Another nice evening with our South Roane reading circle/supper club, starting around six it lasted until long after dark. We have gathered once a month for the past two years to read and discuss climate change and peak resources and how they might affect farming here in our county. We rotate the gatherings between our farm and Kimberly Ann farm a couple of valleys and ten miles away.
Usually about ten area farmers or residents gather, bring food, homemade wine or beer. Invariably we spend time walking around the gardens and barnyards, before or after eating, chatting about the weather, our successes and failures. After a couple of hours we settle in to discuss the topic for the night. The readings have ranged from Wendell Berry to new works on permaculture.
Last night we read a governmental assessment on the Knoxville Food-shed, covering the 11 counties bordering Knox. It was a fairly benign piece that surveyed the state of agriculture in the region, what the region was capable of producing and what it was currently producing. It was fairly ambitious in tone, yet like so many such documents it walked a bland bureaucratic line, offering some substance tempered by the language of restraint and institutional structure.
It outlined three recommendations for the food-shed: USDA slaughterhouses, food corridors and food hubs. As the evening progressed, between the wonderful spread of food, a few pints of the local brew and the stimulating conversation I realized that our current cultural vocabulary was inadequate to explain or anticipate the future.
We lack, in this age of abundance, the vocabulary of the past. Our knowledge of the cycles of history has been reconstructed into ever ascending cycles plateauing into greatness. Knowledge of dark forces in the past, of the ebb and flow of empires and stability, has no place in our vocabulary of the present. Even as the current generation of twenty-somethings matriculate in their parents’ homes or on friends’ couches; as the drought ridden Imperial Valley begins to resemble more and more its southern cousin, the Death Valley, or as the planet racks up another hottest year on record and another species goes extinct as you read these words, we still cannot conjure a language of need.
It is not that we need to learn the words of despair. But we desperately need to learn the language of limitations. A Sysco selling local produce is not going to change our global trajectory or solve either climate change or peak resources. One of these days, whether in ten years or a hundred, one of the children of this culture will once again be able to write convincingly these words written by Kathryn Anne Porter, “I am a grandchild of a lost war, and I have blood knowledge of what life can be in a defeated country on the bare bones of privation.”
I especially like the way you put this: walked a bland bureaucratic line, offering some substance tempered by the language of restraint and institutional structure.
I would offer, however, that “ascending cycles plateauing into greatness” is a mirage. It is that greatness that will be our undoing. How many bygone civilizations have erected monuments to their own greatness only to fall into the dustbin of history?
No doubt on that one!
Thanks again for the note on the typos. I’d hate to have left those hanging out there for too long.
Cheers,
Brian
Very nicely put. It’s often seemed to me that one of the problems we have in Western Europe and North America, is that since world war II – which is almost a whole lifetime – we’ve experienced huge economic growth, no major epidemic disease or resource constraint, and few armed conflicts that have touched our daily lives directly. This has lulled people into a mistaken sense that life is always this easy, or even more perniciously that modern societies have solved these scourges of the past, so that anyone begging to differ is easily dismissed as a doom-monger. Well, I’ll guess we or our descendants will see…
Have to quibble a bit with your history… at least for North America. I may be the eldest in this little party, but in my lifetime an armed conflict between ourselves and some Southeast Asian folks touched quite a few lives directly. American Boomers might be aging and retreating from the ‘scene’, but we’re not gone yet.
A resurgent Ebola virus, HIV cocktails, Bird flu… plant diseases attacking wheat, bananas… [gosh, I’m sounding like a doomer]… but I list these to make a different point. There are still lots of ugly things on the planet to concern us. But I do see your point – that compared to the first half of the 20th century the last 60 odd years have been fairly sanguine.
Almost 100 years ago now a crackpot in Serbia shot and killed a royal. Led to WWI and some truly horrific history. Recently a handful of crackpots no so far away from Serbia shot down a civilian airplane. I suppose WW3 could result, but I really doubt it.
So my point is that even though we have had some relatively good times in recent history (ascending cycles!) there are plenty of things to concern us – a nod to doomers. But there are also plenty of new ways to deal with many of the challenges we face. Wheat and bananas will be saved. The human health challenges I’m not qualified to speak to, but I see all the new tools that can help and am convinced that like our ancestors who faced incredible difficulties in other arenas… where there’s a will.
Oh – I do want to say its nice to see you here Chris!! 🙂
Clem sez: “… human health challenges I’m not qualified to speak to, but I see all the new tools that can help ….” I saw a comment elsewhere that many demographic problems (e.g., sheer overpopulation) result from the ability of modern medicine and science to keep too many people alive who would surely have perished in an early phase of history. So as with the desire to feed the world’s hungry, there may be an understandable humanitarian motivation to save the world, but the effects downstream in history are now being felt. For instance, when famine struck Ethiopia in 1985, the population of Ethiopia was around 36 million. That famine was addressed and that same population is now nearly 100 million. It’s a Pyrrhic or at least temporary victory.
Jevons’ Paradox… and I think I owe it to Chris as having introduced me to the concept… and I’ll readily admit I have no rosy little bluebird of happiness comeback for this particular human characteristic. There is strong evidence that birth rates decline in more developed societies (more developed defined as higher GDP). Perhaps this is a positive.
Here’s another angle perhaps – I was once asked what sorts of problems keep me up at night. The questioner expected me to list some plant related issues – potato blight, leaf rust, that sort of thing. But I think I surprised her when I said income inequality and other societal misgivings. I nodded that I thought she was looking for a list of serious issues to plants – to which I assured her that there are solutions to the plant problems and I have some understanding of how to get to those solutions, so they don’t keep me up. But societal troubles are not up my alley so to speak… and thus I have trouble at times trusting that they will go away.
Abundance can be a bit of a curse. It certainly can play hell with some kids’ work ethics. But, there is a cure for that….
BTW: I was thinking of sending this report mentioned in the post to you. It seems like there might be some relevant info as you prepare posts for your fall return.
Good to hear from you, hope your gardens are full of produce and your customers are lined up waiting.
Cheers,
Brian
Brian thanks for the link! Have to read up and figure out what a food corridor might be.
Slaughterhouses would be a good thing, no?
Clem,
I like all three suggestions. Although I’m with you that I don’t really have a firm grasp on the food corridor idea. I know some of the people who wrote and compiled the information contained in the report.
I’m always glad to have your “happy” comments.
Cheers,
Brian
Sorry, failed to follow up on this thread until now. You’re right Clem – Vietnam did cross my mind and give me pause as I wrote those words, but I’d stand by my larger point. And I think you’re right to worry about the social side of the question – not really because it’s not your field, but because most farming problems are ultimately social problems, and usually more intractable ones than immediate agronomic solutions which only get you so far. The next Dark Mountain book (http://dark-mountain.net/), out in October, is all about facing the future realistically – haven’t seen the other contributions, though mine has a somewhat more doom-laden take than Clem!