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Re: Cities/rural--resources (was Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award)





On 12 Dec 1996, David Lloyd-Jones wrote:

> On 12 Dec 1996 19:50:06 GMT, "Richard W. Tarara"
> <rtarara@saintmarys.edu> wrote:
> 
> >My point made to counter DLJ's stand, is that the cities can't survive
> >without the rural support system, while the rural areas CAN survive without
> >the cities (not at current Western living standard, but survive.) 
>  
> Rick,
>  
> You're chasing your own tail: that "rural support system" is entirely
> located in cities.  Fertilizer plants, trucking, research, tax
> subsidies, education _everything that makes farming possible_ takes
> place in cities.  The only thing that happens out in the country is a
> tiny number of people drive tractors around a few days a year -- and
> this will be done by robots guided by satellites quite soon.
>  
> Take away the Chicago mercantile Exchange, and tens of millions die
> the next year.  Tens of thousands of farmers go out of business in the
> same time.  They stop farming.  Their farms go back to the buffalo or
> the squackgrass.
>  
You have a very good point. Wait....no you don't.

Here's why: all of your assumptions about the necessity of cities is 
based upon a consumer-based view of agriculture. Fertilizer, trucks, 
research, subsidies, and even bureaucratic education (the kind that comes 
>from  cities) is required to produce healthy, productive harvests. Using 
old-fashioned organic methods, solar-powered tractors (you know, the ones 
that have babies), and intimate knowledge of the land and seasons it is 
possible to create just as bountiful a harvest as using sick land with 
artificial fertilizers, artificial seeds, and oil based tractors.  The 
idea that agriculture needs the stock exchange in order to survive is 
inherently inaccurate (what happened before there was a Chicago, for 
instance).

I'd like to see a city try and survive without any rural inputs. The 
truth is that it can't.  Cities, because they are inhabited, cannot 
provide their own raw materials, even if people are willing to conserve  
every single waste product and turn it into something useful (which they 
aren't.)  Even if this did occur, it would be impossible to insure clean  
water and fuel supply unless rural resources were imported.

Toby Reiter



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