ox / crops need profit - otherwise?

[Guest guest]

Syam commented

 

> Let us encourage the

> vaisya's to get rich by cow protection just as

> Krishna was rich by cow

> protection. Of course the get rich is not at the

> expense of the cows but by

> following strict protection principles alongside the

> economic development.

 

> I do not share the idea of mark chatburn of leading

> by milk production and

> getting the ox farms to catch up. I do share the

> concept completley that cow

> protection farming must make economic sense in

> giving its practitioners a

> good living.

>

> If the oxen are taken care of the milk side will

> make sense but not

> neccessarily the other way, as we have seen many

> times.

 

Just a note here.

 

If I remember rightly, Prabhupada said "if you do not

work the oxen you will want to kill them".

Now, I'm sure there are many reasons for this both

gross and subtle.

 

Now, let's take the grossest one - $ reason.

 

Imagine a protected herd of cows growing to mature

herd status, the oxen are minimally worked, their

maintenace is paid for (accounting for herd maturinty)

by the milk from the cows, the compost and the leather

that will come. They are minimally worked as no way

has been found as yet to make any profit from their

work - in fact they make a loss. There is research

going on into how to make a profit, but at the moment

its viability is still lacking. If this were not the

case, not only would the cow department be supporting

the oxen it would also be subsidising a loss-making

business of ox-powered crops. What a better reason to

kill them, or not to work them.

 

As Syam knows, I am not against ox-powered cropping

systems, in fact other than an agricultural systems

analyist and designer I would love to work oxen again,

as milking cows is not to my taste (having done both

for a short period of time). The thing is that if ox'

crops can not yield profit in the market place then

they will only yield a loss - and somehow that loss

has to be paid for. Now, as Protection Farms milk can

or can not be viable, so can its ox-powered crops. It

is only by research and ultimately doing it that the

viability will be known, and if we fail then at least

we tried and maybe in the ash of the failure is the

seeds of true viability of what was missed before.

 

We have to watch the socialist ease that is slipt

into, where everything needs a subsidy and support

from everything else. As I see it, each department -

the cows milk, the ox' crops, the agroforest, the

herd's compost and leather, the tourism, the cafè, the

added-value products - needs to survive as

independently from each other as possible. Otherwise

everything is being subsidised by everything else,

whilst none actually yield a profit and the system

collapses all together.

 

So if we need to wait for enlightened Brahmans or for

ox' crops to yiels fruit, we could be waiting for the

cows to come home, which of course they won't do

´cause there won't be any.

 

Still at it, though I could be way off the mark -

though at least I tried,

 

Mark

 

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