terra central

Eaarth: Bill McKibben’s New Book

I’ve been enjoying Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. At one point he writes this about soil and farming:

“We need to stop thinking of farming in abstract terms, as a “low rung on the ladder of economic development,” and remember again what it involves: using water and sunshine to grow plants rooted in soil that can provide the nutrients people need….When you have virgin soil (say, a prairie that’s been growing grass for millennnia until someone invents the plow that can break it), that soil is full of nutrients…

For a very long time, in places like China, people replenished the soil by returning their excrement to the fields – “night soil” it was called. That’s how China kept growing food on the same fields for millennia. But of course that depended on people living near to those fields…

When you move up the “economic ladder of development” and dispatch your family to Shaoxing to sew T-shirts, that’s not possible. Instead you have to start using the increasingly barren soil as a matrix for artificial fertilizer. Soil becomes stuff that holds your plant upright while you pour oil on it.”

The oil McKibben refers to is that used to operate farm equipment that till the soil, plant and fertilize the seed, cultivate the rows, spray the herbicides, and harvest the crops. It’s also the oil used to run the heavy equipment to mine and process the phosphate, potassium and other essential nutrients needed to grow healthy crops and sustain society.

Production of nitrogen, an essential nutrient, requires natural gas to manufacture anhydrous ammonia. The cost of this fertilizer to farmers is closely correlated to the price of natural gas. McKibben discusses the expanded use of natural gas as a “bridge fuel” to replace coal and oil until renewable energy systems develop. As natural gas prices go up, so will the cost of growing our food. The situation is not entirely bleak, however, as the local food, slow food movement offers serious energy savings.

McKibben’s book isn’t about saving what used to be. It is about living on a planet that’s been messed up. I especially like it because McKibben provides many excellent references throughout the text. No one can honestly accuse him of weak documentation. Kudo!

Author Ann Vileisis: “Food Has Stories”

Ann’ book, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes from and Why We Need to Get It Back is available at Amazon. What intrigues me is the idea that “food has stories.” That means food is not just about plants and animals raised for consumption, but also about people, places, motives, risk, success, failure, redemption, and (hopefully) new lessons and insight.

Ann’s other book, linked in the sidebar, is Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History Of America’s Wetlands. It is about America’s long, often troubled relationship with wetlands. Again, the the history consists of many rich and complex stories.

Globalized Agriculture and Third-World Farmers

Photo by Nicksail

No need to feel guilty about growing your own food. On the contrary, you may help peasant farmers keep their sustaining piece of land.

The Environmental News Network picked up this article called Food Miles May Be Green, but Are They Fair? from Reuters. The thrust of the article suggests that the local food movement hurts the Third-World peasant farmer struggling to sell a crop.

Craig Mackintosh’s excellent article Food Miles or Fair Miles is a well-supported argument, essentially “fisking” the ENN and Reuters article. There are also some excellent comments following the article.

For me, the most poignant argument comes from India’s author and activist Verdana Shiva (emphasis mine):

“For those of you who feel troubled that the new certification consideration that food that has been flown in will not be certified by Soil Association, and you are feeling troubled about the farmer in Kenya, or the farmer in India, let me tell you, by the time huge volumes of exports happen in lettuce or beans or baby corn, the farmer is the first to go.

Their land is taken away and put in the hands of agribusiness. An agribusiness through corporate farming does the exports. It’s not peasants. The peasant was finished at the beginning of the process. So in fact by your refusing to add to food miles and add to carbon emissions you are in fact giving protection. You’re not just protecting the atmosphere, you’re protecting a peasant economy.”

Good luck with your gardens, folks!

Remember the best ferilizer is rain.