House of Paine

kunstler brief part II

 


 heres kunt'z agricultural vision 
the like
has not  been seen 
since 
  Longfellow dropped his quill  


=====================


      Agriculture faces a similar predicament. 

< ie with commerce>

Today, we grow a few monocultures 
of grain or milk or beef or pork
 in vast quantities on gigantic factory farms,
 process most of the outputs 
at a similar enormous scale,
 and truck it great distances 
to gigantic super-stores. 

< his take on today in a nutshell
interestingly
the energy issue of large scale is not seen as a counter tendency
in fact large ops have lower 
per output  unit energy consumption>

The end of cheap oil 
means this will no longer be possible.

< nb the broad brush
again he relies on transport costs alone here >
 
We are going to have to grow 
at least some of our food closer to home.

 We will have to do it 
with fewer petroleum inputs,
 the fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides

< in other words only small scale farming can be organic
or at least non oily
                              pure  non sense >
.
 Our methods will have to be 
along lines that are today labeled as "organic." 

< get the  green gilled 
         lullaby cradle will rock  here>

Farming will have to be done 
at a smaller scale, 
and it will probably entail 


< here comes why i went on to a part II>

 
A class of people will re-emerge on the scene:
 American agricultural laborers.
 Their lives will probably be far from idyllic. 

< let this sink in 
and i mean all the way in
if you bally hoo this shit
remember he wrote this passage
remember
the fuck balls fantasy entails
to his apparent sense of whats decent and natural
a  burgeoning class of stoop laborers >

 
Don't count on this kind of work
 being done by foreign migrants

 when we are engaged 
n border disputes 
and demographic / territorial contests
 with Mexico.

 < I'm not sure of the dynamics here
but at the final bugle call
 white folks will be back at stuff their great grandfather fled>
 
When the US economy
 shudders and stumbles,
 life will become worse by orders 
of magnitude in Mexico,
 which is already struggling.

< by implication
 brown hordes will try crossing
 our southern  border
  in such ugly huge numbers 
we'll at long last seal the rio  with a kiss of death >

      The re-localization of farming in America 
is going to be very difficult.



 Our relationship with land 
the past half century
 has been one almost exclusively 
of brutal commodity exploitation.

< fair enough
so was it for the prior 250 >

 A lot of farmland in California 
is close to being ruined from over-irrigation
 you can see the salt precipitates 
in the fields off Interstate Five
 in the Central Valley today.

< ok if you say so
butfuck
we 
don't need an oil price spike
 to face  thiz
sounds like land depletion
iz  coming our way either way >

 Some of the best eastern farmland 
has been paved over. 

< shit
 those car putz ageen
what won't we sacrifice 
to those  hideous  4 wheeled demons >

The years ahead will require us to rediscover 
a relationship of caring for land 
and doing so by hand,
 tenderly.

< tender peon hands of course
you master kunt one presumes will keep
key tapping
and" told ya so" grand touring >

an age when
 the farmland around our towns and cities
 seemed to have value only
 as potential development 
- for monocultures of suburban houses 
and discount shopping -

< oh a mono culture
or better a mo-not-tony culture >

 stewardship was regarded as merely prissy.

< whow see the bile 
the guyz been called fruity 
just cause he's caring and gill green>

 In the future,
 our lives will depend on 
how we take care of the land.



      The re-localization of agriculture presumes
 that many so-called value-added activities
 will take place on a more local and regional basis

< relocalized demechanized dechemicalized
   re brassero ized   we get it kunty
                                 stop repeating yourself >

 the conversion of milk into dairy products,
 the production 
of meats, hams, sausages, wine,
 preserved foods, and so on.
 Europeans never stopped doing this

< oh god 
now we're headed back to swiss miss chalet >

. Their models and methods exist 
to be emulated, 
and we will have to do it 

< can you see
swiss miss 
legs spread 
locks gold
and  arms akimbo 
" either do it my way or starve wee willy ">

as the end of globalism
 becomes 
a more emphatic condition of life.





 Today, there are probably fewer than fifty
 immense factories producing 
most of the cheese in America, 
all absolutely dependent on 
long-haul trucking 

< fuck hoffa 's goons
                         got us by the ...>

based on cheap diesel fuel. 

< here we circle again>

Twenty years in the future, 

< wow a time frame >

there may be thousands
 of smaller dairies operating across the US.
 They will probably put out better products.
    
 
< why increased competition?>

 They will employ people 
in complex vocations.

< meaningful
 tasking
hard to master
life long rewarding  skills
like
black smithing
and  barrel coopering
and chicken geeking
and cob holing   
and utter jacking 
and hay lofting
and and and ...
don't it 
sound grand

 like the oil sqeeze
will 
 make production a reward in itself 
plus better butter too
                         what a fucking       win win >
 
They will have regional differences.

< aah the ultimate
 real regional variety
a biproduct of bucolic  idiocy
unfortunately only availible 
as a change of pace
 for  the rare wealthy traveller >

     The downscaling of agriculture 
presents some obvious problems.

< here comes the dark side folks>

 Farms take years to establish. 
The knowledge for running 
diverse, small-scale farms 
becomes a little more lost every day 
as elderly farmers die 
and the culture of farming dies with them.

< we'll need to do some reviving
           will it be
like the isrealis revived hebrew
or like the irish revived gaelic?
a hysterical success
or a preposterous flop>

 
The end of the cheap oil economy 
may bring dysfunction so swiftly 
to our current arrangements 

< can you feel his glee here?>

that we will not have time 
to make an orderly transition.

< chaos road warriors blade runners 
teen age atomic cave men>

 This could result 
in a specific food emergency in the US 
that might go on for years.

< soylent green is people>


As the Chinese proverb goes:
 women who fly upside down have crack up 

< one wonders just how this chap
 getz  off on this
  end to fatty are nots
  country livin 
with a hideous and sudden beam back
 to 1800 
 ever see that reality show
where moderns try a hand at the good old days
 
which reminds me 
ooh how bout  plagues?

no oil based  essentials
in any of our key 
medicines are there?

even so 
when a pandemic explodes out of no where
how will we get the stuff
 there in time
using horse carts and paddle wheelers>

 another reason to be prepared 
for political strife here in the US. 

< see the tilt here
as my man sammo pointed out somewhere nicely
this shit leads by lock step
to arms 
to honest white men in arms
yep
         militia 

shaved headed
ring tailed  militia

thats where this non-sense always always ends>

In the meantime, 
we may see swiss chard and potatoes 
sprout where formerly the monocultures 
of Kentucky bluegrass,
 stoked by oil-based turf-builders,
 grew so luxuriantly on the lawns of suburbia.

 < what a closing image 

  homer and archie 
  sweating  over
 a front yard  
      gourmet victory garden>

---------------------------------------------
 a sum up be4 part III :

so far

i hate thiz 

would be 
"natural aristocrat"


fuck what a dirty little shallow snot head

par contrast
take 
 that vile schizo thoreau 

in  the 1840's
the guy 
had essentially
 the same social position 
and the same  resonse

both gents
more then anything else
can be said to possess
dark revenge crammed minds


henry  against the then still fairly
 new industrial blight 

our man against
the still  reasonably  new 
car world  blight

but  by contrast
look
what fine wooliness thoreau spun out 

look at his john brown reach

his act of revulsion
his sublimation retains 
the chance of a progressive future light

his work has the eyes
of  a  three d imagination 

our man .....

well we live
 in a dull 
lite beer
and chardonay
 soaked age

so it follows 

even our

"   slighted natural good tasters"

are really pretty
bland 
low water mark 
pasteurized
hollywood products 

 bull lee where be ya mate ?

 -----------------------------------------------------