[p2p-research] Fwd: VW's open and transparent Factory in dresden - Germany

[Kevin Carson]

On 10/10/09, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:

>  A US workforce that was 90% agricultural 200 years ago went to 50%
> agricultural 100 years ago and then went to 2% agricultural today. That
> percentage is probably still falling (like from robot milkers), even as it
> maybe has gone too far, since a lot of people like to farm and want to farm
> and can't get the land, and smaller local organic farms are better for a
> variety of reasons (less environmental impact, lower transport costs, more
> security, more fun, more sociality, better jobs, kinder to any animals,
> etc.).

I'm skeptical that the decline in agricultural population was really
that steep, because it's comparing apples to oranges.  Much of that
90% 200 years ago was engaged primarily in subsistence production
(i.e., for their own labor), whereas the conventional measure that
today's 2% falls into is almost entirely cash crop farming.  An
apples-to-apples comparison would include the amount of food
production for subsistence that takes place today within the household
sector (backyard gardens, etc.), that is conventionally classified as
a "hobby."

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html