hello lion,
>I have made a claim that people can obtain a decent median
>livlihood from microfarming on 2-to-5 acres of land in decent
>climates. This claim is made in a set of essays, with additional
>details, also archived at the following URLs:
let's first define: what do you understand by the word
"decent"? not everyone likes to live like thoreau at "walden
pond". while reading it i first thought "what a nice, uncomplicated
and decent life". when i'd finished reading the book, i was even
more impressed - until i realized, that this guy nowhere hadn't
mentioned a woman, a girlfriend or any children of his own in his
hut or the book. now THAT WAS decent and certainly TOO decent for
me and maybe to a lot of others. what thoreau also did not mention,
was an internet provider. if you can get a really cheap provider
in europe, his annual bill would cost you the harvest from 2-3
acres of grade 1 wheat or the rice mentioned below. while i
certainly might life happily ever after without the net, the first
two option would be out of any discussion. farmers are no monks.
and for me a decent living for a farmer means, that he gets the same
money for his work as a tailor, a drugstore owner, a soldier or
any other professional for the same time of work (did i mention
jack welch ? no ? ok, let's forget about him and the discussion
about his real worth).
i know exactly 6 people, who can make more than 30.000$
from 2 or 3 acre, of which 5 are owners of vineyards for
extremely high-priced grands-crus and one indead is a farmer, who
visits me irregulary to let me have a look under
the microscope for some strange problem of his plants. he grows
something so special and rare, that i do assume, he's the only one
in the whole europe. he would probably kill me, if i would tell
anyone else about it. ANY second grower would reduce his income by
one half and people got killed for less than 15.000$ a year (which
would be a lot less decent, but agreed: a lot of people in
industrialized countries have to live on that or
are satisfied with it)
>I do hereby swear under the penalty of perjury that I have not
>knowingly published any false or misleading claims in any of
>these pages.
any lawyer could tell you, that you can swear whatever you like
without risking ANY penalty, provided you are not under oath in a
courtroom. you can swear by e-mail, that you are the famous
harun-al-rashid or the REAL jfk and the ftc couldn't care less.
do the same thing under oath in a courtroom and - well results
are far less predictable and run from a fine over prison up to a
straight-jacket. so this sentence of yours at least was
absolutely useless. either people trust and believe you or the
don't.
>Experimental results have confirmed that a family of four can
>eat a whole (vegetarian) diet from one-sixth of an acre of land.
you did not mention for HOW LONG..
>This can be multiplied to 24 persons can be sustained on one
>whole acre of land. My claim that 30 customers of a microfarmer
>can be supplied on 2-to-5 acres is conservatively within this
>scientifically verified parameter.
assumption : paddy rice on a total of 5 acres for 30 customers
2500 kcal / person/ day
* 365 days / y
* 30 customers
= 27,375,000 kcal total needed
/ 5 acres
= 5,475,000 kcal/acre needed
/ 3,540 kcal / kg rice
= 1546 kg rice/acre/y
anything wrong with that calculation ?? guess, no.
well, you find me surprised. in fact this could be harvested under
optimum conditions (although i would not want to live by rice alone
and not even have the money to buy simple clothes. a group of 30
will not offer much variety in exchange.... (someone certainly
wants
to become the chief and some other wants to become an artist, the
3rd a researcher, 27 remaining... no joke, just count the numbers
of professions you are depending on heavily or which you really
do not want to miss)
>One of the claims I have made, based on confirmable personal
>knowledge, is that "Permaculture(tm)" certification is not
>necessarily based on agricultural commerce.
certainly correct. the same goes for the "red cross", "lion's
club", the "GNU" license, then goes over "ben & jerry's" up till
"pepsico". so a trademark is not necessarily based on commerce,
but mostly is.
>Of course I know I have private civil law remedies available to
>me if I feel that my rights have been abridged, but I shouldn't
>have to be suing people all day long because they accuse me of
>false claims or themselves make false claims. Congress told you
>to sue them. That's the law.
on this i have strong doubts (although i'm not sure). in that case
you would need a patent, a trademark isn't enough, as a registered
trademark ONLY protects the NAME, under which you INTEND (you
needn't) to TRADE something. any other might sell or produce the
same product using the same production scheme provided he does not
use your trademark (in rare cases a very similar one) or infringe
any patent accompanied with the process of production. that's the
disadvantage of a trademark, less expensive and less effective. the
advantage: you do not need make an invention (in some countries
a discovery seems to be enough - as can be sadly shown with gene
patents)
klaus
---------------
klaus wiegand
+-[Quote of the day, powered by k. wiegand]---+
| |
| A fool and his money are soon... |
| Hey! Where's my wallet? |
+---------------------------------------------+
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/san/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 11 2000 - 22:02:11 EDT