Hey Everyone,

While I've been lurking around the site for a while, I haven't posted in some time.

I wanted to get the word out here early about The Sustainable Local Food and Farm Conference which will be held Saturday, January 22, 2011 at the Gold Miner's Inn Hotel and Conference Center in Grass Valley, California.

If you are interested in sustainable farming and ranching (i.e. growing and raising your own food) this will be an all day lecture series well worth attending.

The committed speakers for this event are all nationally known and well respected for their knowledge in farming and ranching without the need for chemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics.

The keynote speaker is Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Swope, Virginia. He is a multi-generational farmer who speaks around the world. He is featured in the book; The Omnivore's Dilemma, and in the movie; Food, Inc , and has authored several books on sustainable farming. Also speaking is Dr. Will Winter , DVM, who is the founder of the American Holistic Livestock Association, and is also an author and lecturer on sustainable farming. Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy will give two lectures as will Aaron Lucich who is the creator of the forth coming documentary; We Are What We Eat .

All of these individuals are amazing, dynamic speakers who will give you great insight into how you can improve on your current practices, or start on this path without making the same mistakes that so many do. The Gold Miner's Inn will have room packages if you are from out of the area, and Grass Valley is only about an hour northeast of Sacramento. A local organization, Nevada County Grown will be presenting the event. Pre-registration will begin in October for this event, but I am guessing that some of you will want to mark your calendars now.

FWIW, I'm not a guy who stands to make a buck off the event, just someone who knows that this lecture series will provide a world of insight for those wanting to sustainably feed themselves.

Jeez, I wish I could go!

Joel Salatin is just plain brilliant. He really uses his head, and can SEE!

Sue

Thought I would bump this up as the event web site went up this week.

The Sustainable Local Food And Farm Conference

The conference hotel is offering room packages at $179.00 per night and include 1 All Conference Pass for each room night booked.

If you are in the area, or want to be, don't miss out on this great event.

I grew up on farms in the Midwest. What on earth do you mean by sustainably feeding yourself? I suspect I know what this is about, the facts might be surprising to you. Here's a primer to get you started.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1110/stossel111710.php3

It's about "farming and ranching without the need for chemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormones and antibiotics." It's also about growing and buying locally, to cut down on all facets of the costs of long-distance shipping. In other words, local survival, the way it has been done for thousands of years.

"Dr. Jude Capper, an assistant professor of dairy sciences at Washington State University, has studied the data."

Dr. Jude Capper is owned and operated (as are most of her cohorts) by the huge chemical and pharmaceutical companies who make enormous donations to ag colleges, and when the colleges attempt to teach anything else but the grossly expensive CAFOs, the corporations threaten to withdraw their funding.

This country appears to be on its last legs, financially. If/when we go into another Great Depression, where do you think your long-term food supply is coming from?

Sue

I think Susan sums it up pretty well.

From our farms, where it always has come from. Modern technology has enabled us to increase our yield immensely. That's a GOOD thing, by the way.

Some cattle are luckier than others I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqk-Di6gPVI

Industrial scale cattle farming using grain and corn is basically unsustainable in the post peak oil world yet even in the UK there are folks who want to proceed with this type of farming for the first time for purely financial greed due to pressure from the cartel corporate supermarket chains who need ever greater profit margins to keep their city financiers dumb and happy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300748/50m-plan-Britains-megafarm-houses-8-000-cows.html

The sooner folks realise that the party is over the better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xl3J4Kpy88

"From our farms, where it always has come from. Modern technology has enabled us to increase our yield immensely."

Modern agriculture: increasingly expensive chemical fertilizers, increasingly expensive herbicides, increasingly expensive fungicides, incredibly expensive and untested genetically-modified seed that can't be saved to reproduce itself ...

I guess it depends on where you're standing. The costs of unsustainable chemical growing and confined animal operations are increasing daily, and those are just the visible costs. The hidden costs are even more astronomical.

But if/when this country crashes, who can afford to pay for all those chemicals? The 1000-acre farmers who are living on the edge now, heavily dependent on their government (taxpayer-paid) subsidies? I don't think so. And the soil on those farms is dead, it's just something to hold down the roots so the plants don't fall over. If you think that all those farms can go organic overnight, think again.

And what about delivery? Do you know where your food comes from, if it even comes from somewhere in the U.S.?

Let's just look at some staple foods that keep at least relatively well:

Dried beans come mostly from ND, MI, NE, MN, ID, CA, CO.

Potatoes mostly come from ID, WA, WI, ND

Wheat comes from KS, ND, MT, OK, WA, TX, SD

Rice comes from AR (by far), CA, LA, MS, TX , MO

Squash and sweet potatoes mostly come from the south: FL, GA, TX, NC, OK

Milk & Dairy products: CA (about 1.5 times WI), WI, NY,
PA, ID, MN

Apples: WA, NY, MI, PA, CA

How many of those things are grown near you? Does anyone notice a pattern of where most of the food comes from? Are you confident that even your most basic far-off, low-nutrient, chemically-tainted food is actually going to show up twice weekly in your grocery stores?

Okay, how about your local farms? How many don't depend on the petrochemical industry? Do you think they can feed everyone in your area?

At the time of the Great Depression, there were more than six million farms scattered over American. Today, there are less than two million, they're far more centralized, and only about 160,000 of them are producing a high percentage of our food. Too much rain? Not enough? Disease attack? Pest attack? Crop failure? Just too bad, I guess.

If there is a great crash (maybe we can call it the Greater Depression), it's going to interfere with everything that our food supply depends on: chemical fertilizers, fuel for harvesting, power for processing, fuel for delivery. If we lose power (even intermittently and in random places), that will disrupt the internet and the logistics of delivery. Power losses will cause spoilage.

Can you imagine today's spoiled brats (of all ages) dumped into the conditions of the 1930s?

Check into your local CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) and see if there's anything you can do to help. Learn to garden.

Frankly, the whole possible scenario scares the 'ell out of me!

Sue

It's easy for this debate to go sideways. Many aspects of modern agriculture have value, though the pendulum may have swung too far.

I can tell you, as a former farm kid, that I have the means to sustainably feed myself.

I do not have the means to sustainably feed everybody else. There's the pinch point.