Climate Change again, so please bear with me (I hate that expression
)
So, Climate Change is most definitely with us, it's real, it's happening and it is beginning to impact our lives. We all have to accept that now, whether you believe it is caused by humanity or is a natural occurrence.
One of the major effects of the global changing climate is that food will become more difficult to grow, at least in the ways we are used to. Wetter weather, drier weather, more frosts, fewer frosts, deserts popping up, low lying land disappearing under the sea, all that and more, and it adds up to a problem with growing our food. I touched on this in a previous post.
It would appear that there is a large proportion of folk in this world of ours who actually dislike working on the land and producing the food we all eat. Weird and hard for us on TAS to understand, but it seems to be true. This is often a reason given for why we have to mechanise and go high tech for food production.
But is it? My preference is that yes, the major staples such as wheat, sorghum, even rice and maybe potatoes and maize, can be produced by robotic machines, set up to care for the land in minute detail. It saves some poor bod having to sit on a tractor all his life getting pressure sores on his bum.
Green food though really needs to be produced locally to save on transport costs and pollution, and to ensure freshness. Producing market garden type crops though requires quite a lot of labour and if today's snowflakes don't want to use their muscles or breathe fresh air, then how to we go about planting and harvesting our greens? Here in Britain we are losing our cheap labour from EU countries where they have a different work ethic, so our crisis is very nearly upon us.
During WW2, we had conscription, following an initial phase of voluntary joiners. Mainly men were either sent to the Front to be cannon fodder or down the mines which was probably not the better option. Mainly women were sent to work in munitions and plane or tank construction, or to food production ie the Land Army.
The crisis we are facing is not just a national one caused by war, this time it's a global crisis and potential catastrophe caused by our inbuilt sense of entitlement (to turn everthing to our use with no thought) So, we need a big social change to
make those who don't want to chip in and get their hands dirty to do so. I really think it's come to that. Instead of the military, because we don't want war, do we, we would have two streams for conscription: Environmental work and food production. Two years, say, when all young people who are physically and mentally able to do this, work to make this huge but vital contribution to society. Those going onto the land, would spend Year 1 on the farms, growing and harvesting crops, then in Year 2 they would progress to packaging, preserving and distributing food. Those working on environmental programmes would have a similar progression. At the end of their conscription years, people would either go back to their previous lives, or they could seek careers in the food industry, based on their service history.
I see this as a way to prepare young people for survival in the world they will be living in, but also a way of using fit young bodies to do the hard work of food production.
So what do you think? Would Government be prepared to re-introduce conscription on those terms? Would people accept it? Would it solve the original problem?
Again this is not a new idea.
Mr F has already brought up the question of whether it would be volunteers or conscriptees who worked in slaughter houses........
Topic: Brain's gone into overdrive. What do you think of this? (Read 5304 times)