Susan Kennedy wrote:



"David I. Raines" wrote in message
ink.net...
Jim Dauven wrote:


[...]


Why do you need to grow so much stuff? We can live on a quarter acre
apiece and that includes veggies, grain, oilseeds, bush/cane/vine fruits,
legumes, sugar plants, and fiber plants.

A simple planting stick is all you need, and something sharp to cut the
weeds off at the base.


Seems to me that you only have to have the tractor and horses in order
to grow enough crops to 'feed' both of them.

As for raising large animals, that's an incredible amount of work. I
would rather eat veggies and kick back.

Why feed animals 10# of food to get 2# back? And ALL that water and care
and shelter and fencing and herding and on and on and on.

I don't think you can do the above, Jim, without a pretty good size work
force of people that are not equal partners. That tend the animals and
eat turnips, so to speak. An underclass.

Americans couldn't eat animal products at every meal now, if their food
supply wasn't subsidized by cheap labor, here and abroad.

You do know what subsidies are, don't you? They're money we paid to the
government so that we wouldn't have to pay it to the farmer. After the
government takes there share for the administration of the farm
programs...we'd be better off if we'd just bit the bullet and paid higher
prices for the food.


You are leaving out just *how* people have enough money to pay those taxes
in the first place.

Living on things picked and processed and mined and manufactured by what
amounts to slave labor are also forms of subsidies.

Like the Hispanic migrant laborers that pick and process a good percentage
of American fruits and vegetables.

Although most of this happens in the Third World.

-dir

--
The greatest fine art of the future will be the making
of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Abraham Lincoln