[SustainableTompkins] Fw: Fifty Million Farmers

[Tony Del Plato]

Wow. What a tale & vision. Almost sounds like how to create a soft landing
as we abandon the corporate pyramids of energy & agriculture. Perhaps
similar to the Maya abandonment of their highly developed centralized
civilizations. Back to the land...again.
Tony Del Plato

On 11/19/06, bosak at ibiblio.org <bosak at ibiblio.org> wrote:
>
> CATEGORY: Agriculture and Energy Descent
>
> In this recent lecture before the E. F. Schumacher Society,
> Richard Heinberg, a leading figure in the Peak Oil movement,
> describes a key outcome of energy descent -- the restoration of
> the small farmer to a position of respect and relative affluence
> and the return of the American population to a largely rural
> existence.  These developments will have consequences for Tompkins
> County that we need to start planning for.
>
> Jon Bosak
> Chair, TCLocal
>
> ==================================================================
>
> Published on 17 Nov 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 17 Nov
> 2006. [http://energybulletin.net/22584.html]
>
> Fifty Million Farmers
> by Richard Heinberg
>
> (Note: This is the abbreviated text of a lecture by Richard
> Heinberg delivered to the E. F. Schumacher Society in Stockbridge,
> Massachusetts on October 28, 2006)
>
> There was a time not so long ago when famine was an expected, if
> not accepted, part of life. Until the 19th century -- whether in
> China, France, India or Britain -- food came almost entirely from
> local sources and harvests were variable. In good years, there was
> plenty -- enough for seasonal feasts and for storage in
> anticipation of winter and hard times to come; in bad years,
> starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest -- the very young,
> the old, and the sickly. Sometimes bad years followed one upon
> another, reducing the size of the population by several
> percent. This was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial
> societies, and it persisted for thousands of years.
>
> Today, in America, such a state of affairs is hard to
> imagine. Food is so cheap and plentiful that obesity is a far more
> widespread concern than hunger. The average mega-supermarket
> stocks an impressive array of exotic foods from across the globe,
> and even staples are typically trucked from hundreds of miles
> away. Many people in America did go hungry during the Great
> Depression, but those were times that only the elderly can
> recall. In the current regime, the desperately poor may experience
> chronic malnutrition and may miss meals, but for most the dilemma
> is finding time in the day's hectic schedule to go to the grocery
> store or to cook. As a result, fast-food restaurants proliferate:
> the fare may not be particularly nutritious, but even an hour's
> earnings at minimum wage will buy a meal or two. The average
> American family spent 20 percent of its income on food in 1950;
> today the figure is 10 percent.
>
> This is an extraordinary situation; but because it is the only one
> that most Americans alive today have ever experienced, we tend to
> assume that it will continue indefinitely. However there are
> reasons to think that our current anomalous abundance of
> inexpensive food may be only temporary; if so, present and future
> generations may become acquainted with that old, formerly familiar
> but unwelcome houseguest -- famine.
>
> The following are four principal bases (there are others) for this
> gloomy forecast.
>
> The first has to with looming fuel shortages. This is a subject I
> have written about extensively elsewhere, so I shall not repeat
> myself in any detail. Suffice it to say that the era of cheap oil
> and natural gas is coming to a crashing end, with global oil
> production projected to peak in 2010 and North American natural
> gas extraction rates already in decline. These events will have
> enormous implications for America's petroleum-dependent food
> system.
>
> Modern industrial agriculture has been described as a method of
> using soil to turn petroleum and gas into food. We use natural gas
> to make fertilizer, and oil to fuel farm machinery and power
> irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, in
> the maintenance of animal operations, in crop storage and drying,
> and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs. Agriculture
> accounts for about 17 percent of the U.S. annual energy budget;
> this makes it the single largest consumer of petroleum products as
> compared to other industries. By comparison, the U.S. military, in
> all of its operations, uses only about half that amount. About 350
> gallons (1,500 liters) of oil equivalents are required to feed
> each American each year, and every calorie of food produced
> requires, on average, ten calories of fossil-fuel inputs. This is
> a food system profoundly vulnerable, at every level, to fuel
> shortages and skyrocketing prices. And both are inevitable.
>
> An attempt to make up for fuel shortfalls by producing more
> biofuels -- ethanol, butanol, and biodiesel -- will put even more
> pressure on the food system, and will likely result in a
> competition between food and fuel uses of land and other resources
> needed for agricultural production. Already 14 percent of the
> U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol, and that proportion
> is expected to rise to one quarter, based solely on existing
> projects-in-development and government mandates.
>
> The second factor potentially leading to famine is a shortage of
> farmers. Much of the success of industrial agriculture lies in its
> labor efficiency: far less human work is required to produce a
> given amount of food today than was the case decades ago (the
> actual fraction, comparing the year 2000 with 1900, is about one
> seventh). But that very success implies a growing
> vulnerability. We don't need as many farmers, as a percentage of
> the population, as we used to; so, throughout the past century,
> most farming families -- including hundreds of thousands and
> perhaps millions that would have preferred to maintain their
> rural, self-sufficient way of life -- were economically forced to
> move to cities and find jobs. Today so few people farm that vital
> knowledge of how to farm is disappearing. The average age of
> American farmers is over 55 and approaching 60. The proportion of
> principal farm operators younger than 35 has dropped from 15.9
> percent in 1982 to 5.8 percent in 2002. Of all the dismal
> statistics I know, these are surely among the most
> frightening. Who will be growing our food twenty years from now?
> With less oil and gas available, we will need far more knowledge
> and muscle power devoted to food production, and thus far more
> people on the farm, than we have currently.
>
> The third worrisome trend is an increasing scarcity of fresh
> water. Sixty percent of water used nationally goes toward
> agriculture. California's Central Valley, which produces the
> substantial bulk of the nation's fruits, nuts, and vegetables,
> receives virtually no rainfall during summer months and relies
> overwhelmingly on irrigation. But the snowpack on the Sierras,
> which provides much of that irrigation water, is declining, and
> the aquifer that supplies much of the rest is being drawn down at
> many times its recharge rate. If these trends continue, the
> Central Valley may be incapable of producing food in any
> substantial quantities within two or three decades. Other parts of
> the country are similarly overspending their water budgets, and
> very little is being done to deal with this looming catastrophe.
>
> Fourth and finally, there is the problem of global climate
> change. Often the phrase used for this is "global warming," which
> implies only the fact that the world's average temperature will be
> increasing by a couple of degrees or more over the next few
> decades. The much greater problem for farmers is destabilization
> of weather patterns. We face not just a warmer climate, but
> climate chaos: droughts, floods, and stronger storms in general
> (hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, hail storms) -- in short,
> unpredictable weather of all kinds. Farmers depend on relatively
> consistent seasonal patterns of rain and sun, cold and heat; a
> climate shift can spell the end of farmers' ability to grow a crop
> in a given region, and even a single freak storm can destroy an
> entire year's production. Given the fact that modern American
> agriculture has become highly centralized due to cheap transport
> and economies of scale (almost the entire national spinach crop,
> for example, comes from a single valley in California), the damage
> from that freak storm is today potentially continental or even
> global in scale. We have embarked on a century in which,
> increasingly, freakish weather is normal.
>
> I am not pointing out these problems, and their likely
> consequences, in order to cause panic. As I propose below, there
> is a solution to at least two of these dilemmas, one that may also
> help us address the remaining ones. It is not a simple or easy
> strategy and it will require a coordinated and sustained national
> effort. But in addition to averting famine, this strategy may
> permit us to solve a host of other, seemingly unrelated social and
> environmental problems.
>
> INTENSIFYING FOOD PRODUCTION
>
> In order to get a better grasp of the problems and the solution
> being proposed, it is essential that we understand how our present
> exceptional situation of cheap abundance came about. In order to
> do that, we must go back not just a few decades, but at least ten
> thousand years.
>
> The origins of agriculture are shrouded in mystery, though
> archaeologists have been whittling away at that mystery for
> decades. We know that horticulture (gardening) began at somewhat
> different periods, independently, in at least three regions -- the
> Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Central America. Following the
> end of the last Ice Age, roughly 12,000 years ago, much of
> humanity was experiencing a centuries-long food crisis brought on
> by the over-hunting of the megafauna that had previously been at
> the center of the human diet. The subsequent domestication of
> plants and animals brought relative food security, as well as the
> ability to support larger and more sedentary populations.
>
> As compared to hunting and gathering, horticulture intensified the
> process of obtaining food. Intensification (because it led to
> increased population density -- i.e., more mouths to feed), then
> led to the need for even more intensification: thus horticulture
> (gardening) eventually led to agriculture (field cropping). The
> latter produced more food per unit of land, which enabled more
> population growth, which meant still more demand for food. We are
> describing a classic self-reinforcing feedback loop.
>
> As a social regime, horticulture did not represent a decisive
> break with hunting and gathering. Just as women had previously
> participated in essential productive activities by foraging for
> plants and hunting small animals, they now played a prominent role
> in planting, tending, and harvesting the garden -- activities that
> were all compatible with the care of infants and small
> children. Thus women's status remained relatively high in most
> horticultural societies. Seasonal surpluses were relatively small
> and there was no full-time division of labor.
>
> But as agriculture developed -- with field crops, plows, and draft
> animals -- societies inevitably mutated in response. Plowing
> fields was men's work; women were forced to stay at home and lost
> social power. Larger seasonal surpluses required management as
> well as protection from raiders; full-time managers and
> specialists in violence proliferated as a result. Societies became
> multi-layered: wealthy ruling classes (which had never existed
> among hunter-gatherers, and were rare among gardeners) sat atop an
> economic pyramid that came to include scribes, soldiers, and
> religious functionaries, and that was supported at its base by the
> vastly more numerous peasants -- who produced all the food for
> themselves and everyone else as well. Writing, mathematics,
> metallurgy, and, ultimately, the trappings of modern life as we
> know it thus followed not so much from planting in general, as
> from agriculture in particular.
>
> As important an instance of intensification as agriculture was, in
> many respects it pales in comparison with what has occurred within
> the past century or so, with the application of fossil fuels to
> farming. Petroleum-fed tractors replaced horses and oxen, freeing
> up more land to grow food for far more people. The Haber-Bosch
> process for synthesizing ammonia from fossil fuels, invented just
> prior to World War I, has doubled the amount of nitrogen available
> to green nature -- with nearly all of that increase going directly
> to food crops. New hybrid plant varieties led to higher
> yields. Technologies for food storage improved radically. And
> fuel-fed transport systems enabled local surpluses to be sold not
> just regionally, but nationally and even globally. Through all of
> these strategies, we have developed the wherewithal to feed seven
> times the population that existed at the beginning of the
> Industrial Revolution. And, in the process, we have made farming
> uneconomical and unattractive to all but a few.
>
> That's the broad, global overview. In America, whose history as an
> independent nation begins at the dawn of the industrial era, the
> story of agriculture comprises three distinct periods:
>
> The Expansion Period (1600 to 1920): Increases in food production
> during these three centuries came simply from putting more land
> into production; technological change played only a minor role.
>
> The Mechanization Period (1920 to 1970): In this half-century,
> technological advances issuing from cheap, abundant fossil-fuel
> energy resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity (output per
> worker hour). Meanwhile, farm machinery, pesticides, herbicides,
> irrigation, new hybrid crops, and synthetic fertilizers allowed
> for the doubling and tripling of crop production. Also during this
> time, U.S. Department of Agriculture policy began favoring larger
> farms (the average U.S. farm size grew from 100 acres in 1930 to
> almost 500 acres by 1990), and production for export.
>
> The Saturation Period (1970-present): In recent decades, the
> application of still greater amounts of energy have produced
> smaller relative increases in crop yields; meanwhile an
> ever-growing amount of energy is being expended to maintain the
> functioning of the overall system. For example, about ten percent
> of the energy in agriculture is used just to offset the negative
> effects of soil erosion, while increasing amounts of pesticides
> must be sprayed each year as pests develop resistances. In short,
> strategies that had recently produced dramatic increases in
> productivity became subject to the law of diminishing returns.
>
> While we were achieving miracles of productivity, agriculture's
> impact on the natural world was also growing; indeed it is now the
> single greatest source of human damage to the global
> environment. That damage takes a number of forms: erosion and
> salinization of soils; deforestation (a strategy for bringing more
> land into cultivation); fertilizer runoff (which ultimately
> creates enormous "dead zones" around the mouths of many rivers);
> loss of biodiversity; fresh water scarcity; and agrochemical
> pollution of water and soil.
>
> In short, we created unprecedented abundance while ignoring the
> long-term consequences of our actions. This is more than a little
> reminiscent of how some previous agricultural societies -- the
> Greeks, Babylonians, and Romans -- destroyed soil and habitat in
> their mania to feed growing urban populations, and collapsed as a
> result.
>
> Fortunately, during the past century or two we have also developed
> the disciplines of archaeology and ecology, which teach us how and
> why those ancient societies failed, and how the diversity of the
> web of life sustains us. Thus, in principle, if we avail ourselves
> of this knowledge, we need not mindlessly repeat yet again the
> time-worn tale of catastrophic civilizational collapse.
>
> THE 21ST CENTURY: DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION
>
> How might we avoid such a fate?
>
> Surely the dilemmas we have outlined above are understood by the
> managers of the current industrial food system. They must have
> some solutions in mind.
>
> Indeed they do, and, predictably perhaps, those solutions involve
> a further intensification of the food production process. Since we
> cannot achieve much by applying more energy directly to that
> process, the most promising strategy on the horizon seems to be
> the genetic engineering of new crop varieties. If, for example, we
> could design crops to grow with less water, or in unfavorable
> climate and soil conditions, we could perhaps find our way out of
> the current mess.
>
> Unfortunately, there are some flaws with this plan. Our collective
> experience with genetically modifying crops so far shows that
> glowing promises of higher yields, or of the reduced need for
> herbicides, have seldom been fulfilled. At the same time, new
> genetic technologies carry with them the potential for horrific
> unintended consequences in the forms of negative impacts on human
> health and the integrity of ecosystems. We have been gradually
> modifying plants and animals through selective breeding for
> millennia, but new gene-splicing techniques enable the re-mixing
> of genomes in ways and to degrees impossible heretofore. One
> serious error could result in biological tragedy on an
> unprecedented scale.
>
> Yet even if future genetically modified commercial crops prove to
> be much more successful than past ones, and even if we manage to
> avert a genetic apocalypse, the means of producing and
> distributing genetically engineered seeds is itself reliant on the
> very fuel-fed industrial system that is in question.
>
> Is it possible, then, that a solution lies in another direction
> altogether -- perhaps in deliberately de-industrializing
> production, but doing so intelligently, using information we have
> gained from the science of ecology, as well as from traditional
> and indigenous farming methods, in order to reduce environmental
> impacts while maintaining total yields at a level high enough to
> avert widespread famine?
>
> This is not an entirely new idea (as you all well know, the
> organic and ecological farming movements have been around for
> decades), but up to this point the managers of the current system
> have resisted it. This is no doubt largely because those managers
> are heavily influenced by giant corporations that profit from
> centralized industrial production for distant
> markets. Nevertheless, the fact that we have reached the end of
> the era of cheap oil and gas demands that we re-examine the
> potential costs and benefits of our current trajectory and its
> alternatives.
>
> I believe we must and can de-industrialize agriculture. The
> general outline of what I mean by de-industrialization is simple
> enough: this would imply a radical reduction of fossil fuel inputs
> to agriculture, accompanied by an increase in labor inputs and a
> reduction of transport, with production being devoted primarily to
> local consumption.
>
> Once again, fossil fuel depletion almost ensures that this will
> happen. But at the same time, it is fairly obvious that if we
> don't plan for de-industrialization, the result could be
> catastrophic. It's worth taking a moment to think about how events
> might unfold if the process occurs without intelligent management,
> driven simply by oil and gas depletion.
>
> Facing high fuel prices, family farms would declare bankruptcy in
> record numbers. Older farmers (the majority, in other words) would
> probably choose simply to retire, whether they could afford to or
> not. However, giant corporate farms would also confront rising
> costs -- which they would pass along to consumers by way of
> dramatically higher food prices.
>
> Yields would begin to decline -- in fits and starts -- as weather
> anomalies and water shortages affected one crop after another.
>
> Meanwhile, people in the cities would also feel the effects of
> skyrocketing energy prices. Entire industries would falter,
> precipitating a general economic collapse. Massive unemployment
> would lead to unprecedented levels of homelessness and hunger.
>
> Many people would leave cities looking for places to live where
> they could grow some food. Yet they might find all of the
> available land already owned by banks or the government. Without
> experience of farming, even those who succeeded in gaining access
> to acreage would fail to produce much food and would ruin large
> tracts of land in the process.
>
> Eventually these problems would sort themselves out; people and
> social systems would adapt -- but probably not before an immense
> human and environmental tragedy had ensued.
>
> I wish I could say that this forecast is exaggerated for
> effect. Yet the actual events could be far more violent and
> disruptive than it is possible to suggest in so short a summary.
>
> EXAMPLES AND STRATEGIES
>
> Things don't have to turn out that way. As I have already said, I
> believe that the de-industrialization of agriculture could be
> carried out in a way that is not catastrophic and that in fact
> substantially benefits society and the environment in the long
> run. But to be convinced of the thesis we need more than promises
> -- we need historic examples and proven strategies. Fortunately,
> we have two of each.
>
> In some respects the most relevant example is that of Cuba's
> Special Period. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the
> Soviet Union, Cuba lost its source of cheap oil. Its
> industrialized agricultural system, which was heavily
> fuel-dependent, immediately faltered. Very quickly, Cuban leaders
> abandoned the Soviet industrial model of production, changing from
> a fuel- and petrochemical-intensive farming method to a more
> localized, labor-intensive, organic mode of production.
>
> How they did this is itself an interesting story. Eco-agronomists
> at Cuban universities had already been advocating a transition
> somewhat along these lines. However, they were making little or no
> headway. When the crisis hit, they were given free rein to, in
> effect, redesign the entire Cuban food system. Had these academics
> not had a plan waiting in the wings, the nation's fate might have
> been sealed.
>
> Heeding their advice, the Cuban government broke up large,
> state-owned farms and introduced private farms, farmer co-ops, and
> farmer markets. Cuban farmers began breeding oxen for animal
> traction. The Cuban people adopted a mainly vegetarian diet,
> mostly involuntarily (Meat eating went from twice a day to twice a
> week). They increased their intake of vegetable sources of protein
> and farmers decreased the growing of wheat and rice (Green
> Revolution crops that required too many inputs). Urban gardens
> (including rooftop gardens) were encouraged, and today they
> produce 50 to 80 percent of vegetables consumed in cities.
>
> Early on, it was realized that more farmers were needed, and that
> this would require education. All of the nation's colleges and
> universities quickly added courses on agronomy. At the same time,
> wages for farmers were raised to be at parity with those for
> engineers and doctors. Many people moved from the cities to the
> country; in some cases there were incentives, in others the move
> was forced.
>
> The result was survival. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds of body
> weight, but in the long run the overall health of the nation's
> people actually improved as a consequence. Today, Cuba has a
> stable, slowly growing economy. There are few if any luxuries, but
> everyone has enough to eat. Having seen the benefit of
> smaller-scale organic production, Cuba's leaders have decided that
> even if they find another source of cheap oil, they will maintain
> a commitment to their new, decentralized, low-energy methods.
>
> I don't want to give the impression that Cubans sailed through the
> Special Period unscathed. Cuba was a grim place during these
> years, and to this day food is far from plentiful there by
> American standards. My point is not that Cuba is some sort of
> paradise, but simply that matters could have been far worse.
>
> It could be objected that Cuba's experience holds few lessons for
> our own nation. Since Cuba has a very different government and
> climate, we might question whether its experience can be
> extrapolated to the U.S.
>
> Let us, then, consider an indigenous historical example. During
> both World Wars, Americans planted Victory Gardens. During both
> periods, gardening became a sort of spontaneous popular movement,
> which (at least during World War II) the USDA initially tried to
> suppress, believing that it would compromise the industrialization
> of agriculture. It wasn't until Eleanor Roosevelt planted a
> Victory Garden in the White House lawn that agriculture secretary
> Claude Wickard relented; his agency then began to promote Victory
> Gardens and to take credit for them. At the height of the
> movement, Victory Gardens were producing roughly 40 percent of
> America's vegetables, an extraordinary achievement in so short a
> time.
>
> In addition to these historical precedents, we have new techniques
> developed with the coming agricultural crisis in mind; two of the
> most significant are Permaculture and Biointensive farming (there
> are others -- such as efforts by Wes Jackson of The Land Institute
> to breed perennial grain crops -- but limitations of time and
> space require me to pick and choose).
>
> Permaculture was developed in the late 1970s by Australian
> ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in anticipation of
> exactly the problem we see unfolding before us. Holmgren defines
> Permaculture as "consciously designed landscapes that mimic the
> patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an
> abundance of food, fiber, and energy for provision of local
> needs." Common Permaculture strategies include mulching, rainwater
> capture using earthworks such as swales, composting, and the
> harmonious integration of aquaculture, horticulture, and
> small-scale animal operations. A typical Permaculture farm may
> produce a small cash crop but concentrates largely on
> self-sufficiency and soil building. Significantly, Permaculture
> has played an important role in Cuba's adaptation to a low-energy
> food regime.
>
> Biointensive farming has been developed primarily by Californian
> John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables. Like
> Permaculture, Biointensive is a product of research begun in the
> 1970s. Jeavons defines Biointensive (now trademarked as "Grow
> Biointensive") farming as
>
>    . . . an organic agricultural system that focuses on maximum
>    yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously
>    improving the soil. The goal of the method is long-term
>    sustainability on a closed-system basis. Because biointensive
>    is practiced on a relatively small scale, it is well suited to
>    anything from personal or family to community gardens, market
>    gardens, or minifarms. It has also been used successfully on
>    small-scale commercial farms.
>
> Like Holmgren and Mollison, Jeavons has worked for the past three
> decades in anticipation of the need for the de-industrialization
> of food production due to accumulating environmental damage and
> fossil fuel depletion. Currently Biointensive farming is being
> taught extensively in Africa and South America as a sustainable
> alternative to the globalized monocropping. The term
> "biointensive" suggests that what we are discussing here is not a
> de-intensification of food production, but rather the development
> of production along entirely different lines. While both
> Permaculture and Biointensive have been shown to be capable of
> dramatically improving yields-per-acre, their developers clearly
> understand that even these methods will eventually fail us unless
> we also limit demand for food by gradually and humanely limiting
> the size of the human population.
>
> In short, it is possible in principle for industrial nations like
> the U.S. to make the transition to smaller-scale, non-petroleum
> food production, given certain conditions. There are both
> precedents and models.
>
> However, all of them imply more farmers. Here's the catch -- and
> here's where the ancillary benefits kick in.
>
> THE KEY: MORE FARMERS!
>
> One way or another, re-ruralization will be the dominant social
> trend of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years from now --
> again, one way or another -- we will see a more historically
> normal ratio of rural to urban population, with the majority once
> again living in small, farming communities. More food will be
> produced in cities than is the case today, but cities will be
> smaller. Millions more people than today will be in the
> countryside growing food.
>
> They won't be doing so the way farmers do it today, and perhaps
> not the way farmers did it in 1900.
>
> Indeed, we need perhaps to redefine the term farmer. We have come
> to think of a farmer as someone with 500 acres and a big tractor
> and other expensive machinery. But this is not what farmers looked
> like a hundred years ago, and it's not an accurate picture of most
> current farmers in less-industrialized countries. Nor does it
> coincide with what will be needed in the coming decades. We should
> perhaps start thinking of a farmer as someone with 3 to 50 acres,
> who uses mostly hand labor and twice a year borrows a small
> tractor that she or he fuels with ethanol or biodiesel produced
> on-site.
>
> How many more farmers are we talking about? Currently the U.S. has
> three or four million of them, depending on how we define the
> term.
>
> Let's again consider Cuba's experience: in its transition away
> from fossil-fueled agriculture, that nation found that it required
> 15 to 25 percent of its population to become involved in food
> production. In America in 1900, nearly 40 percent of the
> population farmed; the current proportion is close to one percent.
>
> Do the math for yourself. Extrapolated to this country's future
> requirements, this implies the need for a minimum of 40 to 50
> million additional farmers as oil and gas availability
> declines. How soon will the need arise? Assuming that the peak of
> global oil production occurs within the next five years, and that
> North American natural gas is already in decline, we are looking
> at a transition that must occur over the next 20 to 30 years, and
> that must begin approximately now.
>
> Fortunately there are some hopeful existing trends to point
> to. The stereotypical American farmer is a middle-aged,
> Euro-American male, but the millions of new farmers in our future
> will have to include a broad mix of people, reflecting America's
> increasing diversity. Already the fastest growth in farm operators
> in America is among female full-time farmers, as well as Hispanic,
> Asian, and Native American farm operators.
>
> Another positive trend worth noting: Here in the Northeast, where
> the soil is acidic and giant agribusiness has not established as
> much of a foothold as elsewhere, the number of small farms is
> increasing. Young adults -- not in the millions, but at least in
> the hundreds -- are aspiring to become Permaculture or organic or
> Biointensive farmers. Farmers markets and CSAs are established or
> springing up throughout the region. This is somewhat the case also
> on the Pacific coast, much less so in the Midwest and South.
>
> What will it take to make these tentative trends the predominant
> ones? Among other things we will need good and helpful
> policies. The USDA will need to cease supporting and encouraging
> industrial monocropping for export, and begin supporting smaller
> farms, rewarding those that make the effort to reduce inputs and
> to grow for local consumption. In the absence of USDA policy along
> these lines, we need to pursue state, county, and municipal
> efforts to support small farms in various ways, through favorable
> zoning, by purchasing local food for school lunches, and so on.
>
> We will also require land reform. Those millions of new farmers
> will need access to the soil, and there must be some means for
> assisting in making land available for this purpose. Conservation
> land trusts may be useful in this regard, and we might take
> inspiration from Indian Line Farm, here in the northeast.
>
> Since so few people currently know much about farming, education
> will be essential. Universities and community colleges have both
> the opportunity and responsibility to quickly develop programs in
> small-scale ecological farming methods -- programs that also
> include training in other skills that farmers will need, such as
> in marketing and formulating business plans.
>
> Since few if any farms are financially successful the first year
> or even the second or third, loans and grants will also be
> necessary to help farmers get started.
>
> These new farmers will need higher and stabilized food prices. As
> difficult as it may be even to imagine this situation now, food
> rationing may be required at some point in the next two or three
> decades. That quota system needs to be organized in such a way as
> to make sure everyone has the bare essentials, and to support the
> people at the base of the food system -- the farmers.
>
> Finally, we need a revitalization of farming communities and
> farming culture. A century ago, even in the absence of the air and
> auto transport systems we now take for granted, small towns across
> this land strove to provide their citizens with lectures,
> concerts, libraries, and yearly chautauquas. Over the past decades
> these same towns have seen their best and brightest young people
> flee first to distant colleges and then to the cities. The folks
> left behind have done their best to maintain a cultural
> environment, but in all too many cases that now consists merely of
> a movie theater and a couple of video rental stores. Farming
> communities must be interesting, attractive places if we expect
> people to inhabit them and for children to want to stay there.
>
> IF WE DO THIS WELL
>
> We have been trained to admire the benefits of intensification and
> industrialization. But, as I've already indicated, we have paid an
> enormous price for these benefits -- a price that includes
> alienation from nature, loss of community and tradition, and the
> acceptance of the anonymity and loss of autonomy implied by mass
> society. In essence, this tradeoff has its origins in the
> beginnings of urbanization and agriculture.
>
> Could we actually regain much of what we have lost? Yes, perhaps
> by going back, at least in large part, to horticulture. Recall
> that the shift from horticulture to agriculture was, as best we
> can tell, a fateful turning point in cultural history. It
> represented the beginning of full-time division of labor,
> hierarchy, and patriarchy.
>
> Biointensive farming and Permaculture are primarily horticultural
> rather than agricultural systems. These new, intelligent forms of
> horticulture could, then, offer an alternative to a new feudalism
> with a new peasantry. In addition, they emphasize biodiversity,
> averting many of the environmental impacts of field cropping. They
> use various strategies to make hand labor as efficient as
> possible, minimizing toil and drudgery. And they typically slash
> water requirements for crops grown in arid regions.
>
> We have gotten used to a situation where most farmers rely on
> non-farm income. As of 2002 only a bit less than 60 percent of
> farm operators reported that their primary work is on the
> farm. Only 9 percent of primary operators on farms with one
> operator, and 10 percent on farms with multiple operators, report
> all of their income as coming from the farm.
>
> The bad side of this is that it means it's hard to make a living
> farming these days. The good side is that we don't have to think
> of farming as an exclusive occupation. As people return to small
> communities and to farming, they could bring with them other
> interests. Rather than a new peasantry that spends all of its time
> in drudgery, we could look forward to a new population of
> producers who maintain interests in the arts and sciences, in
> history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology -- in short, the
> whole range of pursuits that make modern urban life interesting
> and worthwhile.
>
> Moreover, the re-ruralization program I am describing could be a
> springboard for the rebirth of democracy in this nation. I do not
> have to tell this audience how, over the past few years, democracy
> in America has become little more than a slogan. In fact this
> erosion of our democratic traditions has been going on for some
> time. As Kirkpatrick Sale showed in his wonderful book Human
> Scale, as communities grow in size, individuals' ability to
> influence public affairs tends to shrink. Sociological research
> now shows that people who have the ability to influence policy in
> their communities show a much higher sense of satisfaction with
> life in general. In short, the re-ruralization of America could
> represent the fulfillment of Thomas Jefferson's vision of an
> agrarian democracy -- but without the slaves.
>
> If we do this well, it could mean the revitalization not only of
> democracy, but of the family and of authentic, place-based
> culture. It could also serve as the basis for a new, genuine
> conservatism to replace the ersatz conservatism of the current
> ruling political elites.
>
> What I am proposing is nothing less than a new alliance among
> environmental organizations, farmers, gardeners, organizations
> promoting economic justice, the anti-globalization movement,
> universities and colleges, local businesses, churches, and other
> social organizations. Moreover, the efforts of this alliance would
> have to be coordinated at the national, state, and local
> level. This is clearly a tall order. However, we are not talking
> about merely a good idea. This is a survival strategy.
>
> It may seem that I am describing and advocating a reversion to the
> world of 1800, or even that of 8,000 BC. This is not really the
> case. We will of course need to relearn much of what our ancestors
> knew. But we have discovered a great deal about biology, geology,
> hydrology, and other relevant subjects in recent decades, and we
> should be applying that knowledge -- as Holmgren, Mollison,
> Jeavons, and others have done -- to the project of producing food
> for ourselves.
>
> Cultural anthropology teaches us that the way people get their
> food is the most reliable determinant of virtually all other
> social characteristics. Thus, as we build a different food system
> we will inevitably be building a new kind of culture, certainly
> very different from industrial urbanism but probably also from
> what preceded it. As always before in human history, we will make
> it up as we go along, in response to necessity and opportunity.
>
> Perhaps these great changes won't take place until the need is
> obvious and irresistibly pressing. Maybe gasoline needs to get to
> $10 a gallon. Perhaps unemployment will have to rise to ten or
> twenty or forty percent, with families begging for food in the
> streets, before embattled policy makers begin to reconsider their
> commitment to industrial agriculture.
>
> But even in that case, as in Cuba, all may depend upon having
> another option already articulated. Without that, we will be left
> to the worst possible outcome.
>
> Rather than consigning ourselves to that fate, let us accept the
> current challenge -- the next great energy transition -- as an
> opportunity not to vainly try to preserve business as usual, the
> American Way of Life that, we are told, is not up for negotiation,
> but rather to re-imagine human culture from the ground up.
>
> (This lecture drew on certain ideas earlier put forward by Knox,
> New York farmer Sharon Astyk in her remarks at the 2006 Peak Oil
> and Community Solutions conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and on
> others that emerged in conversation with Pat Murphy of Community
> Service and Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute.)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> SustainableTompkins mailing list
> SustainableTompkins at lists.mutualaid.org
> http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins
> free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
>



-- 
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its
shoes.
  - Mark Twain