Protection Farms - reality bites

[Guest guest]

Syam stated:

 

Why is the concept of commercial farming not

> stimulating.

>

> The cow protection world is awaiting to see a

> breakthrough. The cow world

> wants to see householders living comfortably on the

> land with all the

> resources they need to have their occasional

> internatonal holiday.

>

> There is nobody on this conference as far as I know

> who is dependant on the

> ox for their living. Their is nobody on this

> conference as far as I know who

> is realy prepared to live the talk of self

> sufficiency. If they were they

> could not be on this conference because as we all

> know you cannot grow a

> computer.

>

> Our message to the world must be how to make a

> significant living by using

> vedic principles of agriculture. If we can not

> demonstrate how a family man

> can make a good living from ox centered farming then

> the general world will

> not do it just like our own devotees are not doing

> it.

>

> We must have a farming model that we can live. we

> cannot have a farming

> model that is for somebody else. If we cannot live

> the life we want from the

> land then we will not farm the land.

>

> Ox farming must be based on sound economic

> principles. The produce of ox

> farming is a niche market the world is eagerly

> waiting for.

>

> Any model that gets people on the land dependant on

> their oxen must be

> suported and encouraged. we need to be brave because

> Kali is relentlessly

> moving the goal posts further and further away from

> cow protection economics

>

> We need to show the world a new economics of food

> produced organically by

> protected oxen.

 

Also:

 

> The businessman's answer was very enlivening because

his point was that it is not a

question of price it is a question of meeting the

demand. His point

was

that the flour will sell at the price wanted. There

will be persons who

will

value the product and will pay the premium price for

it. His concern

was can

we meet the demand.

 

 

 

My points - from a karmi/dervotee perspective:

 

How comfortable should we live, or are we allowed to

live as a minimum?

 

The governments of the first world will not allow

subsistence life - just urban poverty. No simple

shacks, only cottages where the prices are

astronomical. So the limiting factor of how "poor" we

can be is within the socio-political environment that

we are in. We could go to less developed countries,

but the challenge is to change the world, as well as

our own spiritual development.

 

I have put forward the need to cost a system so that

we do not run at a defecit, ultimately this is for a

global market, but the best consumers of this product

are the middle class devotees, and ultimately Hindus

and vegies.

 

I agree with the business man, who said the main point

is to ready supply than to worry about price. Price is

relevant, but not that relevant. If the product is

desired people will pay the price.

 

I certainly believe we must acknowledge the

compromises we all make away from what Prabhupada

said. If in the end we design a system that has a few

people (devotees?) on the land supplying others

(devotees?) in their middle class environment, then it

is a step forward and needs to be supported.

 

The breakthrough can come with this reality check. Me,

I definately do not follow Vedic instuctions, but then

neither do devotees to the T; we are all in the

producer/consumer economic world, with TV's, central

heating, comfortable beds - and all the resources

around us come from a system we deride.

 

Hypocrisy rules. Yet I feel less hypocritical

admitting to my limitations, than a devotee who wears

tilak et al, yet has no intention of ever being

interested in cow protection, except as a nice idea.

 

The gulf between the karmi vegy, whom I write to in

The Vegetarian Magazine (UK) and the ISKCONer is

enormous, yet shrinking. Does it really harm our

spiritaul growth to support a half-way-house system,

involving business-orientation? Or is the paradox that

not supporting it means we are doing worse, ´cause the

one we should be doing is too dificult in our

conditioned states?

 

I, for one, acknowledge that cow protection is a

sentimental issue for me, and that I want it so that I

can consume its products. Yes, I know its RIGHT, but I

do so much that is WRONG that I'm not going to be

puritanical.

 

Whilst this paradox, of non-acknowledged

sold-out-ness, goes on, then most of us are just

reactive and not proactive.

 

The present day movement is towards this system, yet

it will come by via hard work, working out the

system's procedures and costs, and then implementing

them. The cow conference devotees are at the forefront

of this movement. Yet, as far as I can see, so far

only Rohita dasa and Syam and a few others show a real

grasp of the necessary compromises necesary to move

forward to a more secular middle class version.

 

Cow protection can not just be for devotees, it must

be spread wide. I firmly believe that this business

approach is the best way to achieve this. Yet, with

all my pushing here, we must get a consensus vision so

that one day soon procedural systems and costs, and

prices, can be presented, professionalised, and then

debated in the animal-rights charities and then mass

media, for it to become a major phenomena that will

have enough support to link funders, producers and

consumers.

 

Otherwise we can just slag of the asuric people and

their acts and allow an opportunity for change to go

by until it appears again in 10 or 20 years when the

secular situation could be more favourable.

 

Please devotees, what I am asking for is not so bad -

help me to systemise and cost this thing so that an

idea becomes a mainstream reality - just as organic

farming has become.

 

Yours again,

 

Mark

 

 

 

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