Below is the text of a speech I gave yesterday
(April 20, 2007), at the annual conference of the
Oklahoma Sustainability Network. I post it here
because it has some permaculture content and also
because it is a hopeful speech, and in this day
and age, it seems to me we need all the hope we
can get.
I would like to begin with a reading of one of
Wendell Berry's poems.
1991 part 2
The ewes crowd to the mangers;
Their bellies widen, sag;
Their udders tighten. Soon
The little voices cry
In morning cold. Soon now
The garden must be worked,
Laid off in rows, the seed
Of life to come brought down
Into the dark to rest,
Abide awhile alone,
And rise. Soon, soon again
The cropland must be plowed,
For the year''s promise now
Answers the year''s desire,
Its hunger and its hope.
This goes against the time
When food is bought, not grown.
O come into the market
With cash, and come to rest
In this economy
Where all we need is money
To be well stuffed and free
By sufferance of our Lord,
The Chairman of the Board.
Because there''s thus no need
To plant one''s ground with seed.
Under the season''s sway,
Against the best advice,
In time of death and tears,
In slow snowfall of years,
Defiant and in hope,
We keep an older way
In light and breath to stay
This household on its slope.
We live in a world of catastrophe. War,
environmental degradation, social injustice, death
and destruction are everywhere. Listening to the
keynote address yesterday, and its vivid
description of the toxic chemicals used in
viticulture, and Dr. Hansen's eloquent
understanding - a knowledge that can only be
acquired by experience - of the dilemmas of rural
life, we see and hear small snapshots of the
present reality.
But like any description, the verbalization is
inevitably incomplete, even when we contemplate
the catastrophe of modern life. Perhaps I should
say, especially when we contemplate the
catastrophe of modern life. All that we see or
perceive is not all that is. Reality is much more
complex than that. In permaculture, we talk about
"invisible structures". They typically have a
visible component, but like the proverbial
iceberg, we can only see the tip.
OSN is an invisible structure. We see some of its
visible component here today, but most of what
goes on we don't see. There are connections being
made, decisions contemplated, relationships
blossoming, information exchanged. There is much
more here than meets the eye. Here is not
catastrophe - well, maybe the organizers had some
catastrophes while they were setting up but if so
they aren't apparent - anyway, here is not
catastrophe.
Catastrophe is not the only option the future
offers us. I can see something better coming,
because I see something better happening right
now. So we should ask ourselves, What does this
better world look like?
It is smaller yet it is bigger. It's like Dr. Who's
magical telephone booth. There is more inside than
we can see outside. Think globally, act locally -
now there's an invisible structure for you. That
phrase has been around so long it is now a cliche,
but cliched as it may be, it is nevertheless truth
and it is increasing in reality. Modern
telecommunications keep the whole world at our
access, with just a click or two, we can read the
daily news in Burma, or Burkino Faso, or Vanuatu.
An injury to one can indeed become an injury to
all. Yet, with this global knowledge, If we are
going to heal the planet, we have to start with
our own lives, our own backyards, our own cities
and towns, our own doorstep. It's like I used to
tell some radical friends of mine, "Before anyone
is going to trust you with foreign policy, you're
going to have to prove you can handle potholes and
sewer systems."
This better world is founded in personal
responsibility. Anyone can go along to get along,
that's a no brainer. That's in part why we are in
the situation we are in. But throughout history,
those who have made a difference for the cause of
goodness, beauty, truth, and wisdom have been
people willing to take personal responsibility for
goodness, beauty, truth, and wisdom and to
incorporate those invisible structures into their
own lives, thus giving a visible sign for all to
see. So if you want more wisdom and beauty and
goodness in the world, your job first and foremost
is to live wisdom, beauty, and goodness in your
own life.
One of the most important aspects of OSN is its
institutional commitment to practicing what it
preaches. Look around you and see all those
compost bins. Look at this serving ware that is
produced with a non-toxic process and which is
compostable. taste the excellent local foods. I
personally know many of the families who produced
the food that we are eating at this conference.
These institutional actions are as important as
anything else that goes on here today because
actions speak louder than words.
I recently received an email inviting me to go to
a conference on "Sacred Foods". I looked at the
website and it looked interesting, but I thought
it was odd that they didn't say anything about the
food that would be served at the conference. So I
sent them an email of inquiry and the word came
back that the conference center had a contract
with an institutional food supplier and so the
groceries would be standard American agribidness
crap. The conference is in June in Chicago, so
there isn't really any excuse about local foods
not being available for the event. I am not going
to that meeting.
It has not been easy for OSN to get local foods
for meals. Many years ago I was in the convention
and meeting business and every convention in the
whole world practically serves the same
homogenized industrial food. I attended a
conference at the Cox Center earlier this winter
and the food was truly terrible. Yet, yesterday,
Kamala Gamble and her staff served a superb meal
to a huge crowd. I was towards the end of the
line, and I was wondering what condition the food
would be in by the time I got there. It was
superb. In 2004, when I went to Terra Madre in
Turin, Italy, they served meals for 5,000, and
every bite was a delight. There is nothing
inherent in serving a crowd that dictates that the
food taste terrible. It helps to start with the
best local foods, and having an artist like Kamala
in charge doesn't hurt either.
Every time OSN holds these annual meetings, we
push the envelope of sustainability everywhere we
go. I trust that won't stop as time goes on,
because it is an important aspect of OSN as an
institution and as an invisible structure. I think
it's called authenticity, and that is also a sign
of this better world I like to talk about.
One way to describe how OSN approaches this is
"entrepreneurship." It goes right along with all
those high sounding thoughts about beauty, wisdom,
and goodness,- entrepreneurship is an inevitable
natural succession to personal responsibility. It's
people thinking up new ways to fix old problems
and rediscovering old ways to fix new problems.
And vice versa, and every other possible
permutation. I often carry on about how we started
the Oklahoma Food Cooperative without a business
plan. We thought about it and we talked about it
and we emailed about it and finally, it was a
reality - we had called into being a new invisible
structure, some of which we could actually see and
feel and touch and most importantly, taste. OSN is
an entrepreneurial approach to the issue of social
change towards a world that is environmentally and
economically sustainable, as well as being
socially just. I don't know that any of us who
were there at the beginning could necessarily have
predicted how all this would turn out today, but
look around you and see what's going on now. Look
at the list of sponsors and exhibitors. Think
scalability and look ten years in the future. This
is how we bring goodness, beauty, and
responsibility into the world - one meal at a
time, one meeting at a time, one relationship at a
time.
This better world is a place where people question
authority and participate fully in the social,
civil, and political acts of the community. There
are many opportunities for this. OSN is offering
important input into the mercury rule-making
process. I hope all of us Oklahoma City residents
plan to advise and counsel the mayor and city
council on the upcoming bond issue. $500 million
for roads, $9 million for mass transit - what's
wrong with this picture? What's wrong with the
allocation of the gas tax that OKC has to take out
a 30 year mortgage to repair its roads? Why don't
we spend more money on mass transit so the roads
stay in better shape and need less repair? And why
don't we use existing infrastructure such as the
rail yard at Union Station as part of a
functioning multi-modal mass transit system?
There is one interesting thing, however, about the
city's desire to borrow $500 million to fix the
roads that deserves some comment. Opponents of
mass transit are fond of saying that mass transit
is subsidized transit, and that cars and trucks
"pay their own way" through the gasoline taxes,
licenses and other fees. Obviously this is not
true, since Oklahoma City is proposing that the
property taxpayers of Oklahoma City subsidize the
automobile system by approving $500 million in
city mortgages to pay for its roads.
This better world is literally rooted in the soil.
If we are going to heal the planet, while we of
course should do everything, we must not forget
that the foundation of any civilization is the
soil and the most important people are the ones
who grow the food. Without a surplus of food,
there is no civilization. There are no oil wells
or oil refineries, no gleaming airplanes, no
mighty cities, no technological advance, no
division of labor, no finance system. All the
dollars in the world will not buy you one loaf of
bread if there is no wheat growing in the fields,
if there is no one to grow the wheat, care for the
wheat, and then bring it to harvest and table.
We have heard an eloquent description of the
toxicity that goes into much farming these days.
We have all read elsewhere, and some of us have
smelled in person, the problems inherent in
confined animal feeding operations. We have the
agricultural system that we presently have because
that's what we pay for. When we go to the
"supermarket" and spend our money that's what we
buy. It's another of those invisible structures.
You don't see all the environmental destruction
and animal cruelty that is packaged with those
supermarket foods, but just because you can't see
it, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. There's
those invisible structures again.
Recently, in an article about local foods, a
"nutritionist" from OSU made the astonishing
statement that she would rather shop at the
supermarket because she was afraid of E coli on
organic foods, a reference no doubt to the organic
spinach contamination scare of last year. Well, if
she is afraid of E coli, she should stay out of
the supermarket. How did that spinach become
contaminated? A feral pig wandered into a spinach
field - after first traversing part of a cattle
feedlot. Rooting around in the cattle manure, it
acquired a good load of a virulent strain of E
coli. That strain of E-coli evolved in the highly
acidic digestive system of feedlot cattle, who are
fed an unnatural diet in order to fatten them for
market. Science magazine recently published a
study reporting that grain feeding of cattle
increases the bacteria count and their resistence
to stomach acids. This high stomach acidity is not
natural in ruminants so once stranded in feedlots,
they become ill from their diet and the filthy
conditions and they require heavy use of
antibiotics to keep them alive. So it comes to
pass that antibiotic resistent strains of E coli
develop, thrive, and spread in these confined
animal feeding operation disease factories.
Besides corn, that feed includes animal byproducts
like beef tallow, feather meal, and chicken parts.
According to the book Fast Food Nation, 13
processing plants produce almost all of the meat
in the supermarket system, thus making it easy to
spread disease. The contaminated spinach also went
through a centralized processing system, so that
people in 26 states got sick. A study in Consumer
Reports found that 83% of broiler chicken in a
supermarket was contaminated with dangerous levels
of bacteria.
If our OSU nutritionist is afraid of filthy food,
she is much better off buying from Oklahoma
farmers than she is shopping in the supermarket.
Food systems grow from personal choices. If we
want something better, if we want this better
world I keep talking about, then we have to take
personal responsibility for our household's
choices. If we want a more sustainable, just, and
humane system of agriculture, then there must be a
market for the products of more sustainable, just,
and humane farms.
Thus, Personal and household choices about where
and how we spend our kitchen money and time are
critical decisions about the future of this
planet. Your active participation in healing the
planet begins with a detailed observation of your
present situation and an inventory of what you
have and do, what you need, and the challenges of
getting from here to there.
OSN conferences are a great place to explore new
ideas in that regard.
Natural succession is the rule in nature, and we
find it in human ecologies too if we know what to
look for. A mature forest does not spring into
being overnight. It starts small, or it doesn't
start at all and that's true for us too. Change is
often exciting but it can also be scary for
people, especially when we are talking about food.
A local food system is about distributing basic
foods; it does not look like a supermarket. And
thank God the food does not taste like supermarket
food.
Modern consumer culture has degraded food to the
status of mere fuel, and devalued it of any
greater cultural or existential meaning. But food
is not just fuel. Food is life. It speaks of our
families and our cultures, our identity as persons
and communities, Eating is an agricultural act,
and eating is a moral act and you are what you
eat.. The big questions are - what food is in your
kitchen, where did it come from, who produced it?
Do the groceries create beauty and wisdom and
environmental sustainability? Do you even think
about that and your food? Do you steal food from
hungry children in poor countries to feed your
household? It's time that we focused on the food
first, and then let the form and function of our
food systems flow from that original essential
reality. When OSN goes the extra mile to secure
local foods for its meetings, it is saying
something about who we are as an organization. And
what it says is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and
truth.
Which leads me to my final point, which is that
this better world is a time and place of hope and
promise. Even as the smoke rolls into the air from
the fires of Mordor, and hosts of genetically
modified evil descend to murder and destroy, out
of sight and thus out of mind, hope creeps slowly
and carefully along a way that leads to a better
world. The promise of tomorrow is not a
genetically modified nightmare of soylent green.
The hope we carry is not the death of our species
in an orgy of mindless consumerism. We can see the
true hope and promise of tomorrow because right
now we are busy creating a tomorrow of
sustainability and justice, beauty and wisdom,
truth and authenticity. The day of the genetically
modified orc is past, what we see about us is the
tumultuous birth of promise and hope. That doesn't
mean that this is an easy time, ask any woman who
has given birth about that. It does mean that the
tumult and the suffering has meaning and is not
purposeless. This purpose that we read into these
events is, of course, itself another indivisible
structure that we brought into being, but that
does not make it any the less real.
Self-fulfilling prophecies are the best kind of
prophecies, because they always come true. We just
have to be careful about which prophecies we
choose to self-fulfill.
I do not mean to trivialize the challenges that
come before us this day - peak oil, climate
instability, war and injustice are real and cannot
be ignored. There is more there too than we can
see with our eyes, and that's an important concept
to think about. The response of humanity to these
challenges clearly hangs in the balance. This is
why each individual's effort is important. Nobody
can say to himself or herself, "What I do doesn't
matter", because everything we do does matter. By
our choices, we vote for the better world I have
been talking about, or we vote for catastrophe and
collapse. No one knows where the critical mass is
that leads us to hope or to doom, so it's better
that we don't push the envelope of catastrophe,
but rather run forward into beauty, goodness and
wisdom. As we become the change we want to see -
and remember, this too works both ways - we bring
into reality a self-fulfilling prophecy of hope
and promise for all people and indeed all the
earth.
The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows for me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives
may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests,
in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things,
who do not tax their lives with forethought of
grief,
I come into the presence of still water,
and I feel above me the dayblind stars,
waiting with their light,
for a time, I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.
[permaculture] Oklahoma Sustainability Network,
Robert Waldrop, 04/22/2007