From Gene Logsdon's "Living at Nature's Pace"

Jerome developed a formula for self-reliance in his community that his offspring and a a few of his neighbors followed: own a little farm for subsistence and stability, do your own building and repair, operate a small business, and work long hours. He'd get one after another of his own children started on this formula and then he'd step back...
p173

This sounds like the integrated life. The question is: is it still a viable model? It sounds like a model that could survive anything. But if it is resilience perfected, where did all these small farms and businesses go?

This book, Living at Nature's Pace, is perhaps the book I would give to someone to inspire them toward the new farm revolution, which is really the old farm revolution with some new suggestions for economic survival. It does a great job of talking about agricultural policy in America, what traditional 120 acre family farms looked like and how they functioned, Amish farms and Amish economics, not to mention the best rendering of a barn-raising I've read. It also has a few good meditations on farm ecology. An excellent and inspiring read, although I'd say the required reading stops at the end of chapter 16.

Biodynamic Farms in Western Washington (videos)

S&S Homestead on Lopez Island:

Henning Sehmsdorf S & S Homestead from Candice Cosler on Vimeo.

Jubilee Farm in Carnation:

Organics in Thailand

Truth on the ground in Northern Thailand (post):

Since joining in 1999, she has now become the head of the Northern Organic Standard Association, which currently has over 20 member farms in the Chiang Mai region. She told me that only 0.2% of Thailand’s population currently knows and understands the dangers of chemical use. The foreign companies have inundated the radio stations, television, and newspapers with advertisements. According to Nang, they have manipulated governments to promote their poison, and now the soil fertility is decreased, the seed varieties have been lost, the farmers are broke, and the pests are everywhere. I admired her presence. She commanded respect and was definitely the matriarch of this farm. She spoke kindly and softly, “If we grow for the market, we need good yield and appearance to survive. This is why Thai farmers use so many chemicals. When you grow for yourself, you don’t need to use chemicals. If we use organic methods, we become friends with the environment and can survive together..."

I asked about organics here and why more farmers do not try it. Inquiring, “Do they sell for higher prices at the market? “ She replied, “The community here is not very supportive, but the NGO’s are. They help to teach farmers to grow organically, but they can’t compete with the advertising power of the chemical companies. Now the farmers have too much debt to try organics. They are scared and worried about low yields.”

And from this article on the Asok movement:

After a large economic collapse in Thailand six years ago, communities began hosting seminars on organic agriculture and self-reliance. Eventually, these were even funded by the government, in an effort to relieve the debt of poor farmers who had invested too heavily in chemicals and agricultural equipment. This is often felt to be a bit ironic, because it was the government, lobbied by companies, which promoted modern farming practices in the first place.

Bushels

Wikipedia says:

• 1 U.S. bushel = 8 corn/dry gallons = 2150.42 cu in ≈ 35.2391 litre ≈ 9.30918 wine/liquid gallons. The original definition was the volume of a cylinder 18.5 in (46.99 cm) in diameter and 8 in (20.32 cm) high, which gives an irrational number of cubic inches, but later this bushel was redefined as 2150.42 cubic inches, about 1 part per million less.
• 1 Imperial bushel = 8 Imperial gallons ≈ 36.3687 dm³ ≈ 2219.36 cu. in.
• 1 bushel = 4 pecks
• 4 bushels = 1 coomb

Use as unit of weight

Bushels are now most often used as units of mass or weight rather than of volume. The bushels in which grains are bought and sold on commodity markets or at local grain elevators, and for reports of grain production, are all units of weight.[2] This is done by assigning a standard weight to each commodity that is to be measured in bushels. These bushels depend on the commodities being measured and the moisture content. Some of the more common ones are:

• Oats
• USA: 32 lb = 14.5150 kg
• Canada: 34 lb = 15.4221 kg
• Barley: 48 lb = 21.7724 kg
• Malted barley: 34 lb = 15.4221 kg
• Shelled maize (corn) at 15.5% moisture by weight: 56 lb[2] = 25.4012 kg
• Wheat at 13.5% moisture by weight and soybeans at 13% moisture by weight: 60 lb[2] = 27.2155 kg

Other specific values are defined (and those definitions may vary within different jurisdictions, including from state to state in the United States) for other grains, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, coal, hair, and many other commodities.

Government policy in the United States is to phase out units such as the bushel and replace them with metric mass equivalents.

The name "bushel" has also been used to translate non-US units of a similar size and sometimes shared origin, like the German "Scheffel".

History

The bushel was originally a measure of capacity for grain. During the Middle Ages, the bushel of wheat was supposed to weigh 64 tower pounds, but when the tower system was abolished in the 16th century, it was described as 56 avoirdupois pounds. The bushel was rarely used in Scotland, Ireland or Wales during the Middle Ages.

Conditions under which peasants can attain a good standard of living (c. 1930s, E. Europe)

The best peasant villages in Transdanubian Hungary are those of the German settlers. In the Bakony hills, in counties Tolna and Baranya, these have achieved a good standard, dependent, as in the Banat, on large farm units and family limitation for some generations back. They carry more live stock to the hectare than the big farms, but cultivate land equally well. They are well organized in milk co-operatives... Farms in these villages average 15 hectares in size, the original unit of settlement in the eighteenth century. Such farms keep 2 horses, 2-3 cows, 2-3 young cattle to feed to a weight of 500 kgs, 6-7 pigs for fattening to a weight of 100-150 kgs, selling 3 or 4 and eating the rest. In addition, they sell milk and eggs. Little corn is sold, usually only a few quintals of wheat. Some of the larger peasants, with farms of 25 hectares, specialize in lucerne production for seed and in horse and cattle breeding. Lucerne is the basis of their field system, taking one-third of the area, and has increased in recent years.

The good standard of living in both these regions, it is apparent, depends on live-stock farming; on the maintenance of fairly large peasant famrs, i.e. of at least 15 acres in size; and on a low population density due to rapid industrialization.

Thus the conditions under which peasants can attain a good standard of living are as follows:

1. Corn yields of 15-20 quintals per hectare.
2. A cattle density of 30 to 60 per 100 hectares.
3. A farm population density of 50-55 to the 100 hectares

This combination of factors of production gives a corn output of 20-30 quintals per head and a meat output of 5-9 quintals per head; the total output of corn, meat, and milk per head amounts to 25 quintals in Hungary, 50 in Bohemia.

~p109, The Economics of Peasant Farming, Doreen Warriner, 1939

Farm productivity (point of clarity)

Sustainable farming has the capacity to be more productive per acre, but will generally be less productive per farmer. Resource (land) productivity goes up while labor productivity goes down.

What's the sense in pursuing any other way of farming when we have so many unemployed? (Duh, increased labor competition = decreased labor wages.) It's asinine. And does sustainable, labor-intensive farming need to be miserable? That's the argument. I would guess no. I'll be developing this more in my series on capital accumulation.

The Value of Semi-Subsistence Farms according to the European Network for Rural Development

ENRD seminar on the undervalued public goods provided by semi-subsistence farms. These include biodiversity, cultural richness and stability, and social welfare.

Example of cooperative farm enterprise

From Rodale Institute Classifieds:

Organic Farm in Oregon
Submitted by Robert Styler (not verified) on Wed, 10/26/2011 - 17:03.
Not sure if this would interest you:

23 acre organic farm just north of Medford, Oregon (also close to Ashland, Or). Three wells (one pumps 100 gallons/min). Two streams that run 8 months out of the year. Mostly flat – irrigation throughout. 20,000 SF of greenhouses. 7,000 SF stone ranch house. The house can easily be divided into three separate living areas, each with their own kitchen and bathroom. There is also a HUGE commercial kitchen to process food in another building. There is also 40,000 SF below roof for shipping, offices, etc. We have a climate similar to Napa, CA…not much rain…we get about two or three snows a year that stick around for a few days.

I am looking for 3 couples or families who each want to pay $2,500/mo to earn equity in the farm. I have a deal where we can pay off the whole mortgage in about 10 years (even faster with the farm producing income…or the income can offset the monthly payments). The families would own the majority of the farm once the loan is paid off. The investor I would own the rest. The farm is worth much more than the mortgage and with a small, committed group working together, we can create a great deal for everyone. It is just too much for me and I want to find the right people who would cherish this opportunity to build equity, live on an organic farm, and create something special together. I am open to other arrangements than the one explained above, as long as it is fair to everyone involved.

[I am looking for 3 couples or families who each want to pay $2,500/mo to earn equity in the farm. I have a deal where we can pay off the whole mortgage of $670K in about 10 years. The families would own about 60% of the farm once the loan is paid off. The investor would own about 25%, and I would be left with 15%. The farm is worth much more than the mortgage and with a small, committed group working together, we can create a great deal for everyone. It is just too much for me and I want to find the right people who would cherish this opportunity to build equity, live on an organic farm, and create something special together.]

If you have farming, construction, or general handy skills...all the better. This farm is magical...and an amazing opportunity for the right people. Each family will need to buy in with a minimum of $30,000 each, which will go into a farm account to make sure we have plenty of reserves.

Please only reply if you are solid, responsible, and have the financial resources to be a partner.

My focus right now is CREWfund.org, a nonprofit that I launched to fund the green economy…and I would enjoy living with and working with positive people who have an inspired vision for a future were we all can thrive. 541 232 1020

Robert

Open Source Ecology distillation [DRAFT]

Right now, the Global Village Construction Set is being driven primarily by the enthusiasm of makers, those that love the idea of local, DIY production. To tap the enthusiasm of the broader public, we need to explain the theory of change - how the GVCS is going to change the world, and why it's viable.

Flexible Fabrication
A flexible, high-tech, low-cost tool set operated by skilled craftsmen promises:
(a) just-in-time, client-centered LOCAL production
(c) a greater margin between cost of production and the current price of comparable products, meaning prices can go down and producer profits can go up
(d) fewer sunk costs for machinery, since most machinery is not product-specific and can be adapted to other uses

Neosubsistence
(a) zero sunk costs for labor, since labor is able to self-sustain between jobs
(b) flexible, episodic work arrangements for neosubsistence craftsmen

Distributive Economics
(a) open sourcing everything means everybody can make use of it
(b) innovation resulting from need

Omnivorous Energy
(a) home, farm or village scaled energy systems (on or off grid)
(b) diverse fuel inputs for adjustment/adaptation to different needs and environmental conditions (solar, wind, water, biofuels, biomass)

Education
(a) a HANDS-ON make-anything, do-everything integrated tool set for learning the fundamentals of all sciences and emphasizing an understanding of the underpinnings of society and economy (agricultural surplus = free time = education = skills = specialization = technology = economy)
(b) K-12 curriculum that goes above and beyond current high school expectations, taught in an experiential, lifestyle environment
(c) community-centered education in "eco-villages"; children educated where parents live and work
(d) networked education allows access to online classes (MIT lectures), learning forums, webinars, etc.
(e) college education optional but kids can specialize from K-12 GenEd base
(f) goal: a resilient, useful, successful individual; "jack of all trades, master of one."

Factor E Farm's Solar Economy

* pic part of the OSE product ecologies.

Topics of Interest

Farming Bubble Could Be Brewing As Farmland Values Boom.

Dmitry Orlov speaks at the Long Now Foundation. "By the mid-1990s I started to see the Soviet/American superpowerdom as a sort of disease that strives for world dominance but in fact eviscerates its host country, eventually leaving behind an empty shell -- an impoverished population, an economy in ruins, a legacy of social problems, and a tremendous burden of debt. The symmetry between the two superpwers were already too numerous to mention, and they have been growing ever since... But it is the asymmetires between the two superpowers that I find instructive... It turns out that many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically resilient in the face of system-wide collapse..." He goes on to list the details. His blog.

Nassim Taleb Says No to Big Corporations and No to Big Government

Philip K. Howard on Fixing Broken Government (Seminars About Long-Term Thinking) including a very intelligent breakdown of the dangers of public sector unions (33 min).

A Conservative on Preparing for the Fall of the State

Surviving the Fall of the State

by William S. Lind

The Discarded Image is the title of C.S. Lewis's last book, and perhaps his best. On the surface, it is a discussion of medieval cosmology and the Ptolemaic universe. In reality it is about very much more, including the medieval refutation of the modern notion of "equality," which decrees that people are interchangeable. That vast error lies at the heart of many of the ideologies which made the 20th century such a horror and which still gnaw at the vitals of Western civilization. Lewis recognized that on many matters, our medieval ancestors were wiser than ourselves.

Lewis's book was brought to mind by a letter from a reader of this column, who asked a difficult question:

…having read all I could lay my hands on about 4th generation warfare (including your books), something is missing. You are still discussing 4th generation warfare at the state level…What can individuals do to prepare for 4th generation warfare? What can my family do?

My correspondent has grasped the most difficult point about Fourth Generation war. In its ultimate form, it is not something we face "over there," in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor is it an import, like 9/11. Fourth Generation theory says that the state here, in the good old USA, is also likely to break apart as Americans too transfer their primary loyalty away from the state to a wide variety of other things. The conflicts among these new loyalties will in many cases be sharp enough to generate fighting.

In the face of this possibility, or maybe probability, what indeed are individuals and families to do? I think the answer, if there is one, begins with my friend David Kline's farm.

David Kline is an Amishman. He farms about 200 acres in Holmes County, Ohio, good land that supports a herd of forty to fifty dairy cows. He has some modern equipment, such as milking machines, but his life does not depend on any of it. In today's world, his farm provides him a good living. In a Fourth Generation world, his farm would still provide well for him and his family.

I am not talking about "survivalism" here. The Kline farm represents much more than that. As I have said to David more than once, what he and other Amish are doing is preserving an understanding of how to live in reality for the time when all the virtual realities collapse.

Virtual realities lie at the heart of Brave New World, aka the New World Order, "globalism," "democratic capitalism" (as the neo-cons define it), etc. The bargain Brave New World offers is this: if you will only do as Marcuse advises and trade the Reality Principle for the Pleasure Principle, we will enmesh you in virtual realities that will make you happy. True, you will lose your free will, because our virtual realities will condition you to think as we want you to. But they will also give you anything and everything you want. So what if none of it is real? All that matters is that you feel happy, right now.

As our medieval forefathers would quickly recognize, this is Hell speaking. Hell has always loathed reality, because in reality, Christ is king. Wiser than we, the medievals were interested not in felicitas but in beautitudine — not in being happy but in being saved. Had they been given a television or a video game, they would have smelled brimstone.

Not only do virtual realities lead to Hell, they have another drawback, one that a Fourth Generation world will soon bring to the fore: all of them, without exception, eventually collapse. The complex structures and vast resources required to sustain them are evanescent. The realities of the Fourth Generation are hard and sharp, and they will slice and dice virtual realities like, well — dare I say the Scimitar of Islam? Many Islamics, unlike most Christians, seem to recognize Brave New World for what it is.

Which brings me back to David Kline's farm. Is the answer to my reader's question that we should all become Amish? No, because in the end some of us will have to fight or the world will have no place for the Amish. Should we all live like Amish farmers? Here the answer is closer to "yes." At the least, even if we do not farm, we need to separate our lives and the lives of our families from the virtual realities and live in reality itself. The small family farm may not be the only way to do that, but it is a good way.

David Kline's farm is itself a discarded image. But it is an image America discarded not very long ago. As David says, "I just farm the way everybody did fifty years ago." David edits Farming Magazine, a thoughtful and literate quarterly dedicated to teaching others, Amish and non-Amish, how they too can make a good living from a small farm, farmed the old way. His discarded image is one we can find, still living, perhaps not too far down the road.

My correspondent concluded, "How do you apply non-state warfare to family protection? Give me only those practical items that can be implemented on the individual and family level." Well, I don't know many things more practical than an Amish farm, nor better at protecting families. And I do know that answers to the Fourth Generation and to Brave New World, false images both, can only be found at the individual and family level, because that is where the decision to live by the Reality Principle must be made.

January 28, 2004

Fukuoka on Zen Farming

People would ask: So tell us, Fukuoka sensei...is this Zen farming? He would say, No, no, no, it's got nothing to do with religion, it's just farming. It's just farming. It's a timeless understanding, and if I were to call it Zen farming, then right away you would take my farming and put it into your Zen file, and then that would be a way you could say, Oh I understand it because I can compartmentalize this whole thing and call it Zen. That would be playing into the need of our human intellect to try to understand things, and by doing that, gain control somehow.

[Fukuoka] didn't want to do that, so he said: No, no, all I'm doing here is farming. But when you're a farmer then you're out in nature, and you see all of these wonderful dramas and these things of beauty, and you hear the wind blowing through the trees and so forth, and the farmer has many opportunites to break through and see God directly.

To him, the religions were an unnecessary structure that people have created to try to understand. And understanding is not part of this at all. If you really wanted to set him off, you would just say, Don't you think people can understand nature? And he would say, People can't really, truly understand anything.

From this interview with Larry Korn, long-time friend and student of Masanobu Fukuoka.

The Right to Say No. Or Yes.

The going socialist theory (as expressed by folks like Kim Moody here) sees the capitalist class abolished by a worldwide democratic uprising of workers, who seize power over the means of production and redistribute assets equally among people.

My own observations of the world suggest that, with rare cooperative exceptions, someone generally organizes productive capacity (material resources and other people), and some people have more vision, drive, and capability for doing so than others. These people, of course, are certainly not the ones that always end up in these positions. Inheritance, class entrenchment, etc. ensure that idiots or assholes or otherwise undeserving folks end up at the top all the time. But if workers did succeed in seizing and equally distributing the assets of the capitalist class, the need would arise again for someone to organize people and assets and shape it all somehow, to manage cooperative projects. People would offer their assets and their labor to "buy into" someone's suggested project, or people would come up democratically with a project they'd like to pursue, and put the best individual or team on the job. This again ends up with more power and more resources in the hands of some people than others.

I am not anti-capitalist, in that I am not against some people having more than others. Greed is disheartening and inequality is ugly, but to attempt to manage human beings to ensure consistent levels of equality in all regards among them sounds like a tedious and frankly oppressive project, and one that is stacked too tenuously against the organic motion that is living and being.

So I am not anti-capitalist, in this regard at least. What I am is for accountability and power-sharing. I am for people having a say, and having the power to really have a say. I think that workers have the right to surrender some of their autonomy to "buy into" collective endeavors, and that includes both unions and private business firms. In other words, they have the right to sell their labor. That said, it's obvious there are some preconditions to making that right practicable.

Where the arguments of the socialists gain traction is in pointing out that workers often have very little decision in how or by whom they are employed because they have to be employed. The industrial, urban, mercantile economy we have surrendered to over the last several hundred years has severely limited peoples' ability to provide for themselves, thereby limiting their ability to say no to bad employment when it's the only employment option to be had. Again, we can trace this back to the expropriation of the peasantry in 17th century England, one of the first clear motions by the burgeoning capitalist class to ensure a dependable supply of low-wage labor - a.k.a., those that don't have an option to say no.

So this is where I end up in my political and economic orientations: I believe in strengthening the capacity of people to say no to shitty employment. Sometimes this means changing employment conditions, and sometimes it means increasing options through developing external or internal resources. While ideally this would entail mostly attentive, dedicated local work, the reality of the globalized age is that it often demands coalition and coordination with actors far and near. I suppose it can take a lot of shapes.

All peoples that exist in the world once had their own land or equal access to collective land. They could grow food, fuel, and textiles on it. Few chose to leave these original holdings; most were forced off. This is the history of labor. In my ideal world, we would all be well-organized smallholders, providing for ourselves and our communities and living freely. The complexities and realities of the modern age preclude this from becoming a reality anytime soon, if ever. But it shapes my policy inclinations nonetheless.


(images from maggieblanck.com)

Fukuoka, Hayek, and the implications of "natural farming" for social work

To anyone who loves, appreciates, and values the natural world, Hayek's notion of a spontaneous order has a certain elegance, simplicity, and beauty to it, but it neglects the simple fact that such an order would undoubtedly replicate and extend current inequalities and injustices. I have been chewing this over, and found it wonderfully captured in this passage from Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution":

"I settled myself on the mountain and everything went well up to the time that my father entrusted me with the richly-bearing trees in the orchard. He had already pruned the trees to 'the shape of sake cups' so that the fruit could easily be harvested. When I left them abandoned in this state, the result was that the branches became intertwined, insects attacked the trees and the entire orchard withered away in no time.

My conviction was that crops grow themselves and should not have to be grown. I had acted in the belief that everything should be left to take its natural course, but I found that if you apply this way of thinking all at once, before long things do not go so well. This is abandonment, not 'natural farming.'"

Similarly, to abandon people to the natural order of the free market is to allow the grotesque heirarchies and structures of privilege and oppression that humans have already created to flourish, to reach their "natural" conclusion - e.g., the primacy of certain groups of people over others.