I used to know a guy named Blake Monsanto Cargill. I wonder if this is the same guy?
Knowledge is a good thing, even a little knowledge. But let’s see it, rather than seeing only scornfully dismissive disgreement. Since, in another thread, I was told to provide “cites”, I did that bit and got them called “non sequiturs”.
As for rudeness, well, I’ve been steamrolled worse, but so far I’m still breathing. Bloodied, but unbowed, you know? Still farming, too. Was never a hippy, and ain’t a “neo hippy”. Been farming for over 40 years, always earned our living farming, and for some years, not only our family living, but the livings of 5 full-time employees. We are not hobby farmers from the city, longing for the country life. We got shit on our gumboots and hay in our hair.
As for the question in the OP. I think the farm life Farmer Chick hopes for is about as ideal a life as is possible in this vale of tears. It is not a kind of farming that is going to feed the world, but if it feeds Farmer Chick’s family, if it gives them a contented and constructive life, if they are stewards of the land they live on, if they are humane and conscientious, then it’s a good thing. I think anyone who has the opportunity to do it, ought to.
The satisfaction of sitting down to table and seeing the work of your own hands before you in the shape of necessary food: blessed.
To feed the world? Well, modern agriculture is necessary for that. But the methods used should begin to reflect a sense of stewardship for the earth. If the continued destruction of the soil, the overuse of water resources, the foolish dependence on limited genotypes, the concentration of ownership in corporate hands continue? It is a dismal prospect.
In his post above, Blake asserts that the populations of India and China will “decline” as they become richer. I daresay they will. But there is another kind of “decline” that is more likely. The time between population reduced by a lower birth rate and the accession of limited resources is a long time. The time between a demanding and newly wealthy population and the accession of limited resources is short, and there will inevitably be “readjustments”.
Addressing the OP,regarding fad or future.It strikes me there is an idealistic streak in the prevalent generation wherein things of antiquity are performed with a better informed (a cynic might say newly aware) consciousness.
Micro-brewing is a good example of that.Thirty/forty years ago homebrewers brought back richness and variety to beer drinkers.Many tried to commercialise yet failed,those that survive find they’re working hard for a little money.The motivator seems to be love.
All part of an increased awareness in craft,in which I include “slow food” and certain agricultural endeavours.
If it is a fad,certainly some good will come of it.It’s easy to get good beer these days,even if it wasn’t made down the road.
Getting back to the things of antiquity,I live surrounded by farms,none are factory,though some are massive and on the verge.All appear sustainable,especially those of Amish ownership. In most cases they’re 3rd-4th generation.Apart from the degree of cash flow required,love of lifestyle is raison d’etre.
I’m not aware of your goals/intents/expectations.Feeding the world is unrealistic (please post link to the farm that does!),feeding yourself,your family and a few of the neighbors is pretty easy;I’m no farmer and I do that.
I have heard of this, that is an excellent site. I’m not sure if it would work for me, my garden is quite large.
Carson O’Genic Regarding your statement -
I think I am mildly offended. I don’t think “things of antiquity” are better. I do KNOW many things and ways in our past are better, and many things and ways in the present are downright harmful. The damage “Big Business” does, especially in third world countries, is undeniable.
The Amish/Mennonite/Hutterite communities are good examples of sustainable agriculture. Another excellent example is the program Millenium Promise is running in Africa.
My goals are not to feed the world, just make my world better.
I think Carson makes a good point–on many fronts I believe people are figuring out that the mindless more-more-MORE-me-me-ME motivations that have driven most endeavors for the past couple of generations have a lot to answer for in that nuances, craft and awareness have been sacrificed for expediency and profit.
The microbrew example he brought up is perfect–to mass produce beer and make a shitpot of money at it you have to appeal to the lowest common denominator and you end up with mildly inoffensive pisswater pilsner that can be swilled down by the gallon as though it were lemonade. Good craft beers don’t travel well and they don’t appeal to the mainstream beer drinker, so most craft brewers aren’t going to get rich beyond all dreams of avarice. However, it is perfectly possible to build a steady and sustainable business by diversifying and crafting a range of beers to suit many tastes, which allows for seasonal brews and experimentation that Miller/Coors/Budweiser et al can’t even dream of doing. The microbrew movement turns beer back into an adventure–when I travel I like to sample what the locals are doing and it would totally ruin the experience if I could get all those oddball beers at the local Safeway. It’s so much more fun to tell friends “oh, when we went to [city] we found this incredible little brew pub that had an amazing chocolate stout–if you’re ever there you HAVE to try it!” It’s like a secret find, a treasure hunt, it makes the experience of travel richer and more satisfying.
Sustainable farming goes hand in hand with locavore movements, because many people are realizing that in the haste to make gigantic amounts of money agribusiness has elevated the lowest common denominator of plant life to the pinnacle, sacrificing diversity and flavor and nuance in order to get a long shelf life and ease of shipping. I can’t even bear to eat those horrible gigantic California strawberries–you can buy them practically year round and they look fabulous but have all the flavor and juiciness of cardboard. Hood River strawberries, which are small and delicate and so flavorful they’ll make you twist your whole face up in ecstacy as ripples of shiver go down your spine don’t ship worth a damn and don’t keep well in the fridge. You have to buy them fresh from the field and eat them up in a day or two or they’re lost. They’re also only available for a short time; they really do have a season and it’s a wonderful one. You can’t get rich growing them, though–but you can make a decent living.
Meat production is one of the more horrible examples of what the agribusiness model does. Gigantic feed lots that produce a stench that’s eyewatering for miles (and if you don’t believe me, travel down I-5 to southern California–you’ll pass the Harris Ranch feed lots and you can smell them coming and going for a half hour at 70 mph) from the huge volume of piss and shit and farts the cows produce, fouling the water table and any local streams or rivers. Jamming that many animals so closely together encourages sickness so they feed them antibiotics as a regular part of their food–giving humans a built in platform for creating resistant bacteria. Slaughterhouses are a nightmare unto themselves as downed animals and healthy ones are shuttled through facilities staffed by low paid workers with minimal training–just so McDonald’s hamburgers can stay on the dollar menu. Chickens raised in tiny cages with their beaks cut off so they can’t peck each other, also routinely fed antibiotics to encourage faster growth. Egg farms where the same chickens live their entire lives in tiny cages producing tasteless pale yellow yolked eggs–farmed eggs are disgusting to anyone who’s ever been lucky enough to have eggs from chickens that forage for themselves. Meat ranchers argue that it’s the only way to make a profit in the business, but I counterargue that it’s actually the only way to get RICH at it. I have friends who raise a few animals a year for slaughter and I can’t express how different a steak is that comes from a young animal that’s been grass and corn fed naturally–tender, juicy and flavorful. I had a chuck steak (usually one of the toughest cuts that generally requires marinating and careful cooking to avoid turning into shoe leather) from one of their steers and I just bunged it on the barbecue for a couple minutes on a side and it was literally fork tender. This year I’m going to buy a lamb to raise on their land for slaughter–I’m already drooling in anticipation!
I applaud the people who’re turning their backs on the mindset that dictates that more is better–that you aren’t really a success until you have millions of dollars and your product is sold internationally. Greed is disgusting; if your only measure of worth is how much money you have pretty soon you’ll do anything to get that worth–screw your family, kill your granny, turn your town into a cesspool, hey whatever it takes to get that almighty dollar. To me success is living well, living responsibly and being mindful of those around you, then leaving a viable legacy for your children and future generations after. Land requires stewardship; raping your acres now to get meaningless money but leaving the mess for another generation is stupid and wasteful and evil.
I have no desire to join this debate. However, I feel obligated to point out that anyone favoring ‘sustainable’ agriculture as it’s being described here would not favor how most Hutterite Colonies farm. They may not allow television or other modern entertainment, but they use all the latest equipment and technology available when it comes to farming.
Roundup pesticide is changing the face of farming. Roundup will sell seeds that resist Roundup. The trick is the crops dont create new seeds. You have to buy more seeds next planting. They have also sued farmers who have had roundup resistant crops blow into their fields.
The farmers I know are not in “agribusiness” and do not make “gigantic amounts of money.” They grow those varieties because it’s how they can make enough money to stay in business until they can sell out to developers. THAT’S where the money is for farmers around here. Perhaps taht fantasy agribusiness makes vast amounts someplace, but most farmers seem to be one or two bad crops, and a couple parttime jobs, away from foreclosure and destitution, same way they’ve been, oh, forever.
I’m interested in FarmerChick explaining how many people she expects to feed, directly and indirectly, from her 50 acres, and how that compares with the productivity of the supposedly less sustainable methods.
Oh, and the craft beer example demonstrates the unrealisticness of the promoters who see it as how all foodstuffs should be, given that those beers cost several times what Anheuser-Busch puts out at the low end. Same with the support of organic food as the be-all-and-end-all. Perhaps its not hippie bullshit, but it shows that its proponents have never been poor, have never known anyone who is poor, and have never had to make a choice between dinner and medicine. (thinking) So yeah, it’s hippie bullshit.
ETA: I had a heritage turkey once. More tendons than meat, and the meat tasted like fish–TOUGH fish. Not that it was WORSE than an industrial turkey, but nasty in a different way.
On the one hand, yeah, eating food from sustainable farms is more expensive. On the other hand, as I understand it, Americans spend a lower portion of our income on food than most industrialized nations. If we spent more on food and less on cable, more people could afford it.
There definitely are huge agribusinesses. By their nature, there are fewer of them than there are of the small farms. They’re much bigger, so there’s not room for that many of them. Midwest states have a lot of humongous farms that do corn, wheat, or soybeans.
I’ll have to dig out the book “Familiy Farming,” by Marti Strange. It’s ten or fifteen years out of date, but it talks about the issues around small farms in great detail.
I don’t have a problem with using modern equipment or technology, if that is the best way to do things. Hell, if I could afford a brand new tractor, trust me, I would be using it! I intend to utilize the newest advances in solar technology when I I install my solar system, and I will also do the same with the windmills.
Don’t think that I wish to return to the days of heating with coal and harvesting with animals. But to say that the “old ways” are no good, and the only way to make a profit on a farm is to use chemicals for both animals and plants is just wrong.
That’s an excellent link gonzo, the article really does a good job at explaining the problem with relying on any one chemical to fight anything. Common sense tells us that eventually mutation and resistance is always the result.
Genetically engineered seed is usually engineered so they don’t create new seeds, is a prime reason for me using “heirloom” seeds for my garden. I harvest my own seeds for the following year and it is my opinion that the flavor is better too.
I use the same reasoning for my permanent livestock. My laying chickens can and do procreate, same with my turkeys.
The broiler chickens I sell come from a hatchery. They have been so highly bred, that there is no way they can even survive for much longer the 3 or 4 months, the rapid weight gain causes major leg problems and heart attacks. BUT, they do gain weight fast and are ready for market quickly, which is where I can make good money in order to afford to do other things.
Sadly, that is true of many many farmers. On the other hand, I know of many other successful farmers who have managed to transition into other areas to stay solvent. And yes, a lot of them have turned to organic farming.
I just started last year, and I fed my immediate families, (2 brothers, 2 sisters and their spouses and kids) and me, and 10 neighbours the years (winter?) supply of chicken and turkeys. This year I intend to advertise, so I assume I will do better. I also donated 15 chickens and 2 turkeys to the local food bank. The garden was minimal, but my family has a ton of veggies in the freezer. We expect to do better this year. I really don’t know how that compares to the factory farmed poultry producers. I have no intention of going “head to head” with them. I am not looking to put anyone out of business, I am looking for other options for me and my neighbours. And I believe I have found one. Some of them obviously agree.
Three of my neighbours didn’t pay me a dime, mind you I get my feed, bales and cultivator work from them, so bartering sometimes is an option. It is my firm belief everyone is talented in something. Whether you have computer, cooking, sewing or some other skill, you more then likely do have something to offer.
I’m sorry about your bad experience. I don’t know who raised or cooked that bird, but it sounds more like road kill then food. Anyone who has ever had a farm raised animal, cooked properly, cannot believe the difference in quality.
The fortunes made in agribusiness are not generally going to the few small farmers left in North America. The fortunes go to the chemical companies, and others who supply the farmers. As well, in the USA, corn farming (in particular) is so heavily subsidized that it really doesn’t matter what the actual price of corn is.
Because of modern technology, few people are needed to grow enough food to feed all us Canucks and Americans. This is a good thing, up to a point. But there are many aspects of it that are NOT good, and that’s my argument about it all: we simply cannot go on as we are. Change is necessary. Not “abandoning” modern farming, but modifying it to suit Reality. I’m not very optimistic, though. Usually it takes a calamity to wake people up.
I think I am mildly offended. I don’t think “things of antiquity” are better.
You may take offense if you wish,none intended.Farming and brewing are things of antiquity,no? At this time,we have much of the knowledge of the past coupled with new discoveries and counter-traditional thinking,e.g.,no-till.Thus my statement of idealism.
I have strayed from your OP definition of "sustainable farming" as johnsonlnl points out regarding Anabaptist farmers.They are certainly using whatever means at their disposal to prosper and would be in violation of some of the tenets.Some of the proscriptions they do abide by seem hypocritical,i.e. no rubber tires if you do use tractors,but nothing said about rubber drive belts or hydraulic hose or O-rings.
Perhaps this is where Blake raises objections-the adherence to a definition that is only tenuously on the horizon to some.Disregarding "peak oil" and the present elevated fuel cost (which of course affects the Haber process),nothing says we can't continue as is.Not my personal viewpoint.
As “sustainable” farming is more labor-intensive, where do you expect to find all of these new farmers? The very technologies that make modern farming possible have permitted fewer and fewer farms and farmers to feed more and more people. I am not saying that those methods cannot bear improvement, but care must be taken that the calamity is not a collapse of production while chasing a chimera.
And if they sold their Welfare Cadillacs they could, too. :rolleyes: Ignorance of how a sadly large number of people in this country live is not a virtue.
I don’t “expect” to find new farmers, although I do think that if more people tried farming, they’d like it. Life on a farm no longer means isolation and boredom, most of us have every convenience and luxury that city dwellers enjoy, and I think we have the best of both worlds. Of course, I’m referring to North American farmers, not paddy rice farmers in China, or subsistence farmers in Brazil.
The technologies that make modern farming possible do not, of necessity, cause harm to the environment. My concern is with overuse of certain technologies: the use of hormones and antibiotics in animal feed, the careless and constant use of herbicides and pesticides, salination due to bad irrigation practices, using land for cropping that might be better left to grazing, etc.
It is a fact that North Americans are accustomed to very cheap food. It is a discussion of another sort, for a different thread, whether “poor” people are poor food shoppers.
High fat, high sugar-content food is the common fodder in “fast food” restaurants and in many prepared (ready-to-cook or even pre-cooked) dinners. Leaving aside the issue of “lower income” consumers, most of us North Americans eat a lot more fat and sugar than we did a generation ago. It is true that we can have fresh produce all year and so have healthy salads and all that sort of wonderful thing, but the reality is that we aren’t getting fat on salad or fruit, no matter where it’s from.
While I agree with you with sugar, I disagree with fat. I think we consume much less fat then a generation ago. The move towards low fat, also nonstick cookware which at most gets a quick spray of pam compared to cooking with lard or tallow. A common thing to eat according to my grandfather was a bacon fat sandwich.
Also the move to low fat has caused lower fat breeds of animals to be raised, chickens with so much white meat breasts that they can’t breed naturally anymore, pork so flavorless that many times some sugar sauce must be added to make it taste good - and also that it’s now claimed to be ‘the other white meat’. People are taking out the yolks of eggs or using egg beaters, the move towards more skim milks away from cream for everything from cereal to coffee to yogurt to cheese to ice cream.
I don’t think it was just boredom that made so many people move off farms and into the city when they had the chance–I think it was the complete helplessness in the face of overpowering risk. Farmers are always one bad year—hell, sometimes, one bad hail storm or one bad freezing snap–away from disaster. I mean, commodity trading in general is considered high risk, and a commodity trader has many opportunities to diversify. A farmer is investing in 2 or 3 commodities and is making that investment early in the game, before any of the varibles are known: at least a commodity trader can switch from wheat to rice early in the game if it starts to look like a bad year for wheat–he might take a bit of a bath, but not a total loss.
There’s a reason every culture has a rain god. Farmers are putting an awful lot in the hands of fate.
You know, it’s really irritating when people set up obnoxious straw-man positions like this. I didn’t say anything about people in poverty, let alone “Welfare Cadillacs”: that’s just you reading your own prejudices into what I said. I said more people could afford it. That’s not a controversial statement. You owe me an apology, frankly, and I’d appreciate it if you’d respond to what I say, not to a ridiculous distortion of what I say, in the future.
Hopping in to add some facts again - the ‘Anabaptists’ referred to by Carson O’Genic are a different group from the Hutterite Colonies that I was talking about. The majority of Hutterite Colonies use EVERY farming technology available, from the latest GMO hybrid seed to the newest tractors and the best fertilizers. (Yes, I know there are some rare exceptions around the fringes.)
The Anabaptists (I think we call them Mennonites) have a full range from little or no modern tech to all the latest. There are so many splinters and different ‘shades’ that you almost have to speak of each group individually.
eta: Manda Jo, I know about the risks of farming. I never feel the urge to go to a casino, since my livelihood is a gamble. But everything in this life is a gamble, there are no certainties and for me and my husband the positives outweigh the negatives.
While the site was evidently an “Atkins bashing” site, the truth of the observation remains: the total caloric intake of the average American had increased from 3300 calories a day in the 70s to 3900 calories a day in the late 90s, and the actual amount of fat has increased. Fat intake expressed as a percentage of calories has decreased, but people are still eating more fat than in the past.
I had a link to the USDA research on the issue, but the information was in the form of a hard-to-read page abstract. The information was the same, though.
Combined with a more sedentary lifestyle, it is bad news.
