Finding a place for cultibotics in Obama’s rural agenda

It’s not like there was any shortage of ideas for how to improve the stability of U.S. agriculture, the lot of farmers, and the economic vitality of rural America. Just have a look at President-Elect Obama’s rural agenda.

What would the ideas encapsulated here look like if embraced by the Obama-Biden team? What might they be called? Here’s a few focused statements that occur to me…

• Help insulate farmers and farming regions from dependency on volatile bulk commodity markets by encouraging greater diversity of production.
• Facilitate production improvements through both simultaneous and sequential polyculture.
• Enable farmers to grow more of their own food without need for much time investment or manual labor.
• Reduce the time spent in machine operation.
• Reduce the acreage needed for an economically viable farming operation.
• Reduce the initial investment required to start a farm.
• Provide farmers and their children with high-tech experience.
• Create a demand for skilled technicians and technical instructors in rural areas.
• Create opportunities for rural youth.
• Preserve local crop varieties and experiment with new crops.
• Improve the quality and diversity of locally available produce.
• Reverse the impoverishment of rural culture.
• Reduce exposure to pesticides and pesticide residues.
• Reduce the dependency of agriculture on fossil fuels and feed stocks.
• Reduce contamination of runoff and ground water.
• Reduce and eventually reverse the loss of soil fertility.
• Reduce wind-borne dust.
• Enlist productive land in the efforts to preserve endangered species and provide wildlife habitat.

This list could be far longer, but that should be enough for a sample.

Reposted from Cultibotics.

John Payne

John Payne