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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

As I do, regularly, I forgot to add the link to the source

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05berry.html?ref=todayspaper

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--- On Mon, 1/5/09, bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Homestead] Wendell Berry - NYT Today - soil, 50 yr. Farm Bill
> To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 11:48 AM
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
>       
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