Michael Perelman wrote:
>
> I was merely pointing out the ag. trade deficit. The US excels in
> producing large amounts of grain per capita because grain production is
> easiest to mechanize.
>
As various people have been pointing out for 50+ years the growing of grain on the great plains is destructive of the future. Water supply there cannot justify any crop but grass. There was a magnificent documentary film made back in the late '40s that traces this fact out dramatically. For 20 years now water for irrigation has been drawn from million-year old deep aquifers that will never replenish themselves. And of course even in Illinois and western Iowa, where there is often --but not always-- sufficient rain the deepest and richest top soil in the world is silting up (chemically charged) the Gulf of Mexico.
Still, I think probably this whole debate should start over from the beginning. Most participants haven't really stated plainly their basic perspectives but have thrown them in more or less implicitly and/or parenthetically. Thus those premises have never been really explored.
For example, is "industrial" agriculture (needs clearer description) compatible with anything like full democracy? Can the "family farm" exist without back-breaking labor? My experience on the "family farm" (fruit raising) is that it resembles the torture dungeons of the Inquisition more than it resembles a minimally human life. Can the food problem of India be intelligently discussed without first discussing thoroughly the political and social context? Does it make sense to discuss technology without specifying the social relations that make sense (or nonsense) of that technology? And so forth.
Carrol