When Profit Abandons Stewardship
-
I guess we forgot the lessons of the Dust Bowl. As agriculture continues its march from family farms to corporate ag companies, you see some bad practices cropping up.
Land is leased instead of owned by the farmer. When the farmer doesn't own the land, he gives no thought to sustainable farming practices. Erosion abatement practices aren't followed like they should be. Fields are often plowed right to the road edges or fence lines. Or trees are cut out of fence lines to make bigger fields...When you're in the turning row, you ain't making money.
You start taking out all the trees, you affect the weather cycle. Speaking of weather cycles, I've been reading about the aquifer in the Midwest and how it is shrinking due to population growth and rainfall changes.
In corporate farming, the green eye-shade people rule all, but accountants make lousy farmers. As Americans, we have some of the cheapest (as a percentage of income spent) food in the world. There may come a day when we wished we had paid a few cents more for a better product, from somebody taking care of his land and passing it on to the next generation.
-
I guess we forgot the lessons of the Dust Bowl. As agriculture continues its march from family farms to corporate ag companies, you see some bad practices cropping up.
Land is leased instead of owned by the farmer. When the farmer doesn't own the land, he gives no thought to sustainable farming practices. Erosion abatement practices aren't followed like they should be. Fields are often plowed right to the road edges or fence lines. Or trees are cut out of fence lines to make bigger fields...When you're in the turning row, you ain't making money.
You start taking out all the trees, you affect the weather cycle. Speaking of weather cycles, I've been reading about the aquifer in the Midwest and how it is shrinking due to population growth and rainfall changes.
In corporate farming, the green eye-shade people rule all, but accountants make lousy farmers. As Americans, we have some of the cheapest (as a percentage of income spent) food in the world. There may come a day when we wished we had paid a few cents more for a better product, from somebody taking care of his land and passing it on to the next generation.
@Jolly Agree with what you said there.
-
The tree huggers fight for sustainability, for the the environment, for the climate. Support them.
-
An opinion on tree huggers...They often don't have a clue about their protest of the moment. Take Great, for example. Poor lost soul has no clue how a modern economy works or why so many of the things she proposed were un-doable or impractical.
In the case of a farmer or rancher, the good ones know they have to take care of their land, because it is their livelihood. If they screw it up by overgrazing, by applying too many chemicals, by not rotating crops or letting field lie fallow, by letting their precious topsoil be eroded...Well, they're going broke. They've got a longer view than the corporation, whose people are one bad financial report from hitting the bricks.
-
An opinion on tree huggers...They often don't have a clue about their protest of the moment. Take Great, for example. Poor lost soul has no clue how a modern economy works or why so many of the things she proposed were un-doable or impractical.
In the case of a farmer or rancher, the good ones know they have to take care of their land, because it is their livelihood. If they screw it up by overgrazing, by applying too many chemicals, by not rotating crops or letting field lie fallow, by letting their precious topsoil be eroded...Well, they're going broke. They've got a longer view than the corporation, whose people are one bad financial report from hitting the bricks.
@Jolly said in When Profit Abandons Stewardship:
An opinion on tree huggers...They often don't have a clue about their protest of the moment. Take Great, for example. Poor lost soul has no clue how a modern economy works or why so many of the things she proposed were un-doable or impractical.
In the case of a farmer or rancher, the good ones know they have to take care of their land, because it is their livelihood. If they screw it up by overgrazing, by applying too many chemicals, by not rotating crops or letting field lie fallow, by letting their precious topsoil be eroded...Well, they're going broke. They've got a longer view than the corporation, whose people are one bad financial report from hitting the bricks.
That's what organic farming used to be about. It used to be about crop sustainability, not necessarily the healthiness of the food. It got weird when the left hijacked it.