[cube]

I remember watching a news video where a Thai farmer said:
"I used to grow oranges, but the money wasn't that good so plowed over all my trees and now I'm growing rice!" *insert big grin*

I think the first thing that will happen (if it has not already) is farmers going back to growing the basic necessities for life: rice, wheat, corn. In a PO world there will be less people eating "luxury goods" like strawberries and peaches so you can expect a lot of fruit trees to get plowed over pretty soon!

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cube', 'y')ou can expect a lot of fruit trees to get plowed over pretty soon!

[Heineken]

Actually we have failed to mention two favorable developments in agriculture: (1) the trend toward organic farming and (2) the proliferation of local farmers' markets. Two such markets just got going in my county this year. We need a lot more of the same if there is to be real hope.

I totally disagree with the belief that Big Ag will just get more efficient and that more resources will be channeled its way and away from other economic nodes, in order to prop up Big Ag at any and all costs. Big Ag will make no sense, for example, when the immense chain of fast-food outlets and air-conditioned big-box grocery stores are no longer viable because they can't be maintained, because they can't be kept stocked by the trucking system, because people have lost their jobs or can't afford the fuel to drive to these far-flung sites, and because the roads and bridges are falling apart. Or when the banking system collapses or the government defaults and farmers can't get their loans and subsidies.

The System consists of tightlly interlocked parts and when one part starts malfunctioning this tends to ramify throughout the system.

In any case there will not be enough water in future to support Big Ag. Its consumption of irrigation water is mind-boggling and the water sources are in steady, mathematical decline.

The population will shrink, until it reaches the level that is supportable under the new regime that is going to force itself upon us whether we like it or not. That's Montequest 101.

[careinke]

Our wheat lands in Eastern Oregon use no irrigation. The downside is you can only plant every other year. Takes two years of rain to get enough moisture for one years worth of grain.

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '.')..
I totally disagree with the belief that Big Ag will just get more efficient and that more resources will be channeled its way and away from other economic nodes, in order to prop up Big Ag at any and all costs. Big Ag will make no sense,
...

[Pops]

One thing I saw growing up in the Central Valley of CA was not just increasing specialization by each operator but the change to increasing specialization regionally.

When I was young, there was a huge variety of fruit and vegetables to supply the many canneries and there were poultry, dairy and beef operations all cheek by jowl.

Fast, cheap, refrigerated transport from virtually anywhere in the world and just about year-round along with hybrids designed to ship and not necessarily eat, put an end to most of the canneries except tomatoes. The egg and poultry operations moved to the foothills where land was cheap and they could spread out and build huge houses. Small milk bottlers and creameries and cheese factories merged into ever larger and distant plants.

Gradually each soil type and climate range became more specialized to the crop most suitable to the area. In the area where I grew up, where once you could once see virtually any food you might want growing in a one or 2 mile range, now is almost totally almonds. I think CA, with that county at the center grows more almonds than any other in the world.

I know it is popular to bad mouth Monsanto, ADM and all, but most every part of that particular production chain; from sprayers to shakers to pick-up machines and hullers to haulers to packers are owned by little guys. Mostly all family businesses and each one invested in and dependent on one crop that is shipped all over the world.

Also in my old home town is the largest winery in the world, up the road ten miles, the headquarters of the biggest egg producer west of the Rockies and 20 miles the other way the largest cheese plant under one roof in the US - they make cheese in 55 gallon drums to put in your mac and cheese and on your Taco Bell taco.

So it isn't just mono culture at the farm level that seems the biggest hurdle for change in my mind, it is mono culture at the regional level in those areas with huge investments in infrastructure all geared to one specialty crop with a huge marketing range - worldwide in some cases and few people around who know anything different.




Having said all that, here are some threads about new-old ways, most have lots of good links:

No-till and other conservation tillage

A snip of a snip...
“South-central Pennsylvania vegetable grower Steve Groff is pioneering what he calls "New Generation Cropping Systems," which emphasize no-till transplanting vegetables with a customized Holland transplanter into cover crops killed with a Buffalo rolling stalk chopper.”

Grass Farming
Snip from Gene Logsdon paraphrased...
He talks about the inevitable rise in fossil fuel costs and his and others attempts to achieve animal production without the use of fossil fuel powered equipment. The method is grass farming, which in a nutshell is rotational grazing to slaughter weight of animals on a number of small plots for quick, uniform grazing of the pasture before moving on to the next plot; allowing the first to recover and regrow.

Who Will Be The New Small Farmer?

The new Small Town

Especially the writings of this guy

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'O')ur wheat lands in Eastern Oregon use no irrigation. The downside is you can only plant every other year. Takes two years of rain to get enough moisture for one years worth of grain.

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

[careinke]

Thanks Pop I'll check it out. My wife's family was farming down there during that time (and still are). I have seen pictures of the 20 horse teams pulling the harvesters. I guess fire in the fields was their biggest problem.

Cliff (Start a rEVOLution, grow a garden)

[Pops]

I think the bumpersticker slogan that corporations own all the farms hides a bigger problem - they control all the distribution channel past the farm gate.

Take hogs again (as they eat so much corn) in MO only three counties allow corporations to own hog farms, granted they raise lots of hogs but the majority I think are raised by contract farms.

There is an up side and a downside here as we move forward.

Today a contract farmer is basically a hired hand who is told what, when, how much and how to operate by the packer; Cargil, Premium or whoever in return for a guaranteed market. The downside of course is the hired hand is also the guy who risks the capital - sort of like the janitor on the hook for the mortgage on the skyscraper.

On the up side though, as we have seen with the construction of all the co-op ethanol plants, given a sufficient market the landowners can make a change.

http://www.ksdk.com/news/news_article.a ... ryid=81786

http://www.newrules.org/agri/constit.html

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I') think the bumpersticker slogan that corporations own all the farms hides a bigger problem - they control all the distribution channel past the farm gate.

[Pops]

One of the links I posted above was for John Ikerd and interestingly I just got an email from him - I got on his list a while back I suppose when we talked briefly about his feelings wrt PO. Anyway I thought I'd pass along the info on new books he has:

Dear Friends and Associates,

I hope you don't mind one more unsolicited email message, at least not too much, but I wanted to make sure you were aware that I had two new books published over the winter.

In December, Small Farms are Real Farms: Sustaining People Through Agriculture was released by Acres USA. For a look as the cover, please check out the Acres website for Small Farms Are Real Farms at http://www.acresusa.com/books/closeup.a ... id=&pcid=2

In March, Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture was released by the University of Nebraska Press. For a look at the cover, please check out the UNP website for Crisis and Opportunity at http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Cr ... 73343.aspx

My objective in writing these books is much more about sharing my ideas than making money, as anyone who has written this kind of book knows. I hope if you buy one of my books, and like it, you will pass it on to someone else and will recommend it to others.

Press releases for the two books are shown below my address block.

John Ikerd
5121 S. Brock Rodgers Rd.Columbia, MO 65201; phone: 573-874-0408
email: JEIkerd@centurytel.net website: http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/

[green_achers]

Well, there's big, and there's really big. I think we had this discussion once before, or maybe it was another forum. Anyway, my premise would be to look at pre-fossil fueled agriculture. In some places, like the Northeast and the hill country of the South, small family-sized farms were the norm, but they weren't much more than subsistence or market-garden operations. On the good bottom-lands of the South and the Midwest, larger farms were always the norm, because they were producing commodities for the general population, and those crops have always best benefited from economies of scale.

Here in the South, it was the "plantation" system. Plantations averaged about 1000 acres (though some were a lot bigger). That was about the ideal size for a single manager to oversee when all of the labor was human or animal powered.

Now the average operator needs to farm at least 3000 just to pay for his fixed overhead (very expensive equipment, chemicals, seed and fuel for the most part.) Labor is a pittance.

I would argue that the post-peak challenge is going to be to maintain our pluralistic governmental and social systems. We have progressed a lot in the last 100 or so years. Because the plantation (or call it "manor" "hacienda" etc.) makes some economic sense doesn't mean we have to inherit the gentry/peasant paradigm along with it.

I also don't think collective farms at that scale will work, for all sorts of reasons I could discuss but won't right now, so we can stay on topic.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('green_achers', 'H')ere in the South, it was the "plantation" system.

[Ferretlover]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('green_achers', 'H')ere in the South, it was the "plantation" system.

[Ludi]

Folks grew cotton here during the Cotton Boom that ruined a lot of land (that hadn't yet been ruined by the Cattle Boom).

Wool is still raised here.

We'll no doubt go back to one suit of clothes a year, with much repair.

[Pops]

I love both of you girls but the question is about getting as many of us as we can from here to there, don't you think?

I know a good seamstress but not many good spinners or weavers.

[Ludi]

Thanks, Pops.


Here's a thread for you:


What to wear?

[JPL]

FPOI I've been looking at horticultural set-ups for sale in Northern Britain recently - the farm in France is going on the market next week so we're pretty serious (groan).

I was looking at a place today in the Scotish lowlands which was potentially a good set-up, about 6000 sq ft under glass but was all heated by LPG (groan) and grew cherry tomatoes & (would you believe) satsumas for the local market.

But, for christ's sakes, oranges in Scotland!

The place is going for a bargain price but I think it might be a fire-sale because of the increased cost of heating. I've been trying to figure out how we might convert it to permaculture but also the place is in the arse-end of nowhere so again this is a non-starter given ever-rising transportation costs.

So basically it's a no-go. I just thought I'd mention this because I wonder how many other glasshouse businesses in Northern climes are going to go out of production pretty soon, due to increased heating costs.

JP

[Ludi]

They could perhaps transition to the Solviva model of greenhouse growing, in which chickens and rabbits are used to provide supplemental heat. This model requires some photovoltaics to run fans.

[Homesteader]

Earlier today I queried my wife if she had any thoughts on how/if eggs were incubated enmasse prior to fossil fuel heat sources. She didn't. Neither do I.

And yes, we both are aware of the underhen method.

Some Iranians we know tell us that a hen turkey can easily be made broody by putting her in a box with food and water and will hatch about 40 chicken egss.