Re: Organic Farming Economics Responce

Alex McGregor (waldenfarm@sprintmail.com)
Fri, 12 Mar 1999 21:06:59 -0500

Ah, but Loren, are you willing to pay 4 times as much for your food so
farmers and farm workers can make minimum wage or slightly above? THE
largest problem (imho) in keeping farms and farmland is that Americans want
to pay the least for their food, whether from a local farmer or offshore
operations of agribusiness.

Loren Muldowney wrote:

> > I was looking to gage the responsiveness of participants
> > in the field of organic/sustainable agriculture.
>
> I see that very few will respond at all.
>
> > You object to
> > supporting those who have chosen a "criminal lifestyle",
>
> NO, I don't, and I didn't say that. I object to allowing others to
> "save money" by using powerless people who have no choice. I object to
> allowing others to escape appropriate costs and to profit by paying less
> than would be a reasonable pay for the labor involved. I think this
> further distorts the relationship between the price paid for any product
> or commodity and the currently "externalized" costs which manifest
> themselves as pollution, soil erosion, and indeed the distruction of
> society which clearly increases and encourages criminal behavior and
> marginalizes people and gives them no real options.
> For these reasons, I rule it both unsustainble and not organic.
>
> "Cheating" of any kind undermines real valuation
> processes and feedback to price setting. Cheating by using contract
> prison labor rather than farm owner and employee labor is no different
> in principle from cheating by using "synthetic miracle stuff" on an
> organic farm,
> instead of actually going to the trouble of building permanent soil
> fertility.
>
> > I am curious why you think that training prisoners to do farm
> > labor is so wrong,
>
> Please quote me if you really think I said that. What YOU did say was
> "There is a free labor source waiting to be tapped" and you proposed the
> use of this "free" labor as a solution to the economics of a somewhat
> labor intensive industry. I don't believe in "free labor," only that
> some people don't get paid.
>
> LM
>
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