On Sat, 20 Jul 2002, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I got this piece of info years ago from an O'Connor student at
> UC-Santa Cruz, who was studying the organic industry of Northern
> California.
Out of curiousity, do you remember his name? I wonder if he ever wrote it up somewhere? I do now remember having read something about Northern California organic strawberries and their requiring more care that had to be done by hand. And I guess in general it makes sense that organic ways of controlling bugs would be more labor intensive than just spreading insecticide. And that if you use less weedkiller, you end up with more weeds to pick.
> My point in flogging it is to trouble upper-middle-class enviros, who
> think they're helping the earth with their sensitive lifestyle choices,
> but not bothering to notice the human labor involved. Recycling, too,
> produces lots of awful jobs sorting trash for low pay. Which isn't to
> say that organic produce isn't better or that recycling is bad. It is to
> say that styles of consumption can't change much, and can make some
> things worse, unless production arrangements are revised.
Well I certainly can't argue with that.
> And who knows what could happen if agro-science research were modified
> so that better taste and better treatment of workers and the earth were
> the goals, rather than maximizing sales and profits?
Nor that.
Michael