Articles

10-24-08
The Market, the Sign of things to come:

Sometimes I wish I were not right about some things. The market being one. Falling so fast today that they shut it down to prevent a mass sellout. While the timing of a Depression may not be as I have said, it is coming with no doubt. My own opinion is that its time is upon us now. It's not a result of some prophetic ability but rather an understanding of how true "Free Market" interactions work. What we have in this country is not a Free Market System. If it were free, it would not be regulated by the federal government. No, if it were truly free it would be left to the consumers to regulate by their spending habits. A true free market system would allow the ups and the downs to naturally occur and those who made mal-investments would loose money and those who made good investments would make money.

But ultimately, the result of the current market crisis (and any in the future) is the foundation of our monetary system. It is the Fed who is the root cause of our "Free Market" not being truly free. It forecasts, it regulates, it makes attempts to curb loss, and in doing all this take the Free out of the Market. This is how I can say, we will have another Depression and another and another. Why? Because those who have the wealth, gain more wealth when a depression occurs. Then the government is granted more Power to take away the freedom of people.

This ultimately leads to a system that facilitates the government and hurts the people. How? By creating a "cash cow" approach. For example, we are the cows and the government is the milker. We eat the grass and as long as we're happy with the grass the government gets the milk. We do the work to eat the grass and convert it to milk. But all the while the cow is oblivious that the grass is dried and is bland and has no real appeal because that's all it has known. The Cow had no idea there were fields of grass with sunshine and freedom to move. Why? Because at some point this cow's parents were duped into walking out of the field into a barn where it was kept, then the calf was born and never knew there was a world outside the barn. Then when the cow is past its production period it is led to the slaughter house. Can you say euthanasia?

All this to say, we have a presidential candidate that doesn't talk in terms of America but rather in terms of the World. Why do we want to give our sovereignty to the world? Only local government can be controlled, State government is harder, National is impossible, and Global get real...there is no stopping Global governmental abuses.

Ultimately, it is going to get tough again just like the Great Depression but slightly different in that people will become more willing to give up a "Free Market" to a government mandated system so that they will not loose any money. Whether it is with this candidate for president or the next.

If we don't realize that our lives have changed and the comforts we had before we will no longer have, we will be left cold and hungry and at the mercy of at first, the Federal Government, and then to the Global Government. Chances are we could still be at their mercy but at least we would have a chance if we returned to a self-sustaining model of agriculture. We would exist without aid of the government.

By the way, (yes this may sound a bit fanatical) be careful what you accept from the Government in the way of free hand outs. There is no such thing as free with the government.



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9-23-08
In Responce to an Email regarding a previous Post:

An email was directed to me after posting to my blog a review of a study on the feasibility of farming with horses. The email went as follows:

An interesting excerpt but if horse farming is so good why did it not survive? The internal combustion engine has taken a lot of revisions but for over 100 years now it is still the mainstay of the world for engine technology. Are you sure you just don't have someone trying to prove a point in RE: to your study? There are several compelling reasons why people don't farm with horses any more, surely some of these reasons are valid today?

There are a lot of smart famers out there, if horse farming is better/faster/cheaper then we should be seeing farmers running in droves to this older technology.

First I want to address the statement of farming with horses as “Not surviving”. Actually on the contrary to what most believe horse farming has survived. Cultures have a funny way of isolating people, so too does the two cultures of Non farmers and Farmers using horses. People just go to the store and pick up what they want to eat and never see how its produced. There are over 200,000 Amish (just to start) who farm with horses or have someone in their family who does farm with horses and that doesn’t count the “Englishers”, as the Amish call us. I believe I read a note in the Small Farmers’ Journal that the editor sites having record of roughly 400,000 who farm using horses and that number doesn’t include the Amish. Even if that estimate wasn’t true, just type in “Horse Farming” into any search engine on the web and you will get droves of articles, News letters, Magazines, Books, Videos, and more on just the subject of working horses for farming. There are companies manufacturing NEW equipment just for today’s horse farming operation. The Horse Progress Days in Ohio is a great example of how new technology is coming to the aid of this “Old technology” of farming with horses.

Now what about the value of farming with horses versus the internal combustion engine and to its legitimacy in today’s market?

This question represents a difference in philosophy as well as a practical application difference. The Charter Gasoline Engine Company of Sterling, Illinois was the first to successfully use gasoline as fuel. It was Charter's creation of a gasoline fueled engine in 1887 that soon led to early gasoline traction engines before the term "tractor" was even coined by others. Charter had adapted its engine to a Rumley steam-traction-engine chassis, and in 1889 produced six of the machines to become one of the first working gasoline traction engines. Now the gasoline engine was created in a time when oil was cheap as a fuel source, and since the previous mainstay for fuel was wood to burn for steam, no one has been able to see the results of using a non renewable fuel such as oil until now.

Once the government began to get involved in the free market, thereby killing it, the special interest groups promoted tractors and implements telling farmers that it will out produce horses any day. What they didn’t tell them is that once they got them in debt for the tractors, and fuel was needed to drive the tractor, they had all the leverage on the American people they needed to push their weight around and receive special incentives from the US Government. When government gets involved in the free market, freedom stops because there is no righting factor, known as a persons will to buy or not to buy based on environmental pressures or desires. But all this is getting into another territory I am not ready to delve into yet.

So from a practical standpoint, farming with horses would ensure a steady overhead to the operation of farming, in that, fluctuations in the market would not effect its operation much farther than it cost to sell the produce.

But really this is more than just the previously stated; the use of Draft power (horses, Ox, and Mules) represents a change in philosophy. Bear with me as I try to get this point across.
If your philosophy is to make farming more of a business, exchange a lot of money in the process, and you DO NOT really care about the consequences of impact to land and the food supply, then you represent one group we’ll call the “Tractor Farmers”.

If your philosophy is to make farming more a way of life, become profitable- not necessarily quick but in due time, and you DO care about the consequences of impact to land and the food supply, then you represent the other group, we’ll call “Horse Farmers”.

Now I am not saying all tractor farmers are like this, but I say this to illustrate a point. Many who use tractors only do so because it is the only way they know how to farm. At the very least, a whole generation has gone by since farming with horses was even done.

The two philosophies can be summed up in one word, Sustainability. While the tractor farmer can out yield the horse farmer, the horse farmer can overcome the financial hurdles that the tractor farmer has. While the tractor farmer is at the whim of the market to do its job (gas prices anyone?) the horse is not. Just as the horse has some drawbacks to operating it in a team, so to does the tractor. With a horse you have to have more knowledge how to handle a team. With a tractor you turn a key and it goes. With a tractor it falls apart as it gets older and leaves you with the need to buy a new one, with a horse it produces you another horse to keep going, all you have to do is train it. With a tractor you get exhaust fumes as a by-product which fills our air with crud, with horses, you get rich fertilizer you can use (not to mention a good source for a charge for your methane production digester). Which is sustainable? Which completes the nature Cycle which God set in motion? Can you take a tractor, use it, while it’s spewing out CO2 capture that to make fertilizer, and then when it stops working make a new tractor out of the old one? Not all this is silly. Only the Draft animal can be a sustainable farming aid.

Just as the study showed, if it were to be read, draft power out functions a tractor in all areas in the long term. People stopped farming with horses because of the hassle of learning to use them, the unpredictability of a horse and the desire to produce more. But this was during a time of economic prosperity, and when oil was a viable and cheap alternative to wood or Draft animal. Now it is not the case. You can change a lot of money using tractors but your net profit is the number to look at, and second, can you maintain this? Its one thing to invest in millions of dollars in equipment and buildings to house that equipment, but can you use that equipment if gasoline raises to $10 a gallon? How about worse, no gas at all?

As to the last statement:
There are a lot of smart famers out there, if horse farming is better/faster/cheaper then we should be seeing farmers running in droves to this older technology.
Yes, there are a lot of smart farmers out their. The number of Draft powered farmers are rising every day where as the number of traditional agricultural farmers are disappearing at an astonishing rate due to unprofitability causing food to be imported from other countries bringing us closer to a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT and bringing the dangers of other countries to our own kitchen.

Horse farming is not faster due to the learning curves, the limited nature of power they have (one horse power instead of 80), and the unpredictability of the animal. But, farming with horses is Better and Cheaper and that is outlined in the study which I posted. If this were not so then why do farmers get premium prices for their products that are either organic and/or cultivated by Draft Power? And yes, we are seeing farmers running to the “older technology”, rather than away as is the case of traditional tractor farming, but they are also improving the older technology to today’s standards.

There is one more factor that I believe was over looked in the email; enjoyability. You say that isn’t a word. It is now! To me, it is more enjoyable to hear myself think, then the bawl of a tractor in my ears with its gas or diesel engine dripping oil on the ground where my food grows. To me, it is more enjoyable to work from my own land, produce what I need, recycle what I need and come out with a net profit with NO outside input. We have become so “Factory” minded that we expect everything to work in an assembly line fashion. It should always work the same way and in a business like fashion. The unpredictability of a draft animal throws that state of mind into a sort of chaos. A little labor never hurt anyone I can say that because I have done it. You want it easy; just go to the store or farmer’s market to buy your food. You want it to be more meaningful; become a farmer who lives a sustainable lifestyle, and who lives within his means until it is granted to him by God to be wealthier.

Farming is a lifestyle first, it becomes a business second. It cannot survive unless it is in that order. You can see this today with the growing number of people becoming sick with produce that would never normally make them sick, it is because the business side of things goes with the market whims and the market demands more profit. In the case of our pseudo-market we have other factors that contribute to the farming pressure. If it were a truly free market, the bad farmers would go out of business and the good farmers would continue to make a profit. But instead the good farmers go out of business because the bad farmers throw more money to the legislators. The market can go anywhere, anytime for any reason. The self sufficiency of farming with Draft Animals produces a balance to this “tossing of the waves”. It provides a person with a rooted sense of purpose because what he is doing is sustainable and has been proven sustainable for generations upon generations. The difference of farming then and farming now can be summed up in, technology. We can produce better equipment now, do more with the equipment, and create greater yields with less power than before because of technology. It is better, cheaper, and you could say faster in that you get the money faster because you don’t have the high payment on a new tractor.