Investing In The Precious Land
On the importance of obeying the Doctrine of Return
One of the most precious things anyone can own is a plot of land. Precious not only for what it can provide — a place to call home, sustenance from the ground, space to roam free — but more so because of its own inherent worth as a unique masterpiece of creation. Owning such a precious gift is an immense privilege. And an immense responsibility. “Every field knows its owner, the earth is indignant at every crime committed on its face”1 thus the old peasant wisdom proclaims. A truth such as this is worth etching on to the forefront of our collective consciousness. We would denounce the man who destroyed or allowed to decay a painting by a Master that he owned. Likewise, we should object to those few farmers who abuse and neglect their most precious charge — their land.
Down throughout the ages, peasants and smallholders have been among the most wise and skilful farmers. Perhaps it is a law that the less one has, the more one takes care of it. Certainly, being acutely aware that your very survival depends upon the health of the limited acres one owns puts an urgent imperative on good and proper care. But perhaps the prime reason that small farmers’/smallholders’ land is generally better cared for is related to limitations: the limited spatial scale of what is under their care coheres with the limited abilities and energies of themselves as a fundamentally limited human steward. Working within these limits and farming at the appropriate scale, the land and its steward can mutually and abundantly flourish. It is a truth we should guard and believe in with all our might.
Living day in day out on their land also allows the small farmer to practice close and consistent observation of the health of their land over the course of the seasons. This, in turn, enables the small farmer to intimately know the needs of their land and readily perceive its limitations. He (or she)2 knows what is best — and will labour strenuously to provide just that. With rich, well-matured, and place-based agroecological wisdom that has accumulated over a multitude of seasons — like a form of cognitive humus — the small farmer tends his crops, defends against pests, leads his livestock to green pastures, and obeys the Doctrine of Return. Scrupulously. These faithful activities, coupled with the necessary blessing of the Creator who causes all things to grow, will lead to abundant harvests and a healthy land — the chief ends of the Good Farmer.
The Doctrine of Return3 is among the most important activities on a farm — second only, perhaps, to the act of harvest. Multitudes of wise agrarians down the ages have each formulated their own version of this doctrine. It is a lore that traditional farmers such as the Hunza4 have been practicing for millennia and is a doctrine that permeates all the writings of the English 20th Century Agrarians. It may be said that the doctrine forms the bedrock of all agricultural wisdom — an integral, fundamental tenant of the “Canon of Good and Sound Farming” that all other good farming practices depend on.5 Simply put, the doctrine states that every time you take and remove from your land — nutrients, crops, livestock — you must in equal measure (or preferably in greater measure) return nutrients and goodness to it. Always.
Whenever crops or livestock leave the farm, they take away with them nutrients from the soil now enclosed within their seeds, leaves, or muscles. If this flow continues unabated, the well will eventually run dry. Poor yields inevitably arise, threatening the farmers’ very existence for his soil is spent. Despite what many think (including, it seems, many Big-Ag CEOs) soil is not an unlimited resource we can liberally and continuously take from; it is fundamentally limited in space and volume, and practically limited over time, forming at a rate that makes a glacier seem fast. Each and every time a farmer exports an abundant harvest off his farm, he is drawing down a debt — a debt that will one day turn to bite and ruin him. That is, unless he obeys the Doctrine of Return. If he faithfully obeys it, he will see his land flourish and will have fulfilled one of his greatest responsibilities — for the maintenance of healthy soil is the ultimate mark of his “goodness” in farming. If he ignores it, he will pass on to the next generation a spent and exhausted land, abused by ignorance and greed.
The Doctrine of Return is consistent with another one of the foremost principles of Good Farming: that agriculture should be as cyclical as possible. Cycles abound in the natural world and life on earth itself could even be considered as one gigantic cycle. We see it in the carbon cycle, the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle and the cycle of life and death. Cycles are renewable, mutually reinforcing, and can build up ecological wealth, health, and resilience with each successive revolution. This accumulation of beneficial attributes occurs as the elements that constitute the cycle (such as individual species or soil) develop and mature over time or build upon the successes of their now deceased forebears. Additionally, any excesses produced can reinvested in the cyclical system or used to further strengthen the health, adaptability, and resilience of individual elements.
Within agriculture, treating the farm as a cycle foremost requires that as much biomass as possible is retained and reinvested in the soil as manures, composts and residues. This builds up rich and fertile soils and limits wastes which in the wrong place (such as within watercourses) can become a pollutant. An additional feature of the cyclical farm is the seed cycle. Over multiple generational cycles, the crops originating from saved seed become specifically adapted to the unique particularities of the land the farm is situated on. They are tailored intimately to their place and perform in a manner which is not only productive, but sustainable. Livestock, too, that are kept on the farm over many generations develop traits and characteristics that are adapted to place enabling them to thrive.
Modern industrial agriculture, on the other hand, treats agriculture as a flow. Agrochemicals such as artificial fertilisers are continuously imported into the system and soil fertility is exported out whenever crops and livestock are harvested and shipped off to distant markets. Instead of excesses being reinvested, they mostly flow out as wastes. The way that manures are often washed into rivers from livestock sheds is a case in point. Whereas for the small farmer, manures are an immensely valuable resource, for the industrial farm they are a largely a nuisance — the disposal of which turns what is valuable into a toxic, polluting waste. Surely, this paradox of something of immense value becoming a waste is one of the most supreme fallacies of our modern age6. The fallacy becomes absurd when the soil itself — that most precious of resources — becomes a toxic waste when it is eroded away by industrial agricultural practices and/or heavy rainfall. Separated from its home on terra firma, the fertiliser-laden soil silts up rivers and produces toxic algal blooms. Two habitats are destroyed for the price of one. Stupidity in concentration.7
Artificial fertilisers form the basis and logic of the agriculture-as-flow mechanism. Though it would be amiss to overlook the stunning, somewhat stratospheric increases in productivity artificial fertilisers have brought about over the last 80 or so years — and though in limited and precise use they can be of great benefit to farmers (especially those with naturally nutrient poor soils) — humanity has generally been grossly profligate in the use of them.8 And we have become addicted.9
Artificial fertilisers can be likened to a drug. A drug that artificially enhances in the short-term the productivity of the land (thus masking ongoing underlying problems that are harming the soil and causing poor yields such as nutrient mining, soil erosion, and the loss of organic matter) and locks the farmer into a dependency. Continuous high yields are now what is expected, demanded even, by the modern food system and modern diets. Thus, to meet contract stipulations, farmers must continuously produce at this inflated level. To the farmer locked into artificial fertiliser use, ever-increasing use seems to be the only way of meeting the inflated demands of the profligate, industrial food system.
A fertiliser-dependent farmer is constantly pumping medicine into the soil without addressing the underlying causes of nutrient loss and soil degradation. A man full of and reliant on medicine is not a healthy man. Likewise, a soil laden with and utterly reliant on chemicals is not healthy by any stretch of the imagination. Neither is the farmer. Being reliant on expensive artificial fertilisers — whose energy intensive production exposes them to volatile energy price swings — lowers farmer autonomy, independence and resilience. The fertiliser-dependent farmer becomes reliant on the stability of distant and volatile energy markets rather than reliant on his own soil’s regenerative capacity in partnership with his own skill and management. The majority of farmers are already severely cash strapped. One more energy crisis may be their ruin. The future looks bleak.
Like most powerful drugs, artificial fertilisers have side effects.10 They detrimentally impact soil microbiota and soil structure; are more likely to be washed off the land into rivers; rely on energy intensive production which contributes to all the ills associated with carbon emissions; contribute to global phosphorous depletion; trap poor farmers in debt from loans taken out to afford costly application machinery and also to afford fertilisers when the energy market inflates their prices. The list goes on. Chiefly, reliance on these stimulants demonstrates something is fundamentally wrong in our agricultural system. Cycles are being broken, abused, and ignored. Soil fertility is not being built up or even maintained. Earthworm abundance is declining. Soil structure is degrading. Farmers are losing the skills, knowledge and wisdom of proper soil and land care.
The land is suffering.
If one’s soil is healthy, rich, and in balance, there should be no need to depend upon artificial fertilisers. The restoration of balance and soil health must, therefore, be the goal that all farmers slowly and steadily work towards, gradually reducing their dependence on fertilisers to the point where they hopefully can be dispensed with. This can be achieved through the use of legume cover crops and rotations, sensitive use of manures and composts, and restoring soil structure, function and organic matter content. These practices come, though, with a cost: initial and ongoing financial costs, labour and time burdens, and potential opportunity costs. But the investment is worth it. The long-term and reliable dividends from the land will more than compensate. And the satisfaction that comes with stewarding land that is healthy and whole is a pearl without price.
Thus, instead of spending on exhaustible and damaging artificial fertilisers, farmers should commit to investing in their own land, building up their “Bank of Fertility” as G. A. Squires memorably put it11. This is especially so for small farmers. By very nature of their little land and limited capital, small farmers are never going to be rich. Their bank balances will almost certainly remain miserly. But that is no great loss. For most of them, a job well done, the independence enabled by self-sufficiency, and a life lived within the Community of Creation surrounded everyday by abundant beauty are rewards enough. The “joys” of mass consumerism are not what brings them joy. They are content with what they have, knowing that a healthy land is one of the most precious things a man can own. The limited surpluses they do obtain from the produce and profits of their land can be reinvested back into it: ploughing crop residues back in, investing in quality composts, and restoring on-farm habitats and soil structure. This builds up a richness of immense value that cannot be stolen, which can see them through lean times, and which persists for future generations.
When all is said and done, passing one’s land on to the next generation in a better, richer, healthier condition than when one inherited it is the chief end of the farmer. It is the mark of stewardship faithfully accomplished and the reward for the long, faithful obedience of the Doctrine of Return. Investing his surpluses in the soil, building up its health for the benefit of the myriad of creatures he shares his land with and for future generations means he will be remembered in local history as a good and faithful steward of the land, the fruits of whose labour continue to be enjoyed.
He will be a Good Farmer indeed.
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Thomas & Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. p.220
It is imperative to mention she as the majority of land workers round the world are women.
Adapting Wendell Berry’s term the ‘economy of return’ from the essay The Agrarian Standard
From James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State.
See C. Howard Jones for more on the Canon of Farming in his essay Is Modern Farming Unsound?
Indeed, Lord Northbourne states as much in his essay Health and Fertility in The Natural Order, Ed. Massingham.
Wendell Berry’s term.
An oft repeated claim by advocates of artificial fertilisers is that we could not feed the world without them. This is true, hence I do not advocate for their complete removal. However, one could argue that the high populations we see round the world have been produced in response to the advent of artificial fertilisers. Thus, increased use of artificial fertiliser may only lead to further population rises. If the global population moves towards a western lifestyle we are in trouble. Thus, artificial fertilisers can be said to be, in part, causing a sustainability crisis of over consumption via high/inflated populations. Lowering our food production output, rather than causing mass starvation as fertiliser advocates like to claim may instead encourage populations to reduce their birth rates in response to resource scarcity to sustainable levels. Additionally, if we resolved systemic crisis in food waste, would be able to transition to lower intensity food production whilst avoiding significant declines in food availability. Artificial fertilisers, then, whilst necessary are not the be all and end all, and cause as many problems as they solve.
So do, it must be said, manures when they are inappropriately applied.
G.A Squires, The Small Farmer on The Land. In The Small Farmer, ed. Massingham. I am indebted to Squires for the content and main ideas of this paragraph.
I appreciate getting to read on a subject I'm quite ignorant of, from the perspective of one who is so invested in it. Your words about artificial fertilizers as a drug are especially interesting to me. A subject I'm much more well-versed in is the use of technology in our personal lives, particularly smartphones, and how it has, through its utter ubiquity, actually done great harm to us. There seems to be a clear parallel here -- humans do seem to have the tendency, when handed a good thing, to make it the ultimate thing, and thereby blind themselves to the harm that can come from overuse.
Stupidity in concentration indeed! Here in the USA, we have not only screwed up some of the richest soils on the planet, the land that was covered in native prairie grasses, but have drained the largest natural aquifer under those beautiful soils to overproduce grain for cattle feed. And the overuse of chemical fertilizers and poor farming practices have further depleted the land and now we are paying the price. American big Ag is a joke and all the money in the world isn’t going to fix the problems. There are many areas in this country that were extremely productive which are now so depleted or polluted that they have been abandoned. And all for of the acquisition of power and money. Our planet and soils are not inexhaustible. Care must be taken in how we live today to help heal the land. Personally, I’ve changed my diet so as not to contribute to these greed mongers. I grow my own produce as much as possible or shop locally to support local small businesses that provide excellent food items. I may be only one individual but if we each do what we can, it adds up. And we can make a difference.