Brian Fredericksen writes:  "I and other like minds  can only hope that 
these systems break down from the fact that they are unsustainable."

    Not sure what to make of a statement like that, Brian. As far as 
beekeeping goes if they are unsustainable then by definition they are going 
to break down.  If they are sustainable then why would you want them to 
break down?  You could either be wishing misfortune on someone who bears no 
malice toward you, and if so shame on you, or you honestly think that if 
migratory beekeepers all go away all your beekeeping problems will go away 
with them in which case I think you are fooling yourself.  In any case you 
do your cause more harm than good by placing yourself on some loftier plane 
than others who are perhaps not motivated as much by greed as by a desire 
to make a living by providing what many good folks feel is a useful 
service.  It’s that holier than thou attitude that turns off the very 
people you ought to be trying to convince.  I hope people do not avoid 
reading Michael Pollan’s books because they feel turned off and maybe even 
insulted by your over simplistic diatribes.  I suggest you read Barack 
Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope”, to learn something about how to carry 
on a dialogue with people who have different views than you do.  He places 
a lot of importance on the need to see the world through the eyes of those 
with whom we disagree.  A clearer less judgmental understanding of where 
people are coming from can take us a long way toward finding not only the 
answers to what is sustainable, but how to get there.
    In terms of what is or is not sustainable, I think it might be worth 
mentioning that in a sense nothing is sustainable, and by that I mean that 
even without the presence of billions of human beings on the planet, 
everything is always changing.  It can be as dangerous to ignore that fact 
as it is to ignore the impacts we humans bring to bear on what stability 
there is within ecological systems.  For us, sustainability requires 
adaptability to change.  So it does not automatically go without saying 
that the smartest thing is to try and rigidly adopt or impose some old time 
means of production and distribution in the world that exists right now.  
You have to make the case that such a system is sustainable just as much as 
you have to make the case that the other system is not.  
    It’s great to promote and try things like small scale organic 
agriculture and local public markets, but what level of guarantee is there 
that those systems will fulfill all our needs all the time?  Lots of 
natural and man made events can disrupt small systems on small and fairly 
large scales.  Resilience may be a quality of such systems but it is not 
guaranteed by them just as it is not necessarily absent or guaranteed in 
large scale systems.  Small scale systems have their own unique 
vulnerabilities just as large scale systems have theirs.  We have been 
observing these large scale systems for quite a while now, about one 
generation, really, and their flaws are being exposed.  If, or as, we 
become more dependent on smaller more localized systems of food production, 
we may well see that there are weaknesses inherent in them as well.  In the 
real world scenario, everything will be moving between extremes of small 
and large scale in search of an optimal point of sustainability.  You will 
never know exactly when you are there or how long you will be able to stay 
there.  You can never just hold on to an idea and take it for granted that 
sticking to it will keep you sustainable.  You have to constantly be 
reading the signs of change and adapting.  Good luck and may the force be 
with you.

Steve Noble

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