Now is the time to start thinking about how we transition away from our dependence on fossil fuels. This article is a good start.
Some excerpts:
Here in New York, our groceries also sell Washington and New Zealand apples, although we are the heart of apple country, one of the three major producing regions. Why? Modern grocers are super-sized while it remains competitive to ship such distances. Can your 50 acre family farm provide 100,000 pallet boxes to Costco, delivered year-round on time? They need size. Also the shiny, wooden varieties that store and ship well that are produced in such places.
While we’re speaking of other varieties, why do we plant corn, wheat and soy? It’s cultural inertia.
Where would we get the men to support a man-per-acre kind of farming? Well, oddly, the system that promoted getting men off the farm and into the cities has depopulated the farms who now produce at a fraction of their potential while an epidemic of healthy men sit unemployed in the cities. Is this an efficient use of our resources? If people are to sit on one side of the street while there is useful work waiting on the other? So far, no one has crossed the street, but that’s not to say it can’t be done. This would be also true over age groups: older workers may not be as productive as younger ones, yet is it better to add something to production, or to add nothing? Not all farm work is arduous. Much of it is paperwork, cooking, sorting, repairs, going to town and so on; jobs well suited to knowledgeable and trustworthy retirees.
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