Mr. Rawles,
Yesterday, you posted Chad
L.'s submission concerning buying "organic" and/or
locally produced food. In it, Chad made a few statements that are simply
wrong. This is an example: "...factory
farming requires the use of fertilizer made from oil, largely derived from
the Middle
East. " This is a wholly ignorant statement, ignorant
because if the author had bothered to check, he would have found that the USA
produces nearly all of it's nitrogen fertilizer from natural gas. Even if we
did use oil as the source for ammonium nitrate, OPEC only accounts
for about half of the oil we import, if you only count Iraq
it accounts for 10 percent
of that (or about 5 percent of all imports). We import more oil from Canada
and Mexico than from any country we are current at war with. This sort of soft-thinking
is impossible to support, but sounds nice to many who take such statements
as fact without taking the time to check them. We don't produce nitrogen fertilizer
from oil, and if we did, the USA produces far more than it imports,
so the "largely derived from the Middle East" is patently false.
Heck, OPEC isn't comprised only of countries from the Middle East. Venezuela
as well
as several independent African nations are lumped in too. Take them out of
the equation and the total oil imported to the USA from the Middle East only
about a third of the total OPEC imports we receive.
He also doesn't point out that the majority of the world is
fed by corporate farming, he even makes "corporate" sound like a
dirty word. Any farmer I know who is making a profit, is incorporated. It costs
approximately 1/3 to produce (by weight) a "corporate" tomato as
it does an "organic" tomato - and the only purported guarantee you
get is that no pesticides were used to produce it. If the world went "organic" the
world would starve. Sure it's a good idea to grow your own food, but to do
so because you hate "corporations" or that non-organic food is somehow
less safe (anybody remember the folks who died/got sick when they drank the "organic" Odwalla
juices a few years back?) or more safe is living in a fantasy world.
Let's not forget the offhand insult delivered to that ignorant guy wearing
the NRA hat. Was it meant to say that the guy, being a gun-owner, should know
something about a place he'd never been? Or, more to the point, was it simply
an ad-hominem attack on some marginalized citizen (aren't all ignorant rednecks,
NRA hat-wearin' types?) who had the misfortune to cross this man's path?
Since he touts "organic" local farming as using, in his words, "very
little oil-based fertilizer" where, exactly does he think they get their
ammonium nitrate? Any farmer can make the claim to use "very little oil-based
fertilizer" since nearly all fertilizer is made from natural gas (that
we produce in the USA).
His arguments simply do not support the truth and facts about farming. He also
knocks, "South American factory farms" and makes an incoherent statement
about millions of low-income immigrants (the same incoherent statements made
about the Irish, Italian and WWII waves of immigrants) who flee here because
of economic conditions on South American farms. The last time I checked, immigration
from Chile (the major source of our winter fruits and vegetables - remember,
the seasons are reversed below the equator - not so with Mexico) was so small,
they did not fulfill their maximum quota with the US department
of state. In fact, with a 96 percent literacy rate, they are better educated
than we are
in the USA. And in fact, with a population of only about 16 million (most descended
from european immigrants) they would depopulate very quickly if they did support
his "millions" number. Corporate farming in Chile works well,
they help feed the rest of the world. Argentina is a close second. Many of
the farm
workers in Chile, for instance, are multi-generational employees of the same evil "corporations" as
their fathers and mothers. How do I know this? I visit there, and have several
connections in their agribusiness community.
He picked a poor example of "insuring national security", most of
the illegal workers in the USA do not work in agriculture-related
industries, although this may not be readily apparent to a Californian (the
breadbasket
of the USA). This also casts unfair aspersions on the character of the human
swarm he would have us fear as a "national security risk", do you
really think an illegal immigrant would countenance someone coming to the country
he needs to work in to support his family as his side in a border
crossing, if that person were to attack the USA? He would have you fear the "great
brown horde" the same way people in the northeast were taught to slur
those "swarthy grape stompers" from Italy.
His facts are either skewed, or wrong. His thinly veiled disdain for gun owners
and their intellect is insulting. And he is ignorant about where ammonium
nitrate comes from. - L.D.M.
JWR Replies: To bolster your position, I should mention that SurvivalBlog reader "3CanKeep" kindly did some research and found that only 3.1% of the U.S. natural gas supply comes from foreign sources.
Jim,
I
really enjoyed Chad L.'s article from an organic farmer reaching out
to the preparedness community. It was very well written with many bits of humor
and many very relevant thoughts, such as, "if I’m lucky I just might
get to be a farm hand if things go bad." and"That requires knowing
how to grow it, something that is well beyond even moderately accomplished
hobby gardeners",and "a book can be a great
source of information, but it will likely never replace hands on learning from
someone
that knows what they’re doing. If you want to be able to grow enough
food to live on you should know a farmer."and, finally, "Much lore
and utility can be learned from those that actually know how to do things and
no thing is more important than being able to produce food."
For some unknown reason, I've been really fired up during the last few weeks
to learn as much about gardening and growing food, more than I have ever been
during my last 50+ years. If this is Providential direction, I had better get
my rear in gear!
Chad's article is truly reaching out to those of us who, "have never really been to a farmer’s market because he thought it was full of overpriced vegetables and dope-smoking hippies", and I commend him for his efforts and have a better idea as to how those prices may be not as high as I thought.
I just want to second what Chad is saying. Having been around production
(factory), small scale and organic farming for about 40 years, it is clear
most of the production farms and farmers will not survive times when oil and
it's associated fertilizers and pesticides disappear or are in very short supply,
the same is true if credit is tight. The knowledge curve to change from production
to organic farming is a multi-year process.
For the preppers having seeds in a can sounds good and may make some folks
feel good but it is unlikely their first crop will provide sufficient food
to make it till the next harvest. That also assumes they have knowledge to
preserve the crops and an a appropriate place for storage. There are only two
groups that might grow us enough food to survive, the small homesteading folks
that are currently supplying food for their family and the small growers that
are selling into the farmers markets and/or have Community Supported Agriculutre
(CSA) organizations. Of these two only the small growers have the knowledge
to rapidly scale up output.
Having been a conservative most of my life and having watched George W. take
away many of our freedoms with the Patriot Act and Paramilitarization of the
police force though the war on drugs, I now mostly try to ignore the far right,
'christian' right, far left, and other fringe groups and just focus on the
individual people. There are many folks planning and preparing for tough times,
it will be difficult enough to survive without using the knowledge of all of
us.
Thanks for the blog. I just ordered your new edition of "Patriots". - Riverrat
