The concepts of economies of large scale, fast food are not exactly fading away but slowly there seems to be a growing realisation at least amongst the saner lot, that those might after all not be the ideal and definitely not the only way of doing things.
Upping the scale of operation does pull down the overall costs, making it affordably available to more people but it also gives rise to evils that in the juncture we are at today, environmentally, we need to sit back and think.
Larger farms lead to ever increasing use of chemicals, pesticides, genetically modified seeds, and various other technologies that wrangles out all the good from the land,eventually making the land unfit for cultivation. Pick up an atlas today and it will have a map on 'desertification.' Argument supporting cultivation on large scale to support a growing population is incorrect as even with the larger farms there are still ever growing number of hungry tummies.
The answer to this evil is going back to how it used to be done - small scale, owner-operated, organic farms. Grow what you need and just about as much as you need. Russia passed an act in 2003, The Bovine, Russia’s Private Garden Plot Act, which entitles individuals to a small piece of land free of cost to cultivate it for their own food needs, free of tax. This is working so effectively there that more than half the food need of the country is being met by this and this in a country where only 1/3rd of a year is available for agriculture.
The economies of scale have made a horror story of the dairy, wool, meat, poultry, leather industries. PETA's July 2014 video shot in an Australian sheep farm will leave one nauseated and terror struck. Animals have been used by us through our evolution but never before have the animals become a piece of machinery.
When good presentation skills, communication skills can be a necessity for getting into client & management facing jobs, why can't compassion be a requirement for another species handling job? In a large scale operation, amidst all the operational costs, marginal costs and profits how will one plot in compassion into the equation? Anyway common sense is not a requirement for any job and that explains why the rest does not fall in place.
It is imperative now with all the havoc our ruthlessness has caused all around to the environment that we reassess our priorities keeping in mind the long term continuity of our planet and of our species. So till someone comes up with a solution to favourably treating the excess greenhouse gases, till someone finds a genie who can give us another sustainable source of energy, can we not do the other small doable things that will buy us some time?
Small is beautiful, slow is lovely and I hope commonsense prevails on the law makers of the world, and on us the common people.
Larger farms lead to ever increasing use of chemicals, pesticides, genetically modified seeds, and various other technologies that wrangles out all the good from the land,eventually making the land unfit for cultivation. Pick up an atlas today and it will have a map on 'desertification.' Argument supporting cultivation on large scale to support a growing population is incorrect as even with the larger farms there are still ever growing number of hungry tummies.
The answer to this evil is going back to how it used to be done - small scale, owner-operated, organic farms. Grow what you need and just about as much as you need. Russia passed an act in 2003, The Bovine, Russia’s Private Garden Plot Act, which entitles individuals to a small piece of land free of cost to cultivate it for their own food needs, free of tax. This is working so effectively there that more than half the food need of the country is being met by this and this in a country where only 1/3rd of a year is available for agriculture.
The economies of scale have made a horror story of the dairy, wool, meat, poultry, leather industries. PETA's July 2014 video shot in an Australian sheep farm will leave one nauseated and terror struck. Animals have been used by us through our evolution but never before have the animals become a piece of machinery.
When good presentation skills, communication skills can be a necessity for getting into client & management facing jobs, why can't compassion be a requirement for another species handling job? In a large scale operation, amidst all the operational costs, marginal costs and profits how will one plot in compassion into the equation? Anyway common sense is not a requirement for any job and that explains why the rest does not fall in place.
It is imperative now with all the havoc our ruthlessness has caused all around to the environment that we reassess our priorities keeping in mind the long term continuity of our planet and of our species. So till someone comes up with a solution to favourably treating the excess greenhouse gases, till someone finds a genie who can give us another sustainable source of energy, can we not do the other small doable things that will buy us some time?
Small is beautiful, slow is lovely and I hope commonsense prevails on the law makers of the world, and on us the common people.
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