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Re: [Market-farming] Thank you for all the information and a few questions
- From: KAKerby AT aol.com
- To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Thank you for all the information and a few questions
- Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 12:27:15 EST
Outstanding video. God bless Mike Rowe for bringing some attention
and dignity (and wonderful humor) to jobs that don't generally involve white
collars and briefcases.
I sorta look at all this regulatory stuff like a pendulum - swings back and
forth in a long arc that is sometimes measured in decades. Just as it gets
to one extreme and we wonder wow, how much farther can it go, momentum is
overcome by weight and it starts to swing back again. Maybe because I was
raised in what was still in some ways a frontier town out on the plains, where
laws were "what civilized folk had back East", I've had the dubious pleasure of
watching civilization and regulatory oversight march into my area hand in
hand. Gawd that makes me sound 200 years old, but I do recall comments
from the old cowboys along those lines from when I was real little. I
haven't lived long enough yet to see the pendulum swing the other way but
historically it tends to run all the way back to anarchy if there's enough
momentum to push it that far.
I guess with that perspective I've considered myself something like a boat
just trying to ride out waves as they roll by underneath me. I have the
work I want to do, I know that sometimes things will tend towards one extreme
and then just as they swing back and we breathe a sigh of relief they tend to
swing to the other extreme and then we're nervous again for opposite
reasons. But I'll keep trying to do the work in spite of all that, rather
than let those swings dictate the work that I do. If there are certain
products that I'd love to produce but current market conditions make it
impossible, such as raw milk right now, I'll produce something similar for the
public and keep the good stuff for myself.
I just attended a farm marketing class the other night where some very
suburbanite marketing pros showed up in their Prius to tell us about the latest
and greatest and I remember thinking 'oh lordie, here we go'. But they
floored me with their latest marketing data - "less is more", "sustainable" and
"frugal" are the new "bling", "local grown, in-season menus, farm to fridge" is
the new up-and-coming religion, Grandma's thriftiness and 'make do or
do without' is the new mantra, and apparently my banged up 1983 Ford Ranger
pickup is quite the stylish set of wheels under this new domain. Someone
in class asked if this was just a passing fancy, a here-today-gone-tomorrow
trend, and they said no, they don't think so. They'd been doing marketing
research for 20 years or whatever, and these trends had been building at strong,
almost sub-conscious levels for a long time. Then last year's economic
slowdown somehow flushed them all to the surface. The one gal said she
considered it a "social consciousness correction change". Um, alrighty
then. But maybe that pendulum is already starting to swing back
again. Let's hope. In the meantime, Go, Mike, GO!
Kathryn Kerby Frog Chorus Farm
Snohomish, WA
In a message dated 3/4/2010 7:01:03 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
jaysleichter AT yahoo.com writes:
|
- Re: [Market-farming] Thank you for all the information and a few questions, KAKerby, 03/04/2010
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