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  • From: "GlobalCirclenet" <webmaster AT globalcircle.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Combine's
  • Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:33:36 -0700


Yes, it's sad. But I'm here to say those farms didn't die a natural death.
I'll explain.

I grew up in the same kind of area in the fifties, losing small farms and
families, all that. But there's hope, and the alternatives have been
building for several years, and the USDA and state ag colleges are getting
more involved in these alternatives. Check my page
http://globalcircle.net/foodlife.htm . And esp my "Alternative crops &
small farm sustainability" at http://globalcircle.net/flalternative.htm .

-- A rural economy built on family farmers sustains itself - "The awful
truth is: Family farmers, communities and the environment lose when we let
these companies have an unfair competitive advantage through lax
environmental enforcement, tax advantages, taxpayer-funded research and
other corporate welfare. It has been shown that 28 jobs get lost whenever
nine jobs are created at factory farms. In contrast, a rural economy built
on family farmers sustains itself as farmers' business expenditures get
recirculated through feed and seed stores, machinery dealers and hardware
stores." - Roger Allison, Columbia, Missouri

What we see happening to small farms and families is not the price of
progress, not some inexorable fate, not just "the way things are". They are
being destroyed by government policy and corporate power. But there are
ways to survive, and in many places farm families are surviving on a vast
scale today.

You see the dairy industry there, which is about the hardest hit
agribusiness today. Sorry for them. But they've been playing in the
government's rigged game too long, and their time is up. Actually that's
not farming at all but a feedlot industry that cannot be sustained
financially or environmentally. There are much better uses for that land,
labor, and money. And if they were in the right kind of farming business
they wouldn't have worked themselves to death in the first place. A
terrible way to make a living, if you call that living.

paul tradingpost AT gilanet.com

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 10/31/2003 at 10:16 AM Pat Meadows wrote:

>On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:20:08 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>
>>I see a growing, broad-based rebellion against that oursourcing and
>>unemployment. Pat, my theme is, the Big Secret of making a livelihood and
>>living cheap is local production for local consumption. It works because
>it
>>bypasses the middlemen who all have to get their cut, from supermarkets
to
>>car dealers, from realtors to shipping lines. Buying local food is the
>Next
>>Big Thing. But it's only the beginning of Buy Local.
>
>If, indeed, there are enough local farmers still existing
>for it to be a big thing..... it doesn't seem that way to
>me.
>
>I live in a fast-dying agricultural area (dairy farming), so
>maybe I get a distorted view.
>
>But gosh: every week there's at least one farm auction here
>because someone has given up, or died and the children don't
>want the farm, or gone bankrupt. It's really sad to drive
>around this area and see all the dead farms. :(
>
>Pat
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