How is this so? Statistically, modern farms, the "corporate" farms, are significantly more productive on just about every statictical measure?The premise is that studies show that small farms are consistently way more productive than large comoditized farming conglomerates - different than what we all thought these past years
Kottke in that underground classic, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and The Seed of the Future said: "Because civilized people do not know what they are, they talk politics, religion and science and pursue material wealth while the basis of their life on earth, the soil, slips away beneath their feet."
(farming pun!)
How is this so? Statistically, modern farms, the "corporate" farms, are significantly more productive on just about every statictical measure?
Algore won a Nobel*, too, and we see how that turned out:cheeky:.The link that I gave explains the premise in four paragraphs (easy to read) and in 4 credible sources cited in the footnotes of the article. The main economist, Amartya Sen, is a Nobel winner. Your comment, while widely accepted, seems to be no longer accurate
WiKi said:She organized the smuggling of Jewish children from the Ghetto, carrying them out in boxes, suitcases and trolleys.[2] Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, Sendler visited the ghetto and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and trams, sometimes disguising them as packages.[5] She also used the old courthouse of the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto (still standing) as one of the main routes of smuggling children out. The children were placed with Polish families, the Warsaw orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary or Roman Catholic convents such as the Sisters Little Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary[6] at Turkowice and Chotom?w. Some were smuggled to priests in parish rectories where they could be further hidden. She hid lists of their names in jars, in order to keep track of their original and new identities. Żegota assured the children that, when the war was over, they must be returned to Jewish relatives.[1]
In 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo, severely tortured, and sentenced to death. Żegota saved her by bribing German guards on the way to her execution. She was left in the woods, unconscious and with broken arms and legs.[2] She was listed on public bulletin boards as among those executed. For the remainder of the war, she lived in hiding, but continued her work for the Jewish children. After the war, she dug up the jars containing the children's identities and began an attempt to find the children and return them to living parents. However, almost all the children's parents had died at the Treblinka extermination camp.
Okay, if you kids want to get into a fight about the environmental impact of small vs. corporate farms, now you have your own thread in which to do so. :tired:
Keith R
Environment Forum moderator
Fighting! We just having fun while solving the worlds problems! :rambo:
Or causing them...:rambo:Fighting! We just having fun while solving the worlds problems! :rambo:
I realize you're a "globalist", Chris, and fall in step with those who embrace pro-globalist agendas
... offer countervailing opinions that do not agree with your fundamental political World View.
Okey Dokey. I only put you in "the box" that your own words over the years here describe, Chris. Virtually ALL your links and data come from World Golbalization (i.e. socialist) sources. This would include the link you ASKED me to read...which I did. And how is quoting a dedicated socialist NOT political (which is what you did), when the "spiritual leader" of socialism himself said "everything is political"? Don't blame ME for pointing out WHO the source YOU cited and asked others to read actually IS in real life.I am?
Which one CB? Firstly you get all political because I read and quote someone who is known as a socialist? I am not scared of socialists you know. I read socialists and capitalists too.
And now you want to place me in a political 'box' while having no idea what you are talking about. You do not know me from a bar of soap. So, now you-re back to attacking al gore and whoever else is out there to attack. Geez man, get over it already, whatever it is.
Forgive me for taking this issue of farm size and productivity somewhere else to discuss. It is being discussed you know. It is being discussed in all 17 countries that the quoted studies pertain to. It is also being discussed in places like:
- Oaxaca and the Chiapas, Mexico where I visited just a short time ago to study the economic viability of a number of weaving cooperatives including what a optimum size is for them to grow their cochineal producing plants on (oh my God, they were all socialist working together in socialist cooperate management structures!) utilizing locally harvested organic dyes.
In the Chiapas, people are fighting a heroic fight (amongst others) to maintain their thousands of years old corn seed stock free of gm contamination and to maintain their significant biological diversity in the area. (Oh my God, these people wear black masks so that the Mexican Government cannot identify them - they must be communist at least! - perhaps even worse than that!)
- in Costa Rica, specifically central where they have just now opened a new organic market, (you are allowed to wonder what I was doing there - it may must have been something to do with soil enrichment)
- in Nicaragua where I am currently assisting to open a new facility making organic nut and seed butters and products - the cycle is sustainable - as well as fixing a small community bakery that seems to be suffering from 'central american' syndrome.
- in Honduras, where I visited an organic peanut farm to tie them up with the Nicaraguans,
- in Guatemala, specifally a small town on the lake where an organic community is taking shape and a friend of mine will shortly present a yoga and body work retreat which I will joyfully attend. My year or so off is turning into a busy period.
Sorry CB, all of these people tell me that they do not care about your agenda, who won the latest nobel prize or who is who in the zoo for that matter. What they are interested in, is to improve their food sources, their sources of soil and their lifestyles. They're interested in preserving the old methods of making and dying their textiles because these are sustainable methods, they're interested in making their organic nut butters, because the complete process is sustainable and ecologically sane, they're interested in taking their organic produce to market where they get a good price for their food.
That is who I will discuss the issue with. It is rich and productive. You may choose eventually to pull your head out of your motorcycle engine but until then, I won't be discussing anything with you.
I applaud the small farmer solutions. I applaud organic peanut farms. I applaud organic nut and seed butters and products. I applaud sustained dying of natural fabrics. I applaud local organic markets. I'm a big advocate for producing goods as close to the consumer as possible. I'm a HUGE advocate of personal choice for what they put in their mouths and bodies. I'm a huge advocate of soil enrichment (which corporate farms in the U.S. do, because it's in their best interest to do so). I'm a big advocate for yoga and body work retreats for consumers who choose them.
But that's not my "issue".
You'd be wrong. I've been around. Maybe not yoga parties, but I've got some bona fides. Anyone who actually knows me will tell you my reading comprehension is just fine. They will also tell you I have an exceptionally accurate BS detector.A factual correction .. (and btw, you won't take the focus of this thread off environment again ... I am correcting these comments because I am convinced now beyond a shadow of a doubt that your reading comprehension sucks and you have never been anywhere else but Florida, Mississipi and perhaps Nebraska - get some world experience already man!)
Uhhhh...he did. He just said he fell short in the kind of redistribution of wealth that Monbiot wants.Chris said:No, Monbiot did not praise Mugabe. You seriously need to consider a reading comprehension course. One reads more than the first paragraph usually.
What kind of "support do ou want, Chris? AG101? Jeez, woman, have you ever actually BEEN to a rela farm that produces real food for real people by folks who expect to be rewarded for their efforts? Economies of scale in farming has been around forever.Chris said:As for the rest, you need to support everything you say and you know what? You cannot.
And you're simply wrong again, Chris. I did nothing but contest your assertions.Chris said:You're simply trolling again.
No. I make contributions that you don't like.Chris said:You do not make a contribution and then want to muddy the waters to any other contribution.
Now that's funny. Sorry I'm not more New Age/One World for you, Chris. I guess I'm "Old School" in that regard, even though I'm told we're about the same age. I do my own critical thinking without consideration of what's popular. It's a lonely path, admittedly, but even Thoreau took it.Chris said:I guess what is happening in our world today does not fit your worldview. You cannot make it fit any more CB. Things are kinda proving you out to be a relic of an older age.
Your problem, Chris, not mine. If folks want to produce organic seed butter, I'm all for it as long as I have the free choice to choose to purchase it or not, and I'm not required to economically support it, against my will, at the point of a gun. If there is a market for organic seed butter that is self-supporting, I think it's a fine pursuit of ones vocation. Seriously. I'm also glad that there are yoga and body work retreats that do not reqire my forced subsidy. Heck, I'm glad there is a market for hair defolliant that does not require my participation. Everybody has their right to choose their own path, and I applaud each of them.Chris said:In addition, we've never been treated here on the environment forum to the long list of things that you say you applaud so forgive me for not believing you.
By all means, please continue the discussion. And I will also participate.Chris said:Once the sound of your incessant 'applause' stops drowning out discussions of the issue at hand, I dare say we will continue.
Fair enough, I understand opinions vary. My message to you is similarly simple: no.Chris said:The message here to you is simple .. get out of here!
Once again, AG101 teaches folks how not to let the soil slip away.Kottke in that underground classic, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and The Seed of the Future said: "Because civilized people do not know what they are, they talk politics, religion and science and pursue material wealth while the basis of their life on earth, the soil, slips away beneath their feet."[/I]
Of course it does. No one was implying otherwise.It makes sense both economically and socially
to encourage as much production of local sustainable industry and food production as possible. In a perfect world.....etc.