Betsy
At 10:57 AM 5/17/98 -0500, you wrote:
>CSAs and other arrangements between local growers and local consumers most
>certainly have a lot of merit ... but not everywhere, not for everyone, not
>for every situation. Just because you have a great hammer, it doesn't
>necessarily follow that every problem in the world is a nail. The attempt
>to claim that the world would be a much happier place if communities were
>simply integrated into geographically local agricultural cooperatives is
>naive or worse. I believe that it is disruptive to other attempts to build
>community on many different levels -- levels that are definitely NOT
>geographically local. At some point, someone needs to inject a tiny dose
>of sanity into what seems to be an ideologically zealous and narrow
>discussion.
>
>I live in an area where I am surrounded by family farming operations -- and
>all of our families have known each other for more than a hundred years
>(probably much more if you consider that our immigrant ancestors settled
>around people who they knew). Part of my motivation for being engaged in
>sustainable agriculture is that I would like to help these people who are
>my neighbors, friends and, in many cases, relatives.
>
>Read my earlier post again ... and try to drop your ideological baggage
>before assessing my motives, okay? There are farms and farmplaces and
>farmland everywhere I look. I cannot see or hear evidence of a city from
>my farm except for the distant grain elevator about seven miles away. I
>KNOW exactly what the outcome of attempting to market produce locally is in
>this region ... my knowledge of the market is based on over ten years in
>the market. It is not based on what I've read in my favorite magazine or
>bullshit I've heard about from friends down at the campus coffeehouse or
>what I'd really like to believe or even what I know works in a very
>different economic / social / cultural environments.
>
>My customers were not affluent enough to be able to afford any price
>premium and I certainly didn't ask for it. (Most of them were widows
>living in small rural towns on a Social Security check.) They also simply
>did not care about whether or not something was organic or not (but they
>definitely didn't like even one thistle in "their" asparagus patch and
>didn't much care about my explanations that a few weeds were going to be
>part of an organic operation ... because they knew that "you could use a
>little squirt of that Ortho WeedBeGone to kill those things." You can be
>as judgmental as you want, but you just gotta smile and bear it when even
>your great aunt's friends tell you something like that.) Change in
>attitudes takes a long time ... but in the mean time, you gotta pay the
>bills.
>
>CSAs will not work here until the economy is more diversified and vibrant
>than it already is. Industry, commerce, and trade will need to raise the
>levels of economic affluence to the point where people can afford to be
>much more concerned and educated about issues like nutrition and
>environment. The point is to do what you can do to ensure that economic
>growth is done in an ecologically sustainable fashion. To do that, you
>need to work with what you have ... not with what you would like to have.
>
>Wes Jackson writes about becoming "native to this place." I think I am
>finally beginning to understand what that involves. It has very little to
>do with preachiness and ideology -- but it has a lot to do with principles
>and values and faith. Ideology is more about making excuses for failures
>and judging what others are doing (i.e., big supermarkets are evil, large
>farms are evil, the USDA is evil, global trade is evil). Principles,
>values, and faith are more about action, forgiveness, healing, and solutions.
>
>
>
>
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