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Non-Tech : Farming -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mcg404 who wrote (1082)	5/7/2008 10:47:41 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 4444

I'm not totally sure what you mean by "American style". The main issue raised was moving away from peasant/sustenance farming to a somewhat larger scale. Nothing particularly American about that, much of the world has done this and benefited by it. There was some mention of GM crops, is that the objection, or what makes the particular issue "American style". Colliers prescription is foolish because american style ag depends on cheap energy Not really. Food is more expensive with more expensive energy, but it can still be produced with higher yields and more effciency, when you move to a larger scale, even if fertilizer and fuel costs go up. That's true even of actual "American style" agriculture, but in addition to that there is no need for a move to higher scale farming activities to have to follow American practices in any exact way. As for the Cuba diet, that wasn't a diet plan or any kind of choice, that was a food shortage. A reduction of food intake can be healthy, for someone who is overweight, or someone on a 3000 calorie a day diet without a very high level of exercise, but many Africans (and people in other very poor countries), already have both low food intake, and poor security for the amount they do get. Reducing their demand does amount to going very hungry at best, and could easily amount to starving them. And having a bunch of small farmers spend most of their time farming, blocks non-farm development, because the labor is used up on the farms and isn't free for other purposes. Would you have the US go back to having 90% of the population involved in agriculture instead of 2 or 3%? If so you would have the US move back to what we would now consider poverty. Or if its just Africa, or just third world countries, than you would condemn them to stay in poverty.