#Foodchat 419, comments and a link to the archives.

Topic: Food price #Foodchat:
Free trade drives agri-culture out of business.
Policy imperative should not only encourage low food price — it should ensure resilience.
Farmers, we can still feed everyone, can’t we? See @Cityfresh.
Industrial food price regimen has no place on my farm.
Export competition cannot keep up. We are one of the only countries that still subsidizes, violating trade laws.
In local foods, we try to make it affordable even for low-income families to eat well.
It’s tough to compete when McDonald’s is subsidized.
We can’t undercut other farmer’s prices and call it moral.
Let’s not do it to our own local farmers and young farmers and organic farmers who want to start out.
Now, we’ve become one of Mexico’s biggest corn exporters. Which puts them out of business unless they’re buying our corn.
Costa Rica didn’t want CAFTA because it would hurt their small producers. Neither did France.
Ron Paul: not that he would be good for America in short term, but it would all make sense.

My work in agriculture has officially invaded inbox, twitter, facebook and everything!
Link to the archives: Agchat and Foodchat Archives

Ecological Economics

All production requires the circulation of materials and the utilization of energy.
So it is the most limiting factor, the first fence that we come to that stops us, that prevents sustainable equilibrium

A new science is emerging that blends a “biophysical” economic perspective with throughput of energy, and a better accounting of our real impact on this planet. Reading the text solidified a lot of the issues I was having with the discipline.

For example, what are the implications of not giving an intrinsic value to a limited resource? (oil)