North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[fuwafuwausagi@muchomail.com]

Gang:

After watching this thread on NAFEX and its membership, which warped 
into  some sort of imperitive to increase its membership I have to ask 
a very basic question.  What is the point?  True Nafex's membership 
has declined, but...so what?   What does it matter?   

Are you all aware that NAFEX has been running a surplus for years, 
primarily because as a group the board of directors has never been 
able to come to a equitable decision on what to do with the money.   
When I was on the board I made a few suggestions and was amazed at the 
result.  NAFEX is every citizen's dream of a government.  It is 
divided in so many factions that it essentailly is unable to "do 
anything".  If you move to left, someone says "hey these people want 
to move right".  If you suggest moving up, some faction says move 
down.  In general it seems the experienced members vote to stay in 
stasis as time has shown them this is where things will end up 
anyways.   

Two years ago I bought a bunch of old Pomonas.  I was shocked by what 
I read.   Essentially NAFEX has been worried about declining 
membership since the 70's, it has been dealing with a surplus for a 
long, long time, there have been all sorts of almost unbelievable 
"infighting" that fractured the "group" into a bunch of camps.  

Some of it colorful past includes moves to ban and censor organic 
growing articles, ban amatuers and make the group professional, get 
rid of nut growers, get rid of tomatoe growers etc, etc.

Consider this, within NAFEX some people love heirlooms, others hate 
them.   Suggest creating a germplasm repository and about half of the 
members will scream bloody murder.  

So the question becomes why does anyone care what NAFEX's membership 
is?  What difference does it make?  Can any of you name a concrete 
thing NAFEX has accomplished in the past 5 years?   How would an 
increased membership have allowed it to accomplish more given the fact  
that the membership is so diverse?

About two years ago, I was also on a "increase NAFEX's membership 
kick.  Now I think better of it, as I cannot see any point in it.  
What are more members going to do and empower?  Perhaps stroke some 
peoples egos.  Perhaps it will allow Dr. C to live his dream of a paid 
trip to the Americas from India at NAFEX's expense, perhaps it will 
allow some writer wannabes to sell some books, and maybe a few more 
sales to a fledgling nursery.  But all in all that is not much of an 
accomplishment.  So I leave you with this simple question: what is the 
point?  Why do you want the membership to increase?  And what are you 
going to do with an increased membership.  Oh I know the answer...you 
will all then decide that NAFEX needs to have fund raisers.  Those are 
always popular.   

Curious at what you guys are thinking,

the rabbit










 

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