> As the referenced articles point out, this is a labor intensive way of > producing food. I come from a part of America where that type of practice was > still common in my chidhood. Know, however, 95%+ of the population is not > dedicated to sunsistence farming, but rather lives in urban environments. One > real big change is this chamge in demographics, which makes locally produced > food (some organically grown) much scarcer in most places here.
I didn't see any reference in the article to organic farming being more
labor intensive. Perhaps it is with weeding, but then it is a trade-off
between paying for poison to pour on the ground or having healthy food.
Since I seem to be ripping-off authors today let's take another look at
"Omnivore's Dilemma".
Corn adapted brilliantly; to the new industrial regime, consuming
prodigious quantities of fossil fuel energy and turning out ever more
prodigious quantities of food energy. More than half of all the synthetic
nitrogen made today is applied to corn, whose hybrid strains can make
better use of it than any other plant. Growing corn, which from a bio-
logical perspective had always been a process of capturing sunlight to
turn it into food, has in no small measure become a process of convert-
ing fossil fuels into food. This shift explains the color of the land:
The reason Greene County is no longer green for half the year is because
the farmer who can buy synthetic fertility no longer needs cover crops
to capture a whole year's worth of sunlight; he has plugged himself into
a new source of energy. When you add together the natural gas in the
fertilizer to the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive
the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, you find that
every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a
quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it--or around fifty
gallons of oil per acre of corn. (Some estimates are much higher.) Put
another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to
produce a'calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the
Naylor farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every
calorie of energy invested. From the standpoint of industrial
efficiency, it's too bad we can't simply drink the petroleum directly.
-------
People moved off the land, peoples can move back. In part, this was due
to the idea that economies of scale required that a farmer only grow one
crop and then sell that crop to a middle man. The new (old) paradigm is
to grow multiple crops and sell directly to the consumer. In this
manner, the family farmer who lives near an urban center may have a
chance. Otherwise, we should return to the old system of crop
guarantees, where the government supported the price of a commodity by
loaning the value of the crop to the farmer. If he couldn't sell it, he
kept the money and the government kept the crop, which was used to feed
the hungry of this country.
As far as the scarcity of organic crops, it is the fastest growing
segment of food production. As people know more about the food they eat
and how it is being produced, they are asking for better.
--
> Asthma, > > psoriasis, > > allergies etc, because they were incredibly rare. Now they seem to > > be > > almost the norm rather than the exception. Something has sure > > changed since > > I was a kid. > > The question is "were the diseases rare or were they commonplace and > the diagnosis of them rare"?
Fair question. I hope someone can answer it. Another fair question is
does the out break of some of these diseases have any thing to do with
the "Body Burden"?
http://www.ewg.org/featured/15
All those unnatural chemicals that our environment seems to be awash in
these days. (DDT in Antarctica? When did they have trouble with insects?
We live in a closed biosphere. What goes up in one place in the world,
comes down in another.) Is it just a coincidence that type II diabetes
began to spread after the introduction of high-fructose-corn syrup?
It seems reasonable to question what appears a correlation between the
introduction of a new farming paradigm and food production and the
sudden concurent onset of health problems.
--
> > > Asthma, > > > psoriasis, > > > allergies etc, because they were incredibly rare. Now they seem to > > > be > > > almost the norm rather than the exception. Something has sure > > > changed since > > > I was a kid. > > > > The question is "were the diseases rare or were they commonplace and > > the diagnosis of them rare"? > > Fair question. I hope someone can answer it. Another fair question is > does the out break of some of these diseases have any thing to do with > the "Body Burden"? > http://www.ewg.org/featured/15 > > All those unnatural chemicals that our environment seems to be awash in > these days. (DDT in Antarctica? When did they have trouble with insects? > We live in a closed biosphere. What goes up in one place in the world, > comes down in another.) Is it just a coincidence that type II diabetes > began to spread after the introduction of high-fructose-corn syrup? > It seems reasonable to question what appears a correlation between the > introduction of a new farming paradigm and food production and the > sudden concurent onset of health problems.
<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/summary.html>
Contains
Historical Summaries of Notifiable Diseases in the United States
1975--2006
Not an easy read :))
Bill
--
Garden in shade zone 5 S Jersey USA
Posted by Charlie on April 29, 2008, 10:36 am
wrote:
>Its interesting to note that some enlightened people are no purposely >sending kids to kindergartens with the express purpose of allowing them >to be infected, and getting antibodies to the diseases kids should be >exposed to.
Heh heh......we often have young folks organizing chicken pox parties
to avoid the vaccine. Who ever though chicken pox vaccine was a good
idea!
Charlie
Posted by Charlie on April 29, 2008, 5:46 pm
>You need to find Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in your area. >Organic is insufficient, if it isn't local (100 miles: definition >varies). Throwing a load of organic produce in the back of a truck to >get contaminated by the previous load, and let it bounce for two days >while getting to market, isn't going to improve it. The problem isn't >just industrial food production but also industrial food distribution. >This is where places like "Whole Foods" break down. They ship from >central warehouses, which means that they have to buy in huge lots, >which gives them economy of scale, and also guarantees that the produce >will be the same from store to store. None of the above guarantees >freshness. Fresh food is more nutritious and it tastes better. This is >the basis for "locavores" (people who eat locally grown food). At a CSA, >the food will be fresh and you can look the grower in the eye and ask >how it was grown. Not only does the food taste better but you are >supporting a source of better food for the whole community.
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> producing food. I come from a part of America where that type of practice was
> still common in my chidhood. Know, however, 95%+ of the population is not
> dedicated to sunsistence farming, but rather lives in urban environments. One
> real big change is this chamge in demographics, which makes locally produced
> food (some organically grown) much scarcer in most places here.