Don’t often post links but I really got fired up about this one: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0309-22.htm
Screw the fat cats and woo hoo to small scale farming all in one!
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comrade simba 
March 15, 2007 at 3:49 am |
So I guess agribusiness is not entitled to make a buck.
More corporate slander. Gosh I never heard this before.
While soil conservation and pollution are left out of the economic equation for food costs, there is going to be big corporate farming weilding their girth to get rules and regulations their way so they don’t have to pay for shitting on the planet.
This knee jerk blame the corporations because corporations are evil obfuscates real solutions. Cute terms like factory farms and Big Food don’t explain what is really going on and how we got here in the first place. I’m getting a little tired of this conspiracy theory bullshit and if we only clap our hands and believe, Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys of Never Never Land will be all right.
We got here by an evolution along a well paved road to hell. Bad habits aren’t to be thrown out the window but coaxed down the stairs one step at a time. Telling folks that they aren’t entitled to make money and they are evil for doing so ain’t going to coax anyone down the stairs.
The next thing these do-gooders will tell you is they’re organizing a bike ride so they can raise awareness while they have good ol’ time with their friends and patting each other on the back telling each other how much they’ve accomplished. Please send money.
How many of these little farms and homesteaders are growing heirloom produce to sell to fancy shmancy reastaurants or in fashionable farmers markets for well heeled people who have time to go to farmers markets? That’s feeding the world alright.
Cut the cheese, I’ve had enough whine.
jB
petroleum pig dog
..
March 15, 2007 at 2:00 pm |
Here is the money quote:
“When an agribusiness executive says his or her company is in the business of feeding the world, he or she is lying. Regardless of the personal inclinations of agribusiness executives, as publicly-held corporations (excluding privately-owned Cargill) they are mandated by law to maximize profit for their shareholders, not to give away their “product” to starving peasants. Anything said to the contrary is just a marketing gimmick designed to get you to buy their product.
If you can’t pay, then you don’t eat. That’s their business. ”
It’s the propaganda factor that always pisses me off, not the fact that companies make a buck. I don’t sell my eggs at a loss, either.
We are in the begining of an era that will see people moving away from dependence upon large scale factory/commercial food production and into local/sustainable methodology. Either that or make do with less variety at best, or go hungry at worst. Deamonizing “Big Agribusiness” can be looked at as a usefull tool to start changing perception. Human nature wants to get in the line to kick a goat. Sad, but true.
The evils of agribusiness are front page news along with the hooplah surrounding ethanol. But when is the last time you remember seeing anything about the 52 cent a gallon federal subsidy for ethanol? Without the kickback ethanol is dead. Corporate Welfare is another knee-jerk line bandied about, but it sure describes the food as fuel industry.
So lets say I grow a couple of acres of soybeans in my field, planting and harvesting by hand, turning the plants back into the soil and pressing the oil in a hand press to make the biodeisel that runs a small generator for my electrical needs. Who do apply to for the 52 cents per gallon subsidy? Bwa ha ha…
Also, a real world observation – on the trip to Boston, whenever I got a tank of gas that was an ethanol blend, I got 26mpg versus 31.5 with straight petroleum gas. That’s 17% higher consumption for ethanol. So if regular gas is $2.50 a gallon, and the cost plus subsidy of ethanol is $3.02- adding 17% makes the true cost of ethanol $3.53 a gallon. Why oh why is that most basic fact not the lead issue in any ethanol story in the media? Answer: why bother? The public has been clamoring for a damn near immediate exit out of Iraq for well over a year. A general freakout over ethanol would fall on deaf ears, too. Cuz the powers that be know the sheep will stick that nozzle in the hole when the gauge reads empty no matter what the fuck comes out of the hose. Sure as fuck ain’t gonna take the bus to the anti-ethanol rally…
Humanity’s long slow march to irrelevance is just baffling to me.
March 16, 2007 at 5:22 am |
Money Talks
So ADM supplies a demmand for for corn syrup so Coca Cola can sell the same marked-up cup of crap in McDonald’s accross the country and the world and McDonalds wants nothing more than to have the same damn fries with the same damn burger with the same damn coke indistinguishable from Maui to Maine because that’s what sells.
Who’s the culprit here? The big bad corporations supplying a demand or the landscape denudding goats that make the demand.
We got to this point because collective memories of bad times of little food and heat tilted government policies torwards making sure there was plenty. I remember talking to people who grew up in the depression back in the seventies when everyone was cutting back on everything between arab oil embargoes and wild ass inflation and those who grew up in the depression cut back on a lot of things like everyone else except they wouldn’t cut back on food.
Governments across the globe subsidize agriculture in the guarded belief that they will need to feed armies and restless populations at the home front. I guess it’s a big surprise that some started taking advantage of those policies and enough got rich on such scheme’s they lobbied the government for more.
Defense spending and government backed raw research begat other benefits that became routine. Vaccines redcued child mortatlity rates. Plastic wrap made food safer. Mass produced soaps and municipal water supplies checked the spread of disease. Assembly line cars and aircraft made everyone richer in ways more than money. Fast, easy and cheap fixes became the norm and now that is just what we expect and we won’t be denied until it’s too late.
God damn the pusher man but what is the pusher man guilty of? Taking risks to supply jerks stuff that makes ’em feel so good. The pushers should get paid good bucksfor the risks they take. The risks are high because some other jerk offs decided that they don’t like that and there ought to be a law. The pusher man was the only guy who bothered to look at the cost/benefit ratio. The jerks who buy the stuff don’t factor in the health costs and the jerks who passed the laws didn’t factor in the health costs and the price to incarcerate people and the costs of reducing the tax rolls by incarcerating people. Funny how money can be used to measure just about anything and funny how hiding the costs fucks up just about everything.
Scientific American already concluded that ethanol from corn is a bum deal In part because ethanol doesn’t have the same oomph as gasoline. In fact, that’s been known for quite some time. In an interview I heard this morning, A BP research scientist looking into using agricultural waste for fuel because they already concluded that the fuel vs food equation is a money loosing proposition. So just who is trumpeting the great biofuels bandwagon? It wouldn’t be those corporate slandering self promoting nice people that spend other peoples money to do all those nice things they talk about while they skim off the top to further promote awareness would it? Just who is marketing here and just who is out and out lying.
Yeah, bad mouth the corporations that respond so quickly to our demands that we’re spoiled but when McDonalds dropped styrofoam packaging, it revolutionized the packaging industry overnight.
Many different ancient civilizations told many tales of how new knowledge or new technology brought both good and bad and we never learn. Those who study history are condemned to repeat it.
two cents _ _ jB
petroleum pig dog
..
March 16, 2007 at 12:24 pm |
Aw, fuck. I’m not a boob – I understand corps cater to profits, and profits come from public demands. But marketing and advertising skews the whole thing out of whack. Sales and consumption is divorced from reality when McDonalds and Vole-Mart are lauded for their ‘green’ efforts.
To be honest, my choice is to attack gov’t, corps, and Madison avenue or just write off humanity as more than just a lost cause – a parasite that needs eradicated. Then I get to view all my neighbors and everyone I come into contact with as another mindless consumer chipping away at my life force. I wind up wishing ill upon my fellow man. Then I seek escape in a bottle and self destruct.
I’m getting better at hopelessness, though. A thousand sheep can’t herd a tiger, but the sheep can be led to where the tiger is not. But teaching the sheep that the tiger is dangerous is the first step. When corporate profits are up and the gov’t ignores the will of the people it is a sign of failure, and every new garden planted is a success.
In the meanwhile, put your money in coal and tar sands rather than photovoltics if ya wanna make a buck. And running the pusher man off your corner won’t save the addict, but it will help keep your T.V. safe…
March 21, 2007 at 5:37 am |
Without Feathers
I try too not to get hopeless but sometimes it gets the better of me.
I’m trying to take the perspective that we got into this mess and we can get out if we can ever extract our heads from our asses.
A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away at another place I worked at, it was decided a particular process we were working was far too cumbersome and slow. We had to streamline the process. It needed to be more flexible. So a bunch of us got together and re-engineered the process. We got rid of a lot or rules and restrictions and jettisoned some requirements. This seemed to work fine for awhile. One day somebody made an honest error and that error carried through the whole process until it was caught somewhere near or at the end of the pipeline and it was observed that it should have been caught somewhere long before that. So they made a rule that we shouldn’t do that again. Then another one popped up and another requirement was built into the system. Of course other little problems cropped up and more regulations were put into place. About a year later I observed we were about where we started from and the system once again became bogged down with ifs, ands, and buts.
I work at a bigger place now and every so often a new system comes along and we’re all supposed to work to change things for the better but as they roll out the training and they’re explaing all the great benefits of this new way of doing things I like to ask: Just why are all those rules and regulations there in the first place? By way of some less than satisfactory answer someone will say: ‘just because we’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean we have do it that way now.’ Nobody talks about how we got bit in the butt before by something or other and we move on.
I’d like to be able to stand back and not only examine the problem afresh but also bring along the lessons learned. The fallacy is we don’t always learn the lesson. Maybe the problem isn’t the intricate beuacracy we have to deal with such things but the reasons we have the beauracracy in the first place.
Fluttering about_ _ jB
petroleum pig dog
..
March 21, 2007 at 1:51 pm |
Quotes:
“I’m trying to take the perspective that we got into this mess and we can get out if we can ever extract our heads from our asses.
and
“Maybe the problem isn’t the intricate bureaucracy we have to deal with such things but the reasons we have the bureaucracy in the first place.”
The more complex a system is , the greater the need for management and control. Some people have a love of management and control hardwired into their psyche, and so strive to create as much complexity as they can to feed their authoritarianism. I am, unfortunately, guilty of possessing this flaw. For example, I got a new milk goat and morning and night I’d milk it, carefully measure the output and record it on the calender. With that data, I can project the number of gallons of milk in a given period, figure out how much cheese can be made, and assess cost savings for the wife’s coffee cream. Oh yeah, and drink the milk…
Hmmm. If I don’t write it down and engage in higher mathematical mental exercises I get free cream, cheese, and milk to drink.
I’m working on changing my default setting of “if it can be quantified, it should be quantified”. That’s why I love the term “pointless”. So much of my real living experience has been buried beneath yesterday’s data and tomorrow’s projections. I hold on to numbers and symbols for fear of losing something tangible and wind up not being able to experience the real deal.
So if I hate the world’s infatuation with bureaucracy and law enforcement I gotta root it out of myself, first. That would be getting my head out of my ass…