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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Thoughts on local food and the Big Problems (long)
  • Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2007 21:46:12 -0600


You wrote
"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."

Yessir.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 9/29/2007 at 5:19 PM Harvey Ussery wrote:

>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
>
>*****************************************
>
>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/>
>







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