Recent content by Dan Powell

You know Delilah, you probably think you're doing something constructive on here. Probably think everyone apart from you is incredibly naive and that we all need shaking to wake us up to the reality of the underlying power politics that we are up against. However, I am pretty sure that most on...

@L P have you found the market for spring barley is holding up. Gave it up here as couldn't sell for feed. We grow all winter cereals where we can help it. Seem to compete with weeds better than spring cereals in our experience and yield better too for us. Quite like pea/barley though for the...

Great thread, and totally agree with @L P about organic wild birdseed mixes. Absolute disaster for creeping thistles and relieved to be giving them up after 5 years of stewardship.

My sister nearly died earlier this year when a bowel cancer op went wrong. Only 52. It sure does make you reflect on how you live your life.

I think this song sums it up.... A Lifetime to Find https://g.co/kgs/jNK7nj

Totally agree, except financial services does bring money into our economy. Other countries' money from which we skim a nice little slice.

As far as I can tell, the best economists in the world are so obsessed by their economic models that they miss the fact that these models don't agree with the real world. How else do you explain the total clusterfudge they have made of managing economies? I would argue that the reason we have...

200 years then.

I guess the questions are as follows: If this is progress, why doesn't efficiency lead to more time for leisure rather than a treadmill of constant expansion? If 1 can do the work of 7, what are the other 6 doing that is helping the whole community? Are they employed in increasing societal...

I don't disagree, but I don't really think it's quite that simple. I was looking at this more from a psychological angle rather than pure economics. It's a chicken and egg thing.

Or maybe just cynical.

I am terribly naive.

Yes that is important. Too many one man/woman bands in farming never get time off. Especially those with livestock. The only reason I really need an employee is to help with the stock, but it's also enormously helpful to have someone around for jobs you can't do alone safely, like clearing...

This is a nice summary of where we are at as a culture. https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/animations At some point we all individually and culturally have to accept this message. I would say only about 10% genuinely accept it though. Everyone else believes in some kind of magical future...

Ah, but why have margins decreased? It's circular. 1. Margins decrease. 2. Need to grow. 3. Extra efficiency and competition in market lead to lower prices. 4. Margins decrease. 5. Etc.