Comments Podchef has made

  • Same Old Song

    Pangolin,

    As a member of an Agriculture Resource Committee working to preserve dwindling farmland and agricultural significant areas and creating markets and opportunities for young--and old--farmers I hear your riff often. No land/capital/access/housing/etc for the young farmer wannabe. I should know. I was singing this song 20 years ago.

    The rise in developments, ranchettes, farmettes and the realtor's wet dream of selling a country-life style to people whose horticultural expertise is killing Easter lillies or spider plants is gobbling up prime agricultural land at an unprecedented extent. Land values where I live are in the 10's of thousands per acre. While there is an educated community who believes they support good food choices and local farmers, they are in majority, fickle consumers. Support and markets access are far below what they need to be to have a sustainable local farming economy.

    What I've found is most young farmers who've done their internship or college eco-ag programs are burning to get out there and farm. To create their own CSA empires. But slow and steady wins the race. Sure working 4 1/4 acre plots on opposite ends of town is hard work, but it's still an acre. An acre can produce a lot of food and make it's farmer enough money to buy more land in time. Bootstrapping is key. I couldn't/wouldn't run livestock if I had to afford permanent fences on land I don't own. Temporary fences and a lot of graft get me where I'm going.

    The key is skill building. Patience. With crashing property prices, peak oil, and the tendency for the industrial-ag complex to implode there will be farmland available or certainly more land to farm. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who have land which sits fallow who would love to get their own vegetables or meat but can't figure out how. Enterprising young farmers need to meet this challenge. I would gladly grow vegetables in a 1/2 dozen backyards I didn't own with the rent being produce and the profit from sales going towards my own land. Such arrangements may become commonplace soon.

    As for 20 years in the future. . . those soft, fat urbanites too lazy to leave their xbox, cable tv and take-away to think about farming will be a thing of the past. They will either have perished through ineptitude or have changed with the times and taken control of their lives and begun to grow some of their own food or even find they want to grow food for others. The future is now. Those who wait for hand-outs, government aide, grants, or other free money will find out the heavy cost. A hoe, watering can and some seeds cost less than an hour's minimum-wage. Find some vacant land and get farming.

    You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

    On 'I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollan about food' posted 1 year, 1 month ago 11 Responses

  • Freedom to Farm

    For the past 60 years or more the small family farm system which was the backbone of the American food system has been steamrollered by Farm Policy, the rise of the commodity agriculture hydra and globalist corporate agribusiness. None of these things in themselves set about to topple agriculture but together they have done a pretty good job of destroying the ability for small family farms to survive and for anyone to get into farming on any scale they choose.

    Something like 70% of American Food is produced by 10% of "Farmers"--more like large scale commodity driven corporations. We import over 1/2 the food eaten in this country--80% of seafood and over 40% of the beef alone. How has this helped the American farmer? Nafta, Gatt, Free Trade, the WTO and the IMF have done as much to ruin American (and just about every other country's) agriculture as it has done to ruin manufacturing in the US.

    Combine this with an intrinsic lack of understanding among American consumers as to where their food comes from, how it is grown and how important it is to pay farmers a fare price and we have "devaluing" of farming. Not that people actually go out of their way to denigrate farmers--the media does enough of this though--they just don't consider them, or have learned to loath them all because of the 10% which pollute the air, land and sea.

    And now, as if land prices, fuel prices, corporate control of everything from market access to vertically integrated operations weren't enough to deal with, the USDA--an agency set up to benefit American agriculture and to support farmers efforts to produce food--has turned against the small, sustainable farmer in favor of criminal, wasteful, irresponsible Agribusiness. Most of this is due to the revolving door policy of Washington.

    In the past 5 years, and maybe even longer than that, the USDA has set about to make it more and more difficult to be a farmer. They have imposed ridiculous laws, created an unnecessary bureaucracy and are wasting taxpayer money on a ponzi-like scheme which benefits Corporations and large-scale producers at the expense of all other farmers and consumers. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is purely about lining the pockets of those who told the USDA to instigate it. It amounts to a license to farm, a triple tax on the food system and a big-bother system of watching who has what. Pedophiles are less monitored than Farmers will be under NAIS.

    In one of the USDA's more infamous documents on NAIS they claim that their operatives should treat all farmers as if they have a 6th grade education.  If that is the agency which is supposed to support and aide farming's opinion, no wonder many people I know look down on farmers. Sure, many farmers are less than Mensa candidates, many are Mensa geniuses. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to farm, but it does take talent, knowledge and willingness to work miserable hours in all weather to earn next to nothing.

    As for small family farms not being able to feed the world--I hear and read that a lot. It usually comes from those opposed to organics, raw milk,  sustainability, you name it. If the organization denies Peak Oil, they probably have people who think small family farms can't feed a region, let alone the world. Their solution is to do away with farms all together and import our food from somewhere else. They obviously don't realize that 40% of the worlds food is grown on farms smaller than 6 acres.

    You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

    On Much depends on finding a new generation to put dinner on the table posted 1 year, 6 months ago 10 Responses

  • The Weekend Farmer

    A great post on a subject dear to my heart.

    I believe there is a whole culture of "Weekend Farmers" out there--those who cultivate land from Friday night to late Sunday evening, or perhaps Monday morning as they pick something for lunch on their way back to the 9-to-5. These people garden/farm because it feeds their soul, their bodies and their neighbors. Raising food is in ones blood somehow, no matter how you are raised. Sure you can learn to grow food and succeed. But others are driven to it by forces beyond.

    But our society doesn't reward Farmers in general, let alone "Weekend Farmers". If you have less than 50 acres you're a "gardener" or a "hobby farmer". If you have more than 50 acres and grow crops or livestock you are "dirty", "smelly", a "polluter", or worse yet--for 90% of impoverished growers--"greedy". But who else toils for next to nothing to grow food? Who else stays off any sort of rest, relaxation, or expense for 8 months of the year, and then takes time off only during the worst of the seasons? People seem to forget "The Farmer is the one who feeds us all."

    For many of us farming is a lifestyle choice. Weekend, part-time or full time subsistence farmer we enjoy the outdoors, the animals, the people, the freedom which can come with a rural existence. I believe the same can be said of those who religiously grow in allotments. I think it is long overdue to celebrate the "Weekend Farmer" and long past due to stop elevating the "Weekend Warrior" to hero status. Now more than  ever we need swords beat to plow shares.

    You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

    On Linguistic insights into agriculture posted 1 year, 7 months ago 4 Responses

  • Wire ahead

    Jon,
    The point I was trying to make about locomotives is that we don't need any overhead wires--they don't need to be electrified from the grid, they create their own electricity. Train freight is actually still a viable means of haulage. If a sustainable source of biodiesel can be grown which doesn't impact our food system, then trains will continue to be a means of transportation and freight long after long distance road haulage has been priced out of existence. At least until we can come up with something else non-petroleum.

    Now, let's talk about getting a solar panel and electric motor on my tractor so we can keep food affordable. . . .it's being done, but needs to be standardized in retrofit kits to help keep the costs down.

    You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

    On Solving the climate problem will solve the peak oil problem, too posted 1 year, 8 months ago 37 Responses

  • Train Us

    In case most of us have been asleep for the last 30 or so years, most diesel trains ARE electric! No need for tram-way, street car like lines and subway like rails. . . .The diesel engines on trains--and Seattle's ferries--are there to generate electricity which drives huge electric motors. You gain more fuel efficiency--the engines only run more when more load is required and idle much of the time--and you gain control--an electric motor responds quicker to commands.

    The problem I see with developing alternative fuels, or agricultures is they are all dreamed of on a petroleum based paradigm. Hybrid cars still require plastics, lubricants, fuel--all petroleum based. Huge towering skyscraper tall, vertical farms still require buildings, fittings, electricity--all based on fossil fuels in the near future. Ethanol and other bio-fuels, propane, natural gas, etc all require petroleum to make a reality. Our mad dash to replace oil and lower emissions has led to the biggest spike in both.

    One thing you never hear in a discussion of peak oil/not peak oil is the point in which the military locks up supplies for its own use. They burn through tons of fuel a minute in completely inefficient vehicles with no practical plan to rectify any time soon. As supplies dwindle the military will control it all for its own use--a pre-peak to the peak.

    We're about to find out what this will mean when truckers can no longer afford to fill their tanks for a long haul--just look at what's been going on in Argentina with the farmer's strike. We need to lobby for better and easier means of developing local economies and sustainable agriculture models to reduce consumption while we re-think what our transportation and fuel needs will be.

    You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

    On Solving the climate problem will solve the peak oil problem, too posted 1 year, 8 months ago 37 Responses