Corporate, Industrial, Big Box = Green?

[riveree]

Originally Posted by sponger42

I could not agree more!! However, the population of the world's cities is increasing faster than rural populations. I believe (maybe because I haven't done enough research) that city dwellers, on average, could consume fewer resources and reduce their impact on the environment if their food and power consumption were serviced by fewer large-scale concentrated industrial farms rather than more widely-spread individual farms.

.....or as these cities grow, community greenspaces can be incorporated.

Whether the greenspaces are zoned into an area being developed or cities buy abandoned properties and convert them to greenspaces, it could allow individuals to grow their own produce on a small scale (maybe enough to share with a few neighbors in barter?), or it could allow for-profit micro-farms to exist inside city borders.

[Winston Smith]

Originally Posted by sterlinggirl

Small farm - plant an apple tree in your yard. When you see ripe apples, walk outside and pick them. When the tree dies, burn it to heat your house. Use the leaves for a mulch pile.

This point is well taken by me. Yes, it's true, to use sterlinggirl's example, that not everyone lives in such a way that a tree (or vegie garden) is readily accessible. But the key concepts of having "it" close by and recycling make total sense, and will make more and more sense going forward, me thinks.

The only reason mass production and distribution is even possible (we can argue about its efficiency) is because of cheap oil. But the bad old days of of 1995 and $20/barrel are most assuredly over. The end times are upon the "3000-mile dinner salad" and 20,000-mile production chain from southeast Asia as oil becomes prohibitively expensive.

(Sorry, Sponger, no studies to show you, some blogs, perhaps, but I'll spare you. It's mainly a 'connect the dots' thing for me and drawing of conclusions based on disparate things I read about false economies, peak oil, resource overconsumption, etc.)

[UpperPeninsulaRon]

Originally Posted by cre8

This point is well taken by me. Yes, it's true, to use sterlinggirl's example, that not everyone lives in such a way that a tree (or vegie garden) is readily accessible. But the key concepts of having "it" close by and recycling make total sense, and will make more and more sense going forward, me thinks.

A very timely and informative article on the subject from the NYT can be found below:

The World; Food Production And the Birth Rate Are In a New Race - New York Times

Some of the details relevant to our discussion are:

"WITHOUT a huge increase in food production in the developing world, demographers are saying, millions more Africans, Latin Americans and Asians will be born in the coming century only to face short and miserable lives marked by poverty and near-starvation.

And it would test anew the human race's ability to achieve a balance among its drive to reproduce, its ability to grow food, and nature's own capacity to trim back populations when they grow too large.

Increased irrigation and fertilizer use, better farm management and above all the development of new high yielding varieties of wheat, rice, corn and other crops combined to produce explosive yield increases in developed and developing countries. In Mexico, for instance, wheat yields almost quadrupled between 1950 and 1980. Global grain output rose 2.6 times."

The realities dictate that feeding the world is not an issue that will be solved by small, local, organic food purveyors. Instead, as the NYT points out, things like increased fetilization and better farm management (O My God, can I dare say it, BIG FARM) are the solutions to a global food crisis.

[Maine Writer]

Originally Posted by riveree

Right, hybrids absolutely do occur in nature . I was referring to the man-made hybrids and the issues surrounding them. You made reference to a very important issue in your example of the corn cross-pollinating (have you heard about the lawsuits to the small farmers when this occurs? ). I touched on the loss of plant diversity which also goes hand-in-hand with the monopolization of seeds (you will buy your seed from me....I have a patent ).

I think we're on the same page .

I think we are too. I'm very familiar with cross pollination issues. I no longer order seeds from any company doing business with Monsanto unless they're in the process of dropping Monsanto. That limits my choices; Monsanto does produce organic seeds so going organic isn't a guarantee. I order from Fedco. They've passed on corn varieties because of cross contamination. Once all these plants are contaminated we're all screwed. If we want corn or canola or anything else we'll have to buy their seed and pay for their license if we want to do this legally.