As I watched the winter rains descend, in a dry land where rain should promise an abundant harvest, I was amazed to see how voraciously the insects consumed our organic garden. In the beginning we thought the insects were a good sign, "At least we know it's edible," we joked. But it wasn't funny for very long. Soon the insects had consumed all hope of the abundant harvest we thought the rains would bring. "What happened?" we wondered. And then it dawned on me. All the surrounding fields had been sprayed with insecticides. Ours was the only plot of land that offered life, and insects swarmed to it with vengeful appetites.

 

The plethora of insecticides sprayed on local cash crops to ward off pests merely chases them into neighboring organic fields. Whether we realize it or not, such industrial efforts set the stage for the perfect famine. Stripped of nutrients by fertilizers spread by machines that compact the soil, machines that return nothing to the organic long-term integrity of the soil, and worn out and depleted by relentless row cropping, the topsoil eventually loses most of its ability to feed an ever-increasing population. But the organic produce, more harmoniously grown in respect to nature, that might possibly feed some hungry mouths while building up the soil with organic matter is likewise decimated by plagues of insects that prefer the taste of real food to the poisons of industrial agriculture. Do they know something we don’t?

 

The food bank runs dry as rain and wind erosion strip the land of both its topsoil and the fertilizers on which it has become so dependent. In this scenario, the supposedly 'benign' terminator gene of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) becomes more than the assassin of the regeneration of grain. It becomes the executioner of a generation of people too indebted to industry to own their own farm, or farm their own land, or grow their own seed without an industrial patent and the specialized fertilizers and herbicides that makes GMO seed grow where nothing else dares.

 

Industrial agriculture builds its frailty on specialized methods that nature, sooner or later, refuses to tolerate. Bees that would pollinate crops are literally impacted to death with indigestible supplements used to create the perfect cash crop. Industrial methods of agriculture, too efficient to return humus to the soil, leave roots vulnerable to the ravages of weather. In the year that it rains too much, the winds blow too hard or too dry, and the winter stays too long, food suddenly becomes more precious than oil or gold. Stunted by the greed of men who preferred profit to sustainability, the harvest does not ripen, is not gathered in, and rots in fields impoverished by their dependence on industry.

 

In such a scenario, governments are forced into ever-more-desperate measures to stem the mounting tide of hunger within and around their borders. Either they must find ways of reducing the population or they must kill the agro-cidal industries whose contributions keep their politicians in plush and padded offices. Forced into cities by the lure of fortune and industry, people that once tended the land with joy, abandon it to feed an industrial appetite that leeches the land's ability to keep them alive. Whereas, once, they were rural producers, in the cities, the farmers, the gardeners, the country folk become mere consumers, returning nothing substantial to the land that feeds them.

 

Like a spent whore, the land has been worn out, stripped of all but superficial beauty and offering no further satisfaction to the industrial mongers that would seek to rape it yet again. Neither can it satisfy the people upon whose noble efforts industry has built its consuming addiction. Would that people would slow down enough to build their appetites on honest labor rather than on lust for more of what can never satisfy. What is the remedy to such proliferate barrenness?

 

Diversity in nature is healthy. By contrast, monoculture and biocidal processes are dangerous. A monoculture restricts the biodiversity that insures life and the resilience of species. One-way biocidal processes that send the bulk of biomass to the cities only to be flushed down toilets and buried in toxic landfills, returning nothing to the soil from which it came, must be redeemed. The country cannot continue to feed the city indefinitely without getting fed in return. Recognized or not, the city owes the country a bio-debt. But the country, its land and its animals, cannot eat the city's gold, coin, or paper money.

 

 

To have global value, ecology and resource conservation must become inherently local issues. That is to say, they must proffer local benefit through local initiatives that are locally scrutinized. Local conservation will never be globally enforced. The required ‘agrarian police’ infrastructure would make such a task financially and practically prohibitive. Rather, global conservation must be locally enforced. If ecology is not first local, it will never be global. But it needs to be local everywhere. This means the understanding of ecology and resource conservation must become as essential and universal as math and reading. When everyone knows the standards and their significance, they are a whole lot easier to enforce

 

But there must also be a return to animal-powered small farming. Wherever farms of seventy-five acres or less are farmed with animals, wherever the soil and its essential food-generating nutrients is being certifiably built up, wherever good farming practices are preserving the topsoil that makes things grow, these farmers ought to be rewarded. They ought to earn a salary that makes farming commensurate with other life-saving occupations -- not that they should become rich -- few farmers want such largesse -- but neither should they be indentured to the government or industry for the privilege of growing the world's food. How many families does a farmer really feed and how much is the resulting life really worth? They should be paid commensurately -- enough to do their work well without having to go into debt to do it.

 

I draw the line at seventy-five acres or less because this is the practical limit at which an average farm family can farm with animals. Beyond this limit, certain oil-dependent machines begin to be necessary. Aside from the fact that such machines might become prohibitively expensive in an increasingly oil-starved world, compared to animal power, they also tend to pollute the air more and compact the topsoil more, making it less rain-water absorbent and, therefore, more prone to erosion. An animal contributes to the soil that feeds it. But, with the exception of bio-diesel (whose production reduces the amount of land available for cultivating food and which is prohibitively expensive without subsidies), a machine does not contribute to the soil that feeds it. Animal-powered farms ought to be rewarded for their ecological prowess.

 

Finally, the agricultural corruption that turns a blind eye to the medical expenses often generated by its industrial, money-hungry practices must come to an end. If there is a genuine benefit to insecticides, pesticides, GMOs, and chemical fertilizers, then they ought to be lauded for their nutritive value and agricultural industry, at the very least, ought to receive commensurate medical benefits. But if the opposite is true, and the agricultural industry proves to be more the source of ills than of cures, then it ought to pay for its negligence. If the agro-industry knew it would have to pay a percentage of the medical expenses for the disease its products generated within the community it fed, it would be far more circumspect about how it grows its food.

 

Such discernment and circumspection would emerge naturally enough from more research performed in our nation's universities and institutes of higher learning. Unfortunately, such research grants are most enthusiastically funded by the industries they benefit -- industries that generally only want to find ways to sell more of their product at the highest possible profit margin. Little research is done to expose the corresponding liabilities that would wrest industry from its perjurious state of denial.

 

To provide an organic feast for more than just insects -- that is, to provide mankind with the healthful, nutritive, and live-giving food it needs to survive -- certain redemptive steps must be taken. Here are a few suggestions for discussion:

 

 

2) The biomass cycle initiated on farms and largely directed toward urban venues must be thoughtfully completed with cities adding their effort toward restoring the tilth of the earth -- an effort for which they are amply rewarded in increased local production of food at reduced prices, in income from local surplus, and in tax breaks from taxes that would otherwise be used to redeem the value of the local land cultivated to generate their food. We must learn how to feed the soil that we expect to feed us.

 

3) Local initiatives toward global ecologic balance ought to be bolstered by a curriculum that emphasizes local ecology as enthusiastically as it emphasizes math and reading. Ecology is a life or death educational issue that must become a matter of personal conscience, not merely a matter of corporate expedience. But ecology becomes a local initiative only where it has first become a personal and essential concern. Appropriate education can illuminate why good ecology is so essential, giving it a chance to become someone's personal conviction.

 

4) Animal-powered small farming and 'best-earth' practices ought to be promoted as enthusiastically as governments have courted industrial agriculture. This means that local extension programs for promoting the responsible use of land (not merely its short-term industrial profitability) ought to receive the bulk of research funds and attention. The land is everyone’s food heritage and must be preserved.

 

5) Agrarian independence from diminishing oil reserves ought to be encouraged and rewarded. A working animal on a food-producing farm should merit a tax exemption on the same scale as the purchase of fuel merits and includes a tax liability. And incentives for the environmentally responsible disposal of animal waste should be offered in much the same way that industries are rewarded for other sound ecological practices.

 

6) The corruption of the agricultural industry being sanctioned at government levels must be exposed and purged. The best way to inspire agricultural integrity is to reward the industry's local contribution to healthy living and to commensurately punish its contribution to poor health. Wherever insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, and chemical fertilizers are shown to correspond to a rise in associated infirmities, the industry ought to be held liable and the use of such substances and organisms ought to be commensurately taxed to resolve the problems they cause.

 

 

8) Factory farm ethics must be thoroughly reevaluated and revised. Among the issues to be considered more carefully are, a) dairy farming mastitis and the related use of penicillin, b) cancerous beef and pork entering the human food chain through liberal government inspection standards and policies toward industrial farms, c) the equitable and ecological disposal of feedlot waste, d) replenishing the soil through urban biomass reclamation programs and, e) the future of imposed animal identification systems and how they favor factory farms and put undue restrictions on small farms, which typically have less impact on the human food chain and are less vulnerable to the health and terror risks that plague industrial farming.

 

None of the above eight points are necessarily solutions so much as they are topics for discussion. But if we do not begin to assemble an agenda of concerns we will probably never cover the full scope of critical agrarian issues that must be resolved. Let's begin to dialogue about what God wants our world to become and how, in every aspect, it should reflect His glory. Small-holding farmers are not looking for an advantage, but for equality. They merely want the same pay for the proportion of humanity they feed. And they want to be able to pass their local farming heritage on to their sons and daughters for generations to come so that whether or not the rich have gold the people will always have food.

 

Michael Hennen