NYT article on monoculture

[hardwood]

It's about time the media starts taking notice!


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/crop-rotation-and-the-future-of-farming.html?_r=0

Scott

[kingbee]

It's about time the media starts taking notice!...

The New York Times prints a story about monoculture agriculture, and its quoted on a web sight about bees.  First, what does the NYT know about the heartland?  I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.  After reading the link I can only ask where was the New York Times or the article's author when the environmental movement insisted on indoor animal husbandry and waste lagoons to mitigate the effects of animal manure on the environment.  What makes this so hilarious or maybe it's tragic is that the same asinine wing of the Environmental movement is shoveling "ORGANIC" fertilizer with both hands.  What's the poor farmer to do?  He is danged if he does and he is darned if he don't.

Then the Environmental movement gets involved with soil erosion and water runoff issues.  This only results in more and more small farms on marginal lands going under because it becomes too expensive to buy or rent the Earth moving equipment needed to meet the new runoff rules.  Then it comes down to, "Do I keep farming or do I want my kids to go to college?

I know that someone is going to mention all the corporate welfare that some farmers receive.  Yea, try to qualify for this aid if your operation doesn't meet some arbitrary government rule.

But the thing that I find most ironic is the New York Times condemnation of large scale agriculture.  The reason I say this is because large scale or monoculture agriculture is the beekeepers' cash cow.  Without vast acerages of almonds, peaches and to a lesser degree apples, crops that all need large amounts of pollination in a very short period of time, beekeepers who rent hives for pollination would be in worse shape today than they already are.

http://discussions.agweb.com/showthread.php?14546-Riverkeeper-Lawsuit
Please at least read the first few posts in the above link to find out what I mean.  This is just the tip of the iceburg.

This is the reason that you hear that a farmers' or other businessmans worst fear is to rear the words,
"Hi there, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."         

[BlueBee]

First, what does the NYT know about the heartland?  I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. 

Hmmm…the Author grew up on a Farm in IOWA!  And where did the Kingbee grow up?

Besides that oversight in your logic, I tend to agree with your complaints. 

Your link about the lawsuit against the small farmers in Maryland is chilling.  The typical individual can’t afford to get into a legal battle against deep pocketed organization (like the environmentalists, governments, etc) and those organizations KNOW that.  So they know they can get away with bullying people around and in this case forcing the farm into Bankruptcy.  That is sad. 

We don’t have huge animal farms in my area of Michigan.  The land is fertile enough to make a living off crops.  So I don’t hear much about the waste lagoons and such.  However I can tell you for years and years the people who pumped septic tanks around here would take the human waste and just spread it on their land as is!  That kind of thing is the genesis of today’s overzealous environmentalists.  If people always acted in a responsible manner, we would never have these kind of problems.

[carlfaba10t]

Just reminded of something that happened some years ago when i had a manufacturing company back in Oklahoma.This friend of mine i had known for many years came by my shop just after dark and wanted me to take a ride with him.He owned a septic pumper truck and pumped my tank for free.This person we had talked about that same day was a person that caused everyone he knew all the trouble he could.Just a ornery old goat.So with a six pack sitting between us we headed south on gravel road that just happens to go right by this guys house.He stop,s the truck in the middle of the road and hop,s out and says you drive for a while.So i move over to drivers side and he goes around behind truck and back in cab.He says hall a$$ down that driveway and dont stop until you come to main road.Found out later why he was laughing so hard when he got out to close dump valve. :evil: