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Title: Sustainable Agriculture — For Whom? Author: Robert Brothers Date: 1986 Language: en Topics: agriculture, deep ecology, Earth First! Notes: from Earth First! Journal, Mabon 1986
Sustainable agriculture is doing well at restoring ecological sanity to
food production... yet there are important questions which it leaves
unanswered. The following paper asserts that for agriculture to be truly
sustainable, it must be sustaining for the natural world around it. This
means that the issues of human population size, and the location,
extent, and type of agriculture must all be dealt with in the broader
context of wild species and the Damaged Lands.
Agriculture developed to help humans survive. Now, if all species of
life on Earth (including people) are to survive the present
environmental crisis, the lessons of sustainable agriculture must be
applied beyond the borders of our cultivated fields.
Agriculture tells us about growing things, how to replenish the vitality
of the soil, and how to seed it with plants that will flourish. We need
to take these nurturing skills and apply them to the Damaged Lands. Who
knows better than farmers how the fabric of life on Earth has been
broken, poisoned, and washed away? And who will know better how to patch
those wounds?
The growing body of experience with sustainable agriculture provides us
with an excellent model for meeting the food needs of people in ways
which enrich soil and are not directly exploitative of the surrounding
environment. Yet there is an unanswered question in the sustainable
agriculture point of view; What is the proper relationship between
cultivated lands and remaining wild species? The context in which
sustainable agriculture occurred in the past was much different from our
present planetary situation. This change in contexts has importance for
agriculture itself, but even more, it is vitally important for wild
species and natural ecosystems.
Main questions arise regarding: 1) the quantity of land devoted to human
sustenance; 2) the location of this land in relation to existing
ecosystems; and 3) the choice of species for cultivation.
In the distant past, cultivated lands were islands in a sea of dominant
wilderness, like the isolated patches of slash and burn (swidden)
agriculture that are maintained on a rotational basis by tribal peoples.
Today, the mechanized farms of the major food-producing nations dominate
thousands of square miles of contiguous farmlands with one or two crops.
For reasons such as pest control and lessened susceptibility to disease
epidemics, sustainable agricultural proponents would break up these huge
blocks of monoculture into small-farm units divided by wild or semi-wild
strips of vegetation in hedgerows and shelter-belts, or even wilderness
belts winding through the countryside to continuous hands.
While the ideal of wilderness would be revered in this compelling
vision, we need a better understanding than this vision can now offer of
how the survival of native species would be served or impeded by
agriculture. An example of where we need a better understanding the
relation between native species and food production is in the Great
Plains, where we have the choice of seeding the land with varieties of
perennial grains which Wes Jackson and his colleagues at the Land
Institute are working to develop; or assisting the return of native
grasses, native herbivores (Bison), and native carnivores (Wolves,
Lakota). Should lands presently under cultivation be regarded as forever
lost to wilderness?
How much is our view of ‘meeting the expectations of the land’ colored
by our human-centered biases? It would seem that the most basic
‘expectation’ must be the survival of all species originally present. If
increased soil fertility and crop vigor are achieved at the expense of
native species, then the expectations of the land (as a whole) are not
being met... only the expectations of the farmer’s soil and crops.
However, if we speak of ‘all-species gardening’ instead of sustainable
agriculture, a new picture of our relationship with Earth can emerge,
one that recognizes inherent value of all beings. We need to show
concern not only for our crops, but for all native species as well. This
means that before choosing a piece of ground to nurture for our
sustenance, we must first look at the full context in which our
intervention will take place.
Just as we make our system of agriculture internally balanced to ensure
our ability to sustain it, so we must also ensure that our gardens,
farms, orchards, or pastures exist in balance with the ‘external’ world
of Nature surrounding them.
Whose habitat are we occupying? Will our imported plants poison local
wildlife? Will our activities prevent migrating birds from using the
neighboring wetlands? The external effects of even the best sustainable
agriculture practices reveal their inadequacy from a deep ecological
point of view. In fact, the difficulty of answering such questions has
led many to conclude that only a hunter/gatherer existence is
justifiable — living totally within the natural world, not apart from it
in any way.
Meeting the expectations of the land must begin with the bottom line of
all-species survival. In fact, the present ecological crisis may provide
the only justification for any form of agriculture. So much land has
been scarred, feforested, desertified, and poisoned, that only the
ancient processes of evolution operating on the scale of geologic time
can heal the wounds — unless the humble, respectful people intervene now
to salve the wounds and contain the toxins.
With all-species gardening as our guiding model, we can look at the
whole Earth as our context, with each local ecosystem as a specific
focus or grounding. As we move from the narrow, human-centered goal of
sustainability to the broader concern for all species, then we can see
where the most urgent needs of Nature’s gardens are. If we need to
reseed an eroding hillside with native grasses to help ensure a
butterfly’s survival, then we may be justified in appropriating some of
the bottomlands below that hill for our food garden.
Here are some of the questions we should be asking: 1) Where are the
labds from which humans and advanced technology must simply withdraw,
leaving these lands to heal themselves in the care of native peoples? 2)
Where are the places that need immediate, high technology reclamation to
stop spread of toxins and genetic mutagens? 3) Where are the places that
would benefit from the planting of native plants... and where do we feel
confident that we can perform this task correctly?
Sustainable agriculture has a vital role to play in this process. Only
recently has restoration ecology come into its own as a profession;
native plant nurseries are finally beginning to provide the needed
growing stock for future work. Yet the idealism of restoration ecology
needs to be leavened with the practicalities of accomplishment: how are
the field workers to be fed?
The rotating corral/garden/grassland agriculture of the Tarahumaras
provides us with a good model for combining restoration work and human
sustenance. Damaged Lands could be first lightly grazed and manured;
then gardened with primarily leguminous or soil enriching crops, to
prepare the ground to answer the needs of the area’s original plant
occupants at their highest sucessional stage. The restoration workers
could then move on to other Damaged Lands, in time finding a spot
suitable for permanent habitation. After all the abuses of this century,
it is necessary for people to once again earn their place in Nature.
To turn the tide, our interdependency with Nature, and our obligation to
her, must be known. As stewards of the earth, caretakers of the soil,
sustainable agriculture people are the natural ones to ectend their
concerns to the nurturing of all life. Wendell Berry’s definition needs
only to be expanded to read: ‘A sustainable agriculture does no deplete
the soils or people, wild species or the planet’, In summary, the phrase
‘for the benefit of all species’ needs to be included in any definition
of sustainable agriculture.
The old hierarchies at the roots of war are in disarray. We see that the
machines that were to save us now enslave us; while our real
life-supporting friends, the plants and animals, suffer widespread
oppression. Clearly, the true priorities of life must be reestablished:
‘Earth first, humans second, and machines last’.
A final example: Where I live in southern Oregon, as elsewhere along the
Pacific Coast, food production depends on irrigation throughout the
rainless summer months. Unfortunately, this practice harms the fish
(salmon and steelhead trout) — water withdrawls for irrigation lower
summer stream flows and raise stream temperatures above tolerable
limits. Out of respect for all species, food crops should be grown in
the mild Oregon winters, when rain is abundant and the fields dry-farmed
or left fallow in the summer drought. As far as I know, such a proposal
has yet to be made in the Pacific Northwest, yet a friend of mine has
begun this practice in the Central Valley of California for simple
economic reasons (a large market for fresh produce in the winter).
As Donald Worster suggests in his essay, “Thinking Like a River”, the
whole mode of human habitation in the West needs to realign with minimal
disturbance of the natural water cycle. Turning around our priorities to
put wild species first will require massive changes in our ways of life.
Fortunately for our bioregion, the vision of streams again filled with
the miracle of returning salmon provides a strong incentive to learn how
we can best go about its restoration.
In these days of despair, we need a focus that makes us feel there is
joy in life, and that we deserve to be living. Of all the tasks before
us, healing the Earth is the most demanding, necessary, challenging and
fulfilling. Unlike many causes, it involves working for something
clearly bigger than us... yet demands that we bow down to no hierarchy,
accept no one else’s judgement of success.
We need a noble purpose. We need to be stricken with awe at the damage
we have done to Earth, then penet of these ways, and fix things... Only
by belonging to something larger than ourselves can we feel whole again
as people... As old symbols and isms fade away, only one thing remains
bigger than us, supporting us, plain for all to see — the whole Earth.
Only that which makes no distinctions between us can unite us.
The role of sustainable agriculture must be first to repair the Damaged
Lands — the wounds wrought by industrial agriculture need to be covered,
vast acres replanted into native grasses, herbs, shrubs and trees. The
overgrazed pasture lands need also to be replanted, and the clearcut
forests need to be restocked with the original full distribution of
native species. It will be best to leave some places entirely alone.
As these attempts at complete restoration are carried out, human
population must be reduced. In time, intensive gardening methods will be
developed to occupy whatever space each ecosystem can afford to divert
toward human needs. Hopefully, ways will be found to benefit all life in
a bioregion by the longterm presence of nurturing humans — but the
repair work must come first.