Save Family Farms, Save America By Willie Nelson, AlterNet Posted on April 27, 2006, Printed on May 1, 2006 http://www.alternet.org/story/35404/
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[Editor's Note: This article appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Waterkeeper, the official magazine of Waterkeeper Alliance.]
As one of the founders of Farm Aid, I have watched with admiration and a good amount of satisfaction the growth of what many now call the "Good Food Movement" -- the growing interest in and demand for organic, humanely-raised and family farm-identified food that is transforming the way America grows its food and how our food gets to our tables.
While it might seem obvious to many, good food comes from farms with healthy soil and clean water. I've always believed that the most important people on the planet are the ones who plant the seeds and care for the soil where they grow. As the stewards of the land, family farmers are the foundation of this movement, as well as its guarantor.
No one can say they planted the original seed that gave rise to this movement, but many can claim they have helped nurture and cultivate its growth. Farm Aid's vision for America is to have many family farmers on the land -- a vision born out of our strong conviction that who grows our food and who cares for the land and water is of vital national importance; that farmers and their fields are the fabric that holds our country together.
Many have asked me, "What is the Good Food movement?" The Good Food movement isn't just about good and delicious food -- although this is certainly one of its greatest achievements. The Good Food movement is at the center of some of the most important issues and debates that will define American society for years to come: issues like stewardship of our soil and water, local and democratic control of decision making and land use, health and nutrition and a thriving and sustainable food and farm economy needed to feed and fuel America.
While good, healthy, fresh food from family farms is the most visible product of the movement that each of us can enjoy, the movement stands for much more. It represents the interests of all who care about the future of this land, its resources and its people. As members of this movement and as eaters, the food we choose to buy connects us directly to those who produced it and to the multiple reasons why it is in our own interests to see this movement flourish.
Natural resources
The future of safe and sound food production depends on taking care of the most basic resources needed to grow food: soil and water. Family farmers eat the food they grow in their fields and drink the water from their wells. They know that they have to take care of the soil and water in order to pass on the promise of the farm's bounty to the next generation. Sustainable family farms are the alternative to the large-scale industrial farms that erode our soil and pollute our waterways. Excessive chemicals, soil erosion, runoff from hog factories laced with hormones and antibiotics and the growing threats of widespread genetic contamination from genetically engineered crops threaten our capacity to grow the food we need to feed our country. By supporting family farms through the Good Food movement, we are all helping to ensure that our children and our children's children inherit a healthy and resilient environment.
Health and nutrition
Good food leads to good nutrition and good health. There's no comparison between fresh, organic food at the local farmers market and the mass-produced, additive-laden, highly processed stuff that corporations would have us think is real food. The rising epidemics of childhood obesity and diabetes are clearly linked to the highly processed food peddled to kids and served in school cafeterias. The Good Food movement is helping to turn this situation around, bringing farm-fresh food grown by local farmers into school lunch programs. A diet of fresh, wholesome food will improve health outcomes for kids and provide new direct markets for family farmers.
Strong local economies
Family farms are the engines for economic vitality, in both rural communities as well as urban areas that benefit from jobs created by vibrant local and regional food systems. When family farms thrive, so do main street businesses. The Good Food movement is creating new markets and opportunities that help farmers stay on their land and provides hope for new and young farmers to make farming their life. A growing number of those now participating in direct farm-to-consumer marketing are first generation farmers! The more we keep farming local, the stronger the community. Participating in local and regional food and farm markets helps keep food dollars circulating in the local economy -- rather than increasing the profits of distant corporations that suck the dollars and the life out of our communities.
Energy
Many Americans are becoming aware of the startling and troubling fact about our food system known as "food miles:" on average, each food item travels 1500 miles before arriving to our tables. It makes little sense to burn fossil fuels that pollute the environment to ship apples across the country and around the world when local growers can provide us with fresh apples, the purchase of which keeps dollars in the local economy. By strengthening local food production, the Good Food movement is reducing the distance food travels and the ecological footprint of American agriculture.
Keeping farmers on their land also enables them to use their know-how and ingenuity to help us achieve more energy independence. Farmers are key to our energy future -- growers and harvesters of renewable energy that will power our vehicles and heat our homes. Farm Aid is working to link The Good Food and Green Energy movements as two sides of the family farm-centered agriculture system we envision.
Animal Welfare
The Good Food movement increases the demand for humanely-raised beef, pork and poultry products by family farms. As opposed to the factory livestock farms, where thousands of animals are raised under one roof and never see the light of day their entire lives, family farm-raised animals are fed natural diets and allowed to live in healthy conditions with access to open pastures.
Democracy
I believe keeping family farmers on the land is inextricably linked to a strong and thriving democracy. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens…they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds." Family farmers are the backbone not only of a strong economy; they are also the defenders of local, democratic control of decision making.
In communities across farm country, large and powerful food corporations are working their political connections at the State House and on Capitol Hill to change local and state laws to take local control and decision-making away from communities, stripping local communities of their democratic right of self-determination. In many examples, corporations are working to change state laws so that communities cannot block the construction of hog factories.
We live in a time when all of us must take our responsibility to exercise our democratic rights seriously -- before it's too late. Family farmers are standing up for their rights -- and they're standing up for our rights too. The Good Food movement is about democracy at the grassroots level- building decentralized, sustainable and locally controlled farm and food economies.
Farm Fresh Food
And yes, the Good Food movement is about better food. Growing up in Texas, I learned at an early age the difference between a fresh tomato, a fresh farm egg and the stuff most other people eat and think is food. There is just no way to compare a family-raised ham to a ham from a factory farm, or fresh strawberries to berries shipped thousands of miles. To understand this, you have to taste it yourself. The next time you drive by your local farmers market, stop by and pick up some farm-fresh food. I guarantee you won't regret the flavor and freshness of food from the family farm.
Growing the Movement
If you enjoy good food and care about the issues behind this movement, I invite you to take action today to ensure the future of family farming and your right to choose food from family farms. The most direct and regular action you can take is to search out and buy as much of your food directly from farm families in your area. Our food choices today shape tomorrow's agriculture. Buying organic milk today strengthens tomorrow's outlook for organic dairy farmers. Think about one food item that you can buy from local farmers and commit to buying it. These small and simple actions are building the Good Food movement and changing American agriculture for the better.
The other opportunity we have to further this movement is the upcoming debate over the next Farm Bill. If you value good food from family farms, call your legislator and demand a Farm Bill that strengthens local and regional food economies.
If you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities' schools. If you want your children and grandchildren to enjoy the benefits of a clean environment, demand a Farm Bill that increases protection of our natural resources by helping farmers transition to organic and more sustainable growing methods. The future of good food depends on you.
If you value good food from family farms, call your legislator and demand a Farm Bill that strengthens local and regional food economies.
If you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities' schools. If you want your children and grandchildren to enjoy the benefits of a clean environment, demand a Farm Bill that increases protection of our natural resources by helping farmers transition to organic and more sustainable growing methods. The future of good food depends on you.
This is an economic and life choice issue. Like many family farms in the last half of the last century, ours went bankrupt when I was in high school. My father was a Rodale organics devotee from the forties and resisted transforming the farm to industrial methods, which would have involved some sort of focus on one of the groups of animals we husbanded -- cows, chickens or hogs, and a trememdous capital investment we didn't have, nor did the farm have the equity value to borrow on even if we wanted to. He worked a full time job the last few years to try to keep the farm solvent, and I took over much of the managing of the farm -- which is excellent training in personal responsibily and the characteristics that go with participating in a democracy, I believe. So I'd certainly agree with Jefferson in the above article on the correlation between family farming and democracy.
Industrial farming as it's now done will come to it's own, inevitable end, especially as the cost of abundant cheap energy rises as the energy itself dwindles around the globe. Few people working in their specialized niches in this hierarchically ordered global society comprehend how dependent their food supply is on this energy. There's very little reason why they would.
When industrial farming collapses, the soil's fertility, now maintained by huge adreniline shots of petroleum based chemicals, and tilled with gigantic machinery operated by a small number of workers, will be minimal and the organic family farming skills that go into building and maintaining healthy, fertile soil will be called upon. At the same time there will undoubtedly be hordes unemployed people skilled at some niche postition in now defunct industries who have never experienced any aspect of farming, and they will be very hungry. So there're going to be a lot of acres of land with only a few skilled people who know how to bring that soil back to a natural form of fertility and productivity. Some new, small, democratically organized communities can emerge, but a lot of people are going to go through a very steep learning curve in the early stages, I suspect many will begin to lose some of that extra weight.
Frankly, I can't imagine what my representatives in Congress can do about this since they don't seem all that concerned about turning the whole thing over to folks like G.W. Bush with barely a peep. And believe me, I've been squawking about that.
Just by way of one example--Who gets elected as your local County Commissioner could have a direct impact on remaining family farms, and small AG businesses... as well as the air and water quality, among other things.
(One more reason I'm supporting Bill Fleenor for West Lane Commissioner!)
Posts: 5740 | Location: Exile | Registered: 24 March 2003
Ren, you show little faith in the enginuity, adaptability and determination of the common American.
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Industrial farming as it's now done will come to it's own, inevitable end, especially as the cost of abundant cheap energy rises as the energy itself dwindles around the globe.
As long as their is a market for fruits and veggies, someone will find a way to grow them and sell them. The successful ones will continue to be the ones you despise.
"Although America has problems, America is not the problem"
Posts: 986 | Location: Humboldt | Registered: 09 November 2005
Heard on the radio today that the average American spends seven bucks a week on fresh fruits and vegetables. Seems low to me. Also heard that labor cost for picking fruits and vegetables is 6%. Heard if migrant labor wasn't available and labor costs for picking rose, the increase would be under a dollar a month or about ten dollars a year.
Seems like a bargain.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Your point seems so far off base I don't know where to begin.
Do you know what I mean by "industrial farming"?
In the late fifties, the highly fertile, deep and rich loess soils of the original breadbasket of this country -- states like Illinois and Iowa -- were stretching to naturally produce 100 bushels to the acre corn. That's been more than doubled on far less fertile based soils, but how? How is it that practically inert soils in the Columbia basin desert, basically centuries of volcanic ash deposits, have been turned into highly productive farmland? Most people that buy their vegetables don't even ask the question.
I have great "faith" in our ability to manage the growth of things in earth, I also believe many more of us will be engaged in the activity in the not too distant future. Ingenuity hasn't that much to do with it. If you haven't much experience in working directly with the soil, unfortunately all you may have to go on at the moment -- yourself that is -- is faith. There's a bit more to it than that. Water... manure... crop rotation... dealing with disease, insects and weeds... I'd be more than happy to share my technical experience in this area so you can consider it with a less "faith based" perspective.
The successful ones will continue to be the ones you despise.
It is a common tactic of right wingers (minions do it unconsciously), to make emotionally potent over-simplifications to avoid the more difficult task of institutional analysis (which would break the "right wing" case apart). Instead of contemplating the very real danger big corporations are to small businesses, he can pass it all off as mere jealousy, wealth envy, or class warfare, etc.
douglas (and now Jason I see, while I was composing),
I overlooked that really irrelevant to me charge of "despising" you picked out. But maybe it's worth some thought now that I've looked at the linked thread you offered. Here's the last post on it, from the last day in April:
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It is undeniable that our American way of life is not sustainable. Farming, is the most blatant example. Petroleum fertilizers are a way of life for farmers. They can rape the ground of its precious nutrients and then replenish them with fertilizers. However, this will burn out the soils. It is time to go to more organic ways of farming. Local production on a small scale is the right choice. Here in Vermont, we have started using our cow manure to make electricity. Yeah, that's right. Not oil, coal, Natrual Gas or Nuclear, but Manure. Cow Power, what a great thing. Sustainable farming practices are possible. You just have to invest in the products that are locally grown. Once the world was so big, now it is so small. I look forward to the day that it is big again.
There's a manure spreader load of good solid scientific based ideas imbedded in that post. I'd personally be more than happy to spread them around and examine them for anyone here that seems to love dwelling in the basement of emotional opinion. Maybe it will fertilize something. Above it in that thread, until I come to your lead post, there's a whole lot of thread unraveling distractions with very little substance. It doesn't appear anyone really wants to take the issue seriously. Early up we find Gnarly dismissing the topic with "family farms are inefficient". That concept devolves right straight back to the cheap energy issue that created the entire enterprises of "factory" farming in the first place, the development of which can be traced directly in parallel with the upcurving extraction and consumption of that resource as well as the parallel curve of human population expansion. Note too that "we" funded through research in many of our top state universities, which were specifically picked out to focus on agriculture and were provided public tax-based grants for that purpose, most of the "science" that made it possible. All this no one thinks much about, but it all goes into the emotionally based paradigm of faith in the free enterprise system and that remark Seahawkfan made imbedded with his undoubted "objective" opinion of my perspective.
As a side note, I once mapped out getting a degree in agricultural engineering, so besides having the personal experience of trying to make a real family farm work, I seriously considered taking it to the next logical level, since I could see at the time which way the wind was blowing, so to speak, for farming. Vietnam sort of distracted me and when I got back I'd already begun looking at the world with a different perspective, and with an entirely new paradigm of questions. But as part of my B(ull) S(h_t) degree, I did end up getting a minor in one of the first programs of environmentalism at the university I attended in Michigan, actually a university famous for its involvement in the Green Revolution, the results of which keep getting wiped out periodically, and we are headed for yet another phase of trying to figure out how to feed the planet as the undeveloped gaps in the world are being rapidly filled in, and populations continue to expand exponentially. I really think we could learn some lessons from lemmings.
But back on topic,
In my brief lifetime I've watched:
Family farms disappear, and, sadly, suicides occur in the process as many lost a way of life they the land that they treasured, not necessarily because it was the loss of property but because they lived with it -- it was their life. Some stayed physically alive but died in other ways;
I've watched the soil be transformed from a living organic self sustaining producer of goods to a medium of chemical infusions for maximizing plant growth, without which the soil soon becomes inert, meanwhile multinationals like Dow, Phizer, Cargill (they've made trillions selling to anyone and everyone in most of the Twentieth Century's wars, now they are tied to Dow, very innovative folks) etc, have tried to buy up every single seed on the planet so they can patent them and thereby control their distribution, not to mention to transform them through genetic research to make them more compatible with industrial agricultural applications;
I've watched this "innovative" process displace small time farmers all over the world, some of whom immigrate here to the mythical "land of opportunity" since their own cities soon fill up and offer little opportunity for survival, so now we have an "immigration" issue;
I've watched much more, but worth a note, I've watched a fledgeling environmental movement grow, develop its own emotional weeds that make it difficult to grasp fundamentally sometimes, and I've watched as it's fundamentals are cast aside by a society that works less and less on a rational basis so important for a democracy to one of isolated specialists who think within the cacoons of their own specialties, and don't even hear the idea of going to grandma's farm to see the livestock or play in the orchard.
In the process of all this, I have stayed cognizant of science, cognizant of the evolution of agriculture and cognizant of the actual complicated and difficult to summarize science in this now emotionally charged word: environmentalism.
Urban sprawl --in concert with developers building extra-large 'McMansions'-- is covering our very best, prime farmland with concrete and forests-into-boxes crap at a record pace, around here...
Posts: 5740 | Location: Exile | Registered: 24 March 2003
long ago and far away my father took his phd from heidelberg universityin agricualtural economics. his main project was "the swedish peasant" in which he advoated land reform and the preservation of the family farm. he came to the united states and alas, no one was intereted in the plight of the swedish peasdant(tr tenant farmer). he wound up in the south where the ideas of land reform and the institution of the family farm were anathema to the big thinkers of the day. they were studying and promoting the idea of the factory farm and of course we see that their ideas prevailed.
by the way, why is manure considered a pollutant infesting our rivers? why isn't it collected and used as fertilizer? in india, cow manure is used as fuel in small villages. talk about renewable energy!
Posts: 20 | Location: florida | Registered: 12 November 2005
If we are going to talk about "instituational" things, then we should talk about the root causes of the problems that we have, rather than simply pointing fingers at big corporations or supposed "neocon" agendas. I guess people need "someone else" to blame.
"Don't blame me for the problems of small family farmers. I voted for Nader."
Klaus I don't know where you live, but there is plenty of farmland around. I don't even think that's the point of what is being posted here, anyway. From what I can gather, we overproduce on the land we have, by utilizing chemicals and other substances to keep squeezing more and more and more out of the soil. I guess some people think that's a bad thing.
Do you disagree that the "successful" farmers are the ones who utilized technology to increase their production for a given acre of land thereby producing a quality product at a cheaper price. I assume these farmers expanded their business into the "industrial farms" you speak of. While "despise" is a word I used, you certainly do not speak kindly of them.
If these imdustrial farms are polluting or causing disease then that needs to be dealt with immediately.
If they are truly depleting the soil to a degree that it will no longer be useful then it is in their best interest financially to come up with a solution or soon go out of business. I am optimistic that if there really is a problem, they will find a solution. That's the adaptability I spoke of.
As long as McDonalds sells millions of $.99 hamburgers with lettuce and pickles on them, there will be someone to provide it.
"Although America has problems, America is not the problem"
Posts: 986 | Location: Humboldt | Registered: 09 November 2005
Sea, I think Ren and others on this thread are speaking more of an institutional issue, at the base of it. I wish there was less finger-pointing and baiting but there you go, it's a liberal forum.
Here's an interesting tidbit from an article in The Economist, the entire article is pretty long and I could post it if anyone is interested. I cannot link to the article b/c you have to pay a subscription fee to read it online:
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[SNIP]The world population growth rate, in percentage terms, had been climbing steadily since the second world war (bar a two-year drop in 1959-60 caused by Mao Xedong). But in the mid 1960s it stopped rising. And by 1974 it was falling significantly. The number of people added each year kept on rising for awhile, but even that peaked in 1989, and then began falling steadily. Population was still growing, but it was adding a smaller and smaller number each year.
Demographers, who had been watching the exponential rise with alarm, now forecast that the population will peak below ten billion—ten gigapeople—not long after 2050. Such a low forecast would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. Already, in developing countries, the number of children born per woman has fallen from six to three in 50 years. It will have reached replacement-level fertility (where deaths equal births) by 2035.
This is an extraordinary development, unexpected, undeserved—and apparently unnatural. Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed. [emphasis added]
There's really very little individuality related to these industrial farming methods. As I've noted, it's a web of connections between government controls, giant multinational chemical/seed corporations, state funded agricultural institutions, farm implement industries, and the availability of cheap fossil fuels. You need to get your head around how it all works and then you can get over your misapplication of these dogmatic conservative principles you've alluded to here.
The family farm is the closest thing to those principles of individuality and a true husbandry of the land, not industrial farming. Industrial farms are imbedded in a huge systemic network of related industries and governmental institutions.
Look into how they make the desert green in the Columbia Basin in Washington State for starters. And it's not just the irrigation available from the dams, primarily the Hoover. The soil is nearly inert volcanic ash. It's just a medium in which a chemical soup is applied, along with water, and various crops can grow. The process of getting cheap food on your plate is not entirely a market based process like you think it is. And many of the costs to the environment have not been calculated into that cheap price.
If you don't know what goes into healthy soil -- the microbes, the humus, all the living content -- it would be a worthwhile excercise to explore, you might even be happy you did some day. Or, alternatively, you can be happy to find some way to actually debunk what I'm saying from my own life long experience and exploration into the science of all this for yourself. Here is a good place to start getting some ideas: Rodale Institute
Pete, I don't know what the blank are you babbling about. Are you speaking in some kind of code? Would you please try to be specific? What does this mean?:
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I think Ren and others on this thread are speaking more of an institutional issue
What institutional issue? Klaus notes it's a local problem, I don't feel government institutions can promote family farming for a number of reasons. Douglaslee correctly notes I'm talking about industrial farming methods. How does "institutional issue" fit into that? What does it mean?
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I wish there was less finger-pointing and baiting but there you go, it's a liberal forum.
That is the most meaningless thing I can imagine you could say. What finger pointing? What baiting? Please point it out. I feel I'm confronting preconceived taken for granted virtually unexamined beliefs with facts.
I'm talking about the science of how things grow. Yes, institutions are involved, where do you see me laying a trip on institutions? So is the economics of what you are willing to buy in the grocery store involved. That's going to change one of these days, and dramatically. But don't listen to me. After all this is a "liberal" site, go listen to Limbaugh or Matt Drudge if you want sanity. Meanwhile, ignore the meaningless fact that all of it is related to a global system that you may not recognize until the farmers start paying the dramatic increase in their fossil fuel based bills. Most of the industrial technology -- and that includes the fertilizer and the huge amounts of mineral infusions, like potassium -- are cheap because it either comes from fossil fuels, as in the nitrogen based fertilizers which are primarily derived from natural gas (U.S. Increasingly Imports Nitrogen and Potash Fertilizer), or because it's still cost effective to mine and ship it from distant places. (Potassium - Potash, K2O)
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The U.S. went from being the world’s largest exporter of nitrogen fertilizer in the 1980s to becoming the largest importer in the 1990s. Domestic production of nitrogen fertilizer declined during the 1990s as the price of domestic natural gas (the primary source of nitrogen) increased because of demand for natural gas in the U.S. expanding faster than production. Imports of nitrogen—mainly from Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, and Russia, all with lower natural gas prices—quickly filled the gap.
This is actually an economics issue far more than an institutional one, though exactly where to separate them is hard to decide. But I'd argue that the one's who are relying blindly on institutions here is you conservatives while you delude yourselves into believing some hogwash about independent initiative in this area. Most of the independent initiative died with the family farms that were replaced by "efficiency". The same kinds of efficiencies you see in the harvest of the "abundant" tundra food sources in lemmings as their populations explode in an upward curve. Ours began with cheap energy. I can't imagine a single reason why human beings should be any smarter than these rodents.
This by the way is a meaningless, and essentially specious generalization without a proper context:
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This is an extraordinary development, unexpected, undeserved—and apparently unnatural. Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed.
Hunter gatherers share the same population growth characteristics as people in societies where the populations have less to do with agricultural production, and more to do with layers of specialization in hierarchically ordered social institutions. It has much more to do with changing the internal dynamics of family-based economies. Until agriculture, there is very little evidence to show a constant rise in human populations, even though the food was plentiful. Needless to say there are many other possible cultural reasons as well, not the least to consider are religious beliefs.
Or... why didn't "The Economist" compare the sine curves of the discovery of cheap and abundant, highly condensed energy in fossil fuels, its related technological development, and population growth curves, the now precluded peak oil leveling off of cheap energy and the related population growth leveling off? Pretty damn close fit if you want to look at it.
But really odd to me, is the implications of the statement have nothing to do with individual human intelligence and choice, but more to do with group systemic reactions to food. I mean, just simplistically, more food, less sex? Less food, more sex? what on earth could that possibly mean? Just stop and give it some thought. I know I for one am talking here about intelligent individual choice in the face of some potentially dramatic changes in our future societies and technological adaptation. We actually have got our hands on knowledge that each of us can work with for our future well being.
Just one small bit for research if either of you care...
Agricultural pollution from industrial farming methods:
I see you live in Wa. State. I grew up just south of Olympia near a little town called Rochester. There were farms everywhere and my first 3 jobs as a kid were on farms. A blueberry farm, several chicken farms, and a horse\cattle ranch.
Directly across the road from my childhood home was a Weyerhauser tree nursery (it's still there) where they grew seedlings for re-forestation. I recall about every 5 years they would plant a type of grass instead of seedlings. That grass would grow and then be plowed into the soil to replenish nutrients not availale from fertilizers.
Although I do not know much of the science of it, I got a first hand look, on a daily basis out my living room window, at industrial farming in action.
"Although America has problems, America is not the problem"
Posts: 986 | Location: Humboldt | Registered: 09 November 2005
I know where Rochester is. I live in Weherhause country here, a bit east of there, as well.
How would you relate what you observed to what I said? Did I say anything at all that you can relate to? Did you ever spend time in the Columbia River Basin area? How do we talk about this in a way that can make sense to both of us?
Ren, my sincere apologies, sometimes at the end of a long day of typing, my mind is in a fog. Didn't mean to confuse you, not my intention.
What I mean is that, modern society runs on the production of cheap energy and cheap food sources, often at the expense of future resources. This is not the fault of any one entity. Sometimes the folks on this board like to blame some elusive "neocon agenda" for this, or some Administration from the past, or whatever. My contention is that many institutional problems we have are the "fault" of multiple entities, including the individuals (like myself) who decide to remain "on the grid" and consuming. Despite the fact that I try to conserve wherever possible, the fact of the matter is, I am still a human being taking up space and consuming resources. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with that...but there are going to be consequences.
Human beings are full of mistakes and perversions. I get sick and tired of some who try to paint every problem on their political nemeses - conservatives, too, are guilty.
It seemed like the discussion was deteriorating and I feel that many of the points in CMJ's article and your followup are worthy of discussion. I agree with you where you say "This is an economic and life choice issue", although I am not positive you are correct in your predictions of future events.
Then you say something like "they don't seem all that concerned about turning the whole thing over to folks like G.W. Bush with barely a peep" and you distill the whole debate down to another us vs. them debate, which is irrelevant.
Seahawkfan was really just reacting to this perceived baiting tactic of yours - I think.
Anyway, hope that clears it up. This is yet another mysterious thread to me...I can't understand where people like you and people like me actually disagree. Yet, we have these little spats and shouting matches.
[SNIP]The world population growth rate, in percentage terms, had been climbing steadily since the second world war (bar a two-year drop in 1959-60 caused by Mao Xedong). But in the mid 1960s it stopped rising. And by 1974 it was falling significantly. The number of people added each year kept on rising for awhile, but even that peaked in 1989, and then began falling steadily. Population was still growing, but it was adding a smaller and smaller number each year.
Demographers, who had been watching the exponential rise with alarm, now forecast that the population will peak below ten billion—ten gigapeople—not long after 2050. Such a low forecast would have been unthinkable just two decades ago. Already, in developing countries, the number of children born per woman has fallen from six to three in 50 years. It will have reached replacement-level fertility (where deaths equal births) by 2035.
Slight tangent, but:
Our particular population explosion had less to do with food, and more to do with a means for mass producing and distributing food (i.e. oil). It's no coincidence that population growth is slowing and peak oil is nearing at the same time (or that the slowing began during the first oil supply crisis in the world). My prediction is that the population will peak way before 2035.
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This is an extraordinary development, unexpected, undeserved—and apparently unnatural. Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed. [emphasis added]
The "fewer babies when better fed" point is not a cause/effect relation, but a correlation (it is useful to be mindful of the difference). Better fed people are generally people who just have better resources, like access to education etc. Such people are more mindful of their decision to reproduce as they are usually, in the middle class sector anyway, spending a great deal of time pursuing their resources. Not to mention they have better access to birth control. There really is nothing mysterious or extraordinary about this particular phenomenon.
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