> About "yobs"- perhaps you're not a Clash fan and missed the reference.
> It's not us and them- you're reading too much into my words...
and
>...I wouldn't dream of "trying to run" someone out of business.
>That's an act of violence. Farmers are better off cooperating and
>realizing there's plenty of market to go around. You'll have to find
>someone else to fight with- I'm not interested. I am interested in
>what benefits my community as a whole. That's why I teach others how
>I grow and market. I would rather live in a community where there
>are so many organic farmers that I would have to quit farming, find
>a job so I could buy all this fresh, nutritious food . It's about
>enriching the community rather than hoarding information and money.
>And you'll have to look to your own soul for the answer about what
>is evil.
And now, Anita's comment:
Perhaps it is not an "us against them" question; perhaps it is a "me
vs. us" question. Whether tis nobler to be greedy, competitive, and
self centered (me, me, me, MEEE!), or whether tis nobler to work for
the good of the community (us). Well, at some point we may realize
that we can't do the former without doing the latter. I'm all for
efficiency, good management, and prosperity, but the idea that it has
to come at the expense of other responsible, hardworking,
well-meaning people (as was suggested in Dale's letter) is just
absurd. It is equally absurd to assume that prosperity can only come
at the expense of ecosystems and the welfare of farm animals. It
has become a paradigm, however -- a "truth" that we take for granted.
The founding fathers of this paradigm are often thought of as Darwin
or Adam Smith (of "invisible hand" fame), but I don't think that
either of these fellows imagined where there followers might go with
their ideas. Thank to John Ikerd, I offer you the following
quotations from Smith's _Wealth of Nations_:
"Servants, labourers, and workmenof different kinds, make up the far
greater part of every great political society. No society can surely
be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the
members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they
who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have
such a share of the produce of their own labour to be themselves
tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. (p. 36)
He goes on to say, "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a
few simple operations, of which the effects too are perhaps always
the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his
understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients
for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses,
therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as
stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to
become." (p. 350)
I can't imagine that Dale or anyone else wants to live in a world of
stupid and ignorant people (or much less be one). When we do our
best at whatever we do, we work for our own self interest, as Smith
encouraged us to do, but even Smith says that the goal of all this is
work toward "employment most suitable to the interest of society"
(p.311).
By rejecting most poisons and contaminents and working toward the
goal of soil fertiility and sustainabilty, organic agriculture is
already taking the first step toward changing the current paradigm of
exploitation=prosperity. There are still many who say that people
can't be fed without destruction to soils, waters, and air, just as
there are people who still think that one cannot run a prosperous
business without doing damage to those around him. I applaud both
Alex and Greg for taking a stand against this sort of mentality, and
I support the idea that organic agriculture is one in which not only
ecosystems and farm systems are protected, but one in which families
and people in general can be respected and allowed to thrive, not
just survive as stupid and ignorant dolts of a country run by the
Tysons, ADMs and Monsontos of the world.
Anita
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
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