Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 3: Stumbling Blocks on the Road & Ways to Repair Them.

July 28, 2010 
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By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences
Written for Living Natural First Magazine May 2010

By now many of you are following along with my series of articles about “Going Local”. If you haven’t been, try to find a back issue of LNF, or e-mail me and I’ll shoot you a copy of my previous writings. So far we’ve discussed the definitions in the “Going Local” movement, and we’ve talked about the importance of food-sheds. (No, not the place where you keep your pickles.). Now we’re going to move into discussing the problems that we will run into, and ways that I see of approaching these problems on the way to “Going Local”. I gleaned these problems from discussions and observations at the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association (TOFGA) annual Conference back in January in San Marcos, Texas.

Time after time as we turn on the nightly, or in this internet age, the minute-by-minute news we keep hearing about climate change, those on the left saying how much of the environment is doomed by this phenomena, and those on the right saying that it is all a bunch of bull. Regardless of which camp you are in my view is that one of the safest ways to argue organic, sustainable, and local food production is to point out the fact that we all want clean air, clean water, clean lively soil, and clean food. Honestly, who can argue with that. I mean come on, is someone who just likes to argue for the sake of arguing going to say, “No to clean stuff. I love to breath tainted air that I can see, drink water the color of molasses, let my kids play on arsenic laced soil, and eat E. coli contaminated meat.” I don’t really think so. Hopefully this statement makes my point, you basically can’t argue against these four cleans, and this is the message sustainable, organic agriculture has got to put forth to win the battle of concepts and words.

At the TOFGA meeting I noted that several folks mentioned that we as a population need to accept that we do have a limited supply of most resources and that we need to be stewards of these resources. The only resources that aren’t necessarily limited are the sun, wind, and in some cases nuclear (Limited by how it is used and the potential risks such as meltdowns and waste disposal. When handled and recycled correctly, such as some Western European countries like France do, there is minimal waste produced for disposal. Much of it is refined back to a usable less harmful form.) along with several other elements that are abundantly available in our surroundings. Thus, resource stewardship is a must, and the only way that we can achieve the proper level of stewardship is to promote common sense and science-based organic, sustainable, and local agriculture. We have to learn to be stewards of our finite resources, while learning how to responsibly use the more available energy sources. Organic may not be the complete entire answer,, but it is part of the answer. Diversifying our energy use from mainly fossil fuel to a mixed resource base is probably going to be key to our modern society over the next 25 to 50 years, regardless of your stance on climate change. Wind and solar power will definitely be key players in this effort. Much like food production, it just makes sense for national security and economic reasons to produce much if not all of your own energy if you have the ways and/or means to do it in a sustainable manner.

From regulations to mandates sometimes our government bureaucracy seems to get out of control. Case in point, the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), the system proposed by USDA to identify and track all livestock including poultry, exotics, and perhaps someday dogs throughout their lives in a supposed effort to get a handle on currently “rampant” animal diseases. This personal rights invasive, very costly proposed system has been defeated in its current proposed from, but that isn’t the end of this proposed rediculous set of regulations that could have impacted the US’s entire food and agricultural economic system. This is just one of the sets of bad law and regulation proposed by our elected government that has come down the pike in recent years. We as farmers and food consumers are going to have to be on our toes. No longer can we just setback and let Washington or Austin do their things, because lobby groups and special interests who don’t have our interests in mind are going to be influencing law and policy for the forseeable future. If we aren’t involved to let our voices be heard and to keep things in check, we could be left in some very tight corners. We’ve got to be proactive like the folks at FARFA, Center for Rural Affairs, the Organic Trade Association, and R-Calf are doing. Go ahead and look up these organizations on the web, get involved, and become a member if you can. This will help, in most cases, our advance towards a sustainable food system.

Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs, are causing and will cause issues and problems with farming and ranching organically/sustainably. Most of these crops are developed for a specific companies interests, and these companies have had the laws written completely in their favor. Thus, these GMO crops are going to make it harder and harder to farm organically and sustainably unless the laws get changed. Right now farmers are completely responsible for keeping GMO crops out of their non-GMO crops regardless of where the potential contamination comes from. Why aren’t the companies responsible for this? They are the ones who released their GMO for planting, and why is it that they can own the gene and thereby the crop wherever it shows up? This kind of insane, in my opinion, lack of regulation has to be saddled. Also, grass-fed livestock producers aren’t going to be left out of this mess. Alfalfa, an open pollinated plant species, is a key source of non-GMO feed and protein supplementation for many grass-fed livestock producers in times of poor quality forage or low availability of forage. Certain companies have GMO alfalfa lines ready to go into commercial production if the courts, where the argument/case is now, allow it. If this gets OK’d, grass-fed livestock producers along with non-GMO and organic alfalfa producers will be pushed into a corner, with little alternative. GMOs deserve heavy regulation, at the least, to minimize contamination of farmers fields who don’t use GMOs and to minimize contamination of our food supply. Let your voices be heard on this issue.

It was noted several times at TOFGA that it seems like too many of the organizations out their working towards sustainability and a responsible food system/economy each have their own direction. It seems they have a hard time cooperating and having a unified voice in food, farm, and environmental policy. In other words disorganization is a problem. Also, as farmers have always tended to be an independent bunch, it is hard to get us organized and cohesively working together. For a sustainable food system and economy to develop we’ve got to work to cooperate, eliminate overlap and disorganization, and pool our resources as sustainable farmers and consumers. Unifying our voice through networking and some dependence would probably benefit our cause and produce a louder voice for sustainability that can’t just be ignored anymore. We also must be presenting the consuming public with factual and unified answers to their questions. One group of folks saying one thing to the public that may not be factual can hurt our entire movement. The organizations out there that are working the hardest to be organic nay-sayers aren’t disorganized with their voice or finances, and we can’t afford to be any longer.

Many of us in the sustainable farming and food movement are very passionate about what we believe, which most of the time is wonderful! However, we also have to reallize that this is a new concept for a lot of folks. Sometimes being over-zealous or extreme and backing up arguments with rumor or here-say instead of facts can get our people and our cause mislabeled as junk and in-turn we become ignored because we’re considered the fringe. This is not a good position to be in, and I would caution everyone who believes in sustainable food and farming to be passionate yet tempered, especially when reaching out to newbies, conventional agricultural advisors, and the mainstream system. Develop less offensive and preferably data backed ways to tell folks about why what we’re trying to do is better for clean air, clean water, productive, alive soil, and clean food.

The above scenario falls right into my next discussion on our current agricultural/food education system. The current system in place, is that man knows best for everything and that we must constantly fight against nature. The organic/sustainable mindset is that we must read the natural systems and figure out ways to work with them to achieve our goals, not against them. Many professionals in the agricultural/food education and research system have labeled farmers like myself as being a little cooky and on the fringe. This may be because of the way they have been approached in the past, their personal experiences, and the ingrained teachings of the industrial system. If we want our agricultural/food education and research system to take organics and sustainability seriously, we are going to have to approach them in a unified yet non-offensive manner and immerse them in our farms and our economics so that they can see the consumer side of our farming while seeing the benefits on our farms. They need to be politely pulled out of their industrial cocoon, and shown what is happening outside those four walls that they’ve been cooped up in while performing industrial agriculture funded research and teaching our children to questionably make a living. In other words, let’s quit faulting these guys and gals for making a living for themselves, and instead show them ground zero and see if that gets their attention. Getting our agricultural/food education and research system to view our system of food and agriculture as a viable system will go a long way in our cause for sustainable and organic agriculture and family farming.

I guess at some point I’ve got to shut this article down. I could probably write about some these issues in much more detail, but for the interest of time and for the sake of avoiding boredom I think summaries work best. The final cluster of problems facing the organic/sustainable food system ties in with many of these that I’ve just mentioned. Having the funding to support research on this kind of system will eventually produce data based results that will probably support many of the things we are seeing, while not supporting some practices. We need this to happen. This is where public funding for research instead of funding from companies could be a real benefit. As I’ve already discussed moving farmers, researchers, teachers, and consumers towards a different mindset will do wonders for our cause. It is going to take time, effort, and tactfulness. Unifying ourselves as organic/sustainable farmers and consumers with voices based on facts and good data are key to standing up to the tug-of-war with the mainstream farm and food lobby for our lawmakers and the general consumers ear. Come on all of you farmers and consumers! Let’s face it, this is about taking care of Creation, making a responsible living, and providing the consumer with a healthy alternative food/health/economic system. I’m fired up, are you? Farm On!