>If you are a farmer who earns his/her living from the land it *does*
>matter if you make a profit. There is no way around this. Profit is
>the number 1 key to sustainability. Greg is exactly right! As a full
Well spoken, from a U.S. farmer. I am not a farmer myself but my wife
comes from a family of subsistence farmers, she still farms part-time
and I work with subsistence farmers (ie, farmers who consume much of
their own harvest) as a social activist. For many of them (and, I
presume, for subsistence farmers in developing countries), the main
concern is enough food for the family, and some surplus for cash and
other family needs. Several hundreds years back, those who farmed
sustainably probably didn't even know what "profit" meant.
The idea of making a profit probably came with the introduction of
unsustainable methods, based on monocultures and external inputs like
oil-driven machines, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, when
industry taught farmers to treat agriculture like a "business" and
farming was done on a cash basis (you buy your inputs including seeds;
you sell your harvest; you buy your food and most everything else).
>time farmer I share his frustration at the posters on this list who
>don't understand this. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we can
Probably because America hardly has subsistence farmers anymore, so
you don't understand them either. But they are still very much around,
especially in the developing world. And most especially in tropical
areas like the Philippines, where it is easier to live sustainably as
a subsistence farmer because we have no winter and crops can be grown
the whole year round.
Perhaps in America, it is as you say and farmers do have to make
profits their number 1 concern to be sustainable. Just consider that
there are many other farmers for whom this is not so. The subsistence
farmers' concern is surplus. Unfortunately, in America, you can have a
lot of surplus and still no profit (so we've heard that your farmers
would sometimes simply throw their surplus milk away or let their
harvest rot in the fields). I do find it hard to understand.
Roberto Verzola
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