Re: Organic Farming Economics
Gaoussou Diarra (gmd@ahabs.wisc.edu)
Fri, 12 Mar 1999 10:05:05 -0600
Hello there!
I, too, am a new member of this group. Your ideas are refreshing in that
they give the impression that you're concerned about the future of the
prisoners. More often than not, the inmates are looked at with disdain and
treated such that true recovery becomes near impossible. Your proposal of
tapping the work force of prisoners seem reasonable in that working in
close contact with the earth has a healing power and might very well lead
into a complete recovery from crime. However, I am not sure about the
logistics and details of this operation. How do you prevent the
prisoners/laborers from running away? What are the risks that the farmers
and their families take by accepting the inmates? How much should they be
paid? Should they be returned to prison at the end of every day?
You wrote,
>I'm a fairly new participant in the world of organic and sustainable
>farming and this list server has signifigantly contributed to my
>education. I've surmised that organic agriculture is so expensive because
>the labor is so expensive. There is a free labor source waiting to be
>tapped--prisons. I know that many prisoners are contractecd out by
>construction crews, but these are mostly males. Male and female prisoners
>would be suited well for agricultural work.
>
>Much of the prison population is illiterate, farm work is a learned low
>skill profession that does not require literacy. Individuals would be
>outside growing food which would provide emmence psychological and self
>esteem benefits as well as practical job skills for their futures after
>prison. The United States is increasingly experiencing a bulge in the
>prison population, obviously the deterent factor of prison life is not
>working. It is a cyclical problem which requires major social and
>political overhaul. I have visited prisons and attended programs run by
>the inmates. With increasing budget cuts, prisoners have less to do
>inside of prisons and are becoming bored and angry. What happens when
>they are released? How are they any better off?
>
>I know there are several programs that work with prisoners to create
>gardens and some agriculture, like those projects out in San Francisco run
>by Cathrine Sneed. I'm curious if there are any farmers out there, who
>contract out to prisoners, and how open growers are to this idea.
>Prison labor for construction may have it's merits, but you can't eat a
>highway.
>
>Shoshanah Inwood
>
>
>
>
>To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
>"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
>To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
>"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
>
>All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
>http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail