The Mounting Imperatives of 21st Century Agrarianism: Farms & Food Face Fundamental Forces

The elemental wherewithal of our farms and our food is in motion. Whirlwinds of change bear upon our land, air, water and climate. Fundamental forces have shouldered their way front and center. The land calls urgently.

As reported worldwide this month, scientific evidence shows that the level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO2), has mounted far beyond the danger zone. Heat is rising. Consequences are evident.

CO2 has now reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million, a level the Earth has not experienced for three million years. That was during an epoch called the Pliocene.

The overwhelming majority of scientists understand that this current rise in CO2 portends epic changes.

“Our food systems, our cities, our people and our very way of life developed within a stable range of climatic conditions on Earth,” former Vice President Al Gore observed in the wake of the CO2 report. “Without immediate and decisive action, these favorable conditions on Earth could become a memory.”

Following the front-page news about the rapid deterioration of the earth’s climate, came two other hard news stories that underscore the matter of food vulnerability: news of the disease-driven collapse of the staple food crop for more than 500 million human beings in Africa, and news of grave troubles for citrus fruits in America and around the world.

Climate change and crop disease are serious business. Here the land is not just calling, it’s shrieking.

Cassava root

In Africa the cassava plant – which produces a large, edible root – is succumbing to brown streak disease. Africa already suffers debilitating food shortages. Because casava is the staple food for the continent, this plant disease is calamitous.

Meanwhile, the citrus industry is grappling with an infernal bacterial disease that has now killed millions of plants in the southeastern United States and is threatening to spread across the entire country. The disease has also been found in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Citrus Greening, also called Huanglongbing or Yellow Dragon Disease, is fatal. The bacteria devastate trees, rendering bitter, misshapen oranges, then death for the entire organism. There is no known cure.

“This year (2012-13) was a real kick in the gut,” Florida’s agriculture commissioner told The New York Times. “It is now everywhere, and it’s just as bad as the doomsayers said it would be.”

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When I absorb this short stack of climate and food news — just a fraction of the farm and food factors in flux — I realize that we must dig in now more resolutely to build a clean, respectful, sacred and sustainable foundation for civilization. That is the direction forward.

Many thousands of local, organic agrarian farm-and-food initiatives have arisen across the Americas in the last 25 years. They offer a wide array of working models. Those models can and should be replicated and emulated far and wide. They represent intelligent and promising responses to the imperative call of the land.

Organic farms and the cooperative food systems they are entwined with (the whole, broad range of 21^st century agrarian initiatives) have manifold positive responses to the central issues, and a track record of evidence. They sequester carbon in the land and thereby mitigate CO2, helping stabilize climate. They offer clean, fresh food directly to people who live near the source. They provide dignified work in nature. They knit together healthy webs of relationship, both personal and digital, around concerns of a foundational nature to every human being. They teach essential ethical values. They establish oases of radiant environmental health. And they bring large numbers of people into a more direct and equitable relationship with the human beings who grow their food, and the land it is grown upon.

21^st century agrarian initiatives also provide wholesome anchoring points (network nodes) for the brittle high-tech, digital-wave culture emerging so dynamically in our world. We are just at the beginning of that, really.

This 21^st century agrarian initiatives – the many thousands of urban farms, CSAs, co-ops, community kitchens, church farms, and city gardens of all sizes shapes and descriptions – constitute core elements of a more wise and respectful human response to the imperative call of the land.

The cooperative development of clean local food systems is in no way a boutique idea or a passing fad. It is a key element of modern food security, and it is emerging not just as prudent but also as essential. It is also about the renewal of our overall human relationship with the earth that sustains us.

Bowl of BioPhotons or Crock of Corporate Life Forms?

What would you like for breakfast: a bowl of fresh, clean organic food naturally radiating the golden goodness of the Sun (aka biophotons), or a crock bulging with lab-engineered, genetically-modified, profit-patented, corporately-owned, food product (aka “novel life forms”)?

Unbidden, this queer question came to the forefront for me last week when two stories arrived all but simultaneously in my email in-box. One story was about novel genetically engineered life forms, and the other was about biophotons. I found the distinctions starkly dismaying.

First I read news from The Cornucopia Institute that Monsanto and DSM Nutritional Products are soon likely to be constructing even more “novel life forms” such as genetically engineered algae, processed with synthetic petrochemical-based solvents, then incorporating these substances, more or less surreptitiously, into “food products.”

If they follow what has so far been their standard corporate operating procedure, these concocted substances will be disseminated without labels or any other way for people to understand what they are ingesting.

In this unsettling, unknowable manner is the industrial food chain being relentlessly infiltrated with “novel life forms” generated in laboratories away from the light of the sun, and owned not by nature, but by corporations. For this I have no appetite.

Then I read about biophotons. Turns out that’s a word for describing the smallest known units of light. Biophotons are sparks of life within biological systems, and best explained by quantum mechanics: subatomic phenomena that exhibit properties of both waves and particles.

Biophotons are used by and stored in all organisms, including the food we eat, the water we drink, and our bodies. When our food is vibrant with high-quality life energy (biophotons), that energy – not just the material substance of vitamins and minerals — is absorbed into our bodies.

The existence and the importance of this basic life force has been known for centuries in China where it is spoken of as chi, in Japan where it is known as ki, in India where the ancient Sanskrit term is prana, and by various terms among many of the native peoples of the Americas.

In recent decades, the reality of the animating life force has been increasingly recognized in Western science. Physicist Fritz-Albert Popp, Ph.D., of Marburg University, researched and named this phenomenon as biophotons – particles of light that infuse life.

Dr. Popp was among the first Western investigators to indicate that this light must come, at least in part, from the foods we eat. The more light a food is able to store, the more nutritious it is.

Naturally grown fresh fruits and vegetables, for example, are rich in biophotons. It’s obvious. You need not be a mystic who can see auras to understand. The reality of light waves, or biophoton energy, is obvious to any receptive and discerning eye.

Biophotons elevate the organism – such as your physical body – to a higher oscillation. As I read that, basically, if you eat fresh, clean food grown on healthy natural land, you support your body at a higher, healthier vibe.

Our bodies are made up not just of organs, tissue, and blood vessels, but are also composed of light. Biophotons enliven, order and regulate living organisms.

The greater your supply of light force from fresh, clean foods, the greater the vitality of your overall electromagnetic field (aura), and consequently the more energy available for maintaining optimal health. In matters biophotonic, quality as much as quantity is key.

Physicist Popp theorizes that the biophoton light emissions of healthy people follow biological rhythms, and that those rhythms are connected to the measureable biorhythms of the earth. There is a direct correlation and an active resonance amidst land, food, and people.

Clean, healthy land tended organically or Biodynamically gives rise to clean healthy food rich in biophotons (chi, ki, prana, life energy). It’s that simple. Starkly simple.

Valiant Pilgrim Paths Will Cross in Memphis

This month a small band of women from the Ojibwe native nation is walking the land in prayer from the source of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca in the North, more than 1,200 miles in a south direction along the shore to the point where the great river spills into the sea at the Gulf of Mexico.

Pilgrim paths form a cross

The Mississippi River Water Walkers sang the Water Song when they began their walk on March 1, 2013. By now they are many hundreds of miles further south, still in ceremony, still walking on to fulfill their vision.

When the women walkers reach Memphis, Tennessee in a week or so, their north-to-south trail will intersect with the east-to-west trail of the Sunbow Prayer Walk, which was guided 2,500 miles across the land 20 years ago by Grandfather William Commanda, now in spirit.

The trails of these two pilgrim bands will intersect in space and across time, forming a Four Directions wheel anchored in prayer and ceremony on the land at the Memphis shore of the Mississippi.

The eight-month long, male-driven Sunbow Walk from the Atlantic to the Pacific crossed the Mississippi River from Tennessee to Arkansas on the ninety-eighth day of the journey (Sept. 28, 1995). They traveled then under the teachings of the Seventh Fire and the skysign of the Whirling Rainbow

The women who are the Mississippi River Walkers, now on foot in real time 2013, are approaching intersection with the Sunbow trail in Memphis.

You can friend the Mississippi River Walkers and support them on their Facebook page, a page which is growing as the walkers make their way to the south, stopping at key points along the way to offer ceremonial blessings.

“We want the walk to be a prayer,” says Sharon Day, walk organizer, on their Facebook page. “Every step we take we will be praying for and thinking of the water. The water has given us life and now, we will support the water.”

The Roots of Good Health Are Anchored in the Land

“Let food be thy medicine,
and medicine be thy food.” - Hippocrates

Healthy land is the key to healthy food; thus, inevitably it’s also the key to healthy human beings.

The famous Greek physician of antiquity, Hippocrates – often called the father of western medicine – drew attention to this health key over 2,000 years ago when he authored On Airs, Waters, and Places.

Hippocrates

Hippocrates argued that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors: diet, habits, and the land where you live.

As observation over time shows, clean, vibrant land that is intelligently, organically cultivated constitutes an oasis of health on the face of the earth. The land’s health radiates to everything around, as well as everything that banquets from the land’s bounty arising. Conversely, unhealthy, polluted, chemically saturated land — and  the food raised from it — trend health on a numbing downward spiral.

In a time of increasing impact from climate instability and swiftly rising food prices, we can no longer leave the care of the land that sustains us, and the production from it of our food  – to less than 1% of the population. That’s how few of us are active farmers — the human beings who serve as ambassadors to the earth for all of us.  They touch the land on our behalf. Depending on how we have invested our money to secure our food, the ambassadors work either great good or great harm upon the land.

The land is calling out with thunder as we approach planting season 2013. We are called to listen now and to respond creatively by establishing thousands more networked oases of clean, organically cultivated land, or by directly and actively supporting the farmer ambassadors touching the land for us via the many thousands of 21st Century agrarian initiatives already at work to sink the roots of good health deep into the land.

Gaze Lifts from the Land to Classical Considerations

With respect, I’m pleased to announce the publication of my new, nonfiction eBook: Classical Considerations.

Succinct but penetrating, the new eBook brings some of life’s foundational questions to the fore by telling a nonfiction story about the late John H. Finley, Jr.  For 51 years Finley was the celebrated and erudite Eliot Professor of the Classics at Harvard. For generations of top students, he was a mentor and way shower.

Luminous and compellingly relevant, Finley’s story leads readers directly into engagement with the fundamental wisdom questions of a worthwhile life. While the book does not directly relate to agrarian matters, it does take a deeply rooted stance in tradition to explore the ethereal. In that sense it’s not so much The Call of the Land, as it is The Call of the Soul.

A compact 44 pages suited to all digital realms, Classical Considerations offers a thoughtfully lyrical shower of intellectual sparks to kindle a gleaming soul fire.

The eBook is available now at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and in 9 different ebook and smartphone formats at Smashwords.com. There is a version adapted to iPhones and iPads at Smashwords, and the book will soon be available through the Apple store and other online venues.

ReSounding the Call of the Land

In the early morning hours of January 31, 2013, I’m alive with the idea of publishing again the original essay* for The Call of the Land. As we move into the waning phase of Winter, feels like it’s time to join the chorus of visionary voices across North America, and to re-sound the basic broad call of the land. – S.M.

*Contemplations on The Call of the Land
by Steven McFadden
Published to start this blog in 2009

In Jack London’s classic novel The Call of the Wild, the alpha dog Buck faces a moment of truth in response to nature, as he stands amid the towering trees of a Northern forest. He must make a choice about the direction of his life.

Similarly, standing both individually and collectively on our earth, we human beings also face a moment of truth. Our call is not from the wild, but from the land. We must make a choice.

Impending matters of finance, transport, oil supply, climate stability, water availability, and diet, necessitate—right now—a clear, visionary look at our relationship with our land and an immediate wholehearted response.

Worldwide, agricultural and financial systems are mutating at breakneck speed. More change is coming. That is certain in response to fundamental shifts in the global economy and environment. These changes impact not just food cost, but also food quality and food availability.

On our land and within the context of our economy, we have commenced a transition the likes of which few are prepared for, but to which we all can respond with intelligence to attain clean, stable and enduring results.

The call of the land is exceedingly loud and urgent. In response to the call, we have the possibility of manifesting a renewed agrarian foundation for our global human culture  that is rooted in experience, adapted to the specific, contemporary needs of our earth, oriented to the future, and capable of integrating high-tech, sustainable energy, tools, and practices. This is the basic vision articulated in The Call of the Land.

The transition to a food system free of fossil fuels is in no way a utopian reverie. It is, rather, an immediate, immense, and unavoidable challenge that calls for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels of society. While there is no single remedy for the many problems affecting our farms and our food, there are many positive paths and possibilities. Citizens in communities across North America are already deep into pioneering territory via a host of creative associations. Dozens of books on the theme have come forward, in particular, over the last 10 years.

The movement toward clean, local gardens, farms, and food is already well underway and has potential to gain further momentum as old economic forms wobble and shift. We already are beneficiaries of a great number of positive agrarian developments. Sustainable initiatives have been coming forward for over 60 years, building steadily on the agrarian traditions of earlier centuries. By now we have a host of workable models that individuals, communities, corporations, churches, and associative networks can learn from and emulate.

The economic and natural worlds are mutating around us. Inescapably, immediately, we must mobilize our strength, will, and intelligence on the essential matter of producing clean food for ourselves in a way that stabilizes and heals the land. This is the most basic and necessary idea of 21st century agrarianism.

While there may be no single remedy for the many challenges we face, there are many possible pathways that lead to healing the land. My intent with The Call of the Land is to help illuminate some of those paths by surveying the work of 21st century agrarian pioneers to reveal the many ways a sustainable agrarian foundation can serve the fragile high-tech, digital-wave culture that is emerging so dynamically in our world.

* Minor changes and corrections on 12/31/13 – SM

– END –

Copyright 2009 – by Steven McFadden

Model Modern Barn Raising: An All-American Community Project Aboard Spaceship Earth

“The only true and effective ‘operator’s manual for spaceship earth’ is not a book that any human will ever write; it is hundreds of thousands of local cultures.”  ― Wendell Berry, What are People For?

This barn will be ‘raised’ (rehabbed) to serve anew as a community hub. 

For over a century there has been a steady pulling back from the land in North America. People have been replaced by increasingly mechanized means as the industrial agriculture model, with its focus on profits rather than people, has proliferated. Social roots have been ripped out.

But as modeled by a ‘barn raising’ project at the Angelic Organics Farm in Caledonia, Illinois, it is time to bring local communities of human beings – the local cultures Wendell Berry speaks of — back into active relationship with the land that feeds them.

This is not an philosophical ideal or an armchair theory, but rather a crucial and present necessity brought on by stark social, environmental, and economic realities.

Farmer Trauger Groh of the Temple-Wilton Community Farm expressed the ideas eloquently over 20 years ago when we teamed up to write Farms of Tomorrow. Our book contained basic essays on new structures for community supported farms.

Driven by Tauger’s insights, those essays acknowledged that farming is not just a business like any other profit-making business, but a precondition of all human life on earth, and a precondition of all economic activity. As such, farming is everyone’s responsibility, and has likewise to be accessible for everyone. Community farms (CSA) are an increasingly useful and popular way to meet this responsibility.

By ‘raising’ a beautiful old barn to become an active community hub for their CSA and the local community at large, Angelic Organics is creating a model for deeper, more meaningful, and more practically powerful community involvement with the land and the farmers who tend it – their ambassadors to the earth.

The farm is home to the non-profit Angelic Organics Learning Center, a resource for adults and children seeking to connect to the land, and to renew our ecology, economy and culture. Many of the farm’s classes are held in the dairy barn and the corn crib that the farmers have begun to transform into majestic community spaces, filled with light and vibrant color and breathtaking panoramic views of the Midwestern prairie.

To finish the barn, the farm has launched a Kickstarter campaign (Barns are for People, Too) complete with a delightful and educational video clip. The video shows how they will complete the necessary construction and safety measures to convert the barn and corn crib into public spaces with a stage, fire escapes, emergency lighting and stairwells.

The improvements will transform the space into a beautifully crafted gathering place for children’s groups, beginner farmers, members of the farm’s successful CSA, and people who naturally yearn for a direct connection with the land that sustains them. It will also serve as a model, as Wendell Berry encourages, for agrarian initiatives in North America and around the world, thereby aiding local cultures to navigate wisely aboard spaceship earth.