Re: [ox-en] Agriculture for the GPL society
- From: Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:41:42 -0700 (PDT)
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Dear Magius:
Are you sure you not setting up a 'false alternative' between industrial agriculture and what you call 'romantic' agriculture?
Here's an interesting quote to put that in perspective, by introducing the concept of intermediate and appropriate technologies:
In the blog, he refers to the false alternative of setting no-tech organic agriculture against highly mechanized industrial agriculture, as if there were no intermediary models. I?m quoting:
?First of all, he sets up a false dichotomy between ?intensively mechanized? chemical agriculture and spadework. What about the possibility of appropriate-scale mechanization: i.e., the use of a simple rototiller? They won?t throw you out of the organic club for using it. Second, even without any mechanization at all, there?s a lot (really a lot) less spadework involved in intensive raised bed techniques than in spading up a field for row crops. One double-digging job for a bed can last for years, with only U-bar cultivation subsequently, if you?re careful not to compact the soil. Third, the vacant space in even a built-up city is sufficient to meet a surprising proportion of people?s total needs, what with rooftop gardens, vacant lots, small yards, and the like. John Jeavons, through years of experimentation, has managed to get the amount of space needed to produce an average person?s diet (meat included) down to 4,000 sq. ft. Fourth, from the point of
view of labor-time, such techniques are probably a net plus for most people, if you compare the amount of time it takes to grow the stuff to the amount of time you?d have to work to earn it. Borsodi calculated, in Flight From the City, that the total cost of labor and supplies to grow and can one?s own tomatoes was about a third less than the grocery store price.?
magius <gmagius gmail.com> wrote: 2006/6/25, Thomas Kalka :
It's a prison, locking out all nature to produce food for humans.
If I remember well on this mailing list there was already a discussion
about this: the "romantic" vs. the techological approach to food
production.
Probably the "food production machines" are "plants' prisons" but
could produce big quantities of food in a more sane way than in the
traditional "romantic" crops' way production, because is possible to
deeply control all the production factors (nutrients, water, heat, and
soon)....and the machines can be put one up to the other: you can have
skyscraper agriculture for places with land scarcity!
IMHO the problem is to don't confuse need with choice: this
techological agriculture probably is what is needed to feed all the
humanity in a cheap and sane way. when we'll have food for all, then
we can think to play manual agriculture on free time, simply for joy.
m
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