Page 14 RAIN April 1981 wants first and our nutritional needs second." Hill contends that alternatives in agriculture will only occur with a qualitative change in consciousness and a holistic approach to what food is really all about. " .. . while it is usual to recommend primarily technological and political solutions to problems such as those that exist within the food system, the acceptance ... of any changes that are proposed are dependent on the psychological development and awareness of the people involved, i.e. , we must be clear internall y if we are to create sustainable external harmony." Or, more to the point: "It seems reasonable to suppose that the process of becoming familiar with the external wisdom of nature is dependent on the level of familiarity with the internal wisdom of the body." Hill then sets out to describe a "vision of a sustainable agricultural future" involving a synthesis of several internal and external contemporary alternatives such as the human potential movement, holistic health, appropriate technology, solar energy and biological agriculture. Hill sees the fundamental problems of our faltering food system as rooted in an inability to grasp a holistic view of this internal-external synthesis of working alternatives, i.e., to the fact that sustainable solutions lie outside the focus of conventional approaches to problems. " Holism," notes Hill, " promotes manageThe inevitable decentralization of our society will begin with agricultu re, and a decentralized agriculture begins wi,th a clear evaluation of the agricultural bioregion. ment systems that avoid crises and promote sustainable technologies in agriculture" ... i.e., integrated pest management, landscape diversity in agro-ecosystems, solar agro-technologies, regional crop varieties, local food economies, and a thorough understanding of the relationship between human health and soil fertility, and of the necessary balance between production, consumption and recycling of organic matter through the decomposer chain of the soil. Of course many of these alternatives are currently being researched and practiced sepaT{ltel!(, but not systematically . For example, the agricultural research establishment continues to plug away at many of these alternatives in isolated stations, cranking out data, suggesting new techniques. But nowhere is there an agricultural research station investigating the entire spectrum of these eco-nomic and eco-logical alternatives simultaneously as a holistic unit ... as a living agro-eco-system. Although Hill's paper tends to get bogged down in the all-encompassing semantics of new-age ecospeak, his thesis is clear and important: the acceptance and success of a sustainable agriculture involves existential changes in the way we view our internal mindset (what is progress, what is health) and external potentials (the necessity of self-sustaining economics and technologies). We can view this another way. History is neither a cycle of patterns nor an arrow of inevitable technical progress. These patterns, ironically, ignore the effects of time. Rather, history is a spiral ... returning on itself but at another level. The " returning" includes the time ~onored internal traditions of survival such as culture, cooperation, sustainability, simplicity and self-reliance ... the sort of things that give agribusiness people cause to call alternative agricultures "reactionary," "back-to-the-Iand," and "unrealistic nostalgia." But the changing level (time dimension) of the spiral also offers us an alternative ... a new age agricu,lture which could creatively thrive in a vastly more complex and troubled world than yesterday. We might call this new level: Bio-Regional Agriculture. Every region of the United States has its own unique climate, geology, resources base, vegetation, watershed, topsoil, culture, I-C")o-\ I '-I';:-:...~ I >::::::-..-........ ~ -rog .. Mark Anderson economy and food needs . . . its own "bios" or set of potentials for adaptation and survival. By decentralizing our food system, that is, by encouraging each region of the country to become more self-reliant-more dependent on its bios for growing, marketing and distributing food-the larger food system becomes more stable and adaptable. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, energy is reduced through decreased transportation and processing. Also, fresh , nutritionally superior, food is made available through direct marketing of locally derived crops. In addition, more jobs are created in the .region and the regional economy becomes more stable and viable. Finally, the grower is able to use farm technologies and techniques that best utilize the local resource base and thus reduce dependence on distant (non-renewable) resources controlled by unstable forces. These technologies and techniques include: a) Integrated Pest Management Programs for local crops and local pests, b) the recycling of organic wastes onto nearby farmlands, c) the use of solar agri-technologies such as solar heating, irrigation, electric and fertilizer manufacturing systems; wind energy and the production of biological fuels, d) the development of regional crop varieties adapted to the local bios (including pests), e) the development of diverse scaled-down food production systems (aquaculture, raised-bed horticulture, solar greenhouse production, etc.) and the tools to niake If agriculture is dying, it foUows that its people are dying also. them work, and f) the utilization of people and small local job opportunities for businesses and hence the development of regional food economies and growers, brokers, farmers markets, food crops, neighborhood food stores and food processors, community gardeners, etc. Awareness of one's bios and of one's region (" bio-region" ) implies knowledge of one's options for survival. Convenience and freedom are not the same thing. It may be convenient to buy food from fields or factories afar. However, it does not enhance one's freedom to do so because the distant food is based on an extremely vulnerable and uncontrollable technology. The important point is that agriculture is more easily set into the bio-regional mode than any other part of our culture; all of its resources, technologies and economies have the potential for being locally derived. The inevitable decentralization of our society will begin with agriculture, and a decentralized agriculture begins with a clear evaluation of the agricultural bioregion. This is the next whorl in the spiral. This is the rebirthing of agriculture.oO Reprinted with permission from Raise the Stakes! P.O. Box 31251, •5an Francisco, CA 94131, $6/yr. for 3 issues.
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