Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - [Homestead] Wendell Berry - NYT Today - soil, 50 yr. Farm Bill

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Wendell Berry - NYT Today - soil, 50 yr. Farm Bill
  • Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 10:48:57 -0800 (PST)

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 ................

-----------------------------------------------------------------------



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.








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page