192
September 5, l988
Sierra Club
P.O. Box 7959
San Francisco, CA 94120-7959
Gentlemen:
I am enclosing my check for $25.00 that I pledged on May 17,
l988. I appreciate the great work you have done in the past
and are presently doing.
I am greatly impressed with the battle that you are
waging to save the big trees in the l7-million acre Tongass
National Forest. I understand that the Sitka spruce may
grow to 500 feet. A magnificent tree much prized by the
logging people. If they have their way, these great trees
may disappear. I understand that the two biggest logging
companies involved are Japanese. The August issue of
Natural History magazine has several fine articles about the
Tongass.
However, I have certain reservations which cause me deep
concern. Most of my life I have been interested in
protecting farm lands and producing better foods for people.
Presently my deepest concern is with past and present
damage to the farmlands of the San Joaquin valley and the
Salinas valley. Also the Santa Clara Valley.
In l953. I rented a car in San Bernardino, California.
I drove through the valley as far as Eugene, Oregon. I was
looking for small family farms. They were not easy to find.
As I drove north in the valley, I saw enormous machines
leveling off the farmland like a billiard table so they could
use flood irrigation. One of the machines was a big leveler.
It must have been 100 feet wide.
It was dragged back and forth to level the land. Flood
irrigation is out of date since they first began using it.
Apparently, It was the big landowners doing this destructive
work.
I found one small farmer with two sons. He was of Italian
origin. We had a long talk about the destructive
possibilities of flood irrigation. He said the best
fertilizer of the land was the shadow or footprints of the
owner. He said when one has hired men, they may be careless
about regulating the flow of the water. He said " While they
are lighting a cigarette, your farm may be going down the
ditch.:
I met a successful potato farmer. He grew 300 acres of
potatoes. I asked him: "How many bushels of potatoes do you
save for seed?" He replied that he did not save any seed.
This surprised me. He told me that the potatoes he produced
would not reproduce themselves. Every year he obtained new
seed potatoes from British Columbia. Sometimes they grew
them one year in Washington State and then they were shipped
south.
Seeds or tubers that will not reproduce themselves do not
sound like very good food to me. The potato farmer said that
what he has is sunshine, water and chemical fertilizers. He
ships all of his crop to New York. No wonder we get poor
tasting potatoes sometimes--or often.
I saw crops of alfalfa which were dried and made into pellets
and then shipped to Hawaii to be used in their cattle
industry. I stopped at a big cotton gin where they extracted
linseed oil from the cotton seeds. Often used to make
margarine. They extracted it with heat and pressure. This
causes polymerization, which makes the molecules bigger. Our
own bodies do not normally have giant molecules unless they
are suffering from cancer, tuberculosis or a social disease.
I never buy margarine. The product may start out as a
unsaturated fat, but by the time they are finished
processing, there is nothing normal about the product. I do
not consider margarine fit for human consumption.
In California, much of our farmland is no longer producing
vigorous plants. They lack natural resistance to disease.
Therefore, they need to be doused with pesticides just to
survive.
It has rankled me for years that Glen Canyon was destroyed
so that more water was available for flood irrigation. This
has helped turn much good land in alkaline flats. This has
scarred my soul.
Apparently, farmlands are being damaged or destroyed over
much of the earth. I anticipate that possibly a billion
people in the world will starve due to worldwide famine.
The intellectuals have betrayed us. The schools and colleges
teach what I call "the slave owner attitude." They tell the
masses that if they get a good education, they will not have
to earn a living by working with their hands or doing other
menial work. This has created a vacuum which has drawn in
millions of undocumented aliens to do this essential work.
Most of the work on which our survival depends might be
called menial work. I believe that every human being at some
time in their lives should do a good share of the menial or
survival work, which is almost synonymous.
The Chinese believed that a nation could only afford ten
percent of nonproductive people. This was part of
Confucianism.
There has been a great increase in service jobs. Much of
this has been created by the public's desire for what is
sometimes called, "Built-in-Maid Service.) TV dinners and
an endless variety of packaged food. Too many restaurants
.
I met a professional couple recently who never, ever, cook
anything at home. Besides producing a lot of garbage , it is
not a healthy way to live.
You are doing a great thing in trying to save the
beauty and livability of our country. I appreciate your
efforts in this vital battle. Your success will affect all
of us now and in to the distant future.
Wishing all of you good health and good fortune and
the thrill of fighting for a great cause.
Sincerely
Robert H.Little
