In ,
Bromo wrote :

> On 2/16/04 10:11 PM, in article
> , "Michel Boucher"
> > wrote:
>
>>> But rather than get into a giant argument about Communism in a
>>> food group - how is this related to food?
>>
>> Food gathered on communal lands is available to everyone. Once
>> someone claims and enforces ownership, resources previously available
>> are either limited or must be traded. It has a lot to do with the
>> pauperizing of the overall diet.
>
> Agriculture did that - since to be a successful farmer, one must be
> able to work the land and get the food from it. Attempts at group
> ownership by communist countries generally have led to starvation
> when there hadn't been before.

I'ld rather say that the general restrictions of the diet comes from
various sources :

First the ever-increasing demographic pressure limited very severely the
access to extensive resources like berries et al. with very restricted
yields per acre.

There is the corollary that nobles restricted quite severely the hunting
rights, and kept hunting preserves from the ever-encroaching farmlands, as
game is of far more limited yield per acre than livestock, even if the
diverse nature of game was better than the omnipresent salted ham and
poultry/rabbit complement.

Second insufficient understanding of the diversification strategy : the
best yielding crop will give you the most to eat / exchange and thus
neighbours will tend to grow that crop too. And the limited fallows didn't
give the land enough time to recover, so they had to discover crop
rotations to get correct yields, but that limited even more the crops,
because only a few rotations were known to work.

Third the want for 'exotic' or 'easy' food, just how many people still know
jerusalem artichokes or medlar, which were common until the first half of
last century, but are so much a pain to process that potatoes and apples
just phased them out. (It's a little more complicated but one can figure it
out...)

And as for the failure of collectivisations, it has more to do with
psychology and politics than with theory, the way it was done, giving a
fixed salary to all hands without respect of yield and
de-responsabilisation of all the local management, bound by a stifling
bureaucracy, were absolutely no incentive to use the land at highest
efficency, and then the transportation system couldn't cope with the
massive transfers of foodstuffs from one part of the continent to another
giving dire starvation art times. But the latifundia of hispanic and
hispanoamerican fame are perhaps quite as bad a management system, what was
Zapata's warcry again ? 'Pan, tierra y libertad !' ;-)

--
Salutations, greetings,
Guiraud Belissen, Chteau du Ciel, Drachenwald
Chris CII, Rennes, France