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2022 Webinar Course is winding up, but you can still get access to all of the recordings for the next few months! Learn more and register today!
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Farming Biodiversity
5 Oct 2022
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I learned this past week that an old acquaintance of mine, Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, The Wildlands Project, and The Rewilding Institute, had passed away. I didn’t know Dave well, but I knew him well enough in the early 90s as part of the budding The Wildlands Project. In 1992-3, I founded the Minnesota Ecosystem Recovery Project (MERP), along with a small group of likeminded folks, and contributed a rewilding plan to their broader North American Wilderness Project. It was an audacious plan, dismissed by many as unrealistic and unachievable. Yet, today many conservation professionals embrace that approach as the only way to protect wild lands and biodiversity. None of this would have been possible had not one man stood on a rock and howled at the moon. That one man was Dave Foreman.
I left my wildlands conservation efforts in the rearview mirror by the late 90s to focus on farming and agriculture. But I didn’t leave my passion for challenging and changing agriculture. It's been a long slog, slow evolution, and for one as impatient as me I wish change had come many years before. But I’ve also learned that like wild nature, human nature is slow to change no matter how much we lean into any cause. Yet change has occurred, and I believe we are in a better spot than we were when I started my career in 1984. That said, we’ve still got a long way to go.
The bulk of the efforts to change agriculture have understandably focused on the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Yet the use of toxic pesticides nefariously pervades agriculture like never before. The big difference is that they do not grasp the public’s attention the way DDT did back in the 1960s. Yet plodding forward we go, seeking to shift how we grow farms to allow nature and wildness to pervade our farms and orchards in a way that complements our efforts and doesn’t detract too much from the fact that farmers need to make a living from the crops they grow. Economics has to be a part of why and how we farm, we just need to reframe the way we look at economics that considers the value of wild nature, clean air, clean water, and clean food – something that doesn’t happen currently. At least not commonly.
Dave Foreman always preached the necessity of reconnecting humanity with wildness to better understand the need for it. The same is true in farming. Now is the time – and it is happening on a small scale across the globe – for us to reconnect with what is happening on our farms, fields, and orchards; even if we don’t understand it all. The mystery of nature is one of the most compelling reasons to protect it.
For too long the needs of nature have been subjugated to the needs of finance. Oh sure, we appreciate the value of beneficial insects and microbes, but we don’t know how to value them at a level that elevates them above the immediate pest management needs we’re often faced with. That has to change. We must do the same for birds, plants, reptiles, and mammals as well. Wild nature can complement what we do if we give it half a chance. However, we all need to find our rock and howl a little louder and a little more often if we can ever expect to see substantial change.
Dave Foreman’s legacy will always be with those of us that knew him. The momentum he created in the wildlands movement is just getting started and by hook or by crook, wild nature will prevail. As the old Earth First! Bumper sticker said: Nature Bats Last. Agriculture needs this kind of momentum, this kind of leader, to spawn the tidalwave of change that we need in farming. But this leader isn’t a singular person, but rather a community of farmers that speak for the trees as well as the apples. By reconnecting with nature, we connect with our cohorts and give wildness a chance for survival by valuing biodiversity differently and more comprehensively.
Know Your Roots is refocusing some of our efforts to begin to better understand the role wild nature plays and can play in how we farm. Details are forthcoming; but studying simply what biodiversity is present on certain farms and the role it plays is a good encapsulation of where we are headed. Even in holistic farming we are fixated on “what to spray.” If there is to be any potential change in how we do what we do, then we must shift consciousness. And part of this shift includes painting a broader picture of what a farm or orchard actually is. None of this shift (at least in my mind) would have occurred without the vision and persistence of Dave Foreman – I might still be chewing the cud of what our land grant university system feeds us. And make no mistake, there has been a lot of good that's come from our universities and institutions of higher learning – but there has also been a lot of bullshit, leading us down the primrose path towards an end that serves not the farmer but the financiers and politicians. (But that’s an article for a different time).
Shifting our thinking away from a commodity-oriented approach and towards one that embraces nature is the only way we’ll save the planet and grow healthy food. Let’s see what biodiversity has to offer and what we can do for biodiversity. Let’s find our rock and howl at the moon for wild nature and for Dave Foreman. In the end, nature is all we really have and all we really are. RIP Dave!
Mike Biltonen
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News from Josephine Porter Institute for Applied Biodynamics
JPI is almost 40 years old as an organization. We are retiring some old equipment and upgrading to expand production to match market demands.
As part of our growing process, we will be auctioning off our Kemutec Centrifugal Sifter (valued at $6000) which has been part of our Pfeiffer Field and Garden Spray process.
JPI is hosting an online fundraiser to expand our educational outreach program, upgrade our equipment for increased biodynamic preparation making, as well as making preparations to introduce our own herd of cattle to the JPI farm.
We are also expanding our research program to include new plant trials and furthering the development of the body of empirical research around biodynamics. This will include preparation quality assessment using picture-forming methods like chromatography and sensitive crystallization. Our commitment is to bringing the world the best quality preparations we can.
If you are interested in funding specific research projects, please let us know.
We will be running an online fundraiser auction from October 1st through October 10th midnight.
There have been some generous contributions so far, including:
- biodynamic wines,
- book bundles,
- on-site consulting services from experienced biodynamic farmers,
- biodynamic honey,
- webinars
- workshops
- and more!
Our auction will be hosted on BiddingOwl. Note: the link is available here but will not appear active until October 1st. Thank you for understanding!
Anything you purchase or donate goes directly to bringing these special preparations not just to North America but to the entire world. We cannot do this without you. Thank you so much for your support.
Be sure to save the date for our fundraiser auction and spread the word!
If there is anything you would like to donate or contribute, please let us know.
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