North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["philip sauber" <mrtejas@lycos.com>]

The myth of the small farm died in the 1930s after tractors became widely 
used.  You might be suprised that the average farmer buys their food at a 
supermarket like the rest of us do and doesn't have a milk cow or butcher 
their own meat or can vegetables from their garden.  The small farm also died 
because people weren't willing to work for subsistence any longer, they 
wanted a 9 to 5 job in a factory instead.  (How you going to keep em down on 
the farm?) Small farms also disappeared because of the economy of scale and 
too many farmers worldwide producing too much driving food prices down with 
government encouragement.

In my area a refinery worker earns in excess of $70,000 per year in a good 
year.  The refinery worker had to put in some overtime to make that much, say 
he averaged 9 hours a day with most weekends off.  However the farmer 
probably works 10-13 hours a day on average with one day a week off but works 
7 days a week in the summer busy time and 5 days a week in the winter.  Lets 
do some economics for a wheat farm(I worked on a dry land wheat farm during 
the summers in college.)  $4 wheat at 35 bushels to the acre grosses a farmer 
$140 an acre.  Lets be wildly optimistic and say the farmer had a profit of 
25% and put $35/acre in his pocket at the end of the year.  The farmer would 
have to farm 2,000 acres to equal the pay of a refinery worker.  This doesn't 
include the years of lost crops due to rain at the wrong time, drought,etc so 
lets say the farmer has to farm 2,500 acres to average out for the bad years. 
 Lets see, however with the price of land many farmers are leasing part o
f their land so they don't make $35 an acre as they have to pay rent on the 
land.  So lets say the farmer has to farm 3,000 acres to make his 
$70,000/year.  Well with the highprice of farmland, say the farmer owned half 
his land(he inherited it) and leased the rest.  At a conservative price of 
$1,500 an acre his land is worth $2.25 million dollars.  And the farmer 
probably would have to have a million dollars in equipment like tractors, 
combines, etc.  I guess you could call our hypothetical farmer a wealthy 
industrialist millionare or corporate farmer although he would probably not 
see himself as one.  He probably incorporated so the slick lawyers in town 
could only sue him in a limited way.  He probably wouldn't be living the life 
of Riley either and would have a pretty modest home for a being a millionare. 
 

I wouldn't think his hired hands would consider themselves serfs either if 
you asked them.  Our free enterprise system is indeed a pretty bad system 
until you compare it to the alternatives where governments try without 
success to force people to produce instead of letting them work in their own 
best interests.  Oops, forgot that the anti-capitalists exploded into 
oblivion around 1989 and are now capitalists just like us.  Oh well, 
anti-capitalism persists only in our beloved universities.

Just my opinion.

>>
>> I would not purchase irradiated foods in general, though.  Not because I'm
>> 'afeared' of the radiation, but rather that such foods are inevitably
>> produced by industrial/non-sustainable agricultural practices.  I do not
>> purchase organic food because I'm afraid of 'chemicals', but because,
>living
>> in the country, I see how industrial agriculture has destroyed the fabric
>of
>> rural life by eliminating small farms.  Organic agriculture generally
>> requires its adherents to use a lot of human (often family) labor, rather
>> than relying on machinery and fossil fuel.  I believe that US agriculture
>> (you .know by the commercials: the most "efficient system of agriculture
>in
>> the world") now uses about 80 calories of energy for every calorie of food
>> produced.  We might as well drink the oil and huff the natural gas!  I
>> believe that "inefficient" third world agriculture nearly reverses these
>> numbers.
>>
>> The US now has more prison inmates than farmers.  Rather than being a
>> Jeffersonian country of yeoman farmers, we now have a third world pattern
>of
>> agricultural land ownership:  a few wealthy industrial "family" and public
>> corporations now pay local serfs and migrant workers minimum wage, while
>the
>> folks at the top get bigger and richer---just like the rest of the US
>> economy.  Please continue to vote for politicians who pay lip service to
>> God, prevention of gay marriage, and other issues of "morality" about
>which
>> they care not a whit, while they and their, corporate/wealthy buddies
>> continue to siphon off most of the cream that the US produces.
>>
>> Just my opinion.
>>
>> Steve Herje, Lone Rock, WI   USDA zone 3
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Russell" <shaman@pennswoods.net>
>> To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2003 2:58 AM
>> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit Labels
>>
>>
>> > I've heard that tomatoes are irradiated to prolong shelf life. So is
>meat.
>> >
>> > Bill
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: <list@ginda.us>
>> > To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>; "Bill
>> > Russell" <shaman@pennswoods.net>
>> > Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 9:22 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit Labels
>> >
>> >
>> > > I don't think any "fresh produce" can be irradiated - that would kill
>> > > the cells, and it wouldn't keep.
>> > >
>> > > On Dec 18, 2003, at 2:58 AM, Bill Russell wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > Is there a code # for nuclear irradiated food?
>> > > >
>> > > > Bill
>> > > >
>> > > > ----- Original Message -----
>> > > > From: "road's end farm" <organic101@linkny.com>
>> > > > To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
>> > > > Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 4:19 PM
>> > > > Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Fruit Labels
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > >>
>> > > >> On Tuesday, December 16, 2003, at 01:17 PM, Doreen Howard wrote:
>> > > >>
>> > > >>> This is from the Chef's Collaborative newsletter, and it's handy
>> > > >>> information
>> > > >>> for growers, consumers and garden writers.
>> > > >>> Doreen Howard
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> A SECRET ECO-LABEL
>> > > >>> If you find yourself with a sudden fruit craving with nary a
>> > > >>> farmstand
>> > > >>> in
>> > > >>> sight, duck into a supermarket and check out those annoying
>plastic
>> > > >>> stickers
>> > > >>> on the fruit. Conventional produce has a four-digit code starting
>> > > >>> with
>> > > >>> the
>> > > >>> number 4; organic produce has a five-digit code starting with the
>> > > >>> number 9.
>> > > >>> Genetically modified produce also has a five-digit code, which
>> starts
>> > > >>> with
>> > > >>> the number 8. Right now, papayas are the only genetically modified
>> > > >>> food
>> > > >>> available in the produce section. Be aware that PLU (price lookup)
>> > > >>> stickers
>> > > >>> are not mandatory and are not used in all stores.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >> Are growers and wholesalers currently required to identify GMO
>> > > >> produce?
>> > > >> I didn't think they were; in which case, GMO's might easily be
>going
>> > > >> under a conventional label.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> There are GMO summer squash on the market, and there may be GMO
>> > > >> contamination in corn varieties that are not supposed to be GMO. I
>> > > >> think
>> > > >> the previous rounds of GMO potatoes and tomatoes were duds and are
>> not
>> > > >> currently being grown, but am not sure.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> -- Rivka
>> > > >>
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