Docile Oxen & Happy Peasants
Writing in The Weekly Standard, Blake Hurst notes continuing problems with Cuban agriculture and criticizes those he sees as its American proponents:
Yet today people hold up the Cuban food system as a model for the rest of the world.
Sustainable, largely organic, community-based, and healthy food production in post-Soviet Cuba is offered by critics of “industrial agriculture” as an example of the sort of system that we should aspire to in the United States.
I have read two of the books that Hurst mentions: Deep Economy by Bill McKibben and The End of Food by Paul Roberts. While both mention the way that Cuban agriculture changed to be come deindustrialized and somewhat more market oriented, neither fawn over it in the way the Hurst imagines.
Hurst’s mischaracterization of The End of Food is particularly absurd:
Paul Roberts is another writer who finds much to admire in Cuba. His book The End of Food (2008) is a paean to the banishing of the evil tractor and the awful fertilizer, the wonderful diversity, the docile oxen chewing their cud, the peasants happily hoeing as peasants ought to do.
Oddly, for a writer finding “much to admire in Cuba,” he only mentioned it on three pages. I reviewed the book for Chronicles last year and described it as,
a searing indictment not only of the dominant methods of food production, but, implicitly, of the political and media culture, which does a great job of reporting on flag pins and flip-flops but drops the ball when it comes to serious issues.
Roberts makes numerous claims about the American and international food system—none having anything to do with the “evil” of tractors— that Hurst doesn’t mention or dispute. Roberts’ just-the-facts-ma’am style leaves no room for docile oxen or happy peasants. I have no idea what book Hurst had hidden between the covers of The End of Food.
I haven’t read The End of Food, but this article Roberts recently published at Mother Jones further undermines the notion that he’s some starry-eyed romantic hippie:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/02/spoiled-organic-and-local-so-2008
Clark,
Surely you’re not surprised by disingenuous and manipulative argumentation from the Weekly Standard?
Lee – I read your MOTHERJONES article by Paul Roberts. The guy does not seem to be a “starry-eyed romantic hippie”.
He “is” a liberal agenda, coldly shoveling facts and materials into his “organic” steam engine.
This is typical of his comments:
“Think about it. When most of us imagine what a sustainable food economy might look like, chances are we picture a variation on something that already exists—such as organic farming, or a network of local farms and farmers markets, or urban pea patches—only on a much larger scale. The future of food, in other words, will be built from ideas and models that are familiar, relatively simple, and easily distilled into a buying decision: Look for the right label, and you’re done.
But that’s not the reality. Many of the familiar models don’t work well on the scale required to feed billions of people. Or they focus too narrowly on one issue (salad greens that are organic but picked by exploited workers). Or they work only in limited circumstances. (A $4 heirloom tomato is hardly going to save the world.)”
Paul Roberts is one of those people who don’t know why the “global warming” issue is a hoax. He is an agenda looking for facts.
As a starry-eyed liberal kid in the 50′s in Oregon, I could tell you at age 14 what grass to plant in an orchard, and how to deal with sheep flukes, and what temperature to keep turkey eggs.
I did school reports on how India was dealing with foot-rot disease, by putting manure into containers that could produce natural gas fuel to power vehicles. I listened to the Lovely Mrs Smith tell us students that Evil Americans were causing the next Ice Age, and that the US industrial complex was sucking up ALL the world’s oil which would be gone befor the year 2000.
Mr Stooksbury, explain to me why they had to rename “global warming” to “climate change”.
Explain to me why Al Gore has made SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION from this hoax, but has NOT significantly changed his extravagant lifestyle.
Explain to me why NONE of the signers of the KYOTO treaty have been able to get all companies to follow it’s dictates, and why the hoax of “carbon credits” is SLOWING the rate at which big businesses clean up their processes.
Look at the ECONOMIC WELL BEING of California, and decide if that is where you wish to take the whole world, if we put you in charge. If you listen carefully, we can exlain what is wrong, then you can help us throw corrupt Republican politicians out of office (we mad Republicans will donate to your Democratic challengers, until the field begins to clean up).
Paul Roberts has done some good work, and I celebrate his being concerned. But he has a lot of faulty preconceptions, and seems highly agenda-driven. Anyone understanding that some of us might have that concern, might find a lot of good material contained in his articles and documentation.
…and before you tell me that you’re a Republican, instead of a Democrat, we sentence you to 1 year of hard listening to Rush Limbaugh, until you realize that we don’t FOLLOW him, we are way down the road waiting for him to catch up.
We use him as an “ultimate canary in the mineshaft”, to help us ferret out those who haven’t understood yet.
Tom,
What on earth are you going on about? And, please, take the “climate change is a hoax” hobby horse to FREEP or other dwellings of dittoheads.
“Waiting for him to catch up” . . . chuckle. Yeah, right. You’ve displayed ample free thinking here.
And . . . no conservative would/should identify as a Republican at this point.
“Mr Stooksbury, explain to me why they had to rename ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change.’”
That’s a silly question straight out the Limbaugh/Hannity prayerbook. Go to Google News and search “global warming” and I guarantee that you will see recent news stories using the phrase.
Not so long ago I found some liberal blogger (I don’t exactly remember where that was ) complaining about the evil conservative conspiracy labeling “Global Warming” as “Climate Change”. And here is a conservative telling me that in fact it is a liberal conspiracy!
Maybe TomT you should care more about the issue and less about the label.
Let’s examine where we are, in this discussion.
Liberals, advancing their typical agenda, have “evolved” to the latest buzzword of “sustainability”. I know a bit about the history of this agenda, having been a fierce liberal-leaning Republican in the 60′s, and supporting 100% the book SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson.
The current post, which we are discussing, is a “hit piece”, a heavily agenda-driven piece, based on assumptions that are integral to the liberal manifesto.
Many who pretend to be conservative, are espousing liberal tenants, based on BAD SCIENCE.
You can tell a liberal, but you can’t tell him/her much, because they are inherently superior to everyone else. When you start spouting evidence that seems legitimate, they will start calling us names.
When that falters, they will simply begin to shift the meaning of words and facts. Ex President looks into the camera and says, “I did NOT have sex with that woman.” Current President looks into the camera and says, “There will be FIVE DAYS for the public to examine the important bills online, before a vote upon them.”
How much time has Paul Roberts spent on a tractor? How much time has he spent “pulling” a calf? How much time has he spent, personally, taking soil and water samples? Sorry if I’m wrong, but it seems like his knowledge, which is considerable, has been derived from agenda-driven literature.
Central planning tends to cause unintended consequences, and causes pain for those who are controlled from some remote government agency. This brings about the whole “No taxation without representation” reaction by those who have been coopted by someone else’s agenda.
I can explain why Al Gore used BAD SCIENCE to anyone who will listen. Not ALL of his conclusions are wrong. But he is NOT CONSTRAINED by the rules he wishes to set for everyone else, and much of his populist literature is based on FALSE PREMISES.
I simply was making the point that while Paul Roberts does not seem as rabid as an Al Gore, he seems to be collecting data with a fixed goal in mind. I base this solely upon my exposure to him from this blog, as well as the link given to us by Lee (in this blog, above).
Show me a conservative whose sneering contempt keeps them from absorbing information, and I’ll show you someone who may not be all that conservative.
And being a “conservative” now means drawing immoveable conclusions on matters about which you have no real knowledge and cannot have either the skill or time to research. Instead, it’s just picking “experts” like picking a favorite athlete (“I like that Dutch guy who doesn’t believe in global warming”–except, of course, that he does.)
A real conservative recognizes his limitations and is modest in ambition in those areas where he’s limited. That elminates Limbaugh, Hannity (who isn’t qualified to run the tap a Frat Kegger), et al–and their legion of “dittohead” followers, from the definition of conservative.