I'll take exception to one of your comments, though:
small scale organic farming? If so that means much higher prices and much more land taken away from nature.
This is a talking-point regularly circulated by the pro-industrial/productivist lobby. Don't you wonder why it is you don't hear it when the corn (maize) ethanol lobby proposes increasing acreage of corn? Then we hear that in fact there's heaps of land lying fallow that could be used... Organic farming is capable of higher yields and of lower unit costs the wider-spread and better-organised it is (I suggest to Sven above that the lack of a well-organised commercial network in a sizeable market is one of the reasons that hamstrings organic farming and keeps costs higher; secondly, as we have seen with petro-farming over the decades, the more the production chain is organized and given technical support, the greater the technical capacity of the farmers and the yields they obtain. That can be just as true of organic farming). Finally, no, as I explain to Sven, Hulot is not only speaking of organic farming. Just a switch from subsidising industrial farming to subsidising higher-quality, local, labour-intensive farming.
Give that man an organic cow!
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Farming can also provide jobs for lower-skilled workers who are now no longer needed in such great numbers by industry. And rather a countryside inhabited by people and their families than a monoculture desert run by agri-managers...
Fine if done voluntarily. Encourage it through laws and regulations making it easier. But that's easier said than done since farmers tend to have a rather strong attachment to owning their own land, if possible.
btw, I think you misunderstood me. I didn't say people should like their cubicle jobs, just that a regular, limited work schedule which allows time for a proper life outside of work beats the alternative. There's more to life than work, and I don't think that it's good to encourage greater numbers of people to have jobs that completely dominate their lives. Sure some people like heavy physical labour - whether on a farm or on some construction project or wherever, but most don't and family farming is especially problematic because of its all consuming nature.
As for city bias - I plead guilty. I like crowds and having everything I could possibly want right near me. No car needed or desired. Trees on the streets and parks are also good, but I feel better surrounded by concrete, asphalt, and brick than I do surrounded by nature.
But I quite agree, someone, that it's not just a question of "family farms" that conjure up the image of grinding hard work and lack of freedom Marek brings up. There could certainly be other forms of organisation.
<cough> In Western Europe, afaik. <re-cough> ;)
;) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
