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chelidonVery good article here on sustainable agriculture and the importance of true "husbandry," or put another way, of context, and of connection with the land, much of which has been lost over the last 50 years of scientific and industrial farming methods.
full article: Renewing Husbandry
Excerpt:
THE EFFECTS OF THE PROCESS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION have become so apparent, so numerous, so favorable to the agribusiness corporations, and so unfavorable to everything else, that by now the questions troubling me and a few others in the ‘60s and ‘70s are being asked everywhere. It has become increasingly clear that the way we farm affects the local community, and that the economy of the local community affects the way we farm; that the way we farm affects the health and integrity of the local ecosystem, and that the farm is intricately dependent, even economically, upon the health of the local ecosystem. We can no longer pretend that agriculture is a sort of economic machine with interchangeable parts, the same everywhere, determined by “market forces” and independent of everything else. We are not farming in a specialist capsule or a professionalist department; we are farming in the world, in a webwork of dependences and influences probably more intricate than we will ever understand. It has become clear, in short, that we have been running our fundamental economic enterprise by the wrong rules. We were wrong to assume that agriculture could be adequately defined by reductionist science and determinist economics.
[snip]
Most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture’s manifest failures appear to be the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry. The attempt to remake agriculture as a science and an industry has excluded from it the age-old husbandry which was central and essential to it.
full article: Renewing Husbandry
Excerpt:
THE EFFECTS OF THE PROCESS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION have become so apparent, so numerous, so favorable to the agribusiness corporations, and so unfavorable to everything else, that by now the questions troubling me and a few others in the ‘60s and ‘70s are being asked everywhere. It has become increasingly clear that the way we farm affects the local community, and that the economy of the local community affects the way we farm; that the way we farm affects the health and integrity of the local ecosystem, and that the farm is intricately dependent, even economically, upon the health of the local ecosystem. We can no longer pretend that agriculture is a sort of economic machine with interchangeable parts, the same everywhere, determined by “market forces” and independent of everything else. We are not farming in a specialist capsule or a professionalist department; we are farming in the world, in a webwork of dependences and influences probably more intricate than we will ever understand. It has become clear, in short, that we have been running our fundamental economic enterprise by the wrong rules. We were wrong to assume that agriculture could be adequately defined by reductionist science and determinist economics.
[snip]
Most and perhaps all of industrial agriculture’s manifest failures appear to be the result of an attempt to make the land produce without husbandry. The attempt to remake agriculture as a science and an industry has excluded from it the age-old husbandry which was central and essential to it.
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Date: 2008-02-27 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 12:26 am (UTC)Another good piece along the same lines I read recently was this one (http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html)
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Date: 2008-02-28 06:08 pm (UTC)John McCutcheon, folk singer/songwriter, wrote a talking-song called "It's the Economy, Stupid" after reading Berry's Jayber Crow in 2001. I've been thinking about memorizing it, bleak as it is, so as to be able to recite it on cue. In any case, I recommend it. My favorite lines are these:
We grow
What we cannot use
Purchase
What we used to raise
Spend
What we used to save
Sell
What we used to treasure
Mock
What we used to revere
Hate
What we used to love
It’s the economy, stupid
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Date: 2008-03-02 06:38 pm (UTC)