Some apparently think of the news that Iowa farmers are relying on mules to pull their tractor rake because of the rising cost of petroleum as an example of the ways in which our globalized free market “taketh away”. I cannot disagree more, and I imagine that the farmers – one of whom is quoted as saying that he “just likes using the mules around the farm” – would be pretty much on my side. Wendell Berry, too. Obviously not all transitions to a post-oil economy will be as smooth as this one, but our resourcefulness and ingenuity are not to be underestimated. To the race go the careful, and the tradition-bound, and the easily adaptable. Even, that is, in the “age of globalization”. Plow on, Raymond brothers, plow on.
(Vintage-era photo presumably not taken by Flickr user jwinfred.)
Filed under: agriculture, energy
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