14—Lancaster Farming. Saturday. April 13, 1974 , » , » , »VrtVtVAW*V«WAV«VAV*V»V*V*%V»V»V» , iViV/AV»»VAV*V«V*V* , iV* ORGANIC LIVING By Robert Rodole Soon you will be able to buy butter that spreads easily even when cold. The technology for that new-product advance has >been perfected. Cows will be fed special foods, changing the •character of their milk so it can be made into cold-spreading •outter. All that remains is for the practical application of the • echnique to be worked out. Already, you can buy commercial'chickens that have a 'olden-yellow color, just like the farmyard chickens of venerations ago that used to scratch for wild foods that gave heir flesh a deep, healthy pigment. Advertisements for these tew yellow chickens claim that the color is natural - from narigold petals added to their rations. Neither one of these changed foods is harmful to our health, ■md possibly the added cost of these changes is reasonable *nough to allow such modified products to fit easily into the amily budget. Yet frivolous technological improvements - 1 ike butter that spreads when cold - are deeply disturbing to iome observers of the way our lives have been changed by irogress. They are symbolic of our inability to see progress is anything other than increased material prosperity in all ireas. Bernard Levin, a columnist for the London Times, views 'old-spreading butter and similar inventions as a positive hreat to the survival of society as we know it. “If our society *annot stop itself spending its labour and its treasure on Dutch School Natural Foods LARGEST SELECTION OF NATURAL FOODS AND VITAMINS IN CENTRAL PENNA. RT. 222, AKRON, PENNA. PH. 859-2339 ISEW HOLLAIXD team t for haylage!* <y * // HAYBINE® MOWER-CONDITIONER The Model 479 with the 9'-3" cut -- designed for the operator who can't justify a self-propelled unit or wider pull-type. The "479" cuts and conditions the crop in one straight-through operation, leaving the fast-drying swaths or windrows. Superior performance at modest cost. FORAGE HARVESTER with WINDROW PICK-UP The New Holland Super 717 forage harvester % with Super-Sweep windrow pickup attachment reduces field losses. Let us demonstrate in your own crops. Roy A. Brubaker L. H. Brubaker TOOWoodcrestAve S5O Strasburg Pike Lititz, Pa Lancaster Tel G2()-77Mi 397-517!) A.B.C. Groff, Inc. C. E. Wiley & Son, Inc. HO S Railroad Ave ioi S Lime St , Quarryville New HolJahd 78(5-2895 .154-4191 devising methods of sj survive, nor long deserve to,” he says. The main problem, says Levin, is our inability to draw a line and say that progress in certain areas has reached reasonable limits. The idea of easy living is like a balloon that can expand indefinitely. Even if everyone would have several refrigerators, each filled with a couple of hundred pounds of perpetually soft butter, people would still want more “prosperity.” At least, that’s Levin’s view, and he makes a good deal of sense. Of course, the immediate outlook is for a decline in material prosperity, forced on us by the energy situation and rampant inflation. But even though many people are tightening their belts and cutting back their travel plans, those measures are generally viewed as temporary setbacks. Someday, the popular view holds, nuclear energy or oil from shale will again give us the power to boost our physical standards of living onward and upward. Evidence of our inability to steer our efforts at improving prosperity into logical channels abounds. Probably every American is now using a dozen products that symbolize our mixed-up objectives as much as cold-spreading butter. Here are a few examples to ponder: Instant-on TV sets. You may not have realized that many TV’s that turn on instantly in fact have power running through some circuits all the time. So to get the convenience of immediate entertainment, you are consuming power when nothing is heppening. (That’s not true, incidentally, of solid state TV’s. They can be turned off completely.) Four-channel stereo draws current only when turned on, but is it a truly meaningful advance, worth the extra cost and the purchase of new records and tapes? Has anyone thought of defining reasonable limits for high fidelity sound reproduction, or are there no limits? American autos are replete with borderline “im provements.” Automatic speed controls take the pressure off our right foot. Antennas rise from the fender automatically when the radio is turned on. Windows open or close at the touch of a finger. All these things make life easier, but do we r 3518 Two outstanding med. & season varieties. Stalk strength second to none with 3517 excellent yield ability. qqz.q Four full season varieties 0000 which have proven them -3334A selves in southeastern Pa Excellent for husking or 3306 silage When ordering seed corn please consider the 3369 A Pioneer Team The best from start to finish m U PIONEER, \ o If 4 SEED CORN 1 i PIONEER HI BRED INC IAURINBURG N C • TIPTON INDIANA ■r, it will not long really need that ease? Does It warp our sense of values? Food and drugs are ripe with similar examples. Striped toothpaste blends in mouthwash. Peanut butter and Jelly la layered in jars in the same way, saving a few arm movements each day. Aspirins are made to dissolve in eight hours instead of four, for the sake of convenience. Packaging is another fertile field for study. Throw-away bottles are a national habit, while glass for canning Jars is in short supply. Pop-top beer and soda cans have hooked a whole generation, while their discarded tabs cut bare feet on beaches and litter the landscape. Cheese is sold sliced, with each slice individually wrapped in plastic. There are other examples. New electric thermometers show both indoor and outdoor temperature in digital numerals, saving us the trouble of peering at a dial. And over the horizon looms the supersonic transport, promising to take us anywhere in the world twice as fast as old-fashioned jets - while using more fuel per mile. I am not against progress, and I admit that all these things that seem to me slightly silly or needless do represent progress of a kind. That is why most people accept such changes readily, and are willing to pay for them. But this question remains: Have we retained our ability to tell the difference between progress that makes life better in meaningful ways, and what I call pseudo-progress - which uses gimmickry to lull us into thinking that we need slight improvements in traditional products that have served us well in the past? Find out more about how technology can sometimes back fire, in the 48-page booklet, “Hot-Line to Health.” To get your copy of this inside report on man-made hazards that affect us all, send fifty cents to Robert Rodale, Organic Living, in care of this newspaper. Be sure to ask for the booklet by name, and please allow at least three weeks for delivery. (c) 1974 by The Chicago Tribune. World Rights Reserved ATTENTION FARMERS AGRISERUM is a word that about 3 /ith of the farmers know of, but with some confusion about the proper use of it as a fertilizer replacer, or a helper to feed your bacteria. A meeting is planned by the Farmers Mfg. Co. to explain the way Agriserum is intended to be used to get your benefit from the product. If you have any questions on Agriserum, please try to attend this meeting. Place - Quarryville Fire Hall 217 East State St., Quarryville, Pa. Time - 7:30 P.M. EOT April 17, 1974 Speaker - Wilfred AJjets - Dorsey, 111. Product Available From Your Distributor Emanuel B. King, Kirkwood, Pa.
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