Saturday, January 13, 2007

Wanna see the talk I gave (sort of) at Community Solutions?

The talk I *wrote* is here, at energybulletin.net http://www.energybulletin.net/24634.html. I have no idea what I actually said when I ad libbed. But this isn't totally far off.

Sharon

4 comments:

Connie said...

Sharon, thank you! Yours is the article that has made me realize how important are all of my small efforts to learn how to grow my own food! I can't wait to read the book!

Cheryl said...

Excellent article, thank you.

Sololeum said...

G'Day Shaz and all from a Downunder Peaker,

Sharon what a pleasure it was to read on the Engergy Bulletin such an articulate expression of life based hope within the context of Peak Energy.

I sincerely hope that you become a focus for a world wide phenonomen that will return a significant proportion of people to the land and natural cycles.

We probably need a "New Farmers" Party replete with "Little Green Book". Many of us know what to do but have been greatly unsuccessful in proclaiming it - you my friend are a proclaimer, a teacher, a communicator.

The Universal Core; may SHe provide all the help and strength you need.

Yours in converting fences to trellises,

Anita said...

This is great. Well written and a necessary article. What I especially like about your writing in general is that it is powerful yet gentle- very different than most of the strident and angry stuff out there.

In terms of this article, I can relate to it well as a small market grower-over the years I've grown mostly fruit and veggies, plus eggs, ran a CSA, did Farmers' Markets, etc. I can vouch for the fact that small farms can be quite productive, but we are not respected. There is the sense that only large farms are "real farms", and in my area, only dairy is a farm. When our state government speaks of assistance to farmers or saving farms, they are only speaking of dairy, and then not 30 cow dairy farms either....

We need to change this mindset but it is difficult. As well I can relate to how out of touch most people are with farming as so few of us engage in it. And for the most part we are poorly paid, expected to subsidize our farm earnings by off-farm work. Does anyone expect their auto mechanic or dentist to subsidize their business by working at other jobs in order to make car repairs or dentistry "affordable" to the general public? I haven't figured out why people assume farmers should do this- it's almost as if they regard farming as a hobby or something. We also need to keep our bright and energetic young people in farming. All too often in rural areas the schools deliver the message to the kids that if they are smart they will go into other fields of work; that they are "too smart" to stay on the farm.

But in general here in this country we have a public that is so blissfully unaware of food production and takes it for granted, until something such as the spinach e-coli scare arises, and then they just want the government to do something to make it safe. They are not looking at the bigger picture such as why should spinach from CA be trucked to parts of the country that can very well be growing spinach themselves? I know I had plenty of my own spinach in my garden at the time.

Anway, we need to keep on talking about this and hopefully people will start to pay attention. As well, doing it is sometimes the best way. As Ghandi said, we must be the change we wish to see in the world, and so growing our own food at whatever scale is a good way to start.