In 1990, the Blandin Foundation published a book with text by Paul Gruchow and photos by Jim Brandenburg. Its title: Minnesota: Images of Home. The Preface begins with an observation that “our state faces a special challenge: the struggle to hold to a common purpose in the face of economic realities that threaten to divide and polarize us.” It goes on to note that “So both urban and rural Minnesota are caught up in the tensions of enormous change. At the same time, a growing economic gap threatens to divide rural Minnesotans from their urban cousins, and the wealthiest urbanites from their neighbors, who have not shared in recent income gains. It will take discipline, imagination, and determined leadership to keep us working together as a community of communities toward what is good for all Minnesotans.”
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| Minnesota: Images of Home |
Meanwhile, in my opinion, our political leaders have spent the past 30+ years focused on opposing the other party rather than working together for the good of the country. Plus, I believe the preface missed the significant, going back at least to Earl Butz, political emphasis in agriculture for farms and farmers to “get big or get out.” Congress has failed to rein in, let alone curb, industrial agriculture. Consequently, the number of farms decreases, the size of farms increases, the number of Confined Animal Feed Operations [CAFOs] increases, the agricultural nonpoint source water pollution grows horribly and the “farm population” declines.
Do you really think that the solution to an urban-rural divide is to have only half a dozen farms in all of Minnesota’s agricultural regions; plowed by unmanned tractors using GIS; spreading fertilizer on eroded soils to grow commodity row crops not for food, but as feed for biofuels, which produce more greenhouse gases than they save? I hope not. Agriculture has become too much an extractive industry, extracting life from rural America.
Once upon a time, Minnesota had a state planning agency. It also had a citizen board that ran the Pollution Control Agency. Regional Planning Agencies once served all of the state. No more. We have confused efficiency with effectiveness. We have focused on cost rather than value. We have become too much a “beggar my neighbor” culture. We have grown to ask not what we can do for our community, but what our community can do for us. We are not alone in making these mistakes.
Climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions has been known for decades. We have failed to act adequately that entire time and continue to do so. In the 1949 Housing Act, Congress established, “as soon as feasible, the goal of a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family. “ Are we any closer to attaining that goal? I doubt it. I know, we know, that we’re far from attaining the 1983 objective of “fishable-swimmable waters” set in the Clean Water Act of 1972. Half or more of the waters tested fail to meet the fishable-swimmable standards.
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| The Mad Farmer Poems |
One of the rural poets I read with some regularity is Wendell Berry. He farms in Kentucky. (I’ve never read his opinion of Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul. Time for an internet search.) He speaks meaningfully about farming and how to do it. I wonder how many urbanites have read today’s poem and agree with it. In fact, I wish more urban and suburbanites would read or listen to the Mad Farmer Poems in their entirety.
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 millennium. 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 easy 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.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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