> There have been several cutting posts regarding Steven Blank's article
> in the recent issue of "The Futuist". None has contributed a single
> counterpoint
My immediate thought upon reading Mr. Blank's idea was "we had better
maintain a large standing army". Whether one is a proponent of sustainable
agriculture or of the system we have now is irrelevant. To be largely
dependent on crops grown outside of our borders is to court disaster;
remember the oil crisis?
Further, his reasoning assumes that there will always be a large pool of
underpaid workers. What happens if and when that is no longer the case? It
also assumes that petroleum products (or some reasonable facsimile) will
always be available in sufficient quantity to allow the shipping of goods.
But what if they aren't?
This individual is talking about placing total or near total control of our
food supply in other people's hands. That's really scary to me. If we
don't have enough clothing, we can patch. If we don't have enough gas,
there are ways to cut back. But if we don't have enough food, or if the
price of that food is beyond what most people can afford, we starve to death
.We cannot just dismiss our food as another commodity and farming as another
business.
Sasha
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