permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

@Dan Pope
" I mean, ineffeciency is underrated, and what's the starvation of a few 
billion set against the hope of increased quality of life among 
neo-yuppie farmers? "

Ahhhhhh yesss.....those billions who will starve unless global 
agribusiness provides them with "efficiently-produced" foods, never mind 
the quality or true cost of production (do an audit sometime),
those same billions who have been eating a possibly gastronomically 
limited but highly nutritious diet using locally-oriented traditional 
sustainable farming methods, food prep and preservation methods that 
work magnificently. We have much to learn from those cultures,
instead they just get exploited and we write them off as backward
and inefficient. Take over their countries, set up a puppet regime, 
destroy their traditions, their ability to live a self-sufficient, 
independent lifestyle as they have been used to for thousands of years 
years and make them dependent on foreign aid and assistance
and cheap imports of foods and other goods. Meanwhile agribiz cuts deals 
with the puppet regime to take over farming in their country
using chemical farming and GMO's (remember the "Green Revolution"?).
What happens, big factory farms use their land all but lease free, 
export their farm products elsewhere and the people starve for lack of 
sustenance as they get left in the dust to fall through the cracks in 
the (new) system. Talk about erosion of quality of life and environment
and the fabric of their society. Look at Guatemala, countries with palm 
oil production, etc etc etc. The story is the same except that in 
Guatemala and all other countries in Central America the indigenous
folks were direct victims of a war "to prevent the spread of Communism 
in Central and South America" and they fought to protect their people 
and keep what was rightly theirs. And you'd do the same.
I just love it when some yahoo sounds off about the inefficiency of 
sustainable farming practices and how "we" need to use conventional 
industrial agriculture to "feed the starving billions". I have heard 
that argument so many times. Go here to read in depth, well informed, 
articulate opinion about this very issue:
These subject lines in the month of August 2010:
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Farm productivity must increase globally
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Bushels of Corn
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Sustainable agricultural methods vs. 
unsustainable/chemical/gmo-based agriculture
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] SANET-MG Digest - 27 Aug 2010 - Special issue 
(#2010-166)
Fwd: [SANET-MG] Restructuring the food system
Subject: [SANET-MG] Banning Large-Scale, Intensive Livestock Production
Can be found here, sorted by subject:
http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A1=ind1008&L=sanet-mg
Or the main archive by month:
http://lists.sare.org/archives/sanet-mg.html