Let's take a look at some of the problems I listed in the previous paragraph. The use of too much commercial fertilizer is a good place to start. Why do farmers use so much commercial fertilizer? a lot of the reason is the ever growing need for more and more food. As the population grows and the farmland acreage shrinks, farmers need to produce more food from less land. This is also one of the main reasons for the extensive use of pesticides and herbicides. People want more and better looking food, so weeds and pests must be kept away so the crops will form better. Some of these things could be done almost as well without the use of all the chemicals, given enough time and manpower. Could natural fertilizers be used instead of commercial fertilizers? Yes, "but" where farmers use a lot of natural fertilizer (manure) they then get accused of polluting the ground water. The runoff goes into streams and part of the liquid seeps into the ground water. This leaves the farmer with very little options. Either he is accused of polluting the ground with chemical fertilizers or he is accused of polluting the water with the runoff from manure. That seems like a no win situation to me. When crops are grown on a field they take nutrients out of the soil. These nutrients need to be replaced and fertilizer of one type or another is the way it is done. Another problem is that on large crop farms there are no animals from which to collect the manure to use as fertilizer. In the past most farms were very diversified, having several different types of animals and several different crops. Except for the susistance farmer, you no longer find very many of this type of farm. Usually one or two crops or one type of animal are raised. For those people who wish all farm animals to be done away with and all of us to become vegetarians, this would be a real problem; no natural fertilizer at all. This is common of people thinking with their emotions. Another example of thinking with the emotions in this area is the people that believe that manure contaminates the ground and that bovine flatulence pollutes the air causing global warming. At the same time these people lament the fact that herds of bison no longer abound. What do they think happened to the fecal matter and flatulence from the huge herds that once were so common?
Monday, December 29, 2008
Agriculture - 2
So, what is it that makes farming so terrible in the eyes of some environmentalists? too many commercial fertilizers, polluting the water, ruining the soil, too many herbicides and pesticides and causing air pollution are just some of the more common complaints. Before we look at these problems, let me say that we have the most efficient agricultural industry, providing some of the least expensive food in the world. People complain every time the price of food goes up. Yet those same people would have farmers use more expensive methods to produce the food in a more "environmentally safe" manner. Farmers are already working on an almost non-existent profit margin. To expect them to switch to more expensive methods without the cost of food going up would be ludicrous. Many of the methods used by farmers were put into place to get the cost of production down and realize at least a small profit. the two ends of the food chain get the least percentage of the food dollar. The farmer is lucky if he gets a very small profit above his production costs and the retailer works on a small profit margin. The bulk of the food dollar disappears between these two entities. Processing, storage, transportation, etc. are the big reason that food cost are what they are. Now many of the environmentalists say that the higher cost of food would be worth it to clean up the environment and that they would be willing to pay more for their food. first, I am not too sure just how willing the would really be and second, they would be forcing everyone else to pay too. Environmentalists have a tendency not to look at the overall picture when making some of their suggestions. There are people that can hardly afford the prices that food is now and could definitely not afford higher prices. However, environmentalists think with their emotions rather than their brains.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Agriculture
Farming is one of those thing that take a lot of heat from pseudo-environmentalists. Although farming is a necessity to sustaining life in these modern times, many Pseudo-environmentalists seem to want to do away with it. Everything that the farmers do seems to be wrong to some of these people. They seem to forget , (or do not realize in the first place), where their food comes from. I think the problem of not realizing where and how food is obtained may be more of a problem than most of us realize. I spent a number of years working in Chicago and it was amazing to me how little some people knew about the food chain. I actually met a couple of people that did not realize that a cow had to be raised and killed to obtain the meat for that "Big Mac" they loved so much. I met people who were born and raised in the city and had never had any contact with rural and farm life. They took their vacations to Disney World, Paris, London, the Bahamas or maybe Las Vegas. They never once rubbed shoulders with the people who grow the food they eat. To them, all food came from a supermarket or a restaurant. Apparently their education did not include farm topics, or if it did, they forgot it. A lot of these people had very strong feelings about the environment. However, they seem to think that "Somewhere else" is the place to clean it up. they could not grasp the concept that the factories that provided their living were just as guilty, if not more so, of causing environmental problems as were the farmers. A report come out that bovine flatulence was harming the ozone layer and some of them actually suggested ridding the world of bovines.When I asked where the would get their dairy products and meat, a couple actually said, "The supermarket". With this type of mindset and lack of knowledge, I can see where we need a lot of education in this field.
Farmers, as I have said before, are the last people that will intentionally mess up the environment. The great majority of them realize that if they do, they will lose their method of making a living. Probably no one knows better the value of good soil, pure water and clean air. These art the things that allow them to grow good crops, feed their families and make a living. Most farmers truly love the land and treat it better than many other people, including many pseudo-environmentalists, do. Some of that is changing with the influx of "factory farms". some of these farms are owned by large corporations and the people that own the farm never even see it. They have no idea of how the farm is being run or much else about it. Managers are hired, workers are hired and to all of these people, farming becomes just a job. The people who own the farm are concerned about only one thing: the bottom line. This can present a problem because the manager and the employees are also only concerned about one thing: keeping their respective jobs. This may cause them to do thing that a resident farmer would not do beingemployees rather than land owners and farmers makes them react to problems differently. What it all boils down to is that when looking at farming and the environment, we may have to look at family farms different than factory farms.
There are a lot of differences of opinion as to what constitutes a family farm and what a factory farm is. For this book I will be using the term factory farm for the large farms owned by some entity other than the resident landowner. I will use the term family farm for farms, no matter how large or small, that are owned and operated by a person or family that actually resides on the land and is responsible for the day to day operation of the farm. there is a third group of farmers that I will also mention and this group I will refer to as subsistence farmers. these are farmers, who by today's standards have very small farms and probably have an outside job to help support their family. These people, like the larger family farmers truly love the land. They may even have more love and respect for the land than the person who farms the larger acreage and makes their entire living at it. Why else would they put up with the long hours and hard work, even though they need an outside job to support their family? The difference between the subsistence farm and a hobby farm is that on the subsistence farm the owner is adding product to the food chain and attempting to earn at least part of their living from it, whereas the hobby farmer usually is not.
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