How to find a land

[Ahmed]

The "price reality", as you call it, is very far from providing a valid indication of optimization and performance, since it is based on accounting falsifications: without the denial of negative externalities (not taken into account), globalization (and this is just one example) would simply not be possible.

[lilian07]

This is exactly what I do not believe. The reality of prices is a system that aims for the least energy-consuming, the most optimized operation. Sometimes we see farmers struggling to waste oil while more sober systems exist in quasi-self-production. For that you have to know how to read nature but for those who can not read (like me) there is the price which allows not to go too far away from an unsustainable concept ... the price indicates the optimum which is inscribed in nature independently of any form of economic "machinery" which can only be temporary before it disappears.

[Ahmed]

the price indicates the optimum which is registered in nature ...

Are you kidding or what?

[lilian07]

No, not at all ... let's take a simple example. The price of fruits and vegetables. When are they less expensive? By optimum I mean a relative price in a domain. It's the same for globalization. The least expensive price is where nature is the most efficient for the product ... I mean that it is sometimes useless to strive to produce a result that will only exist at the cost of an overly complex system to maintain. To realize a viable system in self-production you have to be better than the economy .... like the lazy vegetable garden and it's very difficult to achieve it.

[brinbrin62]

Uh no. Even if the cultivation of peppers is more profitable in Spain, it must be produced locally. The cost price of Spanish pepper does not take into account at all the burning of petroleum (non-renewable resource) at its true price, the extraction of phosphate (non-renewable resource) at its true price, the exhaustion and pollution of groundwater and streams, salinization and destruction of soils, the unrestrained consumption of plastics (still petroleum), etc. That is the externalities not taken into account.

Think that production is the least energy-consuming ... We are growing lettuces in hangars lit by LED ramps and transporting fruits and vegetables over thousands of kilometers.

Totally agree with what has been said above: Without the negation of these externalities, globalization would not be possible. But a world population of 7 billion, a French population of 70 million either. Mr. Jancovici's lectures are very enlightening on the subject.

If oil ever becomes scarce and the markets panic, there is no longer any transport, no agricultural machinery, no production of fertilizers, no extraction of phosphates. And more agricultural production possible. So no more Spanish peppers.

It is of course not possible to base an economic model on apocalyptic assumptions. However, the risk exists.

[chatelot16]

the classical economic system with law of supply and demand works more or less to organize competition between comparable companies ... the current economic system is completely ineffective when it is distorted by big problems ... we often quote the problem of social charges and wages so different in some countries that it justifies huge waste in transport

but in this subject we talk about the small gardener, and it is another problem which makes the law of supply and demand ineffective: inequality of power between the producer who has no means of storage, and the buying merchant who can freely choose from whom he buys without worrying what the small producer will do so production will rot if we don't buy from him

a civilized country must have means of regulation so as not to let the producers die under the pressure of traders ... at one time agricultural cooperatives played this role ... which is no longer the case now because cooperatives became traders as worse as the rest

certain countries, i think of switzerland or japan, are very concerned about a certain food autonomy and support their agriculture without concern for profitability, but just for food independence

what can we do on the scale of a certain number of econologists? preach in the desert until you change French laws ... as effective as banging your head against the wall!

what we can do is create a society to do right away inside this society better than what our country does

[brinbrin62]

To be "better than the economy", I don't know what that means. Either we fit into the socio-economic fabric and we accept its rules and constraints, or we deviate from it, or even come out. But it's not the same dynamic anymore.

Basically, either we set up a business or a community of babacools?

In addition, we can almost no longer change French laws, since French laws are Brussels.

Your numerous posts forced me to question a lot of preconceived ideas that I had. But I ask myself even more questions than before.

I stay on a vegetable production. There are three ways:

1) The company> Need for capital and loans.
2) The association (with the CUI-CAE insertion option + subsidies from the general council, etc., etc.) -> You have to love squeezing ladles and negotiating with people you don't necessarily like.
3) The community (with survivalism option - It exists) -> It is a radical choice.

Then, you have to take into account the distribution:

1) AMAP
2) Direct sales (markets, farm sales)
3) Sale in semi-wholesale (supermarkets, beehives, canteens and restaurants)
4) Mail order.

And also the production:

1) General production
2) Specialized or niche production
3) Processing (jams and preserves)

All in an uncertain economic and political situation, and increasingly restrictive European laws (scales, cash registers, plastic crates, and laboratory standards for processing).

Phew!

[Ahmed]

You describe the situation well, Stranded, and it is even a little more complex than that the example which you chose: without the cheap labor resulting from emigration, itself due to the crushing competition of the more "developed" countries , peppers, strawberries or tomatoes from Almeiria would not be so cheap.
The great merit of market gardening is that it is a source of concrete wealth and that it therefore meets real needs, which does not mean that it is in the best position to derive sufficient income from it. A large part of the future value * which is now essential for the functioning of the so badly named "economy" primarily irrigates other better positioned sectors before any fallout reaches the producers of staple foods.

* Future value (assumed) or borrowing, much more necessary in the short term than oil ...

[brinbrin62]

Ahmed, I blame myself for having forgotten the virtual slavery of Moroccans and others in Spain. We will not talk about the Romanians who come to France to work at the Romanian minimum wage either for the crops.

Understand your argument for future value. It is not linked to the pyramids of needs, but to the short-term vision of political decision-makers, whose concern is to make the economy as a whole last. It is easy to understand that non-essential, or even futile, concerns that provide jobs (and therefore social peace) take precedence over a sector as marginal as "small market gardening".

[brinbrin62]

And I forgot in my post above, you have to choose a method:

1) Organic with tillage, with or without plastic sheeting -> Yield on arrival, but unstructured soil
2) Permaculture -> New-age aspects, and you have to like Gaia and stuff like that
3) Fenoculture -> Very interesting method, but not very suitable for a large area (it seems to me).
4) Conservation agriculture / Living soil market gardening -> Must manage plant cover
5) Aquaponics and cultivation under LED ramps -> Big investment in gear, and you have to like this type of agriculture ...
5) Other methods ...

It must be possible to mix, but this increases the complexity of soil management.