Living in a "Sustainable" world

Nathan said...
You are a farmer. Does your way forward include agriculture in some form? If so what system of checks and balances will keep you and other farmers who follow your way from producing an excess of food?NR
April 14, 2007 12:11 AM

We have always had farming of some sort. Every creature alters its environment to favor its own food supply. Ants and beavers are great examples, but if you look at the life cycle of trees you would find that they shed chemicals that prevent close competition in their own root zone, grazing animals by selecting certain plants to eat create more occurrences of those plants - the prairie was truly a creation of the buffalo. So, to answer Nathan's question, Yes, there must be some form of agriculture for us to survive.

The question of checks and balances is a good one. Who gets to be KING or GOD to decide how much to produce and who lives and who dies? We have spent the past 10000 years proving that such a system can't work. So, what's a farmer to do?

I think the key is to live locally. If I, as a farmer, only sell to a very local market and only use resources (energy, food, water, etc) from my farm or from a very local area to produce what I sell, that automatically puts a limit on how much I produce. This can't be only for the farmer. In nature everything lives locally. Every group lives on the resources available within its range. It doesn't matter what your specialty is in the group (community, tribe, pod, etc.) you live locally.

As an eco-farmer what I am trying to do is to find ways to stop importing basic resources into my operation. We have a long way to go. Right now we import all our energy, except our own labor. We import all of our water. We import most of our food. As a start we are looking at ways to reduce our energy use. We are also designing systems for the house and farm that will allow us to meet our energy needs from our own resources. We are beginning to produce our own food. Right now we produce all of our own eggs and milk, and most of the milk products we use. If spring ever gets here we will be producing most of our fresh produce. We are also seeking out and supporting local producers of things we can't or don't produce ourselves. We are also trying to deal with the "waste" produced from living. Everything that can be composted is (or it gets fed to the chickens, they eat almost anything). We recycle what we can, and chose not to buy things that aren't recyclable. We are also encouraging others to do the same. (I take eggs to my mother-in-law and she trades them for her kitchen scraps. The chickens love the scraps, and it puts some of the lost fertility back into the farm that produced the eggs as well as reducing the waste stream.) We are exploring rain catchment systems as a way to meet our water needs. And the list goes on. All of this will take time.

I am not proposing that everyone should live my life. The system wouldn't work if they did. Human groups need specialists, that is what has allowed us to adapt to so many different environments. Every time I see my brother-in-law he tells me he can't understand why I do what I do. The effort of being a farmer baffles him. I can't explain it to him. I also can't understand how anyone could do what he does. He is a dentist. The thought of spending my day with my hand in someones mouth turns my stomach. Still, I am glad there are people who specialize in dentistry, or in the thousands of other things I can't or won't do. It makes our community stronger. The key is not to have everyone become eco-farmers. The key is to have everyone take responsibility for living locally. Know where your food comes from. Find sources that are local and encourage them to use only local resources. Know where your energy and water come from. Look at ways to change how you live so you use less or produce more of your own (or both). Build networks of local people living locally. These will become the tribes, the communities of the future.