Hi;
I received some copies of the July/August Agriview and they
look very nice.
CBC radio wants to do an interview (with me) this coming week.
I saw an article in Saturday's Leader Post that seemed to say
that Wal-Mart is not the root of all evils, and if you can't
beat 'em , join 'em (like with the Borg on Star Trek, we will
be assimilated). I hope that we can provide a positive alternative
to that defeatist attitude.
I just finished "Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and
Community" by Thomas Lyson. It was quite inspiring - there is hope!
Here are his 6 characteristics of civic agriculture:
1) farming is oriented toward local markets that serve local consumers
rather than national or international mass markets.
2) agriculture is seen as an integral part of rural communities, not
merely as production of commodities.
3) farmers are concerned more with quality and value-added
products and less with quantity (yield) and least-cost production
practices.
4) production at the farm level is often more labour-intensive
and land-intensive and less capital-intensive and land-extensive. Farm
enterprises tend to be considerably smaller in scale and scope than
industrial producers.
5) producers more often rely on local, site-specific knowledge
and less on a uniform set of "best management practices."
6) producers forge direct market links to consumers rather than
indirect links through middlemen (wholesalers, brokers, processors,
etc.).
With regards to point 5 above, some of you may remember me talking
about trying to establish a Centre for Open Systems and the Internet
(COSI). However, following the Knowledge Commons event last November
(that some of you also know about) and working on this project, I
think that a broader mandate is appropriate (and it has a better
acronym too, I think). Does anyone have any comments or suggestions
about a possible Centre for Local Open Knowledge (CLOK)?
Best regards,
Daryl
--
Daryl H. Hepting, Ph.D.
Associate Professor * Computer Science Department * CW 308.22
University of Regina * Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4S 0A2
dhh@cs.uregina.ca * http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~hepting
tel: (306) 585-5210 * fax: (306) 585-4745
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