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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] FOOD NOT LAWNS! Can you dig it!?!?
  • Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 13:40:04 -0600

FOOD NOT LAWNS! Can you dig it!?!?
By Tobias Policha
>From the Winter 2000 issue of Green Anarchy
http://www.proactiveecology.org/

The vast expanse of forever-green American lawn is not only the most resource
intensive agricultural crop in the world, but also an obscene icon to our
arrogant privilege and total alienation from a life in harmony with nature.

For those of us living in the cities, surrounded by cars and concrete where
we can't even see the stars, it is not difficult to see the ways we are
disconnected from nature, and the cycles out of which we receive the elements
essential to life. This has enormous implications in how we interact both
biologically and socially. Agri-culture, taken at the root to mean "culture
of the soil," out of which all life springs, is related to all aspects of our
cultural life. For example, today most of our foods come to us via
established cultural institutions governed by a handfull of agro-chemical/
pharmaceutical/"life-sciences" corporations. Our entire industrial
civilization is needed to provide for our basic needs. Besides global
inequity and agricultural chemical dependence, some elements of this culture
include the erosion and lose of our top soil. at the rate of 38 tonnes per
acre per year and the pollution and salinification of whole watersheds by
fertilizers and industrial waste, leading to the desertification of once
fertile land and mass species extinction. This is also facilitated by the
2,500,000 tonnes of pesticides used every year. We are losing diversity both
in nature and in our agricultural systems, as represented by a 75% decrease
in crop diversity in the last hundred years. Besides the "costs" of
production, there are a myriad of social implications related to how our
sustenance reaches our tables, these include: colonialism, war, and the use
of food as a weapon through artificially created famines, embargoes, etc. One
could go on.

In an age when genetically-engineered entrees are served to diplomats and
heads-of-state at the White House, can we expect this dominant culture, with
it's apparent goal of destroying the biosphere, to provide us with the
nourishment that we need to over-come and transcend that very same system? A
system wherein the same interests that profit from selling us the chemicals
and transgenic seeds which lead to death and disease, are the very same
interests that profit by selling us the drugs that compound the physical and
spiritual degeneration caused by our food. All this under the facade of
feeding the world and bringing us health.

Something I once heard Ramona Africa say rings true. "A system so diabolical
that it poisons the very food that we need to eat, the very water that we
need to drink and the very air that we need to breathe, needs to be resisted!"

A permanent agriculture, a culture based on the care of and respect for the
biosphere, is the only counter-balance to the industrial prison in which our
world is trapped. We need to regain control of our food and our lives to free
ourselves from the death culture. To relearn and develop a supply of food,
fiber and medicine that is sustainable and inherently non-violent is the only
way we will develop autonomous communities that can serve as a base for our
resistance.

All of what I have touched on is of particular relevance to those of us
living in cities. As areas that produce very little or none of what they
consume and that do not take responsibility for their waste (unused,
potential resources i.e.. compost, greywater etc.), cities are significantly
vulnerable to the whims of economic (and military) interests. Almost by
default, we are also fully dependent on the exploitation of land somewhere
else, by not returning our "waste" to this land we also create huge amounts
of trash which becomes pollution somewhere else. Our garbage often travels
hundreds of fossil fuel-driven miles to the landfill.

This doesn't have to be the case. Cities grew up around the places that were
prime farmland with fertile soil and good access to fresh water. Today, 2,000
acres of farm land is being paved over daily, as our disposable suburban
culture devours the countryside. But the point is that under all the asphalt
and under all the trash is what were some of the most productive and
biologically rich soils in the world. With cautions observed and actions
taken to deal with potential toxins in the soil, there is no reason that we
cannot or should not return the life, fertility, beauty and productivity to
these urban areas.

I present here a vision of people breaking free of the dying system and using
the land close at hand to generate potentially all of their food, medicine,
fiber and fuel needs and to introduce beauty in the place of urban decay and
suburban sprawl. Gradually we could see the emergence of self-reliant,
cooperative communities providing the nourishment, both physical and
spiritual, that we need to take up and manifest our visions of a better
world. As this happens in more and more places, the land formerly exploited
and pilaged by chemicals and mono-cultures, over-grazing and resource
extraction can be freed and re-enlivened as native plant and wildlife refuges.

Either we take responsibility for living in an ecologically sustainable way
or we and the earth will certainly perish. The choice is ours. The techniques
are not difficult and can be learned from books, experimentation and the
people around you. Seeds will grow. We just need to plant them. We need FOOD
NOT LAWNS! Dig It!






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