permaculture

["Pete Gasper, Gasper Family Farm" <farmer1@gasperfarm.com>]

Bob's idea won't work. This sort of hyper regution happened before back in 
the 60's with the introduction of the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and then 
again in the 90's with HACCP regulations of butchers. In both cases it 
resulted in the mass loss of dairy farmers and small butchers as regulators 
used their new found uncheckable powers to drive them out of business.

The moment you become subject to the whim of a regulator to stay open it is 
game over. The only question is how long you'll be able to hold out. There 
is no logic or right thinking being involved here. FSMA is just a hammer to 
be used by BigAg to prevent the upstart competition.

The ONLY solution here is resistance.

And its not just the compost thing. The costs for bringing up to standard 
will wipe out most operations and those that survive will be whittled away 
by year on year compliance costs.

On 11/22/2013 12:56 PM, Lawrence London wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 12:09 PM, Bob Waldrop<bob@bobwaldrop.net>  wrote:
>
> > There will likely be a number of adaptations and this could be one of
> > them.  In fact, I'm thinking we should be collecting a set of "best
> > practices for adapting to screwball federal bureaucrats who have never
> > farmed and don't have a clue but are trying to close down local ag at
> > the behest of their big ag money people."
> You know what this is like? After WWII, Russia's imposition of pro Soviet
> Stalin/Lenin-type Communist totalitarian dictatorship (still that way in
> Belarus) governments
> in Eastern Bloc countries within the greater USSR. That was a version of
> what Stalin did in the Ukraine
> and especially to the non communist free enterprise affluent farming class
> called the Kulaks
> The Communists controlled the production and distribution of all goods
> ultimately benefiting the party elite,
> insiders and chosen trading partners. Everyone else waited in woefully
> inadequate  bread lines.
> The Yugoslavs, Slovakians and Czechs may have fared better. Romania still
> has some of those former Communist leaders running that country.
>
> See any similarities to the present state of affairs? It doesn't matter
> whether it is capitalism or communism, its still the same old crowd
> of greedy scheming freeloaders dominating the economy and eliminating
> competition, in our case using ethically and morally corrupt means,
> essentiallly fascist corporations corrupting government while taking
> advantage of weaknesses in and polarization of our society (bread and
> circus syndrome).
> and erosion of the fabric of our culture. ("we don't need all those
> subsistence gardeners, homesteaders and small farmers using natural methods
> and materials,
> earning their livelihoods in economies local to them, contributing to local
> sustainability and environmental stabilization; don't want to have to
> compete with them anyway;
> they can shop at supermarkets and buy mass produced goods, no need to grow
> their own or provide for others who don't or can't").
>
> I have no idea how people in the USA will deal with this new FSMA (first
> major revision in 70 years) but Bob's suggestion is a good one and maybe
> the best so far. How to we get that going?
>
> China's economy is failing; read this article: "The End Of The Chinese
> Economic Miracle" - Forbes
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/stratfor/2013/07/23/the-end-of-the-chinese-economic-miracle/
> Comments in a forum:
> "The canary in the coal mine is China's physical gold imports. Why would
> any country import so much, except as insurance against economic downturn?
> After all, gold is a bad investment. It doesn't generate any returns."
> "The canary in the coal mine is China's physical gold imports. Why would
> any country import so much, except as insurance against economic downturn?
> After all, gold is a bad investment. It doesn't generate any returns."
>
> *"China’s Transformation * The Chinese are not going to completely collapse
> economically any more than the Japanese or South Koreans did. What will
> happen is that China will behave differently than before. With no choices
> that don’t frighten them, the Chinese will focus on containing the social
> and political fallout, both by trying to target benefits to politically
> sensitive groups and by using their excellent security apparatus to
> suppress and deter unrest. The Chinese economic performance will degrade,
> but crisis will be avoided and political interests protected. Since much of
> China never benefited from the boom, there is a massive force that has felt
> marginalized and victimized by coastal elites. That is not a bad foundation
> for the Communist Party to rely on."
>
> LL