Sandra Simone, who owns Huckleberry Hill Farm in Talladega County, Alabama, where she
raises goats on the land once owned by her great-grandfather.
A short excerpt of
The Atlantic's
adaptation from Wendell Berry's book,
Our Only World: Ten Essays:
The landscapes of our country are now virtually deserted. In the vast, relatively flat acreage of the Midwest now given over exclusively to the production of corn and soybeans, the number of farmers is lower than it has ever been. I don’t know what the average number of acres per farmer now is, but I do know that you often can drive for hours through those corn-and-bean deserts without seeing a human being beyond the road ditches, or any green plant other than corn and soybeans. Any people you may see at work, if you see any at work anywhere, almost certainly will be inside the temperature-controlled cabs of large tractors, the connection between the human organism and the soil organism perfectly interrupted by the machine. Thus we have transposed our culture, our cultural goal, of sedentary, indoor work to the fields. Some of the “field work,” unsurprisingly, is now done by airplanes.
This contact, such as it is, between land and people is now brief and infrequent, occurring mainly at the times of planting and harvest. The speed and scale of this work have increased until it is impossible to give close attention to anything beyond the performance of the equipment. The condition of the crop of course is of concern and is observed, but not the condition of the land. And so the technological focus of industrial agriculture by which species diversity has been reduced to one or two crops is reducing human participation ever nearer to zero. Under the preponderant rule of “labor-saving,” the worker’s attention to the work place has been effectively nullified even when the worker is present.
The “farming” of corn-and-bean farmers—and of others as fully industrialized—has been brought down from the complex arts of tending or husbanding the land to the application of purchased inputs according to the instructions conveyed by labels and operators’ manuals.
To make as much sense as I can of our predicament, I turn to Wes Jackson, founder of the Land Institute, in Salina, Kansas, and his perception that for any parcel of land in human use there is an “eyes-to-acres ratio” that is right and is necessary to save it from destruction. By “eyes” Wes means a competent watchfulness, aware of the nature and the history of the place, constantly present, always alert for signs of harm and signs of health.
The necessary ratio of eyes to acres is not constant from one place to another, nor is it scientifically predictable or computable for any place, because from place to place there are too many natural and human variables. The need for the right eyes-to-acres ratio appears nonetheless to have the force of law.
We can suppose that the eyes-to-acres ratio is approximately correct when a place is thriving in human use and care. The sign of its thriving would be the evident good health and diversity, not just of its crops and livestock but also of its population of native and noncommercial creatures, including the community of creatures living in the soil. Equally indicative and necessary would be the signs of a thriving local and locally adapted human economy.
The great and characteristic problem of industrial agriculture is that it does not distinguish one place from another. In effect, it blinds its practitioners to where they are. It cannot, by definition, be adapted to local ecosystems, topographies, soils, economies, problems, and needs. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Brutal dictator in the "Coalition of the Willing":
It's hard to take the Chickenhawk brigades seriously when they rant about Saddam's "brutal regime", when the US names Uzbekistan amongst its "coalition of the willing". From the State Department:
Uzbekistan does not have a free press, and it does not have a democracy. Political opponents have been driven from office. Many have fled, and others have been arrested. Some have been murdered in detention. The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique. |
Not only does the US tolerate this brutal repressive regime, but it proudly lists it as an "ally".
Tweet of the Day
.@GOP How can we encourage kids suffocated by student loan debt to turn to violent crime so we can fill private prisons with them?
— @robdelaney
On
today's "classic" Kagro in the Morning show, it's our 3/24/14 show:
Greg Dworkin joins us for the morning chatter about
Hobby Lobby, Nate Silver, Chris Christie, etc., before turning to Radley Balko's latest on his "warrior cop" theme, E.J. Dionne, Mike Konczal and even Greg himself on the persistent Republican fantasy of "voluntarism." This is the episode that gives rise to Balko's belief that I support militarized policing! (We don't know if he still thinks that, but it's "legend" on the show.) Then back to Hobby Lobby for a look at just how wrong this whole thing really is.
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