I found a nice description (or at least, he said it more eloquently than I did) by Ronald Jager, in his book I'm reading, "The Fate of Family Farming". He says of mixed farming....
"On every farm every one of those elements was intimately tied to each of the others... We hauled the hay that fed the cows that fertilized the fields that grew the grain that thickened the milk that fattened the pigs that supplied the bacon that fed the family that hauled the hay."
4 comments:
I'm curious what happens when you try to scale this up. So far, I haven't imagined how it could work. Not saying it can't, but it seems the bigger you get, the more industrial you get.
Hmm.. I'll have to ponder this. Not that I disagree, but subconsciously I'm hoping to prove you wrong (though my inner cynic knows you're probably right).
It's sad because industry is what kills everything; intimately close by, I mean. Like... does the farmer lose his passion for farming and providing when he sees those $ signs? When does it stop becoming an intimate way of life and turn into a 'job', a necessity (this word is rhetorical of course with double meaning) or ... I guess I'm trying to say.. an autonomous act?
I think this one of the core issues in the eat local movement. How to scale it up. Say, New York City. How can you feed that density, over 8 million people, locally. Within a hundred miles or so. And with small, self-sustaining farms. And no coffee! :)
Y'know, I've been thinking over this trying to come to a solution, but I can't. But it's not to say it's impossible. I think right now it's just improbable. We would have to directly switch one type of farming for the other, but that's so drastic, it would never happen. That's the only way I can think around it.
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