Sustainable Food Systems

[Guest guest]

This is a very good article, the only part missing is the part that

oligarcy plays in the USA. The oil, chemical, pharmacuetical,

agricultural companies are just different parts of the same elite

money circle controlling the market and the government processes. They

want to monopolize the land, water, food, energy, the government, etc.

with all of the people becoming cheap worker bees in a coast to coast

Wal-Martized country and they are doing it one step at a time.

 

 

wolfman communications

Fwd: Sustainable Food Systems

 

wolfman_communications

 

Sun, 1 May 2005 21:16:27 GMT

 

 

CSA farmer Jay Martin on Sustainable Food Systems

by Jay Martin

 

I have been asked to speak to you this evening about sustainable

agriculture, but first I would like to tell you a story.

 

The seed I am holding is from a Fish pepper plant.

 

The origins of the Fish pepper are obscure, but it is believed its

ancestors were brought to this country from West Africa during the

slave trade by way of the Caribbean Islands. It is known that the Fish

pepper was an African-American heirloom that began as a mutation of a

common Serrano pepper. The plant is very attractive, with green and

white mottled foliage and slightly curved fruit that turn from white

with green stripes to orange with brown stripes as it matures.

 

Fish peppers were raised almost exclusively in the black community and

used in oyster and crab dishes, and especially when cooking terrapin.

By the early 1900's, fruits from this hot pepper had found their way

into the markets of Baltimore and Philadelphia, where they were

discovered by chefs and used as a secret ingredient to spike seafood

dishes. It has since become popular with home and market gardeners.

 

The seed was first made available by Seed Savers Exchange, a network

of seed growers dedicated to preserving the heritage of our seed

supply. It is now available commercially through small seed companies

thanks to the efforts of seed savers, one of whom lives in Delmar,

Delaware.

 

We can scratch an opening in the soil, place a seed there and it will

sequester carbon, fix nitrogen, retain moisture, purify air, prevent

soil erosion, provide nourishment for thousands of species of soil

dwelling organisms, feed animals and people, make compost and self

replicate. That is a highly intelligent life form, perhaps more

intelligent than humans. Michael Pollen, in his book " The Botany of

Desire " contends that humans are arrogant to think that we have

cultivated plants for our use, because, in fact, plants have actually

cultivated humans to do their bidding. As I watch plants unfold their

mysteries through a growing season, I find it difficult to disagree

with his contention.

 

I stand in awe of the power of a seed.

 

Seeds contain the wisdom of hundreds of generations of gardeners and

farmers, and that wisdom belongs to you. It should not belong to a

multi-national corporation whose myopic vision aims to manipulate this

wisdom, these capabilities, purely for profit. That is a form of

prostitution which can only hurt society.

 

You may be asking yourselves, " What does this story have to do with

sustainable agriculture " ?

 

It has everything to do with it.

 

This fish pepper seed is absolutely local, historically connected to

this area and preserved by someone just up the road from here. It is

not a generic vegetable seen on every supermarket shelf and it did not

travel hundreds of miles to my field and from there to local dinner

plates.

 

The path to a sustainable food system passes through the people it

feeds, and it must be built on the local level. For this reason, a

sustainable agricultural system cannot be considered separately from a

sustainable society.

 

It makes absolutely no sense to truck food for humans or any other

creature from thousands of miles away. The average meal in the U.S.

travels 1500 miles from farmgate to plate, through a myriad of

processors, packagers, handlers, truckers, warehouses and chain

stores. By the time it reaches the consumer up to 75% of the

nutritional value is gone.

 

In 1984 Americans were spending 8% of their disposable income on

healthcare and 15% on food, today those numbers are reversed because

we are eating food that has been stripped of most of its sustenance.

Furthermore, the farmer who grows the food that should be sustaining

you is not sustaining himself - typically he or she receives 10% of

the food dollar; while at the turn of the century that farmer could

count on 50%. For any farming system to be sustainable, the first

thing that must be sustained is the farmer.

 

In his essay titled " The Pleasures of Eating " , Wendell Berry says that

eating is an agricultural act. If we extrapolate that statement to its

logical conclusion we arrive at the understanding that we are all

farmers, either by occupation or by proxy. According to the 2000

census, farmers, those who actually do work the land, account for less

than 2% of the population, … for policy makers that makes us

statistically irrelevant. Think about that fact for a moment, more

than a moment…

 

the people that feed you are statistically irrelevant.

 

If you do not grow your own food, then you have given that

responsibility to someone or something else. But you still have the

right and more importantly, the responsibility to decide how your food

is grown and where it comes from. Most of us have forgotten this right

and abdicated this responsibility, leaving these decisions to be

juggled with profit motives in corporate boardrooms under the

precarious supervision of the USDA, the FDA, the EPA and the various

political interests which manipulate them.

 

So the next question that arises is " Why have we given up such

important rights and responsibilities " ? I will offer three possible

answers for your consideration.

 

One possible answer can be found in a study done by a group of

biologists for The American Institute of Biological Sciences. They

tried to understand the possible effects on humans of a disturbing

global trend: the tendency of populations to concentrate in urban

areas with distinctly low levels of species diversity. Why do we all

live with pigeons, sparrows and Norway maples when our environment

should, by nature, offer so much more?

Their answer?

 

They suggested that being surrounded by pale imitations of what nature

could be diminished one's expectations of what nature should be. We

are forgetting, and losing, what we have!

 

They offered 2 solutions: we could move nature to the people, or move

the people to nature. The researchers preferred bringing nature to

people because the alternative could cause serious disruption of

ecosystems. I believe both solutions have merit. There are some

wonderful success stories about reclaiming blighted areas of our inner

cities with urban gardening projects that connect people to their food

supply. We can bring some experience of the natural world into our

urban centers. We can also, carefully, move people closer to the

natural world.

 

If people can be made to understand that nature is not something

external to them, but that they are an integral part of the web of

life, I believe that awareness would evolve into a respect and perhaps

even a reverence for our home. Earl Butz, the former Secretary of

Agriculture, said " Soon the American people will be relieved of the

drudgery of growing their own food. " I am convinced he was thinking

with that portion of his anatomy that his name describes, because I

have found quite the contrary to be true. On our farm, we have

volunteers who come on harvest days to help pick and prepare the

produce for delivery. I am always amazed at how much they enjoy

themselves. Many of them have told me that they never realized the

amount of work that goes into growing food, but they truly enjoy being

a part of the process.

 

The second possible answer can be found in our flawed accounting

practices. The American Empire was built on three false assumptions.

 

1. That we were blessed with an inexhaustible supply of natural resources.

2. That we could always import a necessary workforce cheaply.

3. That our transportation costs would remain low and stable.

We are now coming to terms with the reality that these assumptions

are, in fact, false but we are unwilling to sacrifice the level of

comfort they provide. The present biased structure of subsidies and

incentives that reward bad behavior has fostered a dangerous

misconception. We suffer from an illusion of unprecedented prosperity

and economic growth while we live in a land of degraded farms,

forests, ecosystems and watersheds; polluted air, failing families and

perishing communities. We must bring the security of our planet's

ecological capital into the calculations of the marketplace.

 

Cheap food is not cheap;

 

when you pay $1.25 for chicken in the supermarket you do not pay the

cost of cleaning up the rivers polluted by the poultry industry. In

its 2004 Living Planet Report, the World Wildlife Fund revealed the

shocking news that our ecological footprint, that is, the impact of

humanity on the Earth, has increased two and a half fold since 1961.

The report showed that the average footprint is 5.4 acres per person.

There is a problem here - that footprint is 20% greater than the 4.4

acres of land that each person on the planet needs to provide the

necessary natural resources to sustain life. The average footprint of

a North American is not only double that of a European, but seven

times that of the average Asian or African.

 

The third possible answer to this question is one that has intrigued

me for years. We have, quite simply, lost our reverence for Creation.

I used to blame this on Eve for making that uninformed pact with the

serpent. As a result of that poor decision, we were kicked out of the

Garden and told we must toil for our food. I believed that this drove

a wedge between humanity and the natural world, creating an

antagonistic relationship, and that we have suffered the consequences

ever since. But after taking a couple of courses at SU and doing quite

a bit of independent reading, I have come to the conclusion that we

were not kicked out of the Garden, we are still in the Garden, but we

are operating on the wrong principles. I now hold the fathers of the

scientific revolution responsible. I should never have blamed a woman

and I should have known that men with their " get a bigger hammer

approach " to a problem were responsible.

 

The Scientific Revolution started a gradual transformation of society

that has caused us to devalue the natural world and to destroy its

resources for utilitarian ends. In his keynote address at the

Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture's conference in

1999, Wm. McDonough pointed out that the question posed in Genesis

regarding dominion versus stewardship is actually moot: how can we

have dominion over what we have destroyed?

 

In the same address, McDonough, a designer, told the audience that he

sees design as the first signal of human intention. If the systems we

design prove to have faults as they are applied, it is not by

regulations that will only further encumber the application that we

will solve the problems of that poor design, but by re-design.

Certainly we did not intend to design a system of agriculture that

pollutes our water, air and soil, enslaves farmers, compromises our

health and ultimately tyrannizes future generations. These are the

unintended consequences of our poor design. I see no purpose in

bashing the industrial agriculture model other than to inform us about

the perils we face if we continue on this course. I prefer to heed the

advice of Buckminster Fuller when he said, " You never change anything

by fighting the existing. To change something, build a new model and

make the existing obsolete " .

 

It is to that end that I, along with a dedicated group of hard working

folks, have been working for the past 5 years. We are working toward a

regionally based, safe, just and sustainable food system in the

Community Supported Agriculture farming model, known as CSA farms.

 

The CSA model emphasizes mutual, shared responsibility: a committed

group of consumers accepts the financial responsibility for the farm

and the farmer returns his commitment by growing the highest quality

of food he is able to produce for them. The essence of the

relationship is mutual commitment: the farmer is motivated by the

needs of the shareholders and the shareholders are motivated by the

needs of the farmer. The roots of the CSA movement can be traced to

what are called Teikei farms in Japan. Teikei translates to " food with

the farmer's face on it " .

 

After the second world war, when chemical inputs were introduced to

increase the yields on Japanese farms and the population became

increasingly urbanized, both farmers and their customers were

concerned about the degradation of the land and the poor quality and

availability of food. Cooperative arrangements were established to

deliver food to the urban population. The concept spread through

Europe where farmers sought market stabilization and consumers sought

fresh, nutritious food.

 

In 1983, Robyn van En, a Massachusetts farmer was approached by a

local food co-op seeking someone to grow winter storage crops. This

arrangement was successful and with a group of dedicated people,

Indian Line Farm became the first consumer-driven CSA farm in this

country. She began writing the book " Sharing the Harvest " but died of

asthma before its completion. Elizabeth Henderson completed the book,

which has become an important source of guidance for start-up CSA's.

The term Community Supported Agriculture was chosen by Robyn because

it can be transposed into Agriculture Supported Communities, which

defined her dream.

 

CSA's spread throughout the northeast, mostly in university

communities, but also among group homes for the handicapped that

recognized the therapeutic value of gardening. Emergency food banks

have also discovered the benefits of growing their own food.

 

At The Food Bank Farm in western Massachusetts, 50% of the food is

distributed to the local food bank and 50% is distributed to the

shareholders. The entire cost of operating the farm is borne by the

shareholders. Because food distribution costs are minimized by

eliminating middlemen, the shareholders receive more for their food

dollar than if the same produce were purchased at the local supermarket.

 

Most CSA's require a work commitment, either on or off the farm. Tasks

such as bookkeeping, budgeting, recruiting new members, publishing a

weekly newsletter and coordinating farm events such as potluck dinners

and activities for children are available to the members not

interested in getting their hands dirty. For those who like to play in

the dirt we have transplanting parties, mulching extravaganzas,

lessons on how to drive tomato stakes and tie tomatoes and the twice

weekly picking parties. I am particularly blessed with a member who

loves hand-weeding. All of this relieves the farmer of these chores so

he or she can focus on growing the crops and practicing good

stewardship of the land. Member involvement enables the CSA to fit

itself to the community it serves. The success rate of CSA's is

directly proportional to the level of member involvement.

 

I first learned about CSA farms at a conference in Virginia in 1985

where Trauger Groh, a German farmer who had started a CSA in New

Hampshire, spoke on the topic. After listening to Mr. Groh, I believed

the CSA model had the potential to save struggling family farms from

almost certain extinction. At that time I was in the greenhouse

business providing transplants to local vegetable farmers and seeking

to expand my market. I attempted to identify CSA farms and offer my

service. Within a few years, I was custom-growing transplants for

about 25 CSA's. I watched them grow and prosper and decided to sell my

greenhouse business and start a CSA here. In 2001 I sold Silver Seed

Greenhouses to a local couple and started Provident Organic Farm based

on the CSA model in 2002.

 

If you recall, 2002 was one of the worst drought years on record and

our harvest was just as poor as the rainfall. Typical retention rate

for a first year CSA is 35%, miraculously, we retained 65% of the

members for the second year and we went into 2003 with 100 members.

You may recall that 2003 was one of the wettest years on record and

our harvest reflected that. Once again, the members honored their

commitment and we went into 2004 with high hopes.

 

Last year was the great year we were hoping for. By the 25th week of

our 30 week season the membership had received dollar value for their

share cost. The shares they received for the balance of the season

were essentially free.

 

In the three years we have been in existence, we have trained a young

man in organic vegetable farming who is now working in Detroit on a

community food project that enables poor families to grow their own food.

 

We have established an alliance with Go-Getters in Salisbury to help

with distributing the shares.

We started the Lower Eastern Shore Sustainable Organic Network, known

as LESSON, a non-profit organization with the mission of identifying

local farmers interested in making the transition to sustainable

practices and helping them to do so by providing technical and

marketing assistance.

 

We created the Medora Harvest Fund to honor the memory of a young

woman who, prior to her tragic death at the age of 23, had dedicated

herself to organic farming. This fund accepts tax-deductible donations

to distribute food shares to families in need of assistance.

 

This year we are cooperating with an international organization that

brings interns to this country to study sustainable agriculture so

they can return to their homes with an expanded knowledge base to

share with other farmers.

 

We also have a documentary film crew interested in helping us create a

video about the farm that, I hope, can be used in classrooms.

 

This is just the beginning. I see food as a powerful unifying force in

society, it has been so throughout our history. I look forward to the

future when we can assist in establishing micro enterprises that grow

high value crops, perhaps this can be done by a group of young women

struggling to raise their fatherless children and in need of skills to

set them free. I would like to establish handicapped accessible

gardens around a children's garden to reconnect the elders with our

young people. I would like to restock the soda and junk food machines

in our schools with organic fruit juices and nutritious snacks.

 

Impossible?

 

Only if you think it is, if you can imagine it, you can do it.

 

Food is the vehicle, community is the destination.

 

I look forward to the day when farmers claim their rightful place in

society as the first line of defense in our health care system and are

properly compensated for their work.

 

In closing, I will tell you another story. A few years ago I went to

Salina, Kansas for the Prairie Festival at the Land Institute. After

two days of inspiring talks given by Wendell Berry, David Korten,

Winona LaDuke and others, the crowd gathered on Sunday morning for the

closing address from Wes Jackson. His talk titled " Life on the Farm,

100 Years Hence " , described his hopeful vision for agriculture in the

22nd century:

When perennial polycultures have replaced annual monocultures and, as

a result the soils are weatherproof.

 

When the farm grows its own fuel.

 

When farmers are no longer like gamblers betting against the house.

 

When we are no longer trying to subdue nature, but realize that nature

provides the model for us to follow.

 

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Original article available here.

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