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



On 13 Dec 1996 07:49:12 GMT, atanu@are.Berkeley.EDU (Atanu Dey) wrote:

>Sounds like Toby has put a fairly reasonable thought-experiment
>challenge for dlj.  Appears to me that the urban technologist
>does not have much of a shot at growing anything close to what
>a rural 'dolt' can do.

Atanu,
 
You aren't reading very carefully: he wants 2,000 square feet with an
ox on it against the same amount in the city without the ox eating
everything as soon as it puts up a shoot.
 
It's not a matter of him not thinking it through: he hasn't even
thought as far as first base.  Some thought experiment!
 
Obviously I could put salad vegetables, herbs, double and triple
cropping against his grain, and beat him hollow.  Manila, in the
Philppines almost feeds itself.  Tokyo, when I first got there in
1972, looked like one big farm, everywhere you looked somebody growing
something.  Here in Toronto we mostly grow grass, roses, petunias, and
the occasional tomato plant.
 
I write -- and then I think about the last tie I was buying basil
shoots, and all around me there were people buying up whole flats of
tomatos, weird Italian squashes, stuff I know nothing about.  In the
time I buy a season's supply of pesto a half ton truck of other stuff
(from the _urban_ bog at Holland Ferry) has moved out into people's
living rooms, gardens, basements, rooves, verandas. 
 
You guys simply are not looking at what is going on around you.
 
                                                        -dlj.
 

 
 



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