knowing how way leads on to way...
Jenny was saying that in one of her classes they are traveling around Iowa looking at different farming systems comparing the systems, techniques, and outcomes. Basically they are asking the question, 'What is sustainable?'. It is an interesting question. On the one hand there is ecological/resource sustainability. Whatever we do, sooner or later, the environmental chickens are going to come home to roost. At the same time you have real-world market sustainability. In a global and integrated economy, agriculture must be able to meet the nation's food (and possibly fuel) demands in a complex world economy and in a way that works, that makes a profit or that provides incentive to actually do it and do it well.
It is exciting to see some shifts toward organic farming and to see niche possibilities popping up as the market diversifies a bit and there is a demand for other options than mass manufactured foodstuff. Admittedly, I probably have a somewhat stylized and romantic perspective on the world of farming.
But I remember reading Czeslaw Milosz about returning to his grandparents' home, the forest where he had grown up by a river in Poland (or Lithuania?). He had spent his childhood in the woods, getting to know the trees and birds, his own world, a space that you can sense in his poetry. Under communism, the forest and the buildings had been cut down along with everything for miles around to make a giant collective farm. He finally returned to fields along the river following the bare contours of a world that was left only to an old man's memory and words. Perhaps it was not simply communism that erased those family lands. The farmstead that has been a staple way of life in Western culture since the Neolithic may disappear under capitalism as well. Whether it falls to ideas or to the market, it simply may not be sustainable as a means to meet our culture's needs.
All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea is not full. I know that the prairies become farmsteads and that the forests become fields become forests again. Staple foods became hay with the horse-driven economy. And hay turned to corn and beans when the car came to drive the horse into history. But I can't help but will to imagine a way in which we can live and live well with our land, our poetry, and a little hard work.
It is exciting to see some shifts toward organic farming and to see niche possibilities popping up as the market diversifies a bit and there is a demand for other options than mass manufactured foodstuff. Admittedly, I probably have a somewhat stylized and romantic perspective on the world of farming.
But I remember reading Czeslaw Milosz about returning to his grandparents' home, the forest where he had grown up by a river in Poland (or Lithuania?). He had spent his childhood in the woods, getting to know the trees and birds, his own world, a space that you can sense in his poetry. Under communism, the forest and the buildings had been cut down along with everything for miles around to make a giant collective farm. He finally returned to fields along the river following the bare contours of a world that was left only to an old man's memory and words. Perhaps it was not simply communism that erased those family lands. The farmstead that has been a staple way of life in Western culture since the Neolithic may disappear under capitalism as well. Whether it falls to ideas or to the market, it simply may not be sustainable as a means to meet our culture's needs.
All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea is not full. I know that the prairies become farmsteads and that the forests become fields become forests again. Staple foods became hay with the horse-driven economy. And hay turned to corn and beans when the car came to drive the horse into history. But I can't help but will to imagine a way in which we can live and live well with our land, our poetry, and a little hard work.
posted by yonderincarp at 16:32
2 Comments:
Communism is an environmental disaster. Capitalism doesn't have all the answers, but fares much better. Yes, we've done bad things under capitalism, but look at the good things that we've done - Organic farming, Free Range meat, etc. Nowadays, the market is demanding more sustainable farming. Look at Safeway for example (Vons to you Southern Californians). Safeway O is doing HUGE amounts of money. And so is Whole Foods Market. I don't know how they're doing down there, because us Northern Californians tend to be more concerned about the environment than our Southern Californian cousins. Sorry for the slight, it's just the truth.
We can be sustainable if we make the effort to be, and if consumers make the effort to buy sustainable products, and consume less resources.
No worries, remember I am a transplant... I agree that we can make great strides toward sustainability. Most of the current hurdles have to do with building up the will to make the changes, convincing folk it is in their interest to sacrifice in the short term until the center of gravity and the infrastructures can shift. Ultimately, I think there will be other challenges. We will run into the spiderweb logistical complexities. But for now you are right, it is just a matter of getting the ball rolling and there are some beautiful immediate payoffs.
And communism is an environmental disaster. When everybody owns everything nobody takes care of anything. That is also a problem of 'global environmentalism'. How do you get developing China to care about the acid rain and atmospheric particulate that their factories cause in Japan and in the US? Vague ideas of global climate change just aren't strong immediate motivators for most people.
Post a Comment
<< Home