Sep 23, 2010 @ 07:20AM PTLeslie Goldman
Please read these Plant Your Dream Blogs



DEATH OF A FARM

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1692198


CAN WE AFFORD TO HAVE FDA ON THE FARM?

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1693251


The story of the loss of La Milpa Organica Farm in San Diego needs to be told to the national and international people of the world. This farm is shutting down due to breaking laws that are out of the beat with nature.



Leslie Goldman

Your Enchanted Gardener


Sustainable Food:Sustainable Food
http://food.change.org/blog/view/is_our_agricultural_system_about_to_collapse


Is Our Agricultural System About to Collapse?
by Kristen Ridley

September 19, 2010 07:03 AM (PT) Topics:
Climate Change, Food Security
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I've written before about what exactly it means to have an unsustainable agricultural system: If our current system doesn't change, then one day it will collapse, and millions — if not billions — will starve. This collapse won't have been unprecedented; it may, in fact, be an almost inevitable part of a cycle of growth and devastation that humanity has been experiencing since the agricultural revolution, as described in a new book, Empires of Food, by the academic Evan D. G. Fraser and the journalist Andrew Rimas.

The book analyzes the agricultural system in places and time periods from Mesopotamia to Rome to the Middle Ages and beyond. It chronicles a disturbingly reliable pattern of agricultural innovation, expansion, and trade that accompanies periods of favorable weather (just as we've experienced for the past half-century) and then the horrific implosion of the food system (and the civilization that built it) that always follows because of soil erosion, overpopulation, and climate change. Economic troubles caused by unsound banking practices also usually figure prominently in the demise. Does any of this sound eerily familiar?

I hate to sound like a fearmonger, but it's exceedingly difficult to read this book, even as clearly written and level-headed as it is, and not come away wanting to shout like a crazy person that "The End is Near!" It is equal parts fascinating, depressing, and terrifying. As time and again the same historical pattern is described, it's impossible not to see the frightening similarities to our current system.

Just like our modern system, the patterns described in the book begin with the same technological advancements that enable fewer people to grow more food, freeing (or forcing) populations into the cities. Food begins to be traded globally as a commodity, and the food system becomes more consolidated. The land must be farmed more intensively and the soil begins to erode, a problem that is addressed through expansion or technological advancement, but which is never really solved.

From there the instability only grows. Lack of diversification? Check. A smaller and smaller number of people growing the food that urban populations rely on? Check. Agricultural control in the hands of a small number of processors? Check. Increased irrigation leading to soil salinization? Check. Imperial expansion to seek new fertile ground? Check. Imminent climate change? Check. Failure to store excess food? Check. In addition to these familiar problems, there's the fact that the technological advances that our particular society has come to rely on almost all involve fossil fuels. Many experts agree that we have already surpassed "peak oil," and it will only become more scarce and more expensive as time goes on. Rather than build up our soils organically, we have opted instead to prop up falling fertility with finite chemical fertilizers, and when that fuel runs out (as it may have already begun to do), the results are not going to be pretty. When one knows the history of how food systems rise and fall, it's hard to see how we could possibly be setting ourselves up to fail any more quickly.

The time we have in which to change our fate may be shorter than we realize. Rising food prices is the first sign of trouble, and after a half century of falling food costs, they have started to rise again, often sharply. In an interview with Salon, Fraser said that our food system now "looks a lot like Rome in the year 250. " For those who need a quick history lesson, that's about when the Roman Empire began its great decline, and that's about when the global climate began a shift to colder temperatures. What we face now is the opposite problem of global warming, the effects of which we've already begun to see, and as Fraser points out, "either end of the thermometer is problematic for a farmer." I haven't yet gotten to another recent book, The Coming Famine by Julian Cribb, but I'm sure it will offer me no more comfort. It pointedly describes the same message, "The era of cheap, abundant food is over."

Fraser, Rimas, and Cribb provide no easy solutions, just the same common sense ones that those in the sustainable food movement espouse: We need more small farmers supplying a more diversified array of foods to a primarily local consumer base. Food subsidies should be eliminated and prices should reflect a food's real costs, including the environmental ones. Most importantly, farmers need to be using sustainable agricultural practices. If a practice is not building the soil instead of degrading or eroding it, then it is only contributing to our ultimate failure. Unless we change our farming practices soon to reflect this reality, that's exactly where we are headed.

Photo credit: Le Grande Portage


Kristen Ridley is an artist, foodie, and aspiring grass farmer who earned her Bachelor's Degree at the University of Southern California.

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Sep 19, 2010 @ 10:57AM PTKatherine Gustafson
Great piece, Kristen. That book is on the top of my list.

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Sep 19, 2010 @ 02:25PM PTL.S. hope
This year, I began test-growing a variety of plants, using sustainable/organic growing methods. I thought this would provide a solution, until I read that ALL water rights were being called into question by the E.P.A.

I know they've included aquifer depletion and replenishment as a key target. I suppose this means, that even if I were able to collect and store a large quantity of my rain-water, I would be in violation of the "replenishment," of their aquifers.

Needless to say, "I don't buy it." From NAFTA to subsidies, I believe our government/U.N. wants to control all of the world resources. If someone could give me an example that would prove otherwise -- please do so. But every farm bill/regulation, that has been implemented in the past 20 years, favors solely Ag. monopolies; (the one controlling our government and the worlds food supply).






 

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