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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

I don't know much about Wes Jackson, but I always pay attention to what 
Wendell Berry says.  This editorial is in this am NYT, it sounds like he is 
worried that we could be creating something similar to what happened in the 
dust bowl, with our modern farming techniques.  He is never shrill but his 
forcast sounds ominous, unless changes are made ................

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A 50-Year Farm Bill 


 
By WES JACKSON and WENDELL BERRY

Published: January 4, 2009 

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.

Wes Jackson is a plant geneticist and president of The Land Institute in 
Salina, Kan. Wendell Berry is a farmer and writer in Port Royal, Ky.