Posted on 05/28/2002 1:34:11 PM PDT by Fedupwithit
You don't know just how close we came to depleting the soil resources here on Earth. By not following accepted methods of crop rotation, and leaving fields fallow, we were on a fast track to depletion. Many farms have returned to rotation/fallow methods. Many other countries also found that pest control via chemicals was a fast track to major crop loss. They have learned that they get greater return by using natural forms of pest control.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
I'm laughing because I grew up on a farm. My father was considered one of the more successful farmers in our community. I farmed myself until I was 38. Many of my relatives still farm and ranch. My ancestors farmed. We come from a long line of 'tillers of the earth'. My forefathers grew crops for Mother Russia. Many of them still do so.
In the short paragraph you penned you managed to parrot a bunch of 'the sky is falling' phrases that sound idiotic to anyone who knows even a smidgen of the truth.
I'm crying because you've obviously allowed yourself to be duped, and while I expect that kind of drivel when I'm at the Leftists web sites, I was somewhat blindsided (as apparently were others) by your lack of knowledge coupled with an apparent willingness to show it off that ignorance. That's a trait more common to Liberals (or Progressives, or whatever they are calling themselves these days).
Farms going back to summer fallow??????? Give me a break, few, if any, in our western states ever stopped. You are confusing the American farmer, one the the most ingenious and caring professionals that ever lived, with the farming methods of the Marxist (Russia under communism) and dictatorships (Zimbabwe right now).
Food shortages around the world are a result of political manipulation, not production, and by all reasonable projections will remain so for the next hundreds of years.
You definitely need to educate yourself in this area.
You are correct, that for the most part we have followed conservative farming practices in the United States. I also am sure that with your background you have much more knowledge of the subject than I.
But we must still be careful. We are on a fast track to concentrating our food growing capabilities onto smaller and smaller pieces of land. We are using the newest technology to get more output per acre. There is a limit to that, and nature has a nasty habit of carrying mutations beyond what we had planned.
The current situation in the middle east could further complicate things. A few nukes here and there could spread radioactive dust around the globe. That dust would settle onto everything, including much of our farmland. Maybe glow in the dark cereal will be a popular item, but I doubt it.
I know, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. I sound like a harbinger of doom to you. I assure you I don't mean to. I think it is to our benefit to be educated, learn from past and other countries mistakes, and fight to keep growing.
Remember this. Everyone on this planet for years and years and years said there was NO WATER on MARS.
Everyone said.... We couldn't travel faster than the speed of sound, that we couldn't travel in outer space or go to the moon.........
Not everyone said that at all. Art Bell types have been saying there is water on mars for a long time ;P I'm sure there were alot of scientists that felt there must be water still there somewhere.
Also Mars most likely lost its atmosphere when hit by a very large object and then froze. At least that is the theory that sounds good to me anyway.
Political Manipulation, yes. Also the result of overspraying with insecticides, overuse of the land by lack of crop rotation, not allowing the land to fallow.
You may have more personal experience, and then call me ignorant. I may be ignorant of some things, but at least I am not close-minded. When I read all of the available information I can get on soil depletion, lack of potable water, contamination, control of water resources, poor farming practices in Indonesia, Korea, Australia, and watch as what was once fertile farmland disappear, I can SEE what happens if we keep going that same path.
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