Green Issues in Agriculture
Farming to Heal Earth and Humanity
[Note: These comments were quickly drafted to provide input to
the policy development process of the Greens in North America.
As such, these ideas are preliminary and summary in nature, and
are intended to stimulate discussion of key issues in
agriculture.QDY]
In the past, agriculture extracted a maximum dollar value by
producing the largest volume of food on the smallest amount of
land with the least amount of human labor. Human labor was
replaced by machines and chemicals, and millions migrated from
countryside to city as rural economies shrank. Farms that were
sold were either abandoned, or swallowed by ever larger farms.
Large farms may be cost effective and labor efficient, but they
rarely demonstrate sustainable, ecological stewardship.
Now, in the teeth of shifting global circumstances Q politic,
economic and ecologic Q we must set new priorities for our
agriculture and food system. Agriculture involves the three
fundamentals: Land, Humanity and Food. Since everyone must eat
every day, agriculture touches all our lives, and food supply is
a primary service in any local economy. Changes in agriculture
affect all our lives in personal ways, and our ecosystem
globally.
First priority for a new earth-sensible agriculture must be
Earth repair Q to undo the damage done by the
industrial-chemical-monetary mentality which has mandated methods
of farming for short-term profit, not long-term care. Public
policy and market demand must support an agriculture which is
ecological and sustainable, and farmers who are genuine stewards
and caretakers of the land. Farming must restore life to soils,
and thereby to all the plants, trees, animals, and we humans who
depend on Earth's thin skin of living soil.
Second priority must be to restore the human factor in
farming. Fundamentally this requires two actions: training and
placing new farmers, and creating new jobs in agriculture.
People must begin to replace machines, fossil fuels and
chemicals, and farming must become diversified and human scale.
Farmers themselves must be trained and guided to practice
earth-sensible, regenerative agriculture, and both public policy
and market dollars must support them in this way of life.
Third, dollars in the market must finance these changes in
farms, farmers and farming. Consumer demand for organic food
must remain strong and steady, while organic markets must remain
open and accessible to all producers who practice genuinely
eco-sensible agriculture. Food distribution must be regionalized
to reduce transportation, support local agriculture and enhance
regional economic self reliance.
LAND
Create New Topsoil
Most farm and forest soils are extensively damaged despite
steady efforts at conservation, preservation and fertilization.
Chemical fertilizers and acid rains alone are a massive assault
on nutrients and micro-life in soils. Erosion already causes
unacceptable loss of topsoil, and the droughts and downpours of a
changing global climate will accelerate these processes.
The first and most important product of an earth-sensible
agriculture must be new topsoil. Thrift must become capital
savings in the inches of dark humus farmers create to feed our
future generations. Public policy and economic incentives must
encourage farming which emphasizes conservation over
narrow-minded, short-term productivity. But beyond conservation,
agriculture must improve and restore the organic life of soils.
Urban recycling must compost organic wastes with rock powders to
provide local farms with the critical ingredients to create new
topsoil.
Soil Remineralization:
North American soils have endured centuries of accelerating
abuse. Agriculture Q depending on mechanical cultivation,
soluble N-P-K chemical fertilizers and quick-fix, bio-toxic
pesticides Q has exhausted farm soils. Acid rains leach out and
lock up nutrients while soil micro-life declines. The death of
entire forests of trees on eastern America's remote mountaintops
is a critical warning that our ecosystems are in danger of
collapse. Replanting trees to counter rising carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases is pointless if soils are weak and
damaged.
Practical and scientific studies in Europe and America have
shown that fertilization with trace minerals can regenerate soil
fertility, vegetative vitality and food quality. In some
studies, forests which were largely dead from toxic air pollution
have begun to regenerate and grow green again after being
fertilized with finely ground rock powders. Remineralization of
farmland and forests to restore exhausted, impoverished soils is
needed, not merely for land conservation, but the survival of our
own species.
Restoration of forest soils permits vigorous tree growth to
mitigate global warming from accumulating greenhouse gases such
as carbon dioxide and methane. Remineralization of farm soils
boosts crop quality and herd health, improves disease and pest
resistance, and reduces dependence on purchases of soluble
fertilizers,
Large scale remineralization of extensive areas of farm and
forest lands requires significant commitment of funds, resources
and labor. Quarries which currently produce aggregate for roads
and buildings can produce rock powders at little cost. But labor
and equipment to spread powdered rock must be mobilized; this
calls for an effort on the scale of the Civilian Conservation
Corps of the 1930s.
Ultimately, of course, we must curtail consumption of fossil
fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other air
pollution. Soil remineralization has proven remedial
effectiveness, but the only sure cure for soil deterioration must
be the reduction of air pollution.
HUMANITY
Create Jobs:
Since the Civil War, public policy and economic priority have
encouraged the replacement of human labor in farming with
machines and chemicals. Today, farmers are less than 2% of the
U.S. population Q a percent that continues to shrink Q and the
average farmer is over 50 years old. This steady and deliberate
decline in farms and farmers impoverished rural communities,
while urban areas are afflicted with poverty, homelessness and
all their persistent and inevitable side effects.
Genuine economic development must begin by putting people back
to work in farming, and thus allow people to live and work as
productive members of rural communities once again. In the
jargon of public policy, this is job development in agriculture.
Currently, there are no significant efforts to create jobs in
agriculture, no job descriptions for farmwork, few farm job
training programs, and job development programs and criteria
seldom match the realities of farming, especially small scale,
sustainable agriculture.
Special effort is required to formulate job development
strategies suited to agriculture. Farmers must receive
incentives and supports in the form of tax credits, employee
benefits, training stipends, and paperwork reduction. Farm
employees need specialized skill training and general farm
education. Training programs must based on Farm Apprenticeships
to provide on-the-job experience. Housing and transportation for
new rural employees must be provided. Special initiatives are
needed to recruit urban residents from poor neighborhoods.
Create New Farmers:
Creating employment requires employers, and in agriculture
this means farmers. Reviving regional agriculture requires a
large crop of new farmers. New methods of farming require new
farmer training programs. A farm is a small business; a farmer
is an entrepreneur with a complex range of trade and management
skills. Four years is a minimum time to train a new farmer.
Putting new farmers on their own farms requires substantial
investments in training and small business start-up financing.
Curriculum, staff and facilities must be assembled to provide
four year new farmer training programs. One essential element of
this effort are Farm Apprenticeships to provide on-the-job
experience while supplying skilled labor to farmers. Special
effort must be made to recruit urban minorities and the poor, and
to provide remedial services they need to enhance their success
in career training.
Once new farmers are ready to begin production, they will need
a variety of services and supplies to operate profitable farms
and succeed in business. Each county should designate at least
one Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Farm to practice and
teach sustainable farming methods. Financial institutions must
assist new farmers to acquire productive farmland and capitalize
their new enterprise. Federal farm services should be
coordinated into new farmer assistance packages. Economic
development must include marketing assistance and grants to
growers and grower cooperatives.
Currently, Extension staff must account to federal, state and
county overseers; the result is a severe constriction of the
diversity and quality of information available to farmers. For
nearly 50 years this political paralysis of Extension has made it
impossible for farmers to obtain guidance for the difficult
conversion to organic and sustainable farming. It is imperative
to loosen restrictions on Extension personnel to permit more
diversity in technical information, and to encourage more
experimentation with local initiatives and regional adaptations.
prepared by: David Yarrow
Earthwise Education Center
P.O. Box 91, Camden, NY 13316
315-675-8498