Farming that works

I just finished reading Ontario farmer Harry Stoddart’s 2013 book, Real Dirt, An ex-industrial farmer’s guide to sustainable eating. He and family run an organic pastured meats farm in the Kawarthas (www.stoddart.ca).

The book is well worthy of your attention. He takes 200 pages to go through the issues raised by how we grow our food and puts industrial/chemical farming and organic farming in perspective: both have problems that are unsustainable. He takes a hardline on the definition of sustainability: the possibility that human and other life will flourish on earth forever. Anything less (including the famous Brundtland Commission’s attemnpt) can be watered down and co-opted by status quo interests.

The issues are about a dozen in total, but the big three that will result in social strife in Western democracies within our lifetimes, if left unchecked, are: antibiotic resistance, erosion and climate disruption.

Your decisions as eaters will have the greatest impact on how agriculture changes in the coming years, not government policy or activism. How you vote with your dollars to spend your food budget (and household time usage too, eg for doing some gardening, canning, bulk buying, etc.) is the way forward.

Does that make you optimistic about the future? Maybe not, if you are like me. I don’t see very many people making informed and deliberate choices with food, even people in my own extended family. But a future worth living for our children and grandkids has a better chance this way, than waiting for governments or technology to fix things. And you’ll be ABLE TO LOOK THEM IN THE EYE WHEN THEY ASK “what did you do to help?”.

I’ll say more about Stoddart in future posts. But since you might not go out and buy the book, here’s his simple list of what eaters can do:
1. Establish a relationship with your farmer(s).
2. Eat more perennials.
3. Don’t be alarmed that pigs and chickens are being fed food waste, including meat byproducts.
4. Buy rotationally grazed, 100% grass fed meats.
5. Don’t flush anything down your toilet that you don’t want spread on the ground that grows your food.
6. Cook your own meals.

He has a list of 18 questions to inform a discussion with your farmers (s). I’ll post that separately.

Finally, here is a link to a great post from Dan Allen, ecologically informed science teacher and essayist with many blogs on line. He gives you with this post a roadmap for getting on with right-sourcing your food. Check Feb 10 2014 postings on Resilience.org or paste this URL into your browser.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-10/come-on-home-ecological-agriculture-and-sixteen-wonderful-farms-that-point-the-way
He starts by saying,
“I think most of us can agree that we are currently living in a very unsettling time — at the cusp of a monumental transition, with no assurances that the coming descent is even doable. Yikes!

So how then do we respond to this predicament? What choices should we make? …Well, the first step is acknowledging that a lot of conceivable options are just not on the table – namely those involving lots of fossil fuel energy and those that rely on environmental, economic, or social stability. Those options are now likely closed by virtue of our past sins. *But we do still have some choices. * Of course, there are no guarantees that things will turn out OK, but we can maximize our chance for success if we concentrate on making good choices from here on out.

And what are those good choices we can make:

•Find some land – You can buy, lease, rent, borrow or squat, but as the industrial infrastructure crumbles, it just seems like access to land is a prerequisite to maximizing our chances. There are pros and cons with every place. Weigh them and make a stand.
•Listen to the land – Learn the ecology of your chosen place. Watch, listen, taste, smell, and feel. Do this continually. Realize that no matter how much you know about your land, there is much you are missing. Embrace that ignorance – allow for wiggle room in your projects. Start small, observe, & then scale-up. Don’t do anything you can’t undo.
•Look for good examples to follow – Pick the best parts of the best examples you can find and start there. The farms profiled here can be a start, but look around in your area – good examples can be found in the most improbable places. Then try those examples on your land and watch for the response. Then alter your plans accordingly.
•Look to your community – You won’t make it through alone. Find like minded people and put your heads together. And learn to live with those who aren’t like minded. Find some common ground with them and start from there. Moving forward wealth will be measured in the quality and quantity of your relationships, not in stuff.
•Keep on the sunny side – There’s gonna be heap-loads of bad stuff coming our way. So much that it will be tempting to let it swallow us. Don’t let it. Look for the good in everything. Find reasons to laugh. Make your own fun.
•Keep on plugging away – There will be set-backs along the way. Sometimes BIG ones – ones that take us back to the start. Remember the lessons you learned playing ‘Chutes & Ladders’ and keep going. Don’t let the bastards keep you down.

The bulk of the essay profiles 16 farms that are benchmarking the way forward. So the least we can do is go out and find some like this in Hamilton area. Get involved in the local agricultural societies (Rockton, Ancaster): they need and want urban involvement.

But rather than just list the farms, he highlights just one key characteristic of each – one characteristic among the many key elements of the diverse ecological agricultures we need to implement. These key elements include things like a general ecological framework for agriculture, perennial staple crops, species diversity, polyculture planting, capturing rainwater in soil, drought adaptations, etc.. I hope you enjoy your family day, think about the food your family needs to stay healthy and happy.

Ian