Adapt or Die: This is the Lesson of Both Evolution and History

By ADAM TURTLE

We, my wife Sue and I, are what Dr. Vandana Shiva terms farmer/scientists. Our economic model is the traditional, highly diversified family farm. We are addressing what before the dominance of corporate grant funding used to be the work of land grant universities. We seek insights useful to small holders. We study/explore sustainability on a pan-planetary, cross cultural, transhistoric level while trialing various candidate plant species as well as cultural techniques and strategies at Earth Advocates Research Farm in middle Tennessee. We are off-grid (photovoltaic), self-sufficient and not encumbered with debt.

We are both trained in Permaculture with attendant specialties, are avid gardeners and readers, all as part of our efforts to understand and implement good stewardship. When we purchased this 48 acres of abused second growth forest in 1991, our “dirt” was rocky red clay. Now our garden soil is more like chocolate cake, moisture retentive but with no runoff even after a 13-inch inch rain in May 2010 which arrived overnight after a dry spell. Readers may have seen the portable classroom shown on the evening TV news floating down I-24 near Nashville.

Our funding derives from offering unusual but proven plants from our trials (and their highly nutritious produce) suitable for edible landscaping at the Franklin Farmer’s Market, supplemented with occasional Permaculture consultations and speaking fees.

All of which is to say that we don’t endorse the concept of actual scarcity except that from mismanagement. There is potentially more than enough food now. Lacking is the will and the vision to more equitably allocate/distribute what we have. To a large extent this problem is due to the deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance coupled with magic thinking maintained by elites with short-sighted “profit” addiction.

For years as a reader of The Progressive Populist, I’ve been disappointed with the relatively narrow focus on the socio/political with little mention of planetary issues other than monetary. Finally, in V. 25 #1, agriculture is on the front page! That to me opens the door for a broader and more relevant discussion – after all, we all eat!

Talking farming now.

We agree that food production, security and global stability are a catastrophe but not that it is slow moving ... it is a race to the bottom!

Somehow belief prevails in the propaganda that the USA “feeds the world.” It ain’t so. Yes, one person can “farm” thousands of acres but our sense of “efficiency” is measured only in person hours. Based on study of deep history, neither GMOs nor new agricultural chemicals will change the facts of decreasing yields and increased input costs.

Some facts (real, not alternative):

• In the US with only two million famers and most farm acreage in “conventional agriculture” (factoring in the energy needed to mine, refine, manufacture and run equipment plus other purchased inputs) we require (old numbers) about 50 btu’s of input for each btu of yield (50 units in = 1 yield). We are eating oil.

• With traditional intensive hand/animal culture, one person’s effort can feed at least six (energy in 1 = food for 6). And in suitable climates as little as 1/6th of an acre can sustain a person in health.

Together, those numbers represent a 300:1 negative differential and illustrate we are very efficient on a per person/hour but definitely not on a per acre basis. Land is finite, population is fluid.

• The USA is and has been a net food-importing country since about 1970.

• Worldwide, more than 70% of all human food is grown on small holdings of less than five acres.

• And mostly by women using regenerative, organic techniques whose soil is improving.

Under conventional extractive agriculture, we also have increasingly pervasive ill health (mental, physical and emotional) from chemical pollution and toxic residues in food, not to mention critical missing trace elements ... no wonder we are “stuffed and starved”.

Then there is the erosion from our bare ground cultivation and mono-cropping techniques coupled with the lack of adequate nourishment in the food, all of which has led us to a sick, irritable and unstable false sense of superiority.

Who is fooling who?

We maybe used to be the best,

We maybe could be again,

But not without informed honest, conscious and extended effort.

Currently, contemporary agriculture (including forest clearing, food processing and transport) accounts for around 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Using regenerative organic techniques and strategies, regional, small-scale garden/farming agriculture could become a significant net carbon sink, cleaning the air while restoring both depth and fertility to our soils while increasing yields of truly nutritious food.

Currently in broad acre farming, a few hundred or even a few thousand dollar annual “profit” per acre is considered good ... while the carrying capacity is steadily reduced, not to mention the soil itself. We refer to this as the Esau syndrome. So is it really profitable? If so, why are compensatory subsidies even needed?

However, with small-scale artisanal garden/farming 30-50 thousand dollars per acre per year is possible – of course it will take a lot of re-skilling (it is not as simple as riding a tractor).

Radical as it may seem, a possible solution that I believe (with modifications) could potentially address this and other current and future problems would be to recruit around 15 million peasant farm families from refugees and provisionally grant each family five acres and a modest startup loan. If “seeded” around the country, these small farms could help re-regionalize food production, reduce both erosion and chemical pollution while improving food quality and availability as they revitalize rural communities. All the carbon sequestration would be a major bonus. Also it would be easier to require compliance with regenerative practices. Fewer trucks on the roads would be OK too!

But ... can we honest up/smarten up in time? Or do we keep drinking the Kool Aid?

Adam Turtle is an ethnobotanist, bamboo researcher and Fellow of the Linnean Society. He and Sue Turtle are founders and co-directors of Earth Advocates Research Farm, Summertown, Tenn.

From The Progressive Populist, February 15, 2019

Populist.com