“Due to limits being respected and embraced, they often achieve lower yields than industrial farms, whose lands have been pumped with the seemingly limitless ‘performance-enhancing drugs’ of fertilisers and pesticides.”
That’s exactly right, isn’t it? These are to the land what testosterone and other anabolic steroids are to bodybuilders and athletes. They produce the appearance of ideal form, of strength, of health, but in the end they replace the natural functions of the user who ends up dependent on them.
I have just come across this on Twitter and I love it Hadden! Thank you.
Just a question of language: we often talk about ‘respecting’ or ‘accepting’ limits. As an ex-doctor I’m aware that’s what we encourage patients to do with a terminal diagnosis.
Is there something more positive to be found with limits? Since they have existed since before Genesis 3 could we even celebrate them?!
Thank you for this thoughtful piece, Hadden. It reminds me of a Louis Bromfield (1896-1956) quote: "It is simply that in all life on earth as in all good agriculture there are no short-cuts that bypass Nature and the nature of man himself and animals, trees, rocks and streams. Every attempt at a formula, a short-cut, a panacea, always ends in negation and destruction."
Thank you for this IMPORTANT essay! I found my way here via Tish Oxenreider. I restacked it! Your point really pulls a dagger in my heart as recently here in Texas, voters approved a sneakily worded Constitutional Amendment which seemed to support 'the little guy' but definitely helps Big Ag factory farms skirt around limitations to their power. Please keep writing about what Good Farmers need and how we can help y'all.
Usually I like to comment on the current writing, but you send people here. To me, this piece is about a lifestyle, (yours) more than the future of land stewardship. You write that:
"These profit-driven ‘corporations of degradation’ have crippled and discarded agricultural communities, have laid waste to local environments, and have taken farmers hostage with small-print-laden contracts with no get-out clauses."
The small farmer is systematically bankrupted and driven off of the land. That is clear as a ringing bell, world-wide.
Even thousands of years ago man destroyed land. For instance with breading goats on lush mountains, the goats denuded all vegetation and transformed it into desertification. All over the Mediterranean.
(I think) that your only hope to sustain your "spiritual life" is to develop some niche crops that have no global market, just local connoisseurs. Even that is legislated against, because EU standards have been written to recognize only certain limited species of products, (only 30 kinds of apples, some selected grapes, I think the same with vegetables of all kind, everything is standardized to facilitate the corporate world).
So if you are growing the same crops as the industrial farms, your future is dismal. You're rich in land, and poor in cash-flow. In developing nations, in all cases that I can think of, they started out by transforming their nation into a pool of cheap labor. Cheap labor is dependent on one thing, Cheap Food! So in all developing nations farmers were suppressed down to barely a subsistence living. They still are; I am in touch with small farmers in Asia, and they have stopped planting their rice fields. It costs more to plant and harvest than your receipts from selling the crops. Giant rice milling companies and wholesalers suppress the prices.
Your readers might be thinking that a community of good farmers might possibly begin to set things right.
The thing we must realize is that trajectories (industrialization of food production), are historically almost never reversed, because they represent the momentum of hundreds of millions of people’s sentiments, the gravity of entire countries and their political systems. There is almost no precedent you can think of where momentum was trending sharply toward a particular path like it is now, but then was ‘magically’ reversed.
So basically I take this as a historical-nostalgia piece. I wish you all the best for the continuation of your "quest" for the good life.
_____________
Here is another reflection on the Western world. I am familiar with both North America and Europe. VERY FEW Americans feel attachment with any landscape. All the "hinterland cities" have gone stagnant. Eighty percent pull up stakes and get out, think nothing of it. So mobility is more important than the homeland (or the parents). I think you have to extend that to the nation. I'd say the majority don't give a tinker's damn about America. It is OK as long as it feeds me and I get a privileged life-style. If that ever dies, I am taking off. (Same in Eastern Europe, join the EU so I can get-out. Just look at the demographics for the absolute proof.)
With this disdain for land, nobody is going to FIX or REPAIR their nations. Isn't this the measure of our times???
“Due to limits being respected and embraced, they often achieve lower yields than industrial farms, whose lands have been pumped with the seemingly limitless ‘performance-enhancing drugs’ of fertilisers and pesticides.”
That’s exactly right, isn’t it? These are to the land what testosterone and other anabolic steroids are to bodybuilders and athletes. They produce the appearance of ideal form, of strength, of health, but in the end they replace the natural functions of the user who ends up dependent on them.
Great insight here.
I have just come across this on Twitter and I love it Hadden! Thank you.
Just a question of language: we often talk about ‘respecting’ or ‘accepting’ limits. As an ex-doctor I’m aware that’s what we encourage patients to do with a terminal diagnosis.
Is there something more positive to be found with limits? Since they have existed since before Genesis 3 could we even celebrate them?!
Thank you for this thoughtful piece, Hadden. It reminds me of a Louis Bromfield (1896-1956) quote: "It is simply that in all life on earth as in all good agriculture there are no short-cuts that bypass Nature and the nature of man himself and animals, trees, rocks and streams. Every attempt at a formula, a short-cut, a panacea, always ends in negation and destruction."
Thank you for this IMPORTANT essay! I found my way here via Tish Oxenreider. I restacked it! Your point really pulls a dagger in my heart as recently here in Texas, voters approved a sneakily worded Constitutional Amendment which seemed to support 'the little guy' but definitely helps Big Ag factory farms skirt around limitations to their power. Please keep writing about what Good Farmers need and how we can help y'all.
Hello Hadden Turner
Usually I like to comment on the current writing, but you send people here. To me, this piece is about a lifestyle, (yours) more than the future of land stewardship. You write that:
"These profit-driven ‘corporations of degradation’ have crippled and discarded agricultural communities, have laid waste to local environments, and have taken farmers hostage with small-print-laden contracts with no get-out clauses."
The small farmer is systematically bankrupted and driven off of the land. That is clear as a ringing bell, world-wide.
Even thousands of years ago man destroyed land. For instance with breading goats on lush mountains, the goats denuded all vegetation and transformed it into desertification. All over the Mediterranean.
(I think) that your only hope to sustain your "spiritual life" is to develop some niche crops that have no global market, just local connoisseurs. Even that is legislated against, because EU standards have been written to recognize only certain limited species of products, (only 30 kinds of apples, some selected grapes, I think the same with vegetables of all kind, everything is standardized to facilitate the corporate world).
So if you are growing the same crops as the industrial farms, your future is dismal. You're rich in land, and poor in cash-flow. In developing nations, in all cases that I can think of, they started out by transforming their nation into a pool of cheap labor. Cheap labor is dependent on one thing, Cheap Food! So in all developing nations farmers were suppressed down to barely a subsistence living. They still are; I am in touch with small farmers in Asia, and they have stopped planting their rice fields. It costs more to plant and harvest than your receipts from selling the crops. Giant rice milling companies and wholesalers suppress the prices.
Your readers might be thinking that a community of good farmers might possibly begin to set things right.
The thing we must realize is that trajectories (industrialization of food production), are historically almost never reversed, because they represent the momentum of hundreds of millions of people’s sentiments, the gravity of entire countries and their political systems. There is almost no precedent you can think of where momentum was trending sharply toward a particular path like it is now, but then was ‘magically’ reversed.
So basically I take this as a historical-nostalgia piece. I wish you all the best for the continuation of your "quest" for the good life.
_____________
Here is another reflection on the Western world. I am familiar with both North America and Europe. VERY FEW Americans feel attachment with any landscape. All the "hinterland cities" have gone stagnant. Eighty percent pull up stakes and get out, think nothing of it. So mobility is more important than the homeland (or the parents). I think you have to extend that to the nation. I'd say the majority don't give a tinker's damn about America. It is OK as long as it feeds me and I get a privileged life-style. If that ever dies, I am taking off. (Same in Eastern Europe, join the EU so I can get-out. Just look at the demographics for the absolute proof.)
With this disdain for land, nobody is going to FIX or REPAIR their nations. Isn't this the measure of our times???
.