Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>]

The Fauquier Live Energy Festival in Warrenton was held today. I was 
asked to be one of the speakers, and chose to focus on local food as the 
point where doing what is right for *me* and doing what is right for the 
planet intersect.

I'm sending a copy of my remarks in case some of you want to read them.

~Harvey

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How We Eat . . .

We live in an age of crisis unparalleled in our history. Any one of our 
numerous crises would alone pose tremendous danger, but they are rapidly 
converging to create interlocking and cascading effects. We practice an 
enormously destructive agriculture that is ruining some of the best 
soils in the world. Our way of life is polluting and squandering the 
water we drink, and accelerating the loss of natural habitat and wild 
species. The greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere have brought 
on changes in the climate that are no longer a future threat, but a 
terrible, unpredictable reality. These immense and rapid changes are 
related more than anything to our extravagant, wasteful use of fossil 
energies; and until our use of energy changes in fundamental ways, there 
will be no significant change of direction.

It's wonderful to be here today, inspired to believe there is yet hope 
that we can make the profound changes that are required, and to commit 
ourselves to being agents of that change. But I see two great obstacles 
as we strive to make a meaningful difference.

The colossal magnitude of our problems would dwarf even the most ardent 
efforts our government could make to resolve them—but as a matter of 
fact, our government is doing precious little to remedy them, selling 
out time and again to vested interests, blindly striving to protect “the 
economy” rather than our children's future. Absent meaningful action by 
government, how can we possibly believe that we as individuals can blunt 
the momentum of destructive change in the living systems of the world?

Secondly, while we may have the most passionate commitment to do what is 
right for our ailing planet, it is sadly true that good intentions and 
virtue only get us so far—realistically, we are not likely to make 
day-to-day choices “for the good of the planet” which do not intesect in 
a profound and visceral way with our own most deeply felt needs.

Is there a point of intersection where choosing what will meet our own 
deepest interests, and choosing what will benefit our world, are one and 
the same? I believe there is, encapsulated in a statement by Wendell 
Berry: /“How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world 
is used.”/ That powerful statement points the finger of accusation, 
because eating in this culture has become a great act of /forgetting/: 
forgetting that good wholesome food is the foundation of health, of 
community, of culture. Forgetting our sacred responsibility to nurture 
and safeguard our land, and abrogating that responsibility to a 
faceless, rapacious food system with its eye solely on the bottom line, 
blind to its ecological injuries and its prodigal squandering of energy 
resources.

But Wendell Berry's statement also holds out the hand of hope, the 
promise that making informed and caring choices about how we eat, how we 
value our food, what we demand for its growth and processing—will change 
“how we use the world” in profound and revolutionary ways.

Let's think for a moment about our own deepest interests where food is 
concerned. Politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate advertising assure us 
that the American food supply is the safest in the world. If that is 
true, how is it that contamination by /E coli/ in a /single field /in 
California results in 200 cases of serious illness, and several deaths, 
in 26 states of this nation? How is it that we read weekly about food 
arriving from China by the shipload, some of it contaminated enough to 
kill, as proved earlier this year by the death from canned pet food of 
thousands of pets and hogs? How is it that botulism contamination in a 
single industrial processing vat leads to the emergency recall of 
hundreds of thousands of cans of meat products from the supermarket 
shelves? Botulin is one of the most toxic substances on earth—you could 
engage in biological warfare using botulin as your weapon. Food /safety/?

What about food quality? Think of sitting at our mama's or grandmama's 
table, eating meals prepared by loving hands from fresh, wholesome, 
natural foods. At those meals, our very /souls/ were nourished by the 
fundamental /goodness/ of sharing such food with those we love. Those 
who have abandoned that precious heritage for hurried meals from 
supermarkets and fast food restaurants may well retain at a deep level 
an aching void that no amount of empty calories or glitzy pseudo-foods 
will ever fill.

But the question of food quality is foremost about the ability of our 
food to keep our bodies in the glow of good health, and to support the 
sound and vigorous growth of our children. If the food on offer to our 
citizens is of highest quality, why are rates of heart disease and 
cancer and obesity skyrocketing? Why are children suffering degenerative 
diseases once thought to be the exclusive real estate of the very old?

While there are certainly factors, environmental pollution among them, 
causing this decline in our health, none is more critical than the food 
we are eating, and feeding to our children. Much of it is incapable of 
supporting health—grown on depleted and demineralized soils, 
artificially processed to the last degree, and laced with a witch's brew 
of chemical additives and pesticide residues.

As for food security—have you filled your tank at the gas pump lately? 
The price of gasoline has more than doubled in the past couple of years. 
Globally, we are at or near the peak of production of petroleum and 
natural gas. No sector of the economy is more critically dependent on 
cheap, abundant fossil fuels than the industrial food system—from its 
machine-heavy, chemically-intensive production, dependent on fertilizers 
made from natural gas and pesticides from petroleum—to its high-energy 
processing of foods—to its distribution, which moves every bite of food 
an average of 1500 miles from field to fork. So far the system has 
absorbed rising fuel costs without disruption. At a certain point of 
exploding energy costs and shrinking global supplies, however, it will 
surely break. Dependence on a complex, centralized, fragile system to 
bring us the one product most vital to our survival will then be 
revealed for what it is—/astounding/ folly.

So much for the bad news. Can we hope for a bit of good news? Here it 
is: /local food./ Decentralized food. Sustainable, nurturing food. Such 
food is available first and foremost in your own backyard. If you are 
not growing a garden now—even if only a patio tub with lettuces, herbs, 
and scallions—please do so. Plant that seed, reconnect with the miracle 
of life, the promise of each new season, the fecundity and bounty of the 
earth. This is our natural heritage, our precious birthright—let us not 
trade it for the mess of pottage on offer in the supermarkets and fast 
food joints.

And what you don't grow for yourself, buy locally from small farmers you 
know and trust. Treasure their commitment to making their land and 
community a better place, and to providing you and your family the best 
food on the planet. Visit their farms—/your/ eyes-on inspection of the 
source of your food will be worth more than a thousand government 
bureaucrats to ensure its safety. As for food security, it is far more 
likely to come from trusted neighbors who have your family's personal 
well-being at heart, than from an anonymous, complex industrial system 
subject to disruption by economic events beyond anyone's control. 
Discover how your food purchases from small farmers committed to a 
nurturing agriculture can help: to enrich soils rather than degrading 
them; to clean and conserve water resources rather than polluting and 
squandering them; to enhance natural habitat and protect species 
diversity; to sequester atmospheric carbon in the soil, rather than 
adding to it and accelerating climate change.

Your local sustainable farm is most of all a working model for the 
essential reordering of our use of energy, in which the driving input is 
the ultimate renewable energy—sunlight.

If how we eat determines how the world is used, we can help heal the 
world by choosing food with a face. Food we intimately and personally 
know. Food we can revere as a sacred gift.

/~The above thoughts were presented as a talk by Harvey 
Ussery—homesteader, writer, and local food advocate—at the Fauquier Live 
Energy Festival, September 29, 2007. Check out Harvey's website at 
/www.themodernhomestead.us <http://www.themodernhomestead.us/>