<![CDATA[Grist - Comment Feed for Moving toward responsible agriculture]]> Grist Comment Feed en Comment #1 by Maywa Montenegro http://www.grist.org/article/the-future-of-the-farm-bill/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:43:04 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/the-future-of-the-farm-bill/1 Candidates on the Farm Bill?

Great post, Peter. I completely agree with your assessment that a sustainable agriculture policy presents an opportunity equal to climate policy in addressing salient ecological issues. On points like scarcity and land degradation, it may even have a greater direct impact. That said, I have very little idea of where our current presidential candidates stand on the farm bill. We've heard--thanks to David and other Grist writers!--a great deal about their energy and climate plans, but what about agriculture? My instinct is that Hillary will continue promote the same harmful WTO policies championed by her husband, but as for the other candidates, who knows? Maybe other readers out there have something to say on this?

]]> Candidates on the Farm Bill?

Great post, Peter. I completely agree with your assessment that a sustainable agriculture policy presents an opportunity equal to climate policy in addressing salient ecological issues. On points like scarcity and land degradation, it may even have a greater direct impact. That said, I have very little idea of where our current presidential candidates stand on the farm bill. We've heard--thanks to David and other Grist writers!--a great deal about their energy and climate plans, but what about agriculture? My instinct is that Hillary will continue promote the same harmful WTO policies championed by her husband, but as for the other candidates, who knows? Maybe other readers out there have something to say on this?

]]> Comment #2 by Peter Donovan http://www.grist.org/article/the-future-of-the-farm-bill/ Tue, 20 Nov 2007 01:05:20 -0800 http://www.grist.org/article/the-future-of-the-farm-bill/2 no one at the helm

Candidates may have positions on some of the shallower issues, but often not the deeper ones. We are conditioned to believe that someone is thinking about this, someone is working on a policy that makes sense, someone has a good policy in their pocket, but I think we all need to face the fact that there is NO ONE AT THE HELM, as Allan Savory noted recently.

This is true not only in politics and policy, but also in science. As global warming forces our attention to the carbon cycle or water cycle, our disciplinary, individualist, thing-oriented science is having a hard time catching up and reorienting itself to processes, relationships, and wholes.

In this situation, the leadership needs to come from the grassroots. This makes for a very difficult situation--those who are considered experts, but who have no real leadership, are then pitted against practical people who are showing new possibilities.

The people who have discovered how to rapidly take carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into soil organic matter (an essential part of any effective reponse to global warming) are not the environmental organizations, not the government, not the NRCS, not USDA, not university scientists.  They are practitioners of various types of alternative agriculture, who have often dissented from the orthodoxies of the various experts. This often poses problems for the experts, who are not usually accustomed to sharing power with people whom they consider nonexperts.

So yes, we face an enormous political challenge. At the same time, we have many many citizens who care deeply about the kinds of lives they and their children will have. There are many, including farmers, who are not happy with the present situation and its possibilities.

managingwholes.net

]]> no one at the helm

Candidates may have positions on some of the shallower issues, but often not the deeper ones. We are conditioned to believe that someone is thinking about this, someone is working on a policy that makes sense, someone has a good policy in their pocket, but I think we all need to face the fact that there is NO ONE AT THE HELM, as Allan Savory noted recently.

This is true not only in politics and policy, but also in science. As global warming forces our attention to the carbon cycle or water cycle, our disciplinary, individualist, thing-oriented science is having a hard time catching up and reorienting itself to processes, relationships, and wholes.

In this situation, the leadership needs to come from the grassroots. This makes for a very difficult situation--those who are considered experts, but who have no real leadership, are then pitted against practical people who are showing new possibilities.

The people who have discovered how to rapidly take carbon out of the atmosphere and turn it into soil organic matter (an essential part of any effective reponse to global warming) are not the environmental organizations, not the government, not the NRCS, not USDA, not university scientists.  They are practitioners of various types of alternative agriculture, who have often dissented from the orthodoxies of the various experts. This often poses problems for the experts, who are not usually accustomed to sharing power with people whom they consider nonexperts.

So yes, we face an enormous political challenge. At the same time, we have many many citizens who care deeply about the kinds of lives they and their children will have. There are many, including farmers, who are not happy with the present situation and its possibilities.

managingwholes.net

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