When we first began to set up our horse-powered organic farm most folks thought that what we were doing was at best quaint and at worst foolhardy. In the context of the booming 1990’s---government deficit eliminated (budgetary sleight of hand?), a mega-boom of internet start-up companies, wholesale deregulation of Wall Street, and an ever expanding housing market---in the eyes of the world our little horse-powered organic farm scheme looked less like the incorporation of a business and more like the construction of a second Noah’s Ark. Remember, all his neighbors thought that old Noah had gone stark-raving mad.
Seventeen years down the road things have changed and are changing fast. Everywhere around us now we hear talk of food security and re-invention of the local food web. And all around us there are lots of these little farm-arks established and more springing up everyday. These small farms are signs of hope and promise at least as powerful as Noah’s rainbow. Small farms and small farmers are like anchors to the human community. Society without ties to a sustainable agriculture becomes like a rudderless ship. The rituals of life turn less meaningful when they are abstracted from the cycles of the soil.
After Noah and all the occupants of the ark had survived the flood Yahweh made a promise to never flood the earth again. This promise was made not only to Noah and his family but to every creature that crawled on the land or flew in the sky or swam in the sea. Humans were not elevated above all else but were charged to be good stewards of all creation. The sign of the rainbow that Yahweh set forth to seal this promise was further evidence that the transcendent would be known to humans within the imminent---within the wonders of creation.
To be alive---to be human---is to transform acreage. If you don’t take that process into your own hands, if all your food, clothing, and shelter are procured through the earning and expenditure of dollars, then you leave it to others to transform acreage to sustain you. In this way you remain ignorant of the impact on the environment of your chosen lifestyle. This is the ghost acreage that stands unseen and hidden behind the modern urban artifice of unending economic expansion.
The current industrial model of agriculture only gives the illusion of providing “cheap food”. We are deferring the costs that will eventually result from the loss of top soil, contamination of the surface and ground water, and pollution of the atmosphere. The costs, though now hidden from the purview of the average consumer, are all too devastatingly real. Among the direst consequences is the contamination of rivers, lakes, and estuaries. Factory farms are virtually unregulated in their use of fresh water; a toxic strew of excess nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilizer and concentrated animal wastes, as well as antibiotic and pesticide residues, are destroying fresh water habitat. Cheap food comes out of a factory farm system that crowds meat animals and poultry into filthy and inhumane systems. These overcrowded facilities are breeding and mutation grounds for virulent new diseases like “mad cow” and the Avian flu. Most of the cheap food that North Americans consume comes in a highly processed convenience package. This food is full of empty calories and is so denatured that it is a direct culprit in the high incidence of diabetes, heart disease and obesity that are now pandemic in all the wealthy nations.
Each year our government pays out massive subsidies to the corporate farms that grow the major commodity crops of corn, soy, wheat, and cotton. These crops are all either genetically modified or in the process of becoming so, in order to be able to withstand herbicides. They are all hybrid crops that are heavily dependent on high nitrogen applications. They are all grown under conditions that are fossil fuel intensive, both in terms of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and in terms of the heavy equipment required for tillage, fertilizing, seeding and harvesting on such a massive scale. The transportation system that moves our “cheap food” over land and air and sea is also highly subsidized by the government. The farm workers who do the majority of work raising and harvesting our “cheap food” are treated worse than slave labor. As property, the lives of slaves are safeguarded to live and work another day. If an undocumented worker loses a limb in a meat packing plant there are twenty more workers waiting outside to fill his or her place---cheap food at the cost of blood. Whole families pick the cucumbers that we eat as pickles from a jar. Children who will never see the inside of a school pick the tomatoes for the catsup bottle on our table. Who do you think is really stalling immigration reform in this country---grass roots “Nativist” movements fearful of losing the “American way of life”---or the well-padded lobbyists of agri-business?
I am no preacher of Hell-fire nor prophet of doom---I am just a little dirt farmer from
The real cost of cheap food must be measured in our collective confrontation with the realities of peak oil, peak water, and peak soil. These are the hallmarks of the unprecedented environmental degradation resulting from humanities depletion of natural resources at a rate that increasingly outstrips the earth’s ability to renew them. These are the signs of the times that call us to a new consciousness of our interconnectedness. This new consciousness contains the seeds of hope. To the extent that we participate in the fossil fuel economy each and all of us are culpable. It is imperative that, if we haven’t begun already, we ask ourselves how we can reduce and replace our reliance on oil. At Cedar Mountain Farm we are pledging ourselves to becoming a FOSSIL FUEL-FREE FARM. We don’t know how long it will take us---but each day we are trying to make new choices and follow less energy intensive strategies for managing the farm. Getting clear of the fossil fuel addiction is a lofty and difficult aim to acheive. But the important part is not some future achievement but rather making the effort now. Be strong. Eat real food. Chew it well. Love your Mother. To love the Mother Earth is to love all of life.
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