Thanks!
ssikerd@muccmail.missouri.edu
Sun, 22 Mar 98 16:30:08 CST
To All:
Thanks for your thoughts, concerns, and prayers during my recent
heart surgery and continuing recovery. Thanks to those who sent
cards or e-mail, but thanks also those who just sent kind
thoughts my way. It all helped and I truly appreciate it. I am
doing fine and expect to be back to work, pretty much on a full
time basis, beginning Tuesday, March 24.
The following just sort to "came to mind" as I was thinking about
how to open our Sustainable Agriculture conference in Missouri,
shortly after I came home from the hospital. I thought I might
pass it along, for whatever it may be worth to you. The title of
the conference was "Sustaining People Through Agriculture."
SUSTAINING PEOPLE THROUGH AGRICULTURE
Sustainable Agriculture?
What do you mean? I don't understand.
Sustain what?
For Whom? For how long? What's it all about?
Sustain Agriculture --
Food and fiber. Sustain the family farm.
Sustain Communities.
For people; forever. That's what it's all about.
Leave enough so our kids and theirs
Can have as much and as good as we.
While finding ways to take enough
For a good, good life for you and for me.
Things that use up or degrade
Land, water, living things of nature that catch the sun;
Things that cannot turn a profit,
That will not let good stewards farm the land.
Things that will not feed the people -- rich and poor,
Or offer work with dignity for human minds and hands,
Such things are not sustained by God,
Thus, cannot be sustained by man.
The body, the mind, the soul
We are not one, not two, but three.
The physical, the mental, the spiritual
A quality life all three must be.
It's common sense -- we must live this way.
Why should we not farm and work this way as well?
Personal, interpersonal, harmony with an Unseen Order;
Economic, social, ecological, in harmony, in work and life as
well.
Sustaining agriculture, for people, forever.
That's what it's all about.
Sustaining a quality of life for people.
That's what it's all about.
Sustaining people through agriculture -- now and forever.
That's what it's all about.
John Ikerd
February, 1998
I realize that some will see this vision of sustainable
agriculture as being anthropocentric in nature. However, if we
see people as but one element in the intricate web of life, and
our own well-being as critically interrelated with the well-being
of those other "living things of nature that catch the sun," the
vision is neither anthropocentric or ecocentric, but rather is
holistic.
I believe that people must come to realize that our quality
of life is inherently dependent upon the ecological and social,
as well as the economic, before we will begin to see significant
movement away from the blind pursuit of short-run economic
self-interest and toward the purpose of securing long-run
sustainability.
JI.
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