by Donald Worster
Not exactly a page turner...
:-)
But I enjoyed every page of it. I was expecting more lurid tales of scoured automobiles and blackened skies, but that part was over with quickly and it concentrated on the four-way collision of politics, economics, bad science and Mother Nature that resulted in the near-destruction of America's low-grass prairie. First time, then again, then again....
Some lessons were learned and some still need to be learned, for instance, in our management of the California desert. Current drought conditions are forcing the huge farms to find their irrigation water from farther and farther away, but they'll go on doing so as long as they can afford to pay for it. Of course, it's we who pay for it. The fuel--and the fertilizer--that goes into creating a perfect head of lettuce in the middle of a desert and transporting it 1700 miles to a Texas Walmart store--well, it's inconceivable. We pay for it in our tax dollars, not our grocery budget. If we had to pay what it really costs, farmer's markets would start to look awfully cheap.
No comments:
Post a Comment