Garry, let me ask you a question. Is building an agricultural economy solely for export in any way sustainable? Right now we are being crushed due to our over reliance on our exports to bring us wealth. I’ve seen numbers of an average off farm income of 50000 to maintain a smaller commodity crop farm. Why do it? Have a much smaller self contained mixed operation for your own network of people,work offsite, and cut the banks and the monsantos of the world off at the knees. A much lower energy profile and a much stronger bargaining position then hoping someone buys our crops.
1 Like
Smaller farms simply can’t touch the margins of the larger farms. I have seen it first hand as my uncles took what was the biggest farm in the area in the 60s when my grandfather built it and ran it for 30 years unable to buy the land they would have needed to go bigger and unable to work the land here in New England with the equipment which made bigger farms more profitable with bigger flat fields. If you look back to the 50s when small farms where profitable it was a much bigger percentage of anyone’s income which was spent on food. We simply valued food as more important in our lives then we do today. Mega industrial farms have driven down the cost and expected cash value of food. I guess it allowed people to be able to afford things in our modern society like computers and cell phones that didn’t exist in the 50s but I also think devaluing food has been one of the biggest mistakes of the last few decades. Profit over all else is causing issues with both land management and food nutritional value. As someone trying to run a small one person farm because of family issues as a care giver for my mother I can assure you it isn’t a profitable business model today in north America.
4 Likes
Hi David, I completely agree with modern commodity farming being unsustainable and a loser’s game. To that list I will add the entire concept of the city.
I have never liked the idea of effectively mining the land for nutrients, then completely breaking the natural nutrient cycle by shipping products globally. It turns out that Korea is heavily dependent on pork farmed in Manitoba, and thus our feed grain also. That means they have over extended their population beyond sustainable levels. To me depending on food coming from half way around the world to feed millions is insanely precarious. But that is the standard practice for any city, the average supply line from farm to table is something like 1500km, and the processing and logistics so specialized that it can’t be duplicated any other way.
Phosphorus is critical to maintaining our agricultural output, and is only replenished by mining a few key deposits around the world. Our system effectively gleans it from farm land, and concentrates it down city sewer systems where it is lost in waterways leading to the sea. Some estimates indicate a critical shortage of phosphate by 2040. The USGS says there’s so much we don’t need to worry for a long while yet. By long they mean maybe another 50 or more years . Which is still an insanely short timeline to radically alter our standard industrial food and population practices, even if it were true. Instead, we’re going for broke, like there’s no tomorrow, which seems the likely outcome of tapping critical resources with no plan.
I don’t see any good end to it for city people, they are going to go down kicking and screaming,demanding all the resources to keep their fantasy of living outside of nature alive. And they will inevitably go down.
Permaculture, and a widely distributed food system is the only way we can have a future.
7 Likes
Hear’s another thing to look at for rural life; Killing the Electoral College would turn rural Americans into serfs
3 Likes
I have said many times before the problem isn’t the electoral college it is winner take all states which means if 51% of a state votes one way the other 49% have no voice in the process. Simply leave the electoral college to ballance out population density issues but force it to represent the voters in each state proportionally and the system will work fine.
3 Likes
Very well said. I completely agree.
4 Likes
Pretty much I would say…
Could be worse we have more than 2 parties up north.
Now we get governments with less than 40% of the vote and thats not fair at all.
2 Likes
With today’s technology, we have to have votes on every major decision the government makes.
Make the parties a figure head only.
Want to bring in millions of refugees, have a vote.
Want to give 5 billion dollars to Pakistan for womens studies…have a vote.
Every major decision gets a vote…the people need to speak on every decision.
It can be online now…every month theres a list of things to vote on.
1 Like
Don’t forget when Reform / Canadian alliance party leader Stockwell Day was running on that proposal, and fell victim to an online petition to change his first name to Doris…
3 Likes
Hahahaha
I’m a conservative through and through but the power needs to be put back in the hands of the people.
Only little decisions should be left up to politicians. Like whether to leave the toilet seat up or down
2 Likes
In the States, our government is set up with the express intent of removing the Kangaroo Court of Public opinion and slow it down to a crawl. It is too easy to sway people with misinformation propaganda which keeps the government from making good solid decisions. People as a general rule, don’t make informed, rational, logical decisions when it comes to politics.
Finding a good discussion where people actually know and understand all the details and ramifications of changes on any issue is extremely rare. You certainly don’t find that in the general populace.
3 Likes
Yup. works pretty good at gumming up and stopping as it should when things get out of hand.
Again another pretty good example of how to run a gov.
My only beef is too much power has moved into the hands of the president ( he is head of state but not a king with the power to dictate)
Now a parliamentary system can run off into the weeds with no real checks and balances.
All the real power is concentrated in the PMO with token lip service to MPs who can in theory break ranks and vote against bills and bring down a government but almost never do ( whipped ).
In these times a speedy government maybe is not what you really want.
Brexit:
Proof you can screw things up faster than you can talk…
The current state of Bexit talks and political discussion in the Tory party and house of commons in general…
2 Likes
You should consider what Elizabeth May (leader of the Canadian Green party) has to say about parliamentary reform. Hopefully they follow the gains of the Greens in the European elections. In a minority parliament they could maybe get some things fixed. Probably too much to hope for, but I can’t see anyone else to vote for - if the planet dies, nothing else will matter.
3 Likes
Word of an old US Indian chief.
when the white man has fished the last fish, shot down the last tree and poled the last river, then he will understand that the money is not edible.
8 Likes
I have started to shift from the NDP to the Greens Garry,\Its just not that easy to pull away from the party of the farmers and workers after decades.
I can’t believe Spike Milligan only got two votes.
My GOD that man was funny!!
Mad as a bag of frogs
1 Like
The NDP abandoned the workers and farmers quite some time ago. Finally writing socialism out of the national party constitution capped that transition. So for me it’s not much of a conundrum where to park my support.
Provincially the NDP have run government more conservatively than the Conservatives. Look at the sad case of Alberta just lately, at least on oil issues. Gary Doer, the greasy as could be Manitoba premier went from that job to being Steven Harper’s ambassador in Washington. Enough said. (For the foreign readers, Steven Harper was like a creepy sweater wearing version of the extreme right, famous for muzzling scientists and civil servants, shutting down climate change research, etc. ) Prime minister for too long.
Elizabeth May was actually hired to work in Brian Mulroney’s government, which is a bit creepy to me, but she has solid moral principles, and as disturbing as it is to say, Brian Mulroney was pivotal in the acid rain treaty, the CFC ban, and the first Kyoto protocol, which just might have avoided the death of billions of humans and most species if adhered to.
The Greens are an interesting bunch, not necessarily left wingers, some are true conservatives who just want a world for their grandkids, much like Richard Nixon when he established the EPA, and the clean water act. I wish we had such legislation in Canada, fracking would have been outlawed…
I rekon that if spike was still around he would have sorted out the worlds problems by now or we all die from laughing our heads off ether way would works for me .
Is nearly time for some peter sellers now Wallace 
2 Likes
I am a Winnipeg Declaration kind of guy myself.
I see the need for some counter presure to the otherwise unchecked power of concentrated wealth
How about a little bit from Dr. Strrangelove.
3 Likes
You fellows sure do love to fall back into Top-Down making a critical needs-must difference talking.
Really? Richard Millhouse Nixon?
The guy who wadge-freeze locked me into 10 cents-a-hour above minimum wage?
The life-long career jump-a-ship Politician? The out-of-touch man? The knows-best arrogant man?
Simple maths fellows.
Takes the willing contribution of ~3 working WILL/DOers to minimally support a single homeless/welfare Can’t/Willnot’s. They live cheap.
Takes the willing contribution of 3-5 working WILL/DOers to minimally support an earned-in former W/D, a pensioner. They live at ~50% of their former working earning wadges.
Takes 100-10,000 WILL/DOers to supports a Mastered Degreed ed-u-ma-cated professional administrator bureaucrat like a school Administrator, county bureaucrat, Church administrator. They “need” a car. They need an office. They need an administrative assistant. They need to send their own children to advanced education bettermentment to become just like themselves… of thier own class. They need to maintain a Public Face, status. A face the camera’s appearance.
Now a regional bureaucrat/politician . . . . takes at least 100,000+ WORKING/contributing-in WILL/DOers to support them. Office staff now. With an office administrator.
National level Politicians, national political party Elites, nation company Elites, NGO Elites, national non-profits Elites . . . these all take a minimum of 1,000,000,000 working/contributing W/D’s to support them. Why?
Jet flying to w/lodging junkets. Golden parachute support for life plans. Many more Have-to’s. Have-to’s. Higher-bar Status markers.
A, Richard Milhouse Nixon-type is never satisfied with just mere support of only a measly 1,000,000. Nope. Status says: More. History says: More. The dialectic says: More. Must only be measured in 100’s of millions in the pyramid base supporting UP from below. Yep. Truly the Egyptian Pharaoh’s uber-elites really set a high bar to achieve examples. You waana’ be remembered? Gotsta’ go really BIG. Hey! Maybe the early-GO-BIG Chinese Emperors-class were first, eh?
Why was SST really abandoned? The befit for too few. The many: not willing to pay for this anymore.
The French revolution against the royalty-class Elites. Same-same.
More common is that the many bottom tier lifters just no longer seeing a befit for themselves and their immediate family’s to keep WIILINGLY/DOing for what once was few true needing; inflated-up by lazy-knot-heads become too damn many with their grasping, insisting self-centered dragging the system down. Rome. British Empire.
Over-sophistication in people-groupos, just like Tech-over-complication soon leading to system no-longer, workie, usable, anymore. Broke: not-working; more than up: and functioning, benefiting for ALL.
S.U.
4 Likes
Yes we have a mine shaft gap fellows…
Best way to keep people from thinking too hard about stuff is to condition them to reflexively reject contrary thought
crimestop (“preventive stupidity”)
1 Like