uno wrote:Are you wanting to apprentice under a farmer to gain his ethics/morals or to learn his techniques and skills?
If you have your own ethics/morals/philosophy firmly in place and are not seeking spiritual guidance, then you should be able to separate WHAT the man farms from HOW he does it. Because what you want to learn is the HOW. You can learn his HOW, without also going to the dark side yourself.
Very wise point Uno. It is the how I want to learn, but it seems I never let that be put in perspective. It's always interesting to see the outside look on things.
uno wrote:Of course, it would be better if a totally organic, hemp wearing, granola crunching, goat milking hippy took you under his/her wing. But in the event that does not happen, you might have to plug your nose and dive in with the monsanto crowd.
It's sort of like taking swimming lessons from a very skilled instructor, who wears a very offensive Speedo. Look the other way. HOWEVER...for each of us there is a tipping point where our morals are too offended to look the other way. I could never work for someone who I felt abused their livestock or kept them in inhumane conditions. If you feel that strongly about monsanto farming...then you have to know this about yourself before hand.
You said your landlord is a good guy and yet farms some monsanto (they do NOT get a capital letter from me, lower case all the way)He farms monsatan and yet you live on his property. If you are able to make peace with that situation, you can probably find your way around your current conundrum.
Excellently put. I would love to find a goat milking hippy, however reality is I live in Saskatchewan which has an extremely high percentage of conglomerate farmers, and the lovely people from here (who may or may not milk goats or be a hippy) are not really in range save a couple.
My landlord is planting monsanto for the first time this year and has dug up much of his alfalfa field in order to do so. I went to pay the rent, he was tilling up out back. Like a stranger with candy, he asked if I wanted to go for a ride (he did the same to Moose later); having never been in a massive tractor, I was not about to turn that down. He was very scared, had $30,000 put into doing this and, just from talking about offshoot topics, I managed to put the picture together. He's borrowed everything he can to do this and is very scared. I can say though, I've been researching naturally round-up resistant plants in an attempt to find a list of them to plant -- this isn't because I want him to fail, but because I want GE crops to struggle to survive as much as possible. I will be testing my well water in preparation for the fight I'll have on my hands if they taint it with their chemical.
Swamp Hen wrote:Just thought I'd add, what exactly would you like to learn about dirt farming? If you're thinking about going into it commercially, then you may have to look at "aprenticing" to a Monsanto Monster Farm. Consider however, if your interests lay in figureing out how to link the GPS into the new John Deere 1070 Combine, or which header works better on barley ect.
And when you say "Monsanto" I am going on the assumption your refering to any large agribuisness (Viterra, Dow chemicals ect.) Just a heads up, that most modern farming operations have some connection to them, through fertilizer, pesticides, seed contracts ect.
I'm primarily interested in livestock. I, like Uno, would never work for a person if I found their style of care cruel or inhumane, however I have no ground experience with anything except Chickens and a minor bit of horses. I'm interested in dirt farming in that I'd like to learn how to plant alfalfa and hay-type stuff (see? so technical) and learn how to harvest them using farm equipment so I have both sides of the coin to work from. I know how to harvest by hand, I thought it wouldn't be a terrible opportunity to learn the auto-pilot ways. Honestly, my primary drive is to get me out of the city, out of an office, out in the air.
When I say "monsanto" I refer to the GE crop manufacturers in general. I lump them together because I've heard about monsanto goons coming out this way and harassing/threatening farmers who are already financially extended for whatever reasons. The guys they don't threaten already work for them, I assume.
I suppose there's a moral battle put aside every day Moose and I drive into work, putting miles on a vehicle that is fueled by petrol products. I've rationalized that, I suppose, with the fact that we car-pool (primarily because I don't drive much). As Uno said, I can look at it for the HOW rather than the what, I suppose it's all the same. Livestock farming rings true to me though, and I've already become 'afflicted' with The Bug. Chickens have ruined me. I'm always learning new things, always researching, trying to learn what to pick out, what to ignore, and I want to expand my horizons on that when it comes to the world of farming and self-sustainability.
Perhaps I make no sense.
