pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

Very much agree with Scott here.
That is the point of my comments about the WSF and their 
self-contradicting content.

No objection to taking money from them as long as we stay in integrity 
with our responses to their questions and they still choose to give us 
some.  What "our" means here is open to discussion.

> >  They are not saying that large-scale in itself is unsustainable, just 
> > that modern large-scale ag is.  How can we - Pc and PIW - help render 
> > modern large-scale ag sustainable?
> >  
> IMHO this is an oxymoron and one that we shouldn't get near.  I have 
> serious doubts that one can farm more than 40
> acres sustainable let alone 4,000. ...

Case in point - the only "small" farmers in the USA who are not only not 
going broke and losing their farms but actually doing pretty well are 
the Amish.  They keep it small; they keep it relatively low-tech; they 
choose not to farm more than they can handle with some (locally 
sustainable) draft animals and their own community resources; they 
produce top-quality products that fetch premium prices.  And, not least, 
they support each other in communal ways that the rest of us have mostly 
abandoned.

Meanwhile the poor suckers who believed the "get big or die" propaganda 
of the banks and equipment and chemical manufactureres tried to get big 
and died trying, or are still slowly dying.

> To steward land you have to be able to walk it, smell it, and be 
> involved in it, this can't be done in an air conditioned tractor cab 
> with quad stereo headphones driven by an "operator" who get paid $6 .00 
> per hour.

Absolutely.

aloha,
John S.

--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net