North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Thomas Olenio" <tolenio@sentex.net>]

Hi,

 

My underlying point being that preaching to farmers and agriculturists about the virtues of organic and standard agricultural practices will not change consumer demand one iota, and its consumer demand that drives commercial agricultural practice.

 

Later,

Tom

 

PS: We have tobacco farmers in Ontario crying for a bailout to switch from tobacco to standard crops with the shrinking market demand.  Their greed exceeded their reach.  They gambled, lost and now want a public bailout for a crop that killed hundred of thousands of the public.  Really bad business people in my estimation.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Lucky.PIttman@murraystate.edu
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 12:34 PM
To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] foundation of agriculture

 

 

How many farmers do you think are going into tobacco today?  It is all about

market demand, and economics, which are driven by consumers.  Change the

consumer, change farming.

 

Tobacco's not a good analogy for this argument, Tom.

There's actually more tobacco being grown today than ever - but since the government price support program is now

gone, the small 'family' farms that grew small acreages/allotments of tobacco are now phasing out of the equation,

and larger operations are free to grow as much tobacco as they care to - they're no longer limited, as the

government has now gotten out of the tobacco price control business, and it's now a free-market system, with

growers contracting with 'big tobacco' to grow X number of acres or X pounds of tobacco for X number of dollars.

 

Lucky

 

 

 

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