Subject: Re: Ethics in Agriculture (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Larry London)
Date: 3 Jun 1994 13:41:54 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 1994 19:50:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ian S Howard <[email-masked]>
To: "Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup)" <[email-masked]>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list SUSTAG-L <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Ethics in Agriculture (fwd)

I'm not sure that it is correct to claim that we are the dominant
component of the biosphere.  Certainly, we look like the most destructive
biological component (smallpox, malaria and a few others excluded), but
clearly we're outnumbered by any number of other critters.

If I have Sims' piece pegged right I don't think we will have to worry (on
environmental grounds) about the next depression.  He and others (e.g.,
Wendell Berry) advocate more people on the land.  That's how folks
survived the last major depression -- they had no money but they had food.
I realize that this doesn't apply to the Dust Bowl, but there is a good
argument that we should never have plowed that land to start with (see Wes
Jackson's perennial polycultures).  Success at devising the correct moral
attitude to agriculture may well depend on getting everyone who eats
involved.  During the last depression many more were.  Granted, sloppy
practices exacerbated some of the problems of the depression, but many
practices (e.g., mixed rotational farming) were and are environmentally
beneficial; that is, they make soil and maintain fertility, and if Berry
is correct healthy families.

Ian
UoG
Guelph, ON.