NOSTALGIA OR PROGRESS?

The arguments against factory farms have been numerous and internet-savvy, as The Meatrix and Store Wars can attest to. Still, growing food and producing the required inputs for our civilization does not rely exclusively upon technology from the internet age.

A few farmers in America are beginning a small and slow shift away from mechanisation and toward a more appropriate use of resources. So the farmers in Africa, Central Asia, and South America feel a smug sense of satisfaction in knowing that, while tractors, genetic engineering, and chemicals can increase productivity to point, their own historic use of simple and efficient farming techniques can be sustained in 2005. I'm requesting a copy of this book to learn more about what it would mean to run a small farm like this. I don't know a thing about farming, but that's why we read... to learn.

I've also heard about small-scale forestry in Atlantic Canada using horses and the changes that this has had on local water quality. Most of the impact is a result of the fact that roads (and the runoff that they create) are not cut through the forest in order to allow access for huge logging trucks.

I'm planning to ask questions about forestry practices and rangeland use when I travel to the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico and to the Crow Creek area of the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana this summer. Perhaps these issues of appropriate technology melded with appropriate scale can help to chart a course toward improving economic conditions for people attempting to make a living, as well as for the environment. Wouldn't that be something that we could learn from in Eastern Massachusetts?