Farmers on the Front

A few words on the state of the world from your local apple grower

Farmers are the front line on global warming. Because of outdoor activities and immediate dependence on Nature, we see and experience what is happening in a direct and immediate way.

For the past three years we have experienced many weather severities, from excessive spring rain that prevented pollination and caused fungal diseases we have never before encountered, to excessive summer heat that cooked apples on the tree, to unseasonal gale-force winds that blew immature fruit off the tree. All of these weather events combined to reduce our production in the past several years to less than one fourth of normal yields. Our farmer friends, growing other crops throughout California, are sharing similar stories with us.

This winter we have received little rain. The soil profile is drying up, instead of progressively filling up with the stored rain water our orchard and our native flora depend upon. Our livestock forage is greatly reduced. Our animals are walking farther to get what they need, and it feels as though it is going to be a very long, very hot summer. Heat speeds up biological processes, pushing maturation, hurrying ripening. But like a 13-year-old girl suddenly made a mother, it stunts, it overwhelms, it jeopardizes the future.

We have come to the point that we feel the weather is no longer dependable. We are expecting severe weather anomalies from now on, and suggest you do too.

To think that global warming could in any way result in more global food production in the foreseeable future is absurd. (We just read in Sunday's Enterprise that "for a time" food will be plentiful because of a longer growing season in northern regions.) Any place that now produces crops will be subject to unstable weather just as we have here, making dependable production a thing of the past. You've heard of coming drought, you've heard of coming floods. Global warming is not good for agriculture anywhere.

And who is going to farm? Farmers are scarcer than home-cooked Sunday family-dinner nowadays. The U.S. Census no longer has an employment category called "farming," but by other means we know that farmers make up less than 1% of the population, and of that, 68% are part-timers or retirees who are sustained by other sources of income. We are no longer a minority population; we are but tokens. The knowledge of what to do in farming and when to do it is dying out at a very difficult time for humanity.

To make matters worse, the world grain stocks, a basic measure of food security, are currently at a 25-year low, down to 57 days of consumption. Keep in mind that on a world basis, grains provide two-thirds of the energy and one-half of the protein in the human diet. Here is what the United States Department of Agriculture says about our food supply:

"World grain supplies (coarse grain and wheat) are expected be much tighter in 2007, boosting global grain prices. Rising consumption is expected to outstrip production for the second straight year, which would push world grain ending stocks to the lowest levels in more than 25 years... Lower production, coupled with strong domestic demand for ethanol, will likely shrink ending stocks and raise U.S. corn prices. For wheat, global production is expected to be down largely due to poor crops in the Black Sea region, reducing their exportable supply and likely resulting in higher world soft wheat prices. U.S. production is also expected to see a sharp reduction, cutting ending stocks to a decade-low level and boosting U.S. hard wheat prices."

Sound bad? This is why we say that it is misguided to look to agri-tourism to provide us with food security. Knott's Berry Farm is not a model for food production. And waving money, counting on buying green, cannot solve all the problems it has caused. It's too far gone for simply changing the venue where you shop or focusing on the product you pick off the shelf, to suffice. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.

What to do? Learn to take care of yourself and others and the Earth all at the same time as people in sustainable cultures have. Learn about sustainable cultures — gift cultures rather than market cultures — and look to the past at some of the ways people functioned here before things were so attenuated. Grow as much of your own as you can, and get to know a small local producer real well. Develop a relationship; have something to offer besides simply money. Local resident Kami McBride tells us that in the old days her family ran the general store in Davisville. She says they didn't sell vegetables or fruit — didn't need to. People generally grew their own and shared.

It is time for some good old-fashioned consciousness raising. Time to deeply consider what it means to be primarily a consumer, removed, scanning the available offerings for the best at the least cost, bringing goods round the world with the power of money. Time to consider what it means to participate with the Earth, receiving what is given when it is given right here, with or without its blemishes, and, like the blue jays around us busily caching their harvest, make the effort to set aside for ourselves and our families. It is time to really think about what our culture expects farmers to do to provide us with food — sort, cull, deliver, distribute, box, store, process, promote, educate, entertain. And it is time to think about which of these things you can do for yourself, for others, and for the farmer. For if we cannot provide a culture that sustains farmers, then farms are not sustainable as providers of food. And what will we eat?

The House Family, Coco Ranch

March 2007

Food for thought and action:

Read Helena Norberg-Hodge's book Ancient Futures, Learning from Ledakh, her first-hand account of a functioning sustainable culture coming into contact with the dreams of the West.

Read M. Kat Anderson's Tending the Wild, Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources, and learn about the indigenous people who cared for the land here, participating responsibly in the ecosystem for thousands of years.

Learn about the free (as in freedom), open-source (as in not-proprietary) software movement, an active gift-culture that is flourishing all around you, offering hope for the future, at the GNU Project. Be responsible, stem the tide of e-waste and say no to increasing centralization, by converting your computer use; see LUGOD and attend an installfest for kindly local support.

Educate yourself at Our Stolen Future on the important scientific work of Theo Colbern, the Rachael Carson of our day, and know why it matters that pyrethroids (sprayed locally for WNV) are endocrine disrupting chemicals.

Read Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over; inform yourself with a realistic overview of our energy past and future. For more on the merging of the food and energy economies see Earth Policy News Update.

Google for "stop NAIS" and learn about this serious, poorly publicized, threat to small farms and your personal freedom to raise a pet chicken before it is too late to do anything about it.

Visit the Organic Consumers Association, an important watchdog organization so needed to protect organic integrity and the vulnerable subculture that popularized alternative-agriculture; subscribe to their Organic Bytes.

Learn about the resources spent on the commercial storage of apples: see On Storing Apples; (article on www.cocoranch.com); try storing a bushel of local apples at home next harvest.

Read anything and everything by Vandana Shiva, eloquent spokesperson for the Earth, especially her address to the Soil Association conference.

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