Where are our model conservation heroes?

Minnesotans have been farming for a long, long time. Farming has changed a lot over the decades. Many of those changes have created real problems for the environment, including next door neighbors as well as those neighbors who live "in town." Here's a question and a challenge for all of us: How do we manage to elect representatives dedicated more to helping us solve our problems rather than just getting themselves reelected? This question occurs to us in light of the debacle that recently ended in St. Paul and the ongoing train wreck in Washington, D.C.

when did you last see a farmer using one of these?

Photo by J. Harrington

We know there are at least folks committed to solving real problems in the real world. Miriam Horn does a fantastic job describing some of them in her book Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland. Minnesota is in the Heartland. Do we have conservation heroes among our farmers? Are they farming profitably without polluting ground and surface waters with nitrates and phosphorus and sediment? We must have some that are as dedicated as Justin Knopf, a fifth generation farmer in the Heartland and one of the book's heroes.

Are our Minnesota farmers too busy farming the "right way" to have time to talk to their fellow farmers and their legislators about how to protect Minnesota's farms and ground and surface water, all at the same time? Are we experiencing a "failure to communicate" that then leads to a failure to farm and/or legislate responsibly? Or, have we, as one of Horn's heroes says, just got too many "folks who'd rather fight than win"?

the new barn is down the road with the tractors

Photo by J. Harrington

Is the problem that we have too many smaller "family farms?" As Justin Knopf observes:

"There's a perception out there that's tempting to buy into, that to take care of the environment you have to farm at a scale like my grandfather would have farmed on: a couple hundred acres, with smaller machinery, very limited technology. And I think that's not quite accurate. As I think about the farmers in our community and probably agriculture as a whole in much of the Midwest, I would argue that many of the larger scale farms are the ones on the cutting edge of environmentalism."

We learned, a long time ago, that trying to legislate morality is rarely successful. In fact, we think we'd all be better off if we could and did do a better job of following R. Buckminster Fuller's advice:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

It seems to us that there are many who already have built that new model while too many others don't yet know about it or want to use it. That's unfortunate. Miriam Horn, in our opinion, has exceeded one of her objectives. She put a huge dent in our skepticism and pessimism. As she notes:

I wrote this book to challenge several pervasive and powerful myths about the  heartland. First, that in these traditional, deep-red states, “real Americans”—the  ones who run tractors and barges and fishing boats, who go to church and town hall  meetings—are hostile to environmental values. And that producing food at “industrial  scale” is inherently destructive to nature. 

In fact, we'd like to make this book mandatory reading for every candidate, of any party or running as an independent, that hopes to represent any part of rural America. It would be one large step toward getting back to functional governance and politics that doesn't put party first. Ms. Horn has shown us a workable model that's better than what we have. Now it's up to us, and our farmers.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

 Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay.
 Want more 
of everything ready-made.
 Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.


And you will have a window in your head.
 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more.
 Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer.
 

When they want you to buy something 
they will call you.
 When they want you 
to die for profit they will let you know.
 
So, friends, every day do something 
that won't compute.
 Love the Lord.
 
Love the world.
 Work for nothing.
 
Take all that you have and be poor.
 
Love someone who does not deserve it.
 

Denounce the government and embrace 
the flag.
 Hope to live in that free 
republic for which it stands.
 
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand.
 Praise ignorance, for what man 
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
 

Ask the questions that have no answers.
 
Invest in the millenium.
 Plant sequoias.
 
Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest.
 

Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit.
 Prophesy such returns.
 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years.
 

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come.
 
Expect the end of the world.
 Laugh.
 
Laughter is immeasurable.
 Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts.
 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men.
 

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth? 

Go with your love to the fields.
 
Lie down in the shade.
 Rest your head 
in her lap.
 Swear allegiance 
to what is nighest your thoughts.
 

As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it.
 Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn't go.
 

Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction.
 
Practice resurrection.