Page 18 RAIN Oct. /Nov. 1983 and agricultural problems. And we've shown what can be achieved by a small number of people with limited resources. We've done it and done it well. Let's celebrate, and move on ... there's more to do! Tom Bender is an architect, building inspector, and writer. He was an editor ofRAINfrom 1975 to 1979. Agriculture by Mark Musick One major change in the past decade has been a new awareness that people don't have to move to the country to produce a significant amount offood. In November 1974, a few months after the birth of RAIN, I helped organize the Northwest Conference on Alternative Agriculture. One administrator at the college where the conference was held insisted on referring to the gathering as the "Alternatives to Agriculture Conference," which was funny at the time. Yet it was also a poignant reminder of how alienated people had become from the source of their food. If people were to eat, and the land to be preserved, there could be no alternative to agriculture. The petroleum crisis and an awareness that our food production and distribution system was totally dependent on finite stores of fossil fuels first galvanised my interest in farming. My intuitive sense that others shared these concerns proved true with the success of that first conference, which established Tilth as a regional network devoted to alternative agriculture. The seventies saw the growth of similar organizations around the country. The New Alchemy Institute in Massachusetts, The Land Institute in Kansas, and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association are examples. There was also the birth of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). Our understanding of what the word "alternative" means has evolved considerably over the past 10 years. We came to use the term "biological agriculture" (in place of the traditional "organic farming") to describe our use of many wise traditional techniques in the framework of recent scientific experience. The holistic approach of Rudolf Steiner and the biodynamics movement in Europe became a major influence for us, adding a historic and spiritual dimension. Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder reminded us that the "alternative" we advocated was more in harmony with the roots of human culture than the exploitive attitudes toward land use and food production reinforced by our industrial economy. The decade of the seventies ended with the publication of Masanobu Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution and Bill Mollison's Permaculture 1 and Permaculture II. These books provided the concepts and strategies for the creation of agricultural landscapes that embody the diversity, richness, and stability of natural ecosystems. More than anything else, the past decade has taught me to emphasize the word culture in agriculture. Agriculture is not reserved for the few, but is everyone's concern, and more and more people are getting involved. When we think and talk of sustainable agriculture, our goal is the creation of a sustainable and enduring culture, a culture in which all people intuitively understand and celebrate our vital connection with the Earth. Despite all the philosophy, the real challenge has been to put ideas into practice. A burst of enthusiasm and naivete led thousands of people to try farming and homesteading in the past decade. The first flush of the back-to-the-land movement has passed, however, as weary veterans have learned first hand about the isolation, hard labor, and meager economic returns that have driven millions of people off the land, both in this country and around the world. As Wendell Berry said, we are caught in "a farmerkilling and land-killing economy." Coming to grips with the harsh economic realities of our times v^l be one of our greatest challenges in the years ahead. It is essential to give more people access to land and to strengthen alternative marketing techniques. The recent explosive growth of farmers' markets and cooperative marketing ventures around the country is a step in the right direction. New approaches, such as trading networks and community-owned farms, are being created and will have increasing impact in the years to come. One major change in the past decade has been a new awareness that people don't have to move to the country to produce a significant amount of food. Agriculture happens wherever people are growing food—on windowsills and rooftops, in backyard plots, and in community gardens. Sunflowers, zucchini, and neighborhood harvest fairs are becoming as much a part of the urban scene as skyscrapers and traffic jams. The latest surveys report that the majority of U.S. families are now planting food gardens, with a productivity that is having an economic impact. It is estimated that, in 1982, 32 million families in the United States produced $17 billion worth of food in home and community gardens. The Agribusiness myth that 1 percent of the nation's
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