Could agriculture become the new mining?

In meteorological terms, we're close to midsummer, July 17. Astronomically, it won't occur until August 6. Whichever system you prefer, we're near peak summer. We picked up our first community supported agriculture summer share this past Thursday. It included:

• garlic scapes
• broccoli
• cabbage
• cucumbers
• salad turnips
• purple kohlrabi, and
• golden beets

Our local big box grocery store has sweet corn on sale and watermelon [probably not local] for sale. If both were local, we'd be at high summer.

dawn of a new era for agriculture?

Photo by J. Harrington

Lots of the area's field corn and soy bean fields are looking healthier than I expected to see after our unseasonable extended hot spell. Apparently we've been getting just enough rain to keep the commodity crops happy. No sign of tassels on the corn yet. Our local fields of commodity crops may be  consumed locally or be sold internationally. Donella Meadows has several interesting observations about making mid-sized farms sustainable. Among those observations is:

Some of the most interesting experiments weaving together these policies are in the specialty cheese and wine regions of Europe, where certified regional identity and stewardship incentives are combined with supply management collective agreements. When I have taken US farmers and extension specialists to French cheese-making regions, they have been universally impressed by farm prosperity, traditional landscapes, and community vitality.

Being  impressed by "farm prosperity, traditional landscapes, and community vitality" may or may not be enough to overcome entrenched attitudes fortified by the "not invented here" syndrome. And yet, we keep seeing farms get bigger and rural populations get smaller. The more that happens, the more farming resembles another extractive industry, mining. There's been increased participation during the  past few years in an organization known as the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. Maybe we would all benefit if there was a comparable organization and standards adopted for farming, standards that  looked beyond maximizing yield and at social and environmental impacts of extractive production.

The Farmer

By W.D. Ehrhart

Each day I go into the fields 

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.

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