Subject: Re: Good facts...but why? (fwd)
From: [email-masked] (Larry London)
Date: 4 Jun 1994 14:32:36 -0400
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 4 Jun 1994 07:44:58 -0700
From: Tom Hodges (moderated newsgroup) <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list SUSTAG-L <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Good facts...but why? (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 4 Jun 94 00:38:00 EDT
From: JONATHAN HASKETT <[email-masked]>
To: sustag <[email-masked]>
Subject: RE: Good facts...but why? (fwd)

I questioned the use of "Dust Bowl" because I felt that it is being
used as a political phrase... the technical explaination of the
"Dust Bowl" *mechanics* is fine, but "Dust Bowl" is one of the
sybolisms of the process that I mentioned indirectly: communications
and economic interconnection...plus complete monitarization of
all significant national economies...has posed the individual in the
midst a social scale that is unfathomable to most people...irrespective
of their education.<

This is not the argument that you put forward, you implied that the
cause of the dustbowl was the government intervention in agriculture
before and after WW1. I was demonstrating that the dustbowl pre-existed
these policies and thus could not be caused by them (although they
might have exacerbated it), and that the dustbowl was ended by
government intervention through the promotion of soil conservation
techniques. Your argument mentioned nothing about symbolism, unfathomabl-
ness or education.

>
I'm going to challange your vulnerability-sustainability myth.

Looking at Africa...the Ethiopian govement...as an example...has been able
to impose starvation...ditto in Somalia and others...because these economies
are *not* linked into the "high cost -- vulnerable -- non-sustainable"
communications and fossil fuel economic system of the other part of the
world that WILL NOT TOLERATE starvation in its societies.  :^)

Your argument backfires completely...starvation is possible anywhere that
peoples--for whatever reason--fail to link up to the greater economic
and communications powergrid of sustained, healthy, educated, productive,
internetworked social-economic systems of the "western" type.<

As far as I can see you haven't addressed my argument. Essentially I am
saying that there are physical constraints on agricultural production.
Those physical constraints cannot be exceeded. If your agricultural
system is dependant and fossil fuel, and you run out of fossil fuel,
then your system will no longer function no matter what your society
will or will not tolerate. If you can find a viable energy substitute
then the situation has changed because you are no longer dependant on
fossil fuel. It is quite possible for a market driven civilization
to destroy its agricultural resource base and collapse, the area
once called the fertil crescent has many examples of this. The
dependance of industrial society on fossil fuel and its vulnerability
to shortage have been evident since at least WWII. In that war access
to oil dictated a large part of the strategy and to a great extent
determined the outcome. The recent war in the Persian Gulf indicates
how seriously this dependance is taken by policy makers. As the
opponents of organic agriculture are so fond of pointing out, without
mechanical production fueled by petroleum our current system of
agriculture would collapse. There are other physical constraints
as well. The quantity of arable land is not infinately expandable,
nor is the readily available water which could be used for irrigation.
Any agricultral system has to function within the bounds of these
constraints or fail. Starvation in such a circumstance is entirely
possible regardless of the form of government.

Jonathan
Haskett

[email-masked]