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Re: HELP NEEDED SUSTAINABLE LIVING IN IRELAND



On 25 Nov 1996 18:09:37 -0800, Jym Dyer <jym@igc.org> wrote:

>> Ireland has demonstrated how sustainable agriculture works
>> under Irish conditions with pre-industrial agricultural
>> technology:  it doesn't.  It produces horrible famine.

>=o= I didn't see any mention of reverting to pre-industrial
>technology, so I'm not sure why you're invoking that.  You
>are, however, incorrect about what produced the famine.

>=o= One of the major culprits in the famine was the potato
>itself:  While not quite a monoculture, the varieties grown
>were few in number, and all were of course introduced species.
>(Note that prevailing industrial agricultural technology is
>built upon these very vulnerabilities!)  They had not adapted
>to the ecosystems in Ireland, and suffered from a number of
>blights in the 19th Century, the worst one being in 1847.
 
Jym,
 
You're quite right, both on the potato question and on the export of
wheat by the English land-owners during te famine.  The "free trade"
argument was bogus, of course: it was the freedom of landowners
against the unfreedom of tenant farmers, a disguised form of slavery.
Not an ounce of economics in a ton of that sort of argument.  The fact
remains that modern monocultures do quite nicely because we monitor
them very carefully with a very high level of academic scientific
backing: our agriculture is centred not on the land but in the
universities.
 
As for the level of technology, if you're going for "appropriate
technology," more power to you.  The appropriate technologies of the
21st century will sometimes be throwbacks to olde tymes -- the
windmill for instance -- but with up to date transistor and
information technology.  One of the cute things about modern hi-tech
is that it's all made out of silicon -- sand from the Earth.
 
                                  Best wishes,
 
                                           -dlj.

>=o= The other major culprit was political.  At the time of
>the potato famine, Ireland still produced enough food for
>the Irish people to eat; yet the marketplace was controlled
>by the British, who exported the food.  Their reason?  They
>didn't want to interfere with the free market!  (And no, I
>am not making that up -- that is exactly the reason given!)

>=o= There were other factors involved, as well.  British
>landlords disrupted sustainable agricultural practices quite
>a bit.  Some disrupted things simply by drawing property lines
>that had nothing to do with bioregions, and enforcing them
>with their guns.  Others were using Irish lands (and the lives
>of Irish people) as testing grounds for their half-assed
>horticultural theories.  The upshot of these factors is that
>they put a lot of people close to famine conditions even
>before the famine arrived.

>=o= The Irish did have quite a few ingenious techniques for
>growing food in very difficult conditions.  From all accounts it
>was a very hard living, but we could learn a lot from it.  In
>combination with modern appropriate technology and ecological
>science, these techniques could make a substantial contribution
>to sustainable agriculture.
    <_Jym_>




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