Sunday, June 16, 2013

monoculture is how we do things in indiana

it's the typical rotation...the field behind the big box stores was industrial corn last season and this year it's planted in ( no-till ) beans...the field next to the supermarket was soybeans last year and this season has been given over to corn...beyond a late planting of alfalfa or winter wheat that's allowed to mature because wheat prices are up corn or beans is all you see in the industrial fields...there are specialty growers around here that deal in strawberries, sweet corn, asparagus, and the usual range of other vegetables...but they are smaller than the big fields south of here on county line road and almost all the leased fields end up in industrial crops...when the corn is this young you can get a better sense of just how much of the field is barren of vegetation than when the corn is over your head and looks like some green monolith...thirty inch rows are more than wide enough to stand in and walk down without ever trampling a plant...and when they're doused with atrazine ( which probably won't happen to this field...i'll be looking for "weeds" out there later in the season ) it is a field that is planted in a highly erosive fashion...especially if it is dry and windy..so the monoculture dialectic grinds on without ever finding a synthesis...always the thesis of corn and the antithesis of beans...you could call it agriculture...but i skeptical about the culture part.

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