Sustainable Agriculture Symposium

With deadlines piled high, I decided I should stay home to knock off a few on Friday. Phooey! My publisher can't seem to make its payments on time, so why should I plan my life around its deadlines? I packed in a quick morning run, pulled on some decent "casual" clothes, and drove toward a sustainable agriculture symposium sponsored by the Washington & Lee School of Law's Journal of Energy, Climate and the Environment.

Judith McGeary, of the U.S. Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a Texas lawyer and farmer, compared "industrial" to "sustainable" farming. Industrial farming takes a linear, additive approach focused on NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) and the greatest quantity of food at the cheapest (short-term) cost. Sustainable farming seeks synergies in a holistic approach aimed at nutrient-dense food good for consumers, the environment, the farm, and labor. Industrial farming is energy-intensive, oil dependent, and controlled by a few corporations. Sustainable farming promotes social justice, human rights and animal welfare.

She then turned to food safety, where the greatest clash occurs between industrial and sustainable farming. Industrial farming, focused on maximizing profits, is the great consolidator, commingling food through long, complex supply chains. Finding the source of a contaminant, such as the cause of the recent spinach scare, is difficult because the produce of many farmers was commingled and then distributed under 34 different brand names shipped all over the country. Sustainable farming, on the other hand, has a completely different management system, with a much smaller scale. When/if problems arise, fewer people get sick because it takes days instead of months to track down the issue.

The major regulatory problem is "scaleability." Agricultural regulations are aimed at large-scale producers and based on industrial production. Requiring a giant monocultural producer to develop and monitor a 30-40 page procedural manual on spinach production for its 10,000 acres may make sense. Requiring a 30-40 page manual for each of the 100 varieties of vegetables grown on a 5-acre farm does not make sense. The typical approach taken by sustainable farm organizations to this sort of regulation is to seek an exemption for small, local, cottage food producers.

Ms. McGeary asked a number of questions:

• Who decides whether consumers should take the risks involved in food production? Consumers, regulators, judges, farmers?
• What's the role of victims? Is it fair to let decisions be driven by victims' groups?
• Is food a business like any other? Does the market system work well with food? Is food production unique in its dependence on "good" or "bad" weather? Does the market system properly account for positive "externalities" (such as less reliance on foreign oil or superior soil development)? Does the market system work if consumers don't understand the risks involved in use of a product (such as GMO -- genetically modified -- foods)?
• Is an undefined label such as "natural" useful?

The other speaker was Joel Salatin, the internationally renown "beyond organic" farmer. For a good read, try his book "The Sheer Ecstacy of Being a a Lunatic Farmer." He said Ms. McGeary hit the nail on the head when she identified the primary issue as one of scaleability, and launched into a series of colorful examples from his life as a farmer near Staunton, Virginia. You can read about these in his books. Don't miss this fabulous speaker when he visits your area. You may not agree with his libertarian politics, but this entertainer speaks with authority, humor, and flash.

He mentioned the Capitol Hill testimony of a senior USDA ("US-duh" in Mr. Salatin's vocabulary) manager (maybe an assistant secretary), who bragged about how the elimination of a multitude of small local food processors (abattoirs) enabled US-duh inspectors to markedly increase the number of products they could inspect in one day. This was an AHA-moment for Mr. Salatin: in a country that worships efficiency, why not expect its government to worship efficiency too?

He pointed out that our culture has not had a good record when it comes to dealing with the lunatic fringe.

Mr. Salatin turned to four remedies that may be available to deal with the regulatory inflexibility and unscaleability:

• By "commerce." Designing food production so it is not involved in "commerce." Here he threw in his famous observation that you can give food away and be admired as a philanthropist, but charge a dollar and you might as well be selling cocaine.
• By "definition." For example, selling raw milk as "bath milk" or "pet milk." He told the story of a small producer who sold cheese at a local farmers' market. After an inspection of her "facility," she researched State laws and discovered that fish food seemed to be the least regulated food. She called the appropriate state employee and confirmed that there were no restrictions on fish food. So she began to sell "fish-food Colby" and "fish-food Swiss" and the regulators couldn't touch her.
• By "substitution." He offered the example of a farmer who packaged gallons of manure and sold them for $8 each. Buy the manure and you can get a gallon of raw milk for free.
• By "waiver." Calling this remedy "unexplored" and ineffective in States like Virginia, he suggested having consumers sign waivers taking full responsibility for the risks they assume when buying food.

"What can we do?" asked one of the law students in attendance. Mr. Salatin suggested, "Begin to participate in the food system you want to see. The beginning of attorney scruples is consistency of life."

Asked to predict 20 years in the future, both speakers declined. Mr. Salatin quoted someone (I missed the reference): "If we keep going the way we're going we'll end up where we're headed."

Farm Tour

Now that elk cliff farm has become a destination and no longer occupies the boonies, jellystone resort traffic fills the air like main street usa and eyes wander through farm listings in west virginia where larger farms off the beaten track don't require a heavy pile of gold. Just for fun, mind you (really?), they call like a long beachfront farm in new zealand, a zillion miles from friends and family, a short drive from new acquaintances. 

I think nietzsche talked about happiness being poverty and filth and wretched contentment, while the taoists speak highly of the contented person who can be happy with what appears to be useless, and certain religions suggest that contentment, though a virtue, is not natural to the human heart; it's strange that the same words can be used by different people in varied, seemingly contradictory fashion, with admiration and disgust. Maybe fashion or fad guides feeling.

Complacency, contentment, self-satisfaction, contented cows -- political conventions suggest these are enemies of capitalism, the greener grass engines that drive a growth-oriented economy beloving bootstraps. Picture wrinkled visages in tattered clothes, sitting along a fenceline, frowning, living on years of past labor, or make them young, yawning, collecting welfare or living on parental kindness, or think of someone hoeing at high noon, a grand garden richly ripening, not punching a clock or suited and tied for wall street.

As our bodies change, we dream. Overcoming bias is a furious fight after years of work and hating laziness, settling down gives us the shakes, searching seems more sensible.

"What on earth are you trying to say?" says Virginia.

Duh. How about a burger, french fries and milkshake?

Lunch at Elk Cliff Farm

Here's today's lunch:

"All local?" says Virginia.

All very local, all Elk Cliff Farm: cucumber, sweet corn, green beans, tomato, Edam goat cheese, and watermelon.

"Did you eat all of it?" says Virginia.

Burp.

Listening

When we had a new fence built around our field last year, we placed it twenty feet inside the existing perimeter fence. This left a run -- for dogs and me or just me, some blueberry bushes and other edible landscaping, and maybe, some day, a donkey cart. That day is near.

A large horse trailer on a truck's flat bed passed us as we returned from Strasburg last night. An antique horse/donkey cart rested on our pickup. I almost wanted traffic to stop so we could take a picture of them and us. An hour later we parked outside Zynodoa, our favorite restaurant in Staunton, maybe anywhere, and when we finished eating, we were pleased to find the cart still there.

Wendell Berry suggests that when you find a new place to live, you don't rush out and change things. Don't build a barn, don't tear down a fence, don't dig a pond, until you've walked the property for a year or two and listened to what it has to say. We've been listening to our field. We're still listening. The fence suits us and we think the field, too. We also built a run-in shed for our mammoth donkeys. It suits us, as do the donkeys and, so far, the pigs who live a hundred yards north. So far, we think the field is happy, too.

Joel Salatin recommends temporary shelters and movable fences, except for perimeter fencing. We read this after we put in the donkey barn and the fence that divides the field in two. We don't regret the little shed or the median fence. He would also criticize the well we installed, rather than a retention pond. Perhaps we'll do a pond some day. We're also considering how to implement his rotational grazing. In the meantime, we'll follow his other advice: "It's okay to do something badly the first time."

"It's good you haven't built an expensive barn," says Virginia.

Yes. The field hasn't said anything about that, yet.