA (late 1990's) announced that 3,000 people died every year
from secondhand smoke. More people by far die from milk, not to mention bird
droppings in national forests. Are we to stop drinking milk or going to a
national forest ? Is "Organic Milk" an oxymoron too ? I bet 90% of bird
droppings are "organic" (unless they've eaten from a GMO corn field)

We've known for over 70 years that smoking is bad for you. Germany had the
world's strongest anti smoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s,
encompassing bans on smoking in public spaces, bans on advertising,
restrictions on tobacco rations for women, and the world's most refined
tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use with the already evident epidemic
of lung cancer.

Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists
pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of
tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe-Hitler, Mussolini, and
Franco-were all non-smokers.(*Foot Noted Below) Hitler was the most adamant,
characterizing tobacco as "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man
for having been given hard liquor." At one point the Fuhrer even suggested
that Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up
smoking.(** Foot Noted Below)

>Are you people totally insane or just
> the world's greatest hypocrites? I ask this in all
> seriousness assuming that not a one of you has
> ever spent time in hospitals with those dying of
> any of the many devastating, ravaging illnesses
> caused by tobacco in its many forms.

I applaud people like Liz who want to grow (again a perfectly legal
substance) organic tobacco that will wind up in Additive-free Smokes. Do you
have any idea what is in regular smokes ??

Some of the additives were quite benign-sounding - for example, sugar and
apple-juice concentrate. Others sounded like part of a vast and insidious
plot to sap smokers of their vital bodily fluids -
6-acetoxydihydrotheaspirane, alpha-amylcinnamaldehyde, ammonium phosphate
dibasic and 2-acetyl-5-methylfuran. Many of the compounds added to
cigarettes, have been argued to cause cancer.

Several years ago the anti-smoking triumvirate denounced the use of
additives in cigarettes, claiming that they were a toxic soup of
carcinogens. Now tobacco companies have done nothing less than to heed their
advice and remove the additives. But there is no rejoicing among the
triumvirate's pooh-bahs. Instead, they are demanding that the tobacco
companies come up with evidence that the additive free cigarettes are less
dangerous than the toxic-soup variety. I say.. "HELL THEY'RE ALL BAD FOR
YOU" but it comes down to a matter of choice.

> Further
> credibility on any topic involving human values or
> society much less personal responsibility just
> went clean out the windows.


btw... who says the Market Farming List deals with "human values". This list
is about growing plants. (*** Foot Noted Below)

"We hope to see discussions on appropriate scale production methods and
equipment, marketing and profitability, cropping sequences, diversification,
and sustainability, both of the land and of the farm family. Other common
topics include, working with extension agents, private consultants, and
fellow farmers, in other words, all those things involved in making a
living, and providing food and fiber from your small acreage farm." ***

While we are all humans and I'm sure upstanding citizens in our communities
we as farmers can not dictate what people do in their lives. If you believe
that smoking is the Bain of all existence then you have the right to your
opinion and the right to not plant and grow what you feel is in your heart
bad for the rest of us but please don't cast dispersions upon farmers like
Liz who want to make a living and doing it the best she can.

While on a personal level I believe that you are a fool for sticking a
cigarette up to your mouth and lighting it. But then again. If you are over
18 years old and want to be a fool then it's your choice. As long as it
doesn't effect me or my family.

With regards to the list,

Kevin


* Bauer D. So lebt der Duce. Auf der Wacht 1937:19-20

** 8 Picker H. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier.Bonn: Athenaum
Verlag, 1951.

*** http://www.marketfarming.net/mflistfaq.htm, 2002