Don’t let your facts and experience get in the way of his handwaving!!!
The experience I had in eastern Oregon was that even if owned by a family they were about as much a family farm as Wal-Mart is a family business. As far as apples went the families or family corps who invested in low oxygen storage killed the other orchards by multi-year storage, similar situation for wheat and onions, the biggest took the other’s fields when they went bust for some reason. In any case farming today is all about employing migrant labor and housing them in not much more than chicken coops.
Perhaps the mid west is different though I cant see how a working family could compete with seasonal migrant labor who lives with his family off the payment in a much lower cost of living economy.
I have a 1973 electric garden tractor. It uses big heavy lead-acid batteries and has no transistors in it at all. I can make all the parts myself, although typically I buy them from vendors online rather than actually smelting my own copper and iron.
It was admittedly more expensive than a brand new gas riding mower, but it outperforms a brand new gas garden tractor in several key metrics (pollution, noise, hauling capacity, plowing capability, and raw durability).
If I needed a bigger tractor, I’d slap an electric motor on an antique Allis-Chalmers “G” rather than buy a new gas or diesel machine.
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That’s good you caught that because I’m sure absolutely no one understood what I meant. My editor just stepped away from her desk and let that one sliop through. So glad smart people like you are here.
Anything constructive to add?
Ok. You’re with me. Check. Anyone else?
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If you think that my pointing out the sloppiness of your fear-mongering rant against buzzwords in a moderately humorous way in a blog comment thread fails to be constructive, while believing your own post was, I fear we may have a critical failure on your part to understand where, what, or why you’re involved in this little discussion here.
If you want to do something productive, agitate against assholes like Greenpeace that have partnered with Monsanto to shut down independent and open research into more productive and more effective crops and growing methodologies, and try to support organizations like the University of Arkansas, who’ve releases off-patent GMO seeds to compete with the major players, allowing farmers to save seeds, pay no licensing costs, and still benefit from the technology.
If Greenpeace and Monsanto have their way, such efforts will soon become impossible - they are right now pushing to expand legislation that insures that once industry patents have expired, no one will be able to use the resulting technology or any technology derived from it! So if you really don’t want a future dominated by industry monopolies, start advocating for alternatives, and put up the good fight against the two organizations mentioned above that strive to suffocate the open access movement in its grave.
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That, and support DIYbio.
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Seems to me that in practice GMO-enabled* corporate agriculture simultaneously increases total amount of food (at least temporarily) and the toxicity of the working environment (hopefully not permanently) so you can simultaneously drive down wages and the ability of the worker to revolt against exploitative working conditions. If you can’t make a living in the toxic wasteland that once was a farm without Monsanto, you’re less likely to torch Simon Legree’s house, and impoverished cancer-riddled workmen probably make lousy rebels anyway.
An Indian author talks about the famous Green Revolution in the Punjab here.
* to be fair, it’s not really the GMOs or the fact of how they are produced, it is the decision to build food organisms that allow greater use of teratogenic and carcenogenic pesticides and herbicides.
It’s astounding how expensive farm equipment is.
regarding open source hardware, tractors etc, here is this guy’s idea…
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It is a fairly obvious idea.
The guy is the one who pushed it beyond a mere idea. Which, in a way, is way more than the idea itself. As the one with lots of ideas, I can appreciate the difference.
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Um, I can’t help but feel you’re blaming the victim here. Please explain how making life even harder for undocumented workers will have any result other than making them even easier to exploit.
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Not sure why you would suggest that… Did you know that the current system creating mass illegal immigration strongly favors those interested in easily exploited workers, this is why you see right wingers with ag money lobbying to keep the current exploitive system in place, and racism. The workers are simply the invisible hand they like to worship following the money, I might also consider trying to get as much work out of my back for the dream of retiring at 40 in a less expensive economy, but if health gives out a very bad bet with no safety net. Simple economics lesson, forcing people who want to work do so illegally destroys the legal agricultural labor market with easily exploited workers, which means the laws are working perfectly for the people who bought them to drive down their labor costs.
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I think it’s the use of the phrase, “the illegal immigrant problem”. That phrasing usually comes up in the context of arguments that the solution is to further persecute undocumented workers, rather than, say, decriminalizing migration and making it easier for workers to organize and agitate for higher wages and better conditions. Most of the point of persecuting undocumented workers is to intimidate them from demanding better treatment or claiming services to which they’re entitled, and to isolate them from other workers.
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