Is agriculture the problem?

[The2ndWheel]

Or was it the solution?

[Bluzmann57]

1. Huh? What are you talking about?

One thing about agriculture, we all like to eat, so thank goodness for farmers. We do need to get back to the family farms though, instead of factory farms.

[Skidmore]

33. Amen.

Nothin' wrong with diggin' in the dirt and growin' your own vittles.

I'd rather be a gatherer. My eyesight's too poor to be a hunter. In prehistoric times, I'd have been a carnivore snack early in life.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Would you rather be a hunter-gatherer?

I wouldn't.

[undergroundpanther]

5. Yeah.but I cannot go back.

Population Becomes Power

In the primordial past, to be sure, most societies did not coerce reproduction, because they had to avoid breeding faster than the wild game on which they fed. Indeed, in almost all the hunter-gatherer societies that survived long enough to be studied by anthropologists, such as the Eskimos and Tasmanian Bushmen, one finds customs that in one way or another discouraged population growth. In various combinations, these have included late marriage, genital mutilation, abortion, and infanticide. Some early hunter-gatherer societies may have also limited population growth by giving women high-status positions. Allowing at least some number of females to take on roles such as priestess, sorcerer, oracle, artist, and even warrior would have provided meaningful alternatives to motherhood and thereby reduced overall fertility to within sustainable limits.

During the eons before agriculture emerged, there was little or no military reason to promote high fertility. War and conquests could bring little advantage to society. There were no granaries to raid, no livestock to steal, no use for slaves except rape. But with the coming of the Neolithic agricultural revolution, starting about 11,000 years ago, everything changed. The domestication of plants and animals led to vastly increased food supplies. Surplus food allowed cities to emerge, and freed more people to work on projects such as building pyramids and developing a written language to record history. But the most fateful change rendered by the agricultural revolution was the way it turned population into power. Because of the relative abundance of food, more and more societies discovered that the greatest demographic threat to their survival was no longer overpopulation, but underpopulation.

At that point, instead of dying of starvation, societies with high fertility grew in strength and number and began menacing those with lower fertility. In more and more places in the world, fast-breeding tribes morphed into nations and empires and swept away any remaining, slow-breeding hunters and gatherers. It mattered that your warriors were fierce and valiant in battle; it mattered more that there were lots of them.

http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=2912

But now civilization and corporate industrialization has ruined the earth,rendering it uninhabitable without technology I don't think we can go back anymore..and I so wish I could.I hate modern life.I hate being a slave being told how free I am all day.

[unpossibles]

16. have you read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn?

great book.

[undergroundpanther]

30. Yeah it is a good book

He wrote another,beyond civilization read that one yet?
I think it's even better.
Thank Sekhmet for the Anarchists,and environmentalists,animal rights people(not so much peta tho)and the alternative communities,they are the only people really trying to figure out a real way to get us out of this shitty mess we have made at the behest of these rulers ..alive.
I got some great links for ya.

2 are by freinds..
Call me biased, but really it's good shit.
http://www.ranprieur.com/
http://www.derrickjensen.org/
Here's a piece I wrote..
http://web.pitas.com/page6/upits100902.html

Here are others..
http://aftermathblog.wordpress.com/tag/the-world-post-collapse/
http://deconsumption.typepad.com/deconsumption/2005/07/the_collapse_of.html
http://www.newciv.org/
http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/crafts_indigenous_skills/

[Warpy]

8. Don't knock it

Studies of tribes that are still in the hunter/gatherer mode show that they live reasonably well with little hunger, that 90% of their calories come from the gathering done by women and children, and that most of their time is still their own, to do with as they wish.

You get hungry, you go out and look for something to eat. Otherwise, you sit by the fire and swap stories, play with the kids, take a nap, whatever.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Sure.

They've also got life expectancy in their thirties and are far more like to be victims of violent crime.

[Warpy]

13. The poor life expectancy is due to sky high infant and child

mortality rates.

Personally, I greatly prefer a culture that provides things like dentistry with novocaine.

I was just pointing out that these "primitive" people don't have lives lived under the tyrrany of the clock and boss.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. And sky high adult mortality rates.

[undergroundpanther]

38. Hmm if you can't pay

In modern society ,you will go without a dentist and novocaine now too.Ever think of that?

[Raskolnik]

42. So your solution is to take it away

rather than make it available for everyone?

That seems to be cutting off the nose to spite the face, no?

[undergroundpanther]

15. And today you die from things too

car crashes cancer,food poisioning,muder on the streets,things have not changed as much as you would like to believe,we live to be 80,and get locked up in old folks homes to die.
You don't have much knowlege about pre civilized life do you?
Check it out.This is what eexploerers from overseas found here.And civilization, ruined it.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

17. And then you died from things like cholera and infected teeth

and childbirth and axes in the back.

It's because I do have knowledge of what pre-civilized life was like that I don't want to "go back."

You, on the other hand, occasionally pick some berries and have this odd utopian notion of what hunter-gatherer societies are/were like.

Your link's not working.

[undergroundpanther]

22. Ok Fixed it

Hunter gather life was no utopia,but neither is civilized life.
For me civilized life is toxic,and it is in fact killing everything it touches.
What is the true cost of this way of life we have? Do you know. Do you know of all the slaves it takes to make our clothes and ipods? Are you willing to destroy the future so you don't have to deal with death ? You will die either way if not from tooth disease ,from a car accident with some stressed out driver in rush hour traffic,or you might die from mad cow, or a bad vaccine,or you can die from any number of things some that did not exist in hunter gatherer times., And weapons have become more deadly and common,nuclear bombs kill lots of people,bio weapons,chemical weapons,and guns kill people easier than sticking them with a spear.Guns are easier to use,and can depersonalize murder ..so you can kill driving by the victim in a car and not see death come upon who you killed you don't even have to care your bullet missed your target and killed a 3 year old kid in his yard...,Look it is harder to kill a person with a spear,With a spear fight a victim could fight back..It is harder to kill when you see your target as a human being like you,.hear him cry.. The Military works hard to erase the natural aversion to killing our own kind..and ,with a gun,bang it's done killing is easy..
Sure aztecs were murderous thugs but they also had agriculture and hierarchical civilization.And earlier version of what we have now.The Issue of haves and have nots.

Think about it.


http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/14/RVG0HE3BNK1.DTL&type=books
http://www.cojoweb.com/columbus_day.html

[Viva_La_Revolution]

46. thanks

:)

[Jed Dilligan]

12. Requires a big range (up to 100 sq. mi. per person),

which would require a massive die-off at this point. You may get your wish if there is a nuclear war or worldwide epidemic.

[TX-RAT]

24. How did you come up with that number? 100 sq miles

[Jed Dilligan]

27. Just a recollection from anthro courses

The Indians who used to live in my area ranged about 70 miles in either direction from here, and there were only a couple of thousand of them. Hunting and gathering requires being on the move constantly from one pristine landscape to another, usually in a cyclic pattern following seasonal game migrations and plant cycles. There are about 30,000 hunter-gatherers left in the world and their habitats are threatened and their numbers will probably shrink further.

Think about it: if you could hunt and gather on just a few square miles, wouldn't you consider doing it? It sounds a lot more fun than driving to work every day!

[undergroundpanther]

26. Ramp it down,you don't need a massive die off.

Encourage people to not have kids.zero population growth can really change things fast.The rates of death are pretty fast..People need to understand this. if they wont..than people may have to be forced to not give birth and I don't want fucking Eugenicists getting involved because THEY are a big part of the problem. If people won't stop having kids for awhile..

I dunno what to do about it honestly.I don't want a die off. But we can't go on like this either. We are in a bind. A BIG one.

. But people may change on their own if they felt the effects of this ruin for themselves personally and understood why and felt they were not helpless without a leaders command or guidance in changing their situations .(remember the diffusion of responsibility people do when danger comes to a group we HAVE TO overcome this phenomena ).People need to feel they can do something to save themselves,but the truth might be they cannot.. If people would just ignore the churches,corporations and leaders demands for cheap labor and obedience ,and educate themselves it could help . But it may be too late. Civilization is unsustainable ,and we cannot go back..we are in a serious bind.


We got this way by letting some fool stake out private property long ago and say it was mine and nobody else's and by letting people own pieces of the earth,and by telling ourselves it is ok deprive others of the fruits of the earth or pick and choose who deserves it,rationing out fruits that belong to all of us based in 'merits' that are imposed from above....we got this way because we cannot see past the wanna be world 'leaders' visions of the future they want for themselves,the leaders created this idea of a great society a utopia, and we internalized the leaders delusions,ambition,narcissism, and their fear of death and fear of insignificance to the point we compete and mistrust each other and do not have solidarity or a community to care for us when we falter,we have a state,a could state that sees us as numbers and bottom lines...we got this way by systemic and careful social engineering slowly done over time by the few on top and thier'little Eichmann's" who wanted to dominate the world and own it all..And Now their dream of power and living forever is biting us all in the ass.Because it is unsustainable.
We cannot go back because we have destroyed our home pursuing a utopia of a few madmen,we let lead.

And I dunno about the future or even if we will have one for much longer. I know the elites will do anything to keep what they have taken from us all over the millennia ,including a massive murder of us,so that they and thier kind will survive.
That's what happens when you let charismatic sociopaths rule the world,they murder...it if it will not bend to thier will.

[Jed Dilligan]

28. You can't stop people from fucking and having babies

It's what we're born to do. If there are going to be less people in the world, many will have to die. Our only hope is to slow down the growth to the point that we can sustain it, and the way to do that is to distribute wealth more evenly worldwide.

[AngryAmish]

29. Who decides who gets to have kids?

Even if most everyone were "enlightened" and decided voluntarily to not have kids the idiots whop won't listen will have kids and thus idiocy will be carefully selected for in human kind.

[undergroundpanther]

34. I know it is a horrible bind

Kids,are being born in a world that cannot feed themparents want to lifve through thier kids,we all fear death.
And that is part of the issue. And I don't want a top down structure deciding who has kkids. That is bad. What I was thinking is NOBODY have kids for a few years.
Besides scary as it might seem civilization is working hard to destroy our fertility..and shut down our sex drives for us.
Why is sex everywhere? The population is dropping and the industrialists are freaking out there may not be enough labor to run the machine..
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/
http://www.primitivism.com/health-civilization.htm
http://dieoff.org/page75.htm
http://www.inklingbooks.com/moredetails/pivotofcivilization/pivotofcivilization.html
This birth decline might not be in ANYONES control. And this is why rightweingers are desperate to save marriage for it is how they keep birthrates high enough to manage thier'great society' on the backs of billions who have nothing..

[blindpig]

39. Great post except...

the "little Eichmanns" thing. All who participate in our civilizaton are "little Eichmanns" unless we are in active opposition, in the context of this argument. Otherwise I'm with ya, we're in one fuck of a bind.

"Once, our species did live in stable harmony with the natural environment (and in some small groups it still does). This was not because people were incapable of changing their environment or lacked acumen; it was not simply on account of a holistic or reverent attitude; rather, there was some more enveloping and deeper reason. The change to a more hostile stance toward nature began between five and ten thousand years ago and became more destructive and less accountable with the progress of civilization. The economic and material demands of growing villages and towns are, I believe, not causes but results of this change. In concert with advancing knowledge and human organization it wrenched the ancient social machinery that had limited human births. It fostered a new sense of human mastery and the extirpation of nonhuman life. In hindsight this change has been explained in terms of necessity or as the decline of ancient gods. But more likely it was irrational (though not unlogical) and unconscious, a kind of failure in some fundamental dimension of human existence, an irrationality beyond mistakenness, a kind of madness."

Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness

edited for omitted preposition.

[deaniac21]

47. Undergroundpanther you should chane your name to

BundleofJoy!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

10. I prefer the hybrid method used by Native Americans...

pg. 250-251 of "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus"

"Rather than domesticate animals for meat, Indians retooled ecosystems to encourage elk, deer, and bear. Constant burning of undergrowth increased the numbers of herbivores, the predators that fed on them, and the people who ate them both. Rather than the thick, unbroken, monumental snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory and oak. The first white settlers in Ohio found woodlands that resembled English parks - they could drive carriages through the trees...

...Incredible to imagine today, bison roamed from New York to Georgia. A creature of the prairie, Bison bison was imported to the East by Native Americans along a path of indigenous fire, as they changed enough forest to fallows for it to survive far outside its original range. When the Haudenosaunee hunted these animals, the historian William Cronon observed, they

'were harvesting a foodstuff which they had consciously been instrumental in creating. Few English observers could have realized this. People accustomed to keeping domesticated animals lacked the conceptual tools to recognize that the Indians were practicing a more distant kind of husbandry of their own.'

Indian fire had its greatest impact in the middle of the continent, which Native Americans transformed into a prodigious game farm. Native Americans burned the Great Plains and Midwest prairies so much and so often that they increased their extent; in all probability, a substantial portion of the giant grassland celebrated by cowboys was established and maintained by the people who arrived there first. "When Lewis and Clark headed west from ," wrote ethologist Dale Lott, "they were exploring not a wilderness but a vast pasture managed by and for Native Americans."

[Warpy]

14. Most people are completely unaware of how carefully

the tribes managed their lands.

When the Pilgrams landed, they didn't find an impenetrable forest but a village complete with cleared but unplanted fields. Disease brought by first contact two years earlier had caused that village, Patuxent, to be abandoned. The Pilgrims simply took over the fields the Wampanoags had cleared the previous year.

They did not make use of the dwellings, though.

We're only now beginning to realize that fires are therapeutic as well as destructive. It only took us what, 450 years?

[AngryAmish]

31. Native Americans probably made many species extinct when they got here

<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1694655>

Or it could have been the climate or disease.

I think there is a lot of idealization of native Americans which is not quite fair. There were as smart, compassionate and bloodthirsty as folks have been throughout time.

[undergroundpanther]

35. Yes some tribes were bloodthirsty

The Maya the aztec, come to mind.they were brutal thugs,and they were civilized into divisions of labor,gender and class too..
Without these certain things the cultures were very different.
There were alot of tribes and each were unique. Some were horrid the Yanomano..ect. Some were better,some were great.It varies.
We can take the lessons from the best and learn from mistakes of the worst right? You don't have to swallow it all as one big homogenized package.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

45. 1200 different languages classifed into at least 180 linquistic families

which eventually go back to 3 main families (the three major migrations to the Americas)

I too hate it when people try to lump them all into one group.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

44. climate and disease have pretty much been ruled out

(as far as the Clovis camp is concerned) and experts will point out that similar extinctions occurred when human beings first invaded Madagascar, Australia, New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands.

However, comparing the Clovis people to the Natives that Europeans found here is not really accurate. In the years between there were great cities built in South America and on the Mississippi. Large civilizations rose and fell in that time. Language studies show that there were probably 3 major migrations to the Americas over time.

The dispute over the Clovis model is interesting.

In the 1990's geologists laid out data indicating that the ice sheets were bigger and longer lasting than had been thought, and that even when the ice-free corridor existed it was utterly inhospitable. Worse, archaeologists could find no traces op paleo-Indians (or the big mammals they supposedly hunted) in the corridor from the right time. Meanwhile, paleontologists learned that about 2/3 of the species that vanished did so a little BEFORE Clovis appears in the archaeological record. Finally, Clovis people may not have enjoyed hunting that much. Of the 76 US Paleo-Indian camps surveyed by Melzer and Grayson, only 14 showed evidence of big game hunting, all of it just two species, mastodon and bison.
"The overkill hypothesis lives on, not because of archaeologists and paleontologists who are expert in the area, but because it keeps getting repeated by those who are not."
pg. 169

[AngryAmish]

50. This is interesting

I find this subject so fascinating. I think it is plain that Homo Sapien wiped out the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus. We are killing off species all the time now. Where could I get some good information on early migrations to the Americas? (I already read Guns, Germs and Steel).

[Viva_La_Revolution]

52. the book I referenced...

"1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann

It's not a chronology by any means, but he covers so many aspects of the topic.
It's been fascinating for me, I still have more than a quarter of the book to go, I've learned so much!
Lot's of new research, new sites, etc.

Guns Germs and Steel is next on my list, finally got a copy from the Library a few days ago. :)

[AngryAmish]

53. GG&S is interesting

I think Diamond overreaches in some things (ie New Zealanders are the smartest people on Earth) and discounts culture too much but that is his thesis and he stuck to it.

How old is the 1491 book?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

54. less than a year

Aug 12, 2005 is the publish date.

:)

[AngryAmish]

55. Thanks little buddy!

[MallRat]

3. Jared Diamond would argue that agriculture leads to political development.

Once people don't have to spend all their time scrounging for food, they can create civilizations with political power structures, for better or worse.

When you have a few people capable of creating food for many, you get art, science, law, medicine, public works, commerce... and war.

I'll take the good with the bad, thank you. My foraging skills are out of practice.

-MR

[unpossibles]

6. from everything I have read

foraging was not an all-day activity, more like 3-4 hours a day, which is less than we work now.

I think the big advance of agriculture was it allowed a surplus of food to fight off lean times and to allow easier care of others, which resulted in many of the good and bad parts of society.

I do agree that I will take the good with the bad, however.

[undergroundpanther]

4. The problem is...

The first man having enclosed a piece of ground saying"this is mine"and found people simple enough to believe him
was the real founder of society.From how many crimes,murders,wastes might anyone have saved now by pulling up the stakes and crying to his fellows....

"Beware of listening to this impostor!!"

You are undone if once you forget that the fruits of the Earth belong to us all and of the Earth to nobody.
To protect private property men accepted laws and governments.They had too many disputes among themselves
to do without arbiters and avarice to go long without masters.All ran headlong into their chains in hopes of securing their liberty.

Discourse on the origins of inequality of mankind ~Rousseau.

[Raskolnik]

23. How do you manage w/out any property?

And how did you manage to find a computer in the woods?

(edit for clarity)

[undergroundpanther]

32. I am where I am

I gotta ask you can you manage in the woods without the system that is crashing all around us? If you can't you need to learn how,because this is unsustainable. Yeah I got a computer now and I am enmeshed in this like you are..but I'm not just gonna pretend things will be this way forever..it can't..so what are you gonna do without a computer?

[Raskolnik]

41. Who is stopping you from living in the woods?

If you truly think that living as a hunter-gatherer is superior to civilization, then why don't you live that way? If you truly don't believe in private property, why do you have private property? No one is stoppping you from giving your computer away to a needy kid, giving your housing to a homeless person, and living in the wilderness for the rest of your life. Why don't you do it?

And to answer you question, I think I could live for a while in the woods. I have absolutely no desire to do that as a lifestyle, however,for many of the same reasons that I suspect you don't live that way either.

[undergroundpanther]

48. Where could I go?

Not many places that are UNOWNED by someone else in this country left.

[Raskolnik]

49. Lots of places.

Appalachian mountains, Pacific northwest, Canadian Rockies, South American rain forest. A hundred other places. The point is, you could do it if you really did want to. But you don't really want to, just like the rest of us don't really want to.

I *like* not dying when I get a toothache, I *like* not dying when it gets really cold out, and I *like* not dying from malaria. I also like being able to talk to people that live hundreds of miles away on the telephone, I like reading books, and I like the art museum. I'm willing to bet that you like all these things too, and that's probably what's keeping you from actually living the way you propose.

[undergroundpanther]

51. I got shot at last time I tried it.

Up in the mountains.. ain't going there again,sorry,And being"homeless" the cops treat you horrible..it is very hard to find a place to live that people can't find you and alert"authorities" if the cops come all your stuff in your campsite is confiscated.Than what? There are homeless in the city but they don't have much to forage on except dumpters and often assholes pour ammonia in dumpsters to keep poor people from foraging in it for edible food. a while ago I showed a bunch of hungry gutter punx where some mulberry trees were growing in a park. And it shocked me everyone thought the berries were inedible.
Anyways we all may "have to" go back or do something else..that is my point.Civilization is unsustainable as it is.And Even if we don't want to go back we might be forced to that is why I am saying it is good to sharpen your skills and learn to be self suffiecient,get some tools learn to use them, and also develop real social skills so you can build allies and a reciprocal community to help you and you help them.Because that way even if things fall apart you'll be ok,maybe not as comfy but you will be ok.

[AngryAmish]

7. Solution

Modern society is better in almost every way to hunter-gathering.

[undergroundpanther]

19. I disagree.

Because I have been in both. not by choice but because I had to.
School and being indoors for so long was really difficult for me.
because when I grew up my family was very abusive but I lived in the boonies so the woods became my second home.
I built shelter to keep bullies out and me safe and it worked..

My father asshole that he was taught me native skills that serves me to this day,wild foraging,remedies from plants,how to build shelters,start fire,tan hides,dry foods, hunt,even make hunting weapons /traps and use them to catch rabbits fish ect.. I can survive as a hunter gatherer pretty much if I had to. And I thank him for this training. Even tho I still hate what he did to me..I can remember in the areas around our house in the outside suburbs there was fields and woods and that's where a large part of my time was spent,in the summer spring fall and sometimes winter too..

I ate tons of wild raspberries mulberries wine berries,and other plants,during my teen years and younger ages. I ate wild food because it was too dangerous to go into my house and eat from the fridge,my father was violent drunk.I still go out"gathering" or catch a rabbit and spent an hour or so skinning it and roasting it.

Old habits die hard..when I come home from scouring the roadsides and vacant lots, I come home with with pounds and pounds of absolutely no cost to me.. raspberries,blackberries,wild cherries,mulberries white and black ones,even in fall,I found a tree of persimmons hidden among prickle bushes on a vacant field in a business park,near the edge of the tree line where they don't mow.All the fruits I get are,better tasting than supermarket fruits,like the hothouse raspberries that cost 3 dollars and up wards for like 3 handfuls in a little box where half are crushed and some are moldy.

Sad truth is because our kind of male run civilization required such a huge labor pool ,and longevity became an issue kids had to be born to work and to care for elderly patriarchs in families..So we humans bred like rabbits on orders of the rulers of the times.Now we have nearly killed this planet. And if we keep breeding we will not be able to sustain ourselves when our leaders come to the realization their kingdoms are not sustainable and are not natural to this planet.

Cancer can only meta-size and colonize so far before the host collapses. If you depersonalize this issue for a moment realize agriculture that tears up the earth with plowing ruins topsoil,it is what causes desertification. The lack of different plants in a field lacking diversity causes die off of major food strains,this is why bananas are hard to get now the companies like dole reduced the diversity of banana types and focused on the cavendish banana not it is fighting a blight and because it is such a pure strain it cannot defend itself from a disease targeting the cavendish banana without alot of chemical intervention from the farmers..http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2664373.stm


I was taught by my father to NEVER PLOW. If we planted it was in places where it was weedy yes but that favored the plants we wanted like squash or whatever. It grew and thrived among trees and weeds. Our garden didn't look like a typical garden at all,it looked like a tangled mess..but the plants grew fine.The other plants helped the crops once the initial vulnerable stage was past....I still have my father's planting stick and I use it..You can grow anything with a planting stick,
http://www.agroecology.org/cases/notilltaro.htm
or seed balls
http://www.pathtofreedom.com/pathproject/gardening/seed...

Also if you are planting young plants, you don't need to till the earth and mess up the topsoil..just dig a hole in the turf big enough to drop the plant into with enough room for a scoop of a little cow dung under it.water it replace the turf.It will grow fine..,you may have to rip the tops off some bigger leafed weeds competing with the little plant to give it a head start but it will grow..and you do not need to plow at all.

Tilling the earth kills the topsoil,it leads to desertification.. and that topsoil and the turf holding it down is where the nutrients are. Modern agriculture keeps topsoil fertile enough barely..And alot of our oil usage is from sustaining the topsoil with petroleum based fertilizers.
http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/eating.htm

the fields are devoid of nutrients because the soil has not had a chance to recover and because of this this is why strawberries from the grocery store taste like crap now.And the breeding to create big berries that tempt the eye to sell well has not helped.

Long ago there were thousands of varieties of tomatoes apples etc, you don't see anymore. Ever eat a Strawberry apple? This apple is beautiful blush pink color and it has white stripes and smells like strawberry candy and tastes like a strawberry and an apple mixed.It's flesh is a soft pink it's beautiful. You cannot find these trees anymore. My uncle has one in his yard and he sure is saving the seeds.. Ever hear of seed savers? These people are racing against time to save strains of plants that are dying out. The colors and beauty of these trees fruits and flowers are amazing.These plants were not productive enough to be used commercially.To industrialists they are weeds.To Monsanto people making their own gardens a threat to their profits.(they made the killer gene technology that could if it escapes wipe out all food supplies not controlled by Monsanto)
http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/terminator.sht...

http://www.seedsavers.org /

So I tell you it is better to be a hunter gatherer. But I think we cannot go back there now.The Earth is too damaged,polluted and we cannot drink the water without technology to clean it. It wasen'tr walways that way. I used to drink from springs in the mountains at my folks hoouses.aSoon maybe another ice age may come when global warming does it's hot phase thing. We have thrown things so far out of balance I am not sure we will survive it.We can't go back.(read my sig line about trapped in leaders dreams)
http://www.unknownnews.org/051209a-Panther.html

http://festivaldepoesiademedellin.org/pub/en/Corporacio...
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org /

[Jed Dilligan]

11. Agribusiness is a big part of the problem.

We need to shut off the illegal subsidies to corporate farming and bring back family farming with a new organic theme. You know how many people currently rotting in the inner cities would jump on this opportunity?

[undergroundpanther]

20. we need to stop tilling

to stop killing off the plant diversity.And reduce births. and try to let the topsoil recover. But I fear the damage is too extensive.

[TX-RAT]

25. But that would cut 100,000+ people off the CRP teat.

[TX-RAT]

37. illegal subsidies

No corporate farming around here, it's all Mom & Pop, and they jumped on the subsidies wagon as soon as it came out.
34 million acres involved in the CRP program, at a cost of over 2 billion a year. On average it's about 40 dollars acre per year. It just has to land that had been in production.
1200 acres = 48,000 a year to do nothing but sit on your ass.

[Jed Dilligan]

40. I'm talking about the water

that's supposed to go to small farms, but goes to big farms.

[TX-RAT]

43. sorry

[devilgrrl]

21. Can you be a little more vague?

Your question was too detailed. :silly:

[slackmaster]

36. Yeah, we should all go back to hunting and gathering

:nuke: