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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (106262)	6/18/2005 11:27:07 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Factory farming is a pretty new phenomenon. There really is no historical precedent for it before the nineteenth century. True. It basically came along with the whole concept of transition from a craft economy to an industrial economy. Before the nineteenth century, there were no factories as we know of them. There were no assembly lines. Animals were raised, sweaters were knitted, chairs were made, wheat was grown and harvested, basically by hand in small units. During the 19th century, this changed in virtually all aspects of human endeavor. Products were produced in huge quantities with much less hand work and much more machine labor. Grains, cotton, etc. were grown and harvested on larger and larger farms. Industrialization changed everything. Including crop farming. Including animal farming. You may think this is good, you may think it is bad. But it is. There have been some pockets of resistance, some individuals who have bucked the tide, who have started small craft shops making furniture, weaving cloth, making paper and books, the old fashioned way. And having to charge much higher amounts for it, and finding some people able and willing to pay for it. The same is true of both crop farming (I am seeing an increasing number of small market gardeners in my community) and animal farming. I applaud these individuals, and when I can I patronize them. But they will always, at least I think for the foreseeable future, be a minor eddy in the stream of progress. There is simply no way that our society can go back to the farming or animal husbandry techniques of the nineteenth century. And let's keep in mind that in that era a huge number of people even in very civilized countries were going to bed hungry most nights. I am not interested, frankly, in going back to that.