Is "conventional" agriculture feasible?

[JMJones0424]

lemit - can you please elaborate on your last question. I have done a google search for "life of the mind", as I haven't heard the phrase before, and I'm not sure that I understand your question.

[lemit]

JMJones:

I'm sorry for (unintentionally) trying to hijack your thread.

Again, I've lived in a college town most of my life, so I'm accustomed to thinking that all ways of life that might be created should include intellectual pursuits. I know that's not right, but I can't help it.

When I was growing up, we worked day and night six days a week, and since we had livestock, often seven days a week. But when we had a chance to rest in the evening, we'd read our favorite book, the encyclopedia, and make up quizzes for each other.

In fact, when I moved to the college town during high school, I already had written several literary parodies. Although the literature being parodied was primitive compared to the literature I had a chance to work with here, I definitely didn't feel out of place except for my Lower Midwestern twang.

Thank you for reminding me that it's fine for small, conventional farmers to not be intellectual in any way. If they can succeed in farming, they show a transcendent intelligence and creativity.

--lemit

[lemit]

This thread seems to have slowed drastically. I hope that's not my fault, because I think this is a vitally important issue.

Think about it. Conventional agriculture and nature peacefully co-exist, for very good reasons. Modern, industrial farming doesn't do that well with nature, again for very good reasons. If we could find a way to make more traditional, conventional, diversified, family farming really interesting to young, upwardly mobile (if only wistfully so) farmers, we could do a lot for ourselves, the planet, and the economy.

(When I include the economy, I mean that anyone raised on a family farm knows it's full-time employment.)

Actually, I may be the only person around who was raised on a family farm. Are there any other graduates of that life out there?

--lemit

[JMJones0424]

It's funny, I was using "conventional" to describe the current methods, where you are using it to describe the older (and now new again) methods. I like your definition better. The problem is that many organic gardeners see some sort of sick S&M fantasy that hard physical labor is better. As if the sweat off your brow makes the corn taste better. Tractors are not inherently evil. Fertilizer (when needed) is beneficial. It's just that for the last 50, and perhaps 100 years, agricultural schools have ignored the fact that a plant does not exist in a vacuum. Soil health has been sacrificed for immediate productivity, in the same way a body builder sacrifices his long term health by taking steroids to increase muscle mass.

The agricultural school near me led the fight against the cotton bole weevil and has contributed greatly to the knowledge of how individual crops respond to specific inputs. But, they tragically ignore the effects of monoculture and how fertilizer salts destroy organic matter in the soil. They have chosen to ignore the environmental factors that lead to healthy plants, and choose instead to correct the symptoms of imbalances as they arise. This creates a dangerous (and costly) feedback loop that is becoming increasing more obvious to farmers. Unfortunately, "conventional" has come to describe "unconventional" and vice versa. It reminds me of the problem the anti-federalists faced when debating the federalists, in that they lost the battle in defining the situation.

The biggest problem now for farmers who wish to enter the market is market accessibility. I am a firm supporter of Certified Naturally Grown, in that this certifying program does not require a farmer to be a large land owner in order to grow "organically". The consumer is usually unaware of the issues involved, and until this situation is corrected, small farmers can not compete on a large scale. Supermarket chains have no interest in buying from a producer that can only supply enough produce to meet immediate local demands, their distribution and procurement system is not designed to meet these limitations. Consumers who are willing to go to a farmer's market type of area to buy food products are rare. I honestly don't know the correct approach to alleviating this problem.

[lemit]

There is something really perverse about destroying chemically all life in the soil so you can provide a specific chemical nutrient designed for the genetic peculiarities of the crop you are growing. I guess I support "free range" crops, using cultivation to kill weeds while further aerating the soil.

You mentioned the Agricultural school. I wonder about intellectually approaching tasks that are simple and routine. At the university where I worked in the library for nearly 20 years, I breakfasted at the University Club and frequently heard the broad, imperious discussions of range management professors who of course never saw a sagebrush that couldn't be improved. Students in their classes said they didn't make much sense professionally either.

When I was taking agriculture in high school nearly 50 years ago, we were taught something I didn't have the time to do. We were told to plant multiflora roses on pond banks and in fence rows. Friends who did what they were told spent 20 years trying to get rid of the multiflora roses, which are now considered a noxious weed. It's as if people who do our foreign policy also are involved in agriculture.

I hope there are people out there who will turn this into a debate--maybe the organic fanatics--because you, JMJones, seem to have inhabited my head. You use some different language, but you say what I would say. I hope while you were in there you didn't get into some of the basement parts. If you did, I can give you some money to keep quiet.

--lemit

[Michaelangelica]

What do the Yanks on the list think of this please?
Campaign For Liberty — HR 875 The food police, criminalizing organic farming and the backyard gardener, and violation of the 10th amendment
Does anyone see any irony in this and Mrs. obama starting an organic garden?

[belovelife]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

What do the Yanks on the list think of this please?
Campaign For Liberty — HR 875 The food police, criminalizing organic farming and the backyard gardener, and violation of the 10th amendment
Does anyone see any irony in this and Mrs. obama starting an organic garden?

you know i read that litigation
nothing against organic farming
but the people who are sayong that just want organic protection
and then for the local organic farmers market type, i think they are a
IV or V, either way, they get inspected twice a year

now don't get me wrong
i am all about organic farming
and mixed plant farming
you know like an idea

exe.
if we had some corn that grew well with soy, tha just happened to feed thinbleberries

well grow the together

while the massive amounts of ladybugs that we buy and freeze and release in our fields
get rid of most of the parasites
or breed them, but i don't know how to breed ladybugs

anyway

it would be cool

adding the bio char

imagine a thousand acre field with a biochar foundation
they would SAVE THOUSANDS IN FERTILIZER ALONE
plus you know tilling some good old much into a field is not that bad
and man does it make some good tomatoes

now for the bio char, could we use cork, harvisting it is cool
doesn't hurt the tree
an regrows itself

now if we had thousandes of square feet
then we could do conveyer fashon biochar production in huge kilns
then it cold be commercially used

sometime commercial farmers don't even till the ground
they just add their hills, then farm them

so why not just put a layer of biochar
then add the hills (they have a name i just forgot)
uhhhhh.............

anyway, then add the fertilizers needed
or whatever

[belovelife]

also if we did this as a national standard, then we would waste less water, and have a cycle back into our envyroment.

[lemit]

I saw the hearings that led to the forming of HR875 It is a measure to take some health monitoring from USDA and put it in FDA, which is better equipped to handle food testing.

I think it's good legislation. USDA hadn't been the appropriate agency to handle food safety and monitoring, as recent events have shown. In fact, it was a hearing on the peanut problem that finally caused the passage of this legislation that had been discussed for years, every time a food-borne health crisis generated hearings.

--lemit

[lemit]

I just read "Campaign For Liberty's" page more carefully. Apparently they don't care about the deaths caused by shoddy peanut farming practices and shoddy state oversight.

It's amazing if you know the language of law to see how it's interpreted by people who see everything as a vast conspiracy. Here they are trying to instill fear that the federal government wants to take organic farming away from them, and in one case fear that the government's going to take backyard gardens.

I spent 25 years in government, including some time editing laws. What I see in this bill is a lot of the normal administrative stuff. But it's also designed to take some state and individual rights away. For example, it's supposed to be designed to keep peanut growers from using animal waste for fertilizer. It's designed to pass the state enforcement rights to the federal government since state enforcement was very lax in the peanut case.

We need to remember that this legislation was passed as a result of several deaths and several previous incidents that had suggested overworked state governments, an overworked USDA, and an underutilized FDA.

Very often overreaching legislation results from deaths that could be attributed to loose or confused or, well, underreaching legislation. At this point in my argument I'm supposed to say I don't know which is better. I can't say that. I don't accept the deaths, and I don't think Congress did either. I'm proud of them.

--lemit