Teetering Toward The Tipping Point: A Rural Advantage

The Sower - statue atop the Nebraska state capital, just a few blocks from the conference.

“I am convinced that sustainability is the defining question of the 21st Century,” John Ikerd said last Saturday afternoon. Ikerd, a senior statesman among American agrarians, was addressing a conference hosted by the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society in Lincoln, and he earned a standing ovation for his definitive, imperative, and impassioned remarks. He painted a convincing word picture of how sustainable food production systems can and should be employed to restore health to our bodies and minds, to restore vitality to the land, and to restore long-term stability to our economy. This healing potential, he said as he sounded the conference keynote, is a rural advantage. America would do well to take note.

The very day Ikerd spoke, Bob Herbert wrote an op-ed column titled ‘Time is Running Out‘ for The New York Times. “We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good,” Herbert reported. “The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.”

Noting that our economy has been thrown desperately out of whack by frantic, debt-driven consumption, speculative bubbles, and exotic financial instruments, Herbert reported that living standards are sinking swiftly in the USA, and that there is no coherent long-term vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend.

John Ikerd, Ph.D.

Almost as if he picked up on the same thought train as the Times columnist, but basing his response on a lifetime of work advocating for clean, truly economic sustainable agriculture, Ikerd in his speech said that the issue which has potential bring this all into focus is public health — specifically the growing epidemics of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, allergies and asthma. All these illnesses are related to diet, and our diet is directly related to the way we cultivate the land and raise our animals. It’s all linked.

Now gluttonously congested with agrichemicals, processing and genetic-mechanical initiatives, that link has led to some staggeringly expensive consequences. Health care spending devoured 17 percent of the entire U.S. economy last year according to the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Just a few years back it was only 5 percent, 6 percent, and then 7 percent.  But over the same time period that our diets and our land have been dosed with chemicals, hormones, processing and GMOs, our health costs have ballooned to the present onerous 17 percent. Soon, according to the projections of the Federal Centers, health care will be devouring 20 percent, and then 22 percent of our annual economy. That’s money we could be spending on lots of other things we need.

“For the last 50 years,” Ikerd said, “our focus has been on producing a lot of cheap stuff — with chemicals, herbicides and GMOs. But the decline in human health has paralleled this.” Putting the paradox into a sound bite, he said, “Our country is now both overfed and undernourished.”

One day before Ikerd spoke and Herbert wrote his column for the Times, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R), a member of the House Agriculture Committee, told the Nebraska conference that consumers who buy directly from food producers keep 90 percent of food income in the agricultural sector, supporting their neighbors who are local, sustainable growers. Fortenberry also made the connection between clean, healthy food and the kind of good health that could dramatically shrink health-care costs.

John Ikerd really drove the points home on Saturday with his facts and his rhetoric. The tipping point will come, he said, when we realize that the economic and environmental health of the nation depends upon, and is directly related to the physical and mental health of the people, and that that is related to the health of the soil and the way we cultivate the land.

As with other American agrarians, Ikerd sees the potential of clean sustainable agriculture to be the vision and the plan that leads us out of recession and pollution and into the future with clean food, healthy bodies and minds, a vibrant environment, and a stable economy built on something real and enduring.

“The tide is changing,” he said at the end of his talk. “It takes healthy people to maintain healthy soil and to bring healthy food from the land. There is a new purpose for people to be out in rural areas now, to repopulate our farmlands and to create healthy soil, and healthy food that will lead to healthy people. We need to rebuild from the soil up, and we can do it. Where are we going to find the jobs of the future? They are on the land. There’s a whole new concept of society emerging based on local, clean healthy food. That’s the rural advantage.

Native Knowings

It has been my destiny to travel with many contemporary Native American spiritual elders, and to hear many of the teachings they offer about the land and about the era of transition in which we live. I have just created and published a new Soul*Sparks  ebook — Native Knowings: Wisdom Keys for 2012 and Beyond — in an effort to distill and then to express some of  those wisdom teachings in the context of the year 2012 and the Mayan calendar.

My new ebook has been produced in over 10 formats, so it can be read on any ereader device, including Kindle, Nook, Sony,  iPhones, Blackberries, computers, and so forth. I wrote it short and to the point.

The true scope and depth of Native wisdom is generally unknown, and much of what is known is either drawn from the past, or offered out of context. This Soul*Sparks ebook cannot hope to encompass the many levels and great depth of understanding that are part of Native tradition, but it can hint at them, and it can do so in a manner appropriate for the prophetic year of 2012, and in a context that will endure long after that. Some things — basic spiritual teachings like honesty, sharing, humility, respect, and caring for the land — remain constant through all phases and cycles of human and world development. I reckon the year 2012 will bring no alteration to that.

My aim as writer and compiler is to offer a quintessence of both ancient and contemporary Native wisdom in a coherent, and rhetorically strengthening manner that will be readily accessible for many thousands of people as we confront mounting economic, environmental and social crises in North America, and around the world.

Healing for Haiti: Dwellers on an Agrarian Threshold

Threshold by Nguyen Dinh Dang (oil painting, 2003)

“We are dwellers on the threshold. We are poised in a liminal moment — a moment of passage when new cultural symbols and meanings can emerge. Liminal moments are times of tension, extreme reactions, and great opportunity. These moments shimmer with possibilities. They are painful, tough, full of hard choices — and they provoke anxiety.” – Sherry Turkle

John Calvert, webmaster for the International Permaculture Conference. has established a new web site dedicated to support of the Haitian people and their land Permaculture Haiti. The opportuntities and the projects outlined on this web portal have potential make a tremendously positive long-term impact on Haiti, and to establish models that can potentially be emulated globally.

Calvert thought of the idea the day after the massive earthquake struck Haiti earlier this month. He recognized that it would a good idea to concentrate all the information about new and incipient permaculture and sustainable ag initiatives based Haiti on one website.

“…the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” – Bill Mollison , Permaculture pioneer

Among the ‘Best of ‘09′ – The Call of the Land

At the turn of the year, The Food Systems Network NYC assembled a panel of 10 professionals to pool their knowledge and assess their favorite food system developments of 2009.

Their ‘Best of…” list was intended to identify what the panel found most memorable, and also worthy of further development in 2010. They identified the most significant films, books, and policy developments related to food, nutrition, public health, public policy and art.

They named The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century as ranking among the Best Books of 2009.

Their choice of The Call of the Land arrives just two months after the book was published, and just as reviews and endorsements are beginning to arrive.  Here is a sample of what reviewers have to say:

Courtney White

Endorsement by Courtney White, Executive Director of The Quivira Coalition and author of “Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West” and other works.

“The Call of the Land is an important and timely primer on a resurgent agrarianism taking place around the nation. As the challenges of the 21st century begin to bear down, we can take solace, and find pragmatic solutions, in the back-to-the-land work of progressive farmers, ranchers, conservationists, and many others. Hope dwells in the grassroots. This book is a great guide on where to look.”

Larry Dossey, M.D.

Endorsement by best-selling author Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, The Power of Premonitions, and many other books.

“Steven’s book is just terrific. I grew up agrarian, on a small farm in central Texas. I still have dirt under my nails and am proud of it. We grew our own food, a practice I still follow…Our links to the land go deep; they are primordial, archetypal, and innate, and we ignore them at our peril.  In The Call of the Land Steven McFadden explores these connections and how we can restore them at a time in history when they have become dangerously tenuous.

“If you have ever felt the urge to plant a seed or tend a garden, or heard the veggies whispering to you as you pass them in the supermarket aisle, you will love this book. McFadden is dealing with sacred science, the sort of wisdom we require for our survival.”

Woody Wodraska

Book review by Woody Wodraska, yeoman farmer, and the author of Deep Gardening

“The Call of the Land is a hopeful book…The author has been a keen observer-participant of the agricultural scene for more than 30 years and has witnessed first hand this revolution: those who grow and consume food are speedily awakening to the perils of industrialization of food production and finding new ways to make today’s backyard Victory Garden a triumphant response to corporate despotism, to make ‘food with the farmer’s face on it’ the norm. With his research and interviews McFadden presents hundreds of new ideas and resources from citizen groups, individuals, government agencies, educational institutions and his own experience–all sound and all hopeful.“

‘The Call of the Land’ now available as an ebook

Now at the turn of the year, The Call of the Land has become available as an ebook. Readers can obtain the book instantly on Amazon.com for use on their popular Kindle reader, or also order the book as a traditional paperback.

For other format ebooks, readers can now download The Call of the Land from OmniLit.  You will, however, have  to enter the title of the book and the author’s name — Steven McFadden — into the OmniLit search window when you get to the site.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble has The Call of the Land for sale online in paperback,  Any day now the book will also be available formatted for the Nook, their ebook reader

According to industry news source CNET, Amazon.com recently released their annual post-Christmas statement on holiday sales, and made one thing clear: ebooks are coming on big time, taking a progressively larger share of the market..

“We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

In another milestone for the e-reader, the company noted that on Christmas Day 2009, for the first time ever, Amazon customers bought more Kindle books than physical books.

Ebook readers are becoming increasingly popular,  reaching critical mass.

Listening to The Call of the Land

Wendell Berry

This week I picked up a copy of a new book by Wendell Berry, the dean of American agrarians. The book is a collection of essays, titled “Bringing it to the Table,”  and it promises to be a rich read.

In the introduction another illustrious agrarian, Michael Pollan, notes that some of Berry’s ideas, dating back to the 1970s, prefigure the passionate national conversation now taking place concerning our farms, food, environment, and economy

I had barely cracked the cover of Berry’s new book – Essay 1, Nature as Measure –  when I found myself agreeing.

Berry wrote “The fact is that we have nearly destroyed American farming, and in the process have nearly destroyed our country…How has it happened?…

“…Industrial agriculture, built according to the single standard of productivity, has dealt with nature, including human nature, in the manner of a monologist or an orator. It has not asked for anything or waited to hear any response. It has told nature what it wanted, and in various clever ways has taken what it wanted.”

For me Berry’s comments brought into focus a core theme articulated in  The Call of the Land. That theme revolves around the fundamental realization that we have been dictating demands to the land for decades. Much good can come from finally becoming still enough to listen to the land now in the depth of winter, and to respond. What is the land communicating? What does it ask in reciprocity?

As documented in The Call of the Land, thousands upon thousands  of farmers, households, suburbs, cities,  churches, schools, and college campuses across North America are listening. They have already awakened to the necessity and value of a healthy, clean reciprocal relationship with the land. They are pioneering positive, new environmental and economic relationships with the land. These are the Millennial Agrarians, and they are are demonstrating an abundance of promising pathways forward.

Why Did You Write This Book?

A few weeks ago my partner, Elizabeth Wolf of Good Medicine Media, asked me to sit down for an interview about The Call of the Land. She began with a basic question:

Q: Why did you write the book?

A: I recognized two things: first, the severely depleted condition of our land and our Earth, and second, in conjunction with that, the great number of agrarian initiatives that have independently sprung up in North America, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. The book names endeavor after endeavor, from coast to coast. They take place on the level of individual households as well as neighborhoods, communities, churches, cities, and regions. The book offers up dozens upon dozens of examples of these positive initiatives.

For example, there’s Will Allen with Growing Power in Milwaukee. He has turned vacant city lots into dynamically productive gardens and created meaningful work for inner-city youths. They learn skills and have an opportunity to make an important contribution to the communities they’re a part of. I think of the literally thousands of CSAs that have sprung up in the USA since 1986 when I first began reporting on them and how they involve hundreds of thousands of individuals as shareholders and beneficiaries. In CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, individuals and families buy a share in a farm and receive a box of fresh produce at regular intervals during the season, weekly for example. The community shares the risks of farming with the farmer, and benefits from the bounty.

Then there’s the Quivira Coalition in New Mexico, which is creating network linkages among ranchers and environmentalists all across the West. Courtney White, the director, points out that these two groups have traditionally been at odds with each other. The Quivira Coalition creates an opportunity for them to recognize their common interests. After all, they both want the same thing: for the land to be healthy and productive.

I felt it was important to acknowledge all these independent initiatives — and there are thousands of them — as constituting a movement forward into the future: a positive, solution-based thrust forward. That thrust arises from an ancient and venerable foundation that is both pihilosophical and practical: agrarianism.What we have got now, with all the land and food initiatives considered both individually and networked, is an emerging 21st Century agrarianism. That’s the story I wanted to tell about with The Call of the Land.

Almost everything I’ve ever written, over a career of more than 35 years, has to do with the Earth, whether it’s directly addressing the subject of farming the land or through engagement with Native American spiritual elders who invariably make a giveaway of resounding insights about our land. It has been my consuming passion: taking care of the Earth which makes our lives possible.

The Call of the Land sounded on radio

Tuesday evening November 17, 209 author Steven McFadden took to the radio airwaves to talk about his new book — The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century. Host Dennis Kornbluh of Star City Blog guided the discussion on KZUM, 89.3 FM out of Lincoln, Nebraska.

UPDATE:  As of Wednesday, November 18, Star City Blog has posted to the web two MP3 audio files with the full one-hour radio interview. To listen or to download, click here.

Food Security Summit: Send a Message

Later this month at the behest of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), governmental representatives from around the world will convene for a third world food summit in Rome.

While the FAO has prepared an official declaration to launch the summit, a group of civil society organizations have prepared their own draft document: Policies & Actions to Eradicate Hunger and Malnutrition.  These alternative proposals are based not on the lobbying of mega food corporations, but rather on the experiences of small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, women, youth, social movements, and others from all over the world.

Their understandings and advocacy arise in the context of an emerging food sovereignty movement that recognizes an essential human right to adequate clean food – food grown in a way that does not poison our environment.

You can read their letter, and also sign a supportive petition in at the Eradicate Hunger website.

Here are some of their key ideas. “We strongly believe that the actions to eradicate hunger and malnutrition must be based on a vision of a world where:

•  food sovereignty is implemented by communities, peoples, states and international institutions;

•  all peoples, societies and states determine their own food systems and have policies that ensure availability of sufficient, good quality, affordable, healthy food;

•  there is recognition and respect for women’s rights and their crucial contribution to food provision;

•  terrestrial and aquatic environments and biodiversity are conserved and rehabilitated based on ecologically sustainable management of land, soils, water, seas, seeds, and livestock;

•  the diversity of traditional knowledge, food, language and culture, are all valued and respected.

Arising from Sacred Land, Aiming to the Future

On an August evening about two months ago, Doug George-Kanentiio offered a ten-minute oration while the Sun was setting. Choosing good words, he spoke about the power of great art, about our prophetic era, and about our relations with the land and each other. At the end, he gave voice to the emerging vision of establishing an Indigenous University in America.

Sacred Rain Arrow by Allan Houser

The microphone Kanentiio stood at that evening was set on land about twenty-five paces from “Sacred Rain Arrow,” one of the sculptural masterpieces created by the late Allan Houser. Kanentiio’s talk was part of a benefit event for Go Native Arts, hosted in the garden of the Houser Estate about 20 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

An hour after Kanentiio’s oration, his wife Joanne Shenandoah stood before the same microphone. By this time the stars had emerged, and Jupiter was strong in the sky to the East. Joanne faced south, centered herself, and gave voice to the enthralling Prophecy Song from her Orenda CD. She was supported with harmonies arising from daughter, Leah, and flanked in the West by the beseeching bronze presence of Sacred Rain Arrow.

We are now reminded
to be aware of our place upon this earth.
and to fulfill our obligations to ourselves,
our families, our nations,
the natural world, the Creator.

The words sing, we are to awaken.
Stand up,  Be counted,
for you are being recognized in the Spirit world.

- Joanne Shenandoah – Copyright

Several days after the benefit event, I met Kanentiio again amid a crush of people by the Plaza bandstand at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market. We found a quiet place to sit and talk.

To answer my questions about the land, Kanentiio began telling of where he was born and raised, Akwesasne Mohawk Territory on the shores of Kaniatarowanenneh (St. Lawrence River) at the New York-Ontario frontier. The Mohawks are part of the Iroquois Confederacy, and the Keepers of the Eastern Door. Their confederacy is the oldest, active participatory democracy on Earth. With its Great Law of Peace, the Confederacy was a direct example and inspiration for the U.S. Constitution.

A former editor of Akwesasne Notes, Kanentiio is also a founder of the Native American Journalists Association, and the author of several books, including Iroquois on Fire: A Voice from the Mohawk Nation. In collaboration with his wife, Joanne, he is co-author of Skywoman: Tales of the Iroquois.

For many years Kanentiio served on the board of directors for the National Museum of the American Indian, and he is currently serving on the board for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest interfaith gathering on Earth. Steadily growing in scope and influence, the Parliament will reconvene this December in Melbourne, Australia.

As we talked in Santa Fe, Kanentiio reminded me that Mohawk Territory straddles the border between the USA and Canada. It’s territory that’s in both nations, and it’s in neither. “Akwesasne is a nexus,” he said. “It’s situated at a juncture of land and water that is of considerable strategic importance. We straddle the St. Lawrence River at what were once known as the 25-mile rapids.” These rapids serve as a key natural valve of flow in relationship between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean.

“Historically at Akwesasne the lives of the people were interwoven with the land and the water. People were called there because the place had all the resources necessary for life, and those resources gave stability to the people and to the community. That provided the Mohawk people with a high degree of cultural continuity, and it gave us a certain power and purpose. We always had that.

“Then in April of 1959 there came a break with this pattern. The St. Lawrence Seaway came into being, and our whole way of life changed. The natural, free flow of the living waters at 25-mile rapids was choked with locks. That energetic change fractured our community. It messed up the fishing grounds, and it separated the people from the water and from the land. We began to metamorphose from a vigorous people to a sedentary people. We became wage earners for the first time, dependent on money, and we began to lose our language. That brought about a huge change in values, and a whole generation of our children began to change from that point onward.

“When traditional indigenous peoples are separated from the land, then there is a break in trust in relation to the land – a break that goes both ways. We don’t trust the land, and the land doesn’t trust us. But you must have that trust. When we don’t communicate with each other, and when we don’t communicate with the land, the relationships become abrasive.”

In this context, Kanentiio mentioned Handsome Lake (Ganyahdiyok), the legendary figure who brought Gaiwiio (Good Words) to the people over 200 years ago. Among his life experiences, Handsome Lake was given a vision of the future. He foresaw environmental disasters including air and water pollution, and he offered prophetic cautions.

“Handsome Lake and others warned us that the final assault on the Iroquois – the greatest danger – would come from within. That’s what’s happening now,” Kanentiio said. “In terms of ideals, the Iroquois Confederacy represents something very good. But things change. Metamorphosis has continued and is continuing today, but at a faster pace. In our tradition we have in our creation story an important part about the twins, one twin of the good mind and one twin of the bad mind. That’s something to remember. These twins are always present.”

“Smuggling of tobacco and narcotics, and gambling — whatever commands a profit — has created a narco-culture at Akwesasne,” he said. “Our good, traditional Iroquois values of humility, compassion, simplicity, generosity and communal service have been replaced by greed, intimidation, violence, and death.”

After hearing this, I told Kanentiio of a meeting that happened about 17 years ago in Montreal. I found myself sitting beside the widely known and respected Hopi messenger Thomas Banyacya in a hotel lobby after he had given a talk. As we conversed, Grandfather Banyacya told me that long ago, when the Earth had gone through another epic metamorphosis, gambling had been the precipitating factor. “That was the last straw,” Banyacya told me. “When the gambling and all its related problems built up to a certain level, that triggered the great flood that cleansed the land.”

After listening to my story, Kanentiio responded. “We Indian people are supposed to be the custodians of the land, but what we are doing now is running casinos. We are sidetracked. We have lost sight of what we are supposed to do. The bright, shiny thing along the path has enticed many of the people to become lost, to lose track. Handsome Lake warned of that a long time ago, and now it’s everywhere.

“The Earth is beginning to stir,” he said. “She’s beginning to express the dreams and visions of long ago. The Earth is showing us that she’s increasingly upset with us. The Earth is beginning to arouse. There will be huge changes in this time of reckoning, of healing, until the balance is restored. We are very close now. It won’t be subtle. Big winds will come. The Earth will shrug its shoulders.

“We are not able to change this movement toward purification,” Kanentiio said, “but we know some things will survive. The Confederacy will endure in spite of itself. That is a shared understanding among traditionals, that despite all the odds the Confederacy will survive and go on, as the larger world will also go on in a new way.

“People feel the urgency of the changes now, and many are motivated to do things. That’s good. Preserve what you can. You have to leave something good and tangible behind.

A particular thing that Kanentiio would like to help leave behind is an Indigenous University for North America.

“A few years ago, Vine Deloria, Jr. thought maybe we could take the system of formal education, which had been used to undermine traditional native societies, and reverse it’s impact by creating our own institution based on the university system,” Kanentiio said. “We would create a formal, accredited university where native knowledge keepers would have a place to teach.

“We have native colleges, but an Indigenous University could in time meet and exceed universal standards for learning, and provide formal instruction in all native arts and sciences, of which there are many.  It would have a high emphasis on online study. That’s a dream of ours.”

The Indigenous University would be open to everybody on the planet, no restrictions of race or religion. ”That is typical Iroquois,” Kanentiio explained. “Our way is to make it possible that people come to a meeting of the good mind. To get there, you need to sit in respect with one another. You have to invite people from all walks of life and viewpoints to share information, and you have to listen to one another.

“We have the ideas to create an Indigenous University,” he said. “What we need now are the physical and financial means to bring it about.”

Joanne Shenandoah and Doug George-Kanentiio

In a related effort to weave indigenous viewpoints into the world’s larger framework, Kanentiio and Joanne — as well as other native peoples from North America and around the world — have become involved with the Parliament of World Religions. “We have in part managed to get the Parliament to adopt a native perspective on the Earth: to regard the Earth not as a commodity, but as a being.”

Kanentiio serves on the board of directors for the Parliament. He noted that the theme of their December, meeting will be ‘Reconciling with Mother Earth.’  “My hope for this Parliament,” he said, “is that teachers from world’s various disciplines, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Roman Catholics, and many more — can get together again in Melbourne and finally acknowledge that Earth is a living planet and should have standing. If spiritual leaders accept that, and take these spiritual understandings to their nations and congregations to make it a guiding principle, then that’s a good thing.

“We feel the real revolution in human society will come about through these spiritual changes,” Kanentiio said. “It has to happen there first, on the spiritual level. Once we change the spiritual, then the politics will follow.

“For me,” he said, “the roots of this understanding go back to our Iroquois value that all human beings have equal worth, if not necessarily equal abilities. Everyone’s life has meaning. Some are singers and healers, and some are cooks or builders, but each one of us has the blessings of existence. To cultivate this, to acknowledge, to have gratitude for being alive. You can always do that. Our lives are not casual, not by chance. We have been directed here to this time and place, and we are meant to take all of our life experiences with us, all the joys, suffering, and pain, and to take it with us with good mind when we return to the place of living light. That makes the light stronger for the generations to come.”

Author’s Note: Many of the themes articulated in this story are also explored in my epic, nonfiction saga of a North American journey through our era of transition, Odyssey of the 8th Fire. – S. McFadden