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TechnoratiA 50-Year Farm Bill
The extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall - by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.
Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute - and no powerful friends in the halls of government.
Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.
To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.
Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological "solutions" for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.
Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.
For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.
Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.
But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution.
Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient. And with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture - provided, of course, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods.
Thoughtful farmers and consumers everywhere are already making many necessary changes in the production and marketing of food. But we also need a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles. We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.
This is a political issue, certainly, but it far transcends the farm politics we are used to. It is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs.
25 Comments so far
Show AllNOBODY mentions hemp. Is there no intelligent life on this planet? If I were religious I would believe that this marvelous plant was a gift from God and is probably our last chance to wise up. It will feed us, clothe us, house us, provide for our energy needs and will grow almost anywhere without destroying the soil and our precious fresh water supplies.
The war on drugs is not about drugs but about energy monopoly for fossil fuels industries. If some intellect is not found and quickly applied this earth is soon going to kick us off and deservedly so. Paul Jordan
I mentioned hemp ! (See post below). I am afraid the moose might eat the tender little seedlings tho . . . wish it was legal to plant an experimental patch and find out if that would be a problem or not . . . if not, then I truly would believe hemp was a gift from God ! (Not joking, moose are a tremendous problem here when it comes to eating almost any crop except potatoes or hay).
"We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities."
http://emrojapan.com/
Wow......is this article ever out to lunch.
I can tell the author has never turned a piece of earth in his life.
This upcoming Republican Depression may be the only way our urbanized,yuppie culture will ever reconnect with food and real farmers. Otherwise, real farmers and farms are too earthy (smelly)and reek of real sweat and toil, which our society has devalued to zero. A lot of people want wholesome food, but don't want to actually be involved in any way to see that it is possible to support small and local farmers, especially if it costs more. I don't mean to slight these two fine authors, but it is easier (and more profitable) to write about small scale agriculture than to actually do it. I know from 35 years of practice.
It's good to see these powerhouse philosophers in the New York Times. I was waiting for Jackson to get into philosophy of science, a new paradigm of science.
But what might these policies be?
1. Obviously, we need research on these perennials. Also on organic no-till, which promises greatly increased for soil, water, and fossil fuel reduction compared to other row cropping.
2. A return to price floors (& supply management, price ceilings & reserves) would stop the massive below cost grains from pouring into CAFOs, and would encourage livestock to spread back out on farms. This would encourage better "resource conserving crop rotations." Hay and pasture would become more competitive as feeds. But we also need research into uses for small grains, and better productivity from them (barley, oats, triticale, rye) to go along with high enough price floors on them, so there is enough demand to make their increased use in rotations work economically.
3. Conservation compliance, requiring proper use.
4. The other list of sustainable policies from the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (except without continuing below cost subsidization of CAFOs. Instead bring in price floors, #2 above, and get rid of all commodity subsidies). We need good incentives, regulations and programs to get the pendulum moving back the other way.
"Who killed the electric car?" Let's not kill "perennialization of the major grain crops" just because a few corporations can't monopolize all the profits.
5. Let's add Tax Reform to deal with Tax Loss Farming.
I've been reviewing articles at EWG on subsidies. All articles I've seen miss the whole truth, spreading misinformation. But one thing comes up over and over. RICH PEOPLE investing in FARMING. (Of course, I've not yet found any article that mentions that they lose more than a million dollars before getting a million dollars in subsidies).
Of course, it's a tax write off. That's what it's all about, not subsidies. The main "Program Crop" farmers lost money every year in the market (vs. full costs, USDA-ERS) 1981-2006 and again 2008-9, and got partially compensated with subsidies. But farmland values rose (after falling drastically in the 1980s). So, though you still lose money, (adding market income and subsidies, you use it to write off other income, not from farming. Meanwhile your land grows in value.
Farmers have won write offs instead of getting a price in the market place, which the output complex, the hidden beneficiaries and mega lobbyists, fight to keep (their massive below cost gains).
For the past 50 years, the liberals and conservatives have over subsidized Big Agri from corn-fed shit to factory farming in general. And if you think Obama's gonna fix the farming mess, you're fucking deluded because Obama is nothing more than a corporate shill and a king corn shill in one. And I'm still so mad at Klinton for signing NAFTA and that phoney "Freedom to Farm" shit that I'd happily smack that motherfucker with a crowbar if he came up to me ! The business leaders in Big Agri and the pols in both parties who support King Corn and Big Agri would make perfect target practices any day.
Wendell Berry, and to a lesser extent, Wes Jackson: I believed in you! 30 years ago, I made a commitment to small scale sustainable ag. I have fought the good fight. The wage a small farmer receives is abysmal. 30 years has become a crippling of my spirit. The injustice is so severe. Some years ago, I was forced by, economic necessity, to become a 'certified organic' farmer, to abide in another set of rules, some I could agree to, in clear conscience, and some which were excessive, bureaucratic and downright stupid. Organizations like MOSA gleefully collected their fees from me, blood money if you ask me. I signed up to sell milk to CROPP aka Organic Valley. They have abused me and my family, and they have gotten away with the abuse, and they do so by flying self-righteously under their banner of 'organic goodness'. To me, they are shit...
Would that you professors of fine English and notable speeches help me and help guard my kind from further abuse. Until then, I will no longer believe in you.
There's a message here for consumers. There are a lot of farmers out here trying to serve you what you really want, but it's hard to make the connection. We may not be in your convenience story or major supermarket. Marketing is the killer, more than production, I believe, making it pay to load, drive, and spend four hours at the farmers market. There are real sacrifices for consumers here, a spiritual discipline, to help make it happen.
We've had a lot of crippling of spirits in rural areas. Historically we've long had lower rates of suicide, drug abuse, violence, divorce, etc., but that has sometimes changed as exploitation has increased. It's often been reversed, as has been documented in "Harvest of Rage," about hate groups working here, for quite a while now, advocating bigotry and violence. (I notice above that Dennis Duncan says "smack that motherfucker with a crowbar.")
It hurts also when farmers are unfairly blamed. It hurt when Bill Moyers (see my post on his recent Common Dreams article) falsely blames "commodity growers" and subsidies for doing what, in fact, Cargill and ADM, Tyson and Smithfield, (with no price floors, with their below cost gains,) have done. It hurts when (urban?) progressives massively miss the point, as I emphasize in many of my posts.
Yes, there's a lot of futility out in rural areas of America and the world.
But consider a mega big historical picture, quotes from Lewis Mumford, about our 10,000 year history:
"Over the greater part of history, the village and countryside remained a constant reservoir of fresh life, constrained indeed by the ancestral patterns of behavior that had helped make man human, but with a sense of both human limitations and human possibilities. No matter what the errors and aberrations of the rulers of the city, they were still correctable. Even if whole urban populations were destroyed, more than nine-tenths of the human race still remained outside the circle of destruction. Today this factor of safety has gone: the metropolitan explosion has carried both the ideological and the chemical poisons of the metropolis to every part of the earth; and the final damage may be irretrievable."
"so close is this whole culture to the demands of life and the requirements of human nurture that it has met the test of reality--at least by the criterion of survival--longer than any other culture."
"Great cities might be leveled to the ground, their temples ransacked, their libraries and records burned: but the village at least would spring up again, like fireweed, in the ruins."
We have endured the burdens of civilization (the power complex) over the long haul.
From here on "Fireweed Farm," I toast to this "fireweed." May it thrive, with the message of Jackson and Berry, 2009 -2059, to help revive our culture and renew our spirits, once again.
Great quotes from Mumford ! Marketing is a huge problem, here in the far north primarily because the big stores do not want to cut off their suppliers for the few weeks that local produce is available in volumes they can sell. However, we do have an active state program to promote "Alaska Grown" and the Fred Meyers store in particular is a big participator and puts on great displays of our produce. Of course it sells well because it is literally 'thousands of miles fresher'. The biggest outlet to date has been our Farmers Market and we do have some very successful organic growers there. Their success is based on : finding a niche market and concentrating on it (for my market neighbor, it is carrots -- they are extra sweet up here because of the photoperiod); minimizing early season costs by heatiing greenhouses with wood rather than oil; fencing adequately to keep the moose out; developing a CSA subscription base; following crop rotation plans faithfully; getting crops out before fall freeze-up. Harvest labor is the hardest part of the equation. However, this neighbor successfully supports a family on less than three acres of farmed land, mostly carrots. (Everybody does something else for supplemental income in the winter, you might as well anyway when it's fifty degrees below zero, in his case finish carpentry. But most of his income is from his farm).
We put up hay on a very desirable piece of real estate and there are subdividers with their eye on it. It's a lot of work and stress for not much return other than the satisfaction of putting up quality hay. The cost of fertilizer is going through the roof. The field is very badly compacted and needs renovation. Planting hemp would be a good management strategy. But that is not an option . . . of course there's no guarantee the moose wouldn't eat the crop anyway, we are not even allowed to experiment to see if that would be a problem . . .
Can you elaborate, nedlud? What did Organic Valley do to you? I was loosely associated with CROPP years ago and still buy Organic Valley products. So I'm curious, and also a fan of Berry and Jackson, have read their work since the '70s. But you're right that small-scale organic sustainable farming doesn't pay any more than it did 30 years ago. Unless you can live on nothing but good karma and what you grow for yourself. It's backbreaking and spiritbreaking labor, and the money--well, there essentially isn't any. I don't know how anyone can do it.
I met Berry and talked with him briefly at a Seed Saver's Exchange meeting in Iowa some years ago. I got him to autograph his books for me. He looked very tired.
He posted the details on another post. And just because it says organic don't mean it's so. Quit acting like a self-reliant yankee.
What other post? True enough, not everything claiming to be organic really is, thanks to government restrictions against following organic producers regulations, but CROPP has had very high standards in that category for many years. And what the hell is "Quit acting like a self-reliant yankee" supposed to mean? So you think it's far better to rely on giant agribusiness corporations for all your food than to grow as much of it yourself as you can, and buy the rest from small producers? Better to consume as much herbicide, pesticide, toxic fertilizer compounds and as many bioengineered pseudo-foods as possible, rather than appearing to be "self-reliant yankee"? What are you, a marketer for Archer Daniels Midland, maybe?
Ephraim~
I shared some details about my problems with Organic Valley in the comments section following an article by Jim Goodman about organic vs. industrialized ag on CommonDreams several days ago.
Thank you very much for your interest.
Thanks, ned. I read your comments from the Goodman piece, and contrary to Duncan, I wasn't implying your claims about OV were false at all. (The way some people rush to judgment is incredible.) I was around the CROPP operation briefly about 16 years ago but did hear how it had gotten a little too big too fast and was exhibiting assholy behavior on several fronts. The same thing happened to Cascade Farms several years ago, which sold out to General Mills (I think). Dangle enough money before before any well-meaning entrepreneur and before you know it he's acting just like the greedy capitalists he originally intended to never become. They're all trapped in the same system and either learn to play by the rules or they get destroyed.
I don't like to comment on my articles, but since this is not mine and some of the discussion has veered to BIG ORGANIC, here are my two cents.
I think OV was a real leader in the field of organic farming. Note I said farming, not agriculture. Farming actually has more to do with people growing food, planting crops and milking cows. Agriculture includes Cargill, Monsanto and yes Horizon Whole Foods, etc and how they do their marketing.
Some of my best friends ship their milk to OV, I never did. I found a private local cheese maker,(although I only live 25 miles from OV) who wanted to stay small and local and pay his farmers a good price. OV has one of the lower pay prices in the area, yet some of the highest retail prices. I can't figure that out.
On a recent trip to a conference (from my seat back in coach), I noticed two OV folks sitting up in first class. Apparently paying their farmers more for their milk is not as important as flying folks around the country first class.
Then there is the USDA pasture rule, OV management has bounced around on that, from requiring their small WI farmers, my neighbors, to provide adequate pasture for their cows(which is as it should be) to saying the big western farms really shouldn't be required to provide actual and meaningful nutrition from pasture since it is dry out there and difficult to grow grass.
So, there you go, BIG ORGANIC vs small. I will win no friends by this post, but organic consumers are not blind, much of their motivation is to support good farmers. They know when management goes the Orwellian Animal Farm route.
I want to thank you Jim Goodman. When I saw your article and decided to post my initial comment, I was hoping we would hear from you here. I wish I had the opportunity of a small local manufacturer in my area. I am VERY worn out, depressed and yes, extremely angry as a result of my experiences...
I have fought the good fight for small scale agricultural sustainability and I am about dead, dead because I can't become numb. At 52 years old, I have precious little hope left...thanks to everybody who read this discussion and who cared...
nedlud
No, I assumed that you called nedluds claims false. And no I'm not an ADM hack. Of course I'm all for independent farming. First though, we gotta shoot down the big government motherfuckers enabling Big Agri to smash the small farmers unfairly. And btw, that's the same big government enabling Israel to unfairly crush the Palestinians. Get your guns out and use your pols as TARGET PRACTICE.
Thank you too Dennis Duncan, for your support. Organic Valley, if my experience is any indicator, has achieved 'BIG ORGANIC' status and is just as bad as any other BIG abusive organizational entity, reaping profits for themselves on the tired, broken backs of the over-worked laborer.
Hi, no problem. Btw, my apologies if the gun comments offended anyone. I'm just so sick and tired of this mess I sometimes go crazy. Losing a farm to Big Agri a decade ago, sometimes my mind feels like shooting to kill but eventually my other side puts me back to some sanity. Sorry.
I totally understand and share your rage. There's been too many words and too damned little action taken about any of these persistent problems, from Big Agri to the lies that led too many gullible unthinking foolish Americans to support Bush's war crimes in Iraq. If only Obama was going to make the difference he advertises, on any of these issues. I can't see how he'll do anything to address what Jackson and Berry outline in this article. It would go against half his major campaign funders. Obama's as beholden to Big Agri as anyone in D.C. Last I looked, they don't give a damn about sustainable or organic agriculture or any of its practices. In fact, they fight 24/7/365 against all that. And they have all the money. I wonder who'll win this battle, Wendell Berry or ConAgra. Gee, who can guess?
If you think that's bad enough, wait until NAIS makes it to the small farmers. We're talking Big Brother and Big Agri teaming up to persecute and rob what's left of the small farmers. Right now, the plan is to tag the animals but when Big Agri invents another ecoli veggie crisis, veggies too are gonna be tagged and the small farmers will be forced to pay higher fees while Big Agri gets a discount. It's just like the US and Israel teaming up to batter down what's left of the Palestinians IMHO. The more Washington does these atrocities on all issues like this the more I hate government.
Thanks to Wes and Wendell for this timely reminder.
Interested parties may also want to check out
WC Lowdermilk's treatise 'CONQUEST OF THE LAND THROUGH SEVEN THOUSAND YEARS "
www.nrcs.usda.gov/news/pub/pdf/conquest.pdf
My new years' resolution is to grow more of my own food and to persuade my friends and neighbours to do the same.