Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Cell phones and things related

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "jay gee" <JayGee AT jghelp.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Cell phones and things related
  • Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 12:27:18 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 12:11:59 -0400, Pat Meadows wrote:

> Certainly, one aspect of the problem with Wal-Mart (as I see
> it) is the death of small towns, and the contributions
> Wal-Mart has made and is making to those deaths.

Small towns generally die because the children who
grow up there learn about big cities on TV and leave.
Without people there is no market for any small retailer.

There isn't room enough in the rural U.S. for everyone
to be farmers without driving the prices of farm products
to levels even less profitable than now for many.

> There are other problems with Wal-Mart such as their
> non-contributions to local communities, paying employees
> below-standard wages and keeping them part-time to avoid
> offering health insurance, and their seeming practice of
> hiring illegal labor, to say nothing of their reliance upon
> slave labor in countries such as China to manufacture goods,
> the adulteration of ALL their meat with sodium polyphosphate
> (IIRC - sodium something anyway), and water so that they can
> get high prices for water, and so on. But let's put those
> aside for now, and think only of the small town problem.

Farmers have over the years engaged in many of the same
"illegal" practices that Wal-Mart is accused of these days.
How many farmers do you know who offer migrant or part
time labor health insurance benefits?

> I don't know how many of us on this list are old enough to
> remember *living vibrant* small towns in the USA. (I am,
> I'm 60 now). Small towns with *people* on the streets,
> shopping, maybe having a cup of coffee at a local cafe,
> small towns with doctors' offices and dentists' offices,
> with a movie theater and a bookstore maybe. Maybe a bakery
> and a deli too, and definitely a hardware store.

These issues are population sensitive. When the people
who were successful in your area retired, did they stay
put, or sell their business and home and move away?

> I hate to see anything that drives more nails in the coffin
> of such towns. There is no reason why such towns could not
> exist today: nothing in modern life as such is incompatible
> with such towns, as can be proven by reference to Europe.
> Western Europe is just as modern and up-to-date as the USA,
> if not more so. And yet they still have many such small
> towns.

English and European small towns are under pressure from many
of the same forces that U.S. small towns were. TV spread more
slowly in those areas after WWII. As upward mobility becomes
more widespread in Europe, expect small towns to dry up and
blow away at a greater rate than in the past.

At least that's my take on the situation...


jay gee
not a farmer -- but interested in farming



Free marketing aids for farmers at:
http://jghelp.com/farming





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page