When do you think they'll get it???

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

   I just read this and want to scream... the craziest thing is on the second page where there is a statement to the effect of "people's livelihoods depend on the shrimping and fishing trade in the gulf".  Well, duh!  It's more than just their livelihood, it is their life... people eat the stuff they fish for, and poisoning it all with fertilizer run-off is going to do more than hurt a few tradesmen in the pocketbook.  I just don't think running cars on ethanol produced from corn is a good idea at all...Corn, especially the modern frankencorn, is such a high input crop that growing it just to get good prices and ignoring the ecological effects is nuts.  It is probably as bad if not worse for the environment than running gasoline powered cars.  GRRRR!  I remember an old bumper sticker I saw once that said, "If you eat, you support agriculture."  I wish more people thought about the KIND of agriculture they support by the decisions they make!!!!!!

Here's the article I'm ranting about:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22301669/

And of course, rather than the farmers themselves making responsible choices (because of the money involved) the government is talking about stepping in again and creating more laws to create buffer zones, so the big commercial farmers will continue to push the limits of what the earth can tolerate until Big Brother tells them to do otherwise. 

[Daddymem]

Uh-oh....
"In a dramatic shift to spur increased demand for nonfossil fuels, the bill also requires a six-fold increase in ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a boon to farmers. And it requires new energy efficiency standards for an array of appliances, lighting and commercial and government buildings."

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Yeah, get the gov behind pushing corn production  to produce ethanol AND then blaming the farmers for the pollution so that they can make more laws to tell the farmers how to farm and inadvertantly hurt small producers, so that we can pay more taxes, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  Meanwhile companies like Monsanto and Dupont get rich off their patented GMOs and the fertilizer it takes to sustain them. THERE ARE BETTER WAYS!  IMO, this whole country could be running on wind, sunshine, and biodiesel or even better technology that hasn't been explored because of the size and overstepping of the government into individuals' lives and the thickness of the government and big oil/industry.  I am not a tree-hugger-radical-environmentalist, but I think most of our approach to pollution, poverty, hunger, and so forth shows an extreme poverty of common sense and an embarrassing degree of greed.  I say this gritting my teeth because I drive an inefficient gas-burning truck and live in a house that is powered neither by wind or sunshine...

[MountainDon]

State of New Mexico is following the road to California. They passed a law stating that 2011 is when vehicles sold here as new have to meet the stricter CA 9and a few others) standards. But they left the door open to buying out of state and bringing it here. You could pay the NM tax, get a rebate on the TX tax and have a non-CA emission vehicle. So now they have the NM auto dealers assoc up in arms about the whole deal.

[MountainDon]

As for corn, God meant us to eat it. Or maybe feed it to animals.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I agree Don, and probably in its natural state because if He'd meant for us to eat it as corn syrup, it'd likely come in bottles instead of ears. 

[Drew]

I've read that corn can be and is used as a tool of empire.  It is storable energy for humans, livestock, and now machines.  We provide it to other countries in the form of aid and extract our quid pro quo.  It has advantages over money in that regard.  The more uses that can be found from corn, the more government support it will receive.  This is not something that local agriculture provides, so it won't get the same kind of attention.

I am not a grower, but my instinct tells me that local growers need to look to local markets, not to the government, for sustenance.  It is against the "sustainable" concept to accept that sort of government inputs to the process, though barriers to multi-culture local growers need to be removed.  I can't believe that the markets (by definition) for local organic produce have been saturated.

But lay it on, folks.  I am prepared to be educated.

[ScottA]

You can trace the end of family farming to the governments desire to make people dependent upon it by taking away all means for people to be self sufficiant thus forcing more workers into the factories and cities. Virtually all government controls on farmers where desined to wipe out the small farmer and in so doing enslave the workforce.

[glenn kangiser]

Follow the money.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I am not a grower, but my instinct tells me that local growers need to look to local markets, not to the government, for sustenance.  It is against the "sustainable" concept to accept that sort of government inputs to the process, though barriers to multi-culture local growers need to be removed.  I can't believe that the markets (by definition) for local organic produce have been saturated.

But lay it on, folks.  I am prepared to be educated.

Drew, I don't believe local organic markets have been saturated...  Sure, there's more organic produce available now, but the definition of local is interesting to me.  When I look at the organic produce available at the store, it is shipped from all over the world.  I'd rather buy my veggies from a local farmer who may not be certified organic, but uses organic  practices, than buy it shipped from halfway around the world.  At the store the other day, there were avacados from Mexico for $0.69 each or there were huge ones from Florida for $0.99 each... either way, those avacados were a long way from home!  (Granted, I don't expect farmers in Wisconsin to start growing avacados anytime real soon! )  I bought the ones from FL.  If I was really going to put my money where my mouth is, I would've skipped the avacado entirely, stocked up on locally grown apples, broccoli, squash, onions, and potatoes....  but I sure did want some guacamole.  

Back home, we had a really good farmer's market.  Everything there was grown/produced within that county.  There was a lady that was one of the vendors there that I got to know really well, and she went out of her way to cater to the international population of a college town.  When foreign students and their families would come to the farmer's market, she had a stack of seed catalogs with rare/heirloom/variety seed stock, and she'd have them loook through the catalogs and see if there was anything there there that she would like them to grow that she wasn't already growing.  She grew stuff that they couldn't get without driving all the way to the Asian market in Oklahoma City... and for a fraction of the price while still making a profit...bitter melons, yard-long beans, diakon radishes, napa cabbage, Chinese and Indian vegetables that I don't even know the names for.  The grad students especially appreciated her, and she had a loyal customer base, and she actually made a living from farming. 

As far as local producers looking to the market and not the government for sustenance, I absolutely agree... all Americans would do very well to depend as little as possible on the government period!  But the system of agriculture in this country is so messed up already, even though I'm the eternal optimist, it sometimes looks pretty hopeless without a total economic collapse that would force people back to subsistance farming...or a thought revolution of the people at large.

[Drew]

Absolutely, HT; the local organic markets are not saturated.  How could they be?  Each population group within a 70-mile radius represents a new local market.  And it's not like cars or credit cards that you buy once over a long period of time.

Hmm.  A product that every demographic needs.  One that is consumed on a regular basis, regardless of economic conditions.  One that provides positive effects to the consumer.  One that does not kill them.  One that is used in other value-add production systems.  Boy, I wish I could think of something like that.   

The kids are 2 1/2 years away from college.  Dan and I plan to move out to our farm and telecommute to our Bay Area jobs, perhaps maintaining a (tax deductible) studio apartment or occasional hotel room near the job for overnighters as needed.  Aside from building and owning the house outright, we'll grow most of our food in the fields we have.  Depending how things go (And I am pushing pretty hard on this point), we might expand to a market garden and perhaps to a CSA farm.  Since we have jobs we can't intern on an organic farm, but we found a CSA where we volunteer on a regular basis to learn what we need to know about sustainable farming.  We've learned so much about processes and infrastructure, and the farmers are really glad for the help!

Oroville is only 12 miles away from us, and Chico, Paradise, and Yuba City/Marysville are all within 25 miles.  Each one has a farmers market and ample population to support any number of local grower enterprises.

You just can't expect to get rich on this stuff, and it's hard to do something for the love of it when you have a mortgage.  I play music and I joke with my fellow band mates, "First get rich, then become an artist."  I'm sitting in a cubicle right now and most of the people around me plan to travel and/or play golf when they retire.  Nothing wrong at all with that.  It's just that market gardening is not what comes to the front of people's minds right now.  I wonder if that will change.  We are living longer and need something to do, especially if Social Security won't be funding us.