TAC has a profile of the crunchy-con farmer-hero Joel Salatin up. Excerpt:
Agriculture-school faculty who visit Polyface tell Salatin that they are "glad to prove the veracity of [his] model," but immediately ask him, "How much money can you give us to do the research?" For Salatin, this is evidence that, in the end, the bottom line drives the research agenda. "I don't have money. Monsanto has money," he says. He is convinced that industrial agriculture pays for science that is biased toward "bigger, faster, better, cheaper" and ignores unintended costs, particularly damage to the land and human health.Salatin points out that when science goes wrong, the consequences are sweeping. Always with us is the "propensity for human evil. ... The question is not whether we can eliminate it, but whether we centralize it or decentralize it. ... If I run a dirty ship here, I'm only affecting a few customers. What happens when the USDA determines that feeding dead cows to cows is the new science-based technique? Mad Cow."
Much as he resists the federal regulatory apparatus, Salatin is skeptical of unqualified celebration of the market, insisting that the status quo, especially when it comes to agriculture, "is not a spontaneous order." He notes, "The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker have been around a lot longer than supermarkets and Wal-Mart." Regulation that favors industrial farming has warped our sense of what Salatin describes as "appropriate scale."
He wants a big-tent local-food movement. While two decades ago, most customers at his farm store were "liberal, hippie, tree-hugger types," he now estimates that an even number are traditional and libertarian conservatives. Surveying his customer parking lot, Salatin says, "It's absolutely typical to have three Obama bumper stickers alongside three that say, 'Abortion stops a beating heart.'" He is encouraged by the movement's broad appeal, but laments that he cannot convince more of his fellow churchgoers not to "stop for happy meals on the way home from the pro-life rally."
Once again, culture is more important than politics.
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The irony is, much of the environmental remediation demanded of farmers is so expensive that only large agribusinesses can afford to comply. As a result, you see a lot of smaller farms either go out of business or eaten up either by developers or the agribusinesses who can afford to pay for the environmental remediation.
I don't see what the irony is since it would be large Ag-business (CAFO') that would have the big environmental problems that require massive remediation. In fact, remediation is pretty much expensive regardless of the source/type. I'm not sure what state your in, but ours is focusing on prevention and utilizing BMP's to prevent contamination in the first place...of course we get thwarted by the lobbyists at times for the big Ag-businesses.
To pb: Have you ever been to a 3rd world country? The notion that you know better than Mr. Borlaug about what constitutes "humane agriculture" is hilarious.
Brian: Did Borlaug contribute to the dominance of monocultures and petro-agriculture or not?
If it's not sustainable, it's not humane.
For a more in-depth critique of Borlaug, click on the link.
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