Eliot Coleman on Industrial Ag

"When soil is used to produce at it's full potential, the soil on our own farms can provide everything we need in a low work system by taking advantage of the synergy inherent in all the diverse pieces of the biology at our disposal. A fertile soil has the power to make the small farm ever more independent of purchased inputs, and ever more independent of the corporate industrial world. But the obvious question is this: If these systems work so well now, and were so clear to our predecessors, why has grass farming had to be rediscovered? Why have the benefits of organic matter and compost and crop rotation and mixed farming had to be rediscovered? Why have we never heard of movable greenhouses, they were devised 100 years ago.

"Logically, in a corporate-dominated world, any idea that leads to empowering the independence of individuals gets dismissed, gets overpowered by propaganda that typically derides such ideas as old-fashioned, outmoded, and unworthy of the modern way of life. If people know these things, and begin to farm this way, and can feed themselves, and become autonomous and independent, and can produce exceptional and unique food of high quality that attracts customers, but its production techniques can't be cheaply copied by industrial methods, this is dangerous competition to the bigger-is-better world."

From this podcast of an Eliot Coleman talk.