"I grew up on a 1950's vintage poultry farm. Back then here in New Jersey there were thousands of small poultry farms with a few hundred to a few thousand birds. Every evening we would collect eggs and the whole family would be in the basement washing candling grading and boxing eggs in 30 dozen crates that we shipped to a co-op.
You might be surprised to know that this nightly ritual was repeated in millions of households across the United States. Everybody was small scale, everybody made a little money, nobody got rich or dominated over anybody else. Every county had small feed mills, poultry vet services, and spent bird haulers who shipped birds to soup canneries. The system worked, the supermarkets and food processors were always supplied with eggs.
It was all over by 1970. How did it end? the same way it always ends, somebody got greedy and wanted to dominate the industry in the good honorable guise of progress and efficiency. They destroyed the infrastructure and the system collapsed then they moved on to conquer the broiler, cattle and hog farms. It doesn't have to be this way.
Sadly we have an entire generation of adults in America that never knew a time when corporations did not dominate commerce. When little people work together they have more power than you can imagine."
Bob
Sunny Meadow Farm
Bridgeton, NJ
permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
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