Pain: Catalyst For Change

First published in the print column, The Nature of Things

In last week’s editorial I wrote about my frustration with reporting on the effects of glyphosate poisoning more than a decade and half ago, and how federal regulatory agencies are only now looking into the matter—sort of.

Admittedly, that particular column was a bit of a rant, but after 15 years of beating the same drum, hope for change can start to wear thin.

Coincidences being what they are (which is never actually a coincidence) I stumbled across a bit of news a few days ago that felt like a deep breath of fresh air when I read it.

Gail and Lynnette Fuller—a farm couple in Kansas, and founders of the Fuller Field School—recently hosted a two-day program bringing together a surprising number of people from various backgrounds. From cattle ranchers grazing several thousand acres to urban farmers, apprentice producers, homesteaders, and regenerative agriculture activists, their willingness to congregate, parley, and expand their perceptions is proof there is an awakening underway.

What united everyone was a love for soil. (Gail’s slogan is, “Soil is the answer. What is the question?”)

Turns out there’s a lot to be learned from listening to conversations on dirt; for example, regenerative grazing depends crucially on burrowing animals, particularly dung beetles, for manure and water to penetrate the earth. Without them, manure stays on the surface much longer, long enough to breed flies that are a nuisance to humans and animals both. The dung beetles are decimated both by applications of insecticides, and by dewormer medicine given to the cows.

The results of regenerative agriculture, which include intensive rotational grazing and no-till horticulture, border on the miraculous. Soil builds up quickly, absorbing as much as 5-10 tons of carbon a year, and water infiltration increases dramatically. Gail described how at his old farm, after a few years of holistic grazing, the soil achieved an infiltration rate of 15 seconds for the first inch of water and 45 seconds for the second inch. He tested his new farm when he moved there. The rate was 45 minutes per inch. When the soil can’t absorb water quickly, most of the rain runs off during thunderstorms, carrying topsoil with it, and the water never reaches the aquifers to replenish them.

This was just one topic discussed at the gathering.

Will a group of a couple hundred or so people in Kansas be enough stop Big Ag from pummeling the planet into infertile oblivion?

Probably not.

But the fact that there are people willing to talk about the ways in which they maybe could do things differently is a big step in the right direction.

Most landholders and active producers today have lived long enough to see certain truths with their own eyes, and the people who call the small towns across America’s heartland home, can’t do so without feeling a pang of sadness. There is a lot of sadness here, even in the land itself, from a long history of recurrent dispossession.

It started with the displacement of the Native people who lived abundantly here before the settlers came. Then came a second wave of dispossession as multigenerational farmers and ranchers struggled to save their land and livelihoods from the banks. Some didn’t make it. Some, traumatized by generational economic hardship, internalized the belief that farming was the lowliest of professions, and encouraged their children to escape the farm to become doctors, lawyers, and engineers in cities far removed from toiling on the land. Those that stayed also lost their way of life, as traditional, diversified farms gave way to industrialized, high dollar “chemigation agriculture,” and onerous, contractual animal confinement operations.

The grief for what has happened to our land, to our way of life, to our place, and our history is finally surfacing.

You can’t drive five miles across any one of our agriculture states without seeing an old abandoned farmhouse, falling down barn, crumbling silo, overgrown apple orchard… the remnants of the lives of generations who loved and lived there, giving their lives to the land. Today, their stories are lost.

Our towns, too, are but skeletal remains of their former vitality.

It is no coincidence that the degradation of life out here has accompanied the degradation of the land.

I’ve heard it said that change can only happen when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of making a change. As disheartening as that may sound on the surface, I am greatly encouraged by the thought that groups of people, like those at the Fuller Field School, are meeting and having conversations about the ways in which our food production practices and stewardship of the land can change for the better—in support of the soil, in support of life.

For many people, life within the current paradigm is reaching a breaking point. While that does not necessarily guarantee a turnaround, it does promise an opportunity for one.