Great... just turn the "scientists" loose

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

and  see how much damage they'll do trying to artificially improve soils... most likely will ignore common sense and simple, time-honored practices in favor of technology.... that seems to be the pattern they're stuck in

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_on_sc/food_crisis_soil;_ylt=Ave4MEEcdUkRSU3L6v3BwlpH2ocA

[ScottA]

Don't forget all this science is profit driven. Usually the scientists just do what they're told or what they need to do to get the next grant. Common sense doesn't usually play a roll in making money.

[MountainDon]

Don't forget though, that it was soil "scientists" who came up with the then novel ideas of contour plowing sloped ground, and other land management techniques in the dustbowl Oklahoma of the 1930's.





http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX06.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX08.html

[glenn kangiser]

...but part of their solution is commercial fertilizer as a fix, which is part of the problem -- organic additions such as manure, compost, ashes etc are the way to build the soil -- commercial fertilizers make things grow fast at the cost of burning out the  soil,  but the other needs to be done too.

[MountainDon]

My point is simply to make the statement that not all science, and by extension, scientists, is/are evil.

... and to cause some general disruption... 

[glenn kangiser]

There you go, Don.  If you and I didn't always try to take whatever was the opposite side, right or wrong,  everyone would be contented and stop posting.

[MountainDon]

 

Those are impressive dirt storms though, aren't they?

[glenn kangiser]

Beauties.  reminds me of me on the Bobcat.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

You know, my grandparents both lived through the dust bowl here... Grandma went with her family to California a few years in a row and they worked picking fruit and in the canneries there.  My Grandpa, on the other hand, when I asked him about it, replied, "Shucks.  I didn't even know there was a depression.  We were always poor."  They'd stayed on their farm (which incidentally still has the terraced fields) in spite of the drought, but the big difference was that most of their labor was by hand, they practiced crop rotation, and they didn't wear the soil out.  Furthermore, they practiced very diversified agriculture, so even if one crop failed they still had something to eat.  I remember now as a kid listening to Grandpa express his disgust with the farm bills of the day and tell me over and over again how that the government was going to run all the small farmers out of business because they made it harder and harder to make a living and just kept passing more legislation aimed at controlling the big guys that mostly was prejudiced toward the little guys... at the time I didn't really understand why he didn't just buck the system.  Looking at it now, I see how hard it really is...just like when I used to sell at farmer's market and they suddenly restricted the sale of home-canned items because they weren't made in a commercial kitchen, etc. 

[ScottA]

I read somewhere recently that Oklahoma is one of the few recession proof places. Thats because everyone here is always broke. LOL

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

   Think I read the same article Scott. 

[glenn kangiser]

Don't worry.  The plan is to make the entire United States middle class the same way.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I don't know... when we lived in OK before DH took the job in WI, he was a student and we lived on about $15K-20K  a year, and we were in a home we owned and we were paying his tuition and tuition for my grad school.  We were never without anything we needed, though I would have loved to have been able to invest some more money in fixing up the house (there was a time when we couldn't afford a few buckets of paint to paint our bedroom.)  We didn't live off the government, either.  When he took the job in WI, he made a lot of money, but housing and taxes were so crazy up there, it didn't make a huge difference in the way we lived.  In fact, IMO, our standard of living went down, though we could afford fancier groceries, etc.  The fact that we had to BUY our food rather than grow it all ourselves was a step down, but OMMV.  However, with food costs and gas costs skyrocketing right now, DH was wondering aloud last night what kind of shape we'd be in if we were still in the same boat we were in before moving....we both kind of concluded that we'd be better off in our piddly little town of 400 as starving students than we'd be in Wisconsin at his other job because we wouldn't have the grocery costs we did in WI or here, nor would we have reason to go (read:drive long distances in gas-guzzling truck) get groceries more than once a month or once every other month.