what is all the field corn used for?
Photo by J. Harrington
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Since we like to eat, and we depend on clean drinking water, we've become more and more interested in the linkage between agriculture, sustainable living, and water pollution. The way we look at things, corn grown for biofuels is an industrial use and should be regulated as if it were a manufacturing operation. Over the past few days, we've begun to reread a book we picked up a year or two ago. Immediately below is the title and an excerpt from the book.
Restoration Agriculture - Real-World Permaculture for Farmers
On the whole, unless someone has special circumstances, nobody is really making money in agriculture. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University has reported on numerous occasions that, of those farmers in the United States who file an IRS Schedule F (farm income and expenses), 80 percent receive the majority of their income from something other than farming. The fact that the USDA has huge agricultural subsidies (both direct and indirect) is evidence that there's something wrong with the economics of farming....Why, we wonder, would people engage in farming if they have to have outside income to support their farming. Wouldn't that, according to other IRS regulations, make 80 percent or so of those farmers engaged in a hobby rather than a business?
wolf statue on Minneapolis' Native American Cultural Corridor
Photo by J. Harrington
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Then today we came across an excerpt from a book that approaches food supply from a quite different perspective. The title and an excerpt are immediately below.
Indigenous Food Sovereignty in the United States - Restoring Cultural Knowledge, Protecting Environments, and Regaining Health
Despite the $13 billion corporate food industry, 70 percent of the world’s food is grown by families, peasants, and Indigenous farmers. We are those people, and today when we return to our farms and our seeds, we take our place in history. In a time when agro-biodiversity has crashed and world food systems are filled with poisons, our seeds remain, and they return. These are our stories: stories of love and stories of hope.If 70 percent of the world's food is grown outside the corporate food industry, and, in the US, most family farmers depend on outside income to survive, could this not be one of the most egregious failures of our current capitalist system, our political system, and our agricultural economy? Are we not adding upper stories to a shaky house of cards? Are we but arguing about what color to paint the deck chairs on the Titanic, before we rearrange them? Isn't our entire food system leaving us in a potentially very vulnerable position vis a vis our food security? You might want to think about these questions between now and November 2020.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation FrontLove the quick profit, the annual raise,vacation with pay. Want moreof everything ready-made. Be afraidto know your neighbors and to die.And you will have a window in your head.Not even your future will be a mysteryany more. Your mind will be punched in a cardand shut away in a little drawer.When they want you to buy somethingthey will call you. When they want youto die for profit they will let you know.So, friends, every day do somethingthat won’t compute. Love the Lord.Love the world. Work for nothing.Take all that you have and be poor.Love someone who does not deserve it.Denounce the government and embracethe flag. Hope to live in that freerepublic for which it stands.Give your approval to all you cannotunderstand. Praise ignorance, for what manhas not encountered he has not destroyed.Ask the questions that have no answers.Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.Say that your main crop is the forestthat you did not plant,that you will not live to harvest.Say that the leaves are harvestedwhen they have rotted into the mold.Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.Put your faith in the two inches of humusthat will build under the treesevery thousand years.Listen to carrion — put your earclose, and hear the faint chatteringof the songs that are to come.Expect the end of the world. Laugh.Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyfulthough you have considered all the facts.So long as women do not go cheapfor power, please women more than men.Ask yourself: Will this satisfya woman satisfied to bear a child?Will this disturb the sleepof a woman near to giving birth?Go with your love to the fields.Lie easy in the shade. Rest your headin her lap. Swear allegianceto what is nighest your thoughts.As soon as the generals and the politicoscan predict the motions of your mind,lose it. Leave it as a signto mark the false trail, the wayyou didn’t go. Be like the foxwho makes more tracks than necessary,some in the wrong direction.Practice resurrection.
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