I have been in farming since 1984. In that time, I have seen many changes, some good, some not so good, some downright awful. The good ones have been the recognition that many pesticides were really bad for the environment and people, and so they were pulled from the market. As well, the rise of regenerative farming, availability of organic produce, and interest in “local.” On the other hand, given that the public is now much more informed (this started in the late 80s), chemical companies and distributors simply morphed into marketing firms (or just hired proper ones) and sold their products differently - not just to the farmer, but to the public. Witness the vast displays of glyphosate (aka Roundup but now under many different brand names) and neonicotinoid insecticides (also under numerous brand names), all with fancy labels, in every hardware store in America. “You want something to kill, I've got your thing right over here.” “You want a lush lawn AND kill weeds at the same time, step right over here.”

In the process, we have gone so far beyond where we were in the late 1980s when all we had to worry about were a few, well hidden, but extremely powerful pesticides being used in industrial agriculture. Now, I am NOT suggesting we go back to 1989 (though that was a fun year). What I am saying is that in the process of becoming seemingly more aware, the American public has largely become less aware and been duped into thinking farming has gotten better since 'Silent Spring' or Alar. Eisenhower warned of military-industrial complex. Kissinger suggested that “if you control the food, you control the people.” And that's where we are today. We have poisoned every square inch of this planet with toxic pesticides thinking we had no choice all in the name of large-scale corporate profits masquerading as food and farming. The most recent and most grotesque example of that is the fact that we're now being given cancerous chickens as a legitimate choice. Chicken nuggets anyone?

We've been losing, not gaining, more soil and our fight against climate change and the loss of biodiversity every single day for the last 40 years and more. This has happened in a very precise, strategic, image-driven way by the politicians and companies that benefit from this ongoing destruction of the planet and human health. Except for the last few years, you’d think with all the greenwashing that agribusiness actually cared about the planet. So how do we break away from this?

The majority of farmers – small and large – in the US are caught up in the current never-ending treadmill of predatory capitalism and corporate model of farming. You can do all the right things on your farm, yet the cost of fuel, energy, tractors, tires, labor, packaging, inputs, etc. cost the same for you as they do anyone else. You don't get a break - financially or otherwise - from the real-world costs of farming in America. That is, unless you can break away from the miasma and take a different path.

The beauty of biodynamic farming is that it starts with the basic premises of “farm as organism” and “closed system.” Meaning, of course, that the farm, your farm, is a living breathing organism. And that, as a potentially “closed system,” inputs could actually come from on the farm itself as a way to preserve not just money, but the energy, the life, the vitality of the farm organism.

I started this post because of a conversation I had over the weekend. The conversation was basically about how to get farmers in general to adopt more pollinator friendly practices. How do you get them to spray less-toxic pesticides, or change to organic altogether? How do you get them to manage habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects? How do you get them to switch from artificial, salt-based fertilizers to using composts and other natural forms of fertility that benefit soil health? How, basically, do you get them from treating their farm as a machine and begin treating it as a living organism? When you do that, then not only does their basic ethos shift, but the economics change because you are placing value on things that are generally not assigned value in normal economic terms. As you begin to see things differently and treat your daily chores differently, you take notice of the life on the farm and your interactions with it. You approach your carrots or apples or spinach not as a commodity to sell to some unknown entity, but as a source of sustenance for yourself, your family, and your community and the environment...and so you have a vested reason for doing things differently. But when your crops are harvested and sold to an entity thousands of miles away, the typical response is: “Don't worry, be happy.”

If the attitudes of farmers are to change, then we need to value food as more than a simple input for our bodies and farms as something more than an organic machine. We need to treat food as physical and spiritual sustenance. And when we buy - let's assume you don't or can't grow your own - really good biodynamic or organic food, then you feel better about yourself and your community and where that food was grown. You feel a connection. Industrial food is dead, organic food is alive. Then you place a higher value not on just the food itself but on all the other things about it like how that food was grown and how that farmer interacts with land and the cleaner air, water and soil that results. And the increased carbon sequestration that occurs because they are not just conserving soil but they are MAKING soil. And you realize you feel better all over because your body is being properly nourished.

At the end of the day we need more small organic farmers who actually care about what they are doing. The large farms are unrealistic and unsustainable (witness the meltdown of academic institutions) because everything runs by remote bean-counters off a balance sheet. Where are the line items in your budget for things like pollinators, syrphid flies, clean air, and structured water? How are these things communicated to the food-buying public or the downstream beneficiaries? The funny thing about regenerative farming is that we know the things we need to do. Now we just need to do them. And the only way that happens is to rejigger our financial accounting systems and include the costs and value of all the ancillary, but ultimately most important, things like birds and bees, clean water and trees. Until then, we're - as a global community - stuck in a downward spiral.

And just remember, though you may live in an area with farmers markets, CSAs, or a Whole Foods, there are many areas of the US that don't have them. Often times Detroit is brought up as the poster city of food deserts. But a few years ago, while traveling through Nebraska, I realized that real food desert in the US is that wide swath of land we call the breadbasket of America. The fact is that they don't grow anything worth eating, they grow inputs. And I realize that is a vast generalization. But in the drive from Minneapolis to Omaha, all I saw was soybeans and corn to feed the hogs to feed the big processing plants in Austin, MN to put cheap bacon in your grocery store. I didn't see one pig, but instead lots of overpriced combines. This is a global issue, not just an American or Big City issue.

The only way things change is if we change our perspective and effect change at scale. Perspective is a 360-degree phenomenon. Stay stuck in the position and you'll never get out of the rut you're in. Move a few degrees in any direction and maybe, just maybe, you'll have an epiphany. It is our job as regenerative farmers to get “stuck” farmers and consumers to shift their perspective, but not criticize them for being stuck. Because....

“It's not about what it is, it's about what it can become.”

 
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

And you thought I was going to quote Steiner!