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Re: Small-farmer Sust. Agric. Economics-HONDURAS



In a message dated 96-04-23 16:53:19 EDT, David Leonard wrote:

>For example, many campesino farmers in Central America continue using
>traditional "organic", nion-chemical methods that are very ecologically
>destructive.  Soil erosion and degradation are markedly accelerated by
>"organic" practices like slash and burn without adequate fallow periods,
>non-countour planting, severe overgrazing, and deforestation.

At 02:44 PM 4/28/96 -0400, Ronald Nigh responded:

>>I hate to be a pill, but these techniques do not meet any organic
standards >>in any country and would never be certifiedf as such.  It very
much >>confuses the discussion on "organic-sustainable agriculture" to
mislabel >>these tecnniques (results of poverty and social inequality) as
"organic" >>and then claim that "organic" is not sustainable.

>>Ronald Nigh
>>Dana Association
>>Mexico


Dear Ronald,

I do agrere with you and apologize for unintentionally stirring up and
further confusing the "organic" vrs. "sustainable" semantic debate.  I
obviously didn't get my real point across.  However, I think you may have
magnified any misintepretation by snipping off most of the paragraph from
which those 2 "offending" sentences came.

My comments were actually referring to the Inter-American Foundation's
request for micro-economic documentation on 2 types of small-farmer ag
systems in Latin America:

1. Organic/sustainable models
2. High-input "Green Revolution" models

My intent was to suggest that the IAF's comparison analysis should be
broadened to include traditional peasant farming systems.  For example,
slash-and-burn farming is still widely used in some countries like Honduras
but is no longer ecologically sustainable where demographic pressures and
socio-economic injusticies have combined to shorten the fallow period below
the critical limit for sustainability.

Regards

David Leonard
Consultant in hillside-farming systems and agro-nutrition