I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn.– Gene Logsdon » The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest.

I first read an article by Gene Logsdon sometime about fourty or so years ago. In other words, his name and philosophy has been on my radar for all of that time through articles in Organic Gardening and The Mother Earth News and now his blog at OrganicToBe.org.

We’ve now seen banks that were “too big to fail” cost us quite a bit of our future. We seem to have had agricultural processing units (so called farm) that are “too big to fail” for years now with our farm policy full of crop subsidies on commodity crops. There is talk about how maybe it’s time to break up these “too big to fail” banks…My thinking is, maybe the “too big to fail” agricultural units need a rethinking too.

Conventional thinking for the last half century has been that bigger is better…Always. That thinking is becoming as outdated as the idea yhat you can make a profit raising more pork than the economy can consume, even as the actual costs of production are hidden or passed down to future generations…Who really pays for those subsidies anyway?

Anyway, go read some of what Mr. Logsdon has tho say…

The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest

“No One With Land Should Be Without A Job”

Harvest Art

Kill People But Not Dogs and Cats

An Offbeat Way To Make Good Hay

We’ve Been Going “Back To The Land” For A Long Time

Our House Frog Liked Beethoven

My Clunker Pickup Is Too Old To Junk

Good Farming Was More Advanced A Hundred Years Ago

The Two Sides of an Organic vs. Chemical Story

A Startling Lesson in Pasture Farming

Sometimes Its Hard To Tell the Vegetables From the Flowers

More Choices at Garden Farm Markets

Gardeners and Farmers Less Fearful of Death?

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At least 69 people have become violently ill — 34 of them hospitalized — after eating uncooked Nestlé’s Toll House cookie dough. At least nine of those victims suffered kidney failure, as a result of a virulent form of E. coli. Nestlé USA has recalled more than 300,000 cases of the product since, even after cooking, the E. coli could remain on hands or survive in softer, undercooked cookies.

Coming after problems with tainted tomatoes, peanuts and pistachios, this is another warning about the weakness of the nation’s food safety system and why Congress needs to fix it. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently approved an excellent bill that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s powers. The full House and the Senate — with White House support — need to move this package forward.

via Editorial – Say No to Raw Cookie Dough – NYTimes.com.

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