![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
claire_58Weaving ourselves back into the web of life as collaborators rather than controllers is not easy. The idea that we are somehow separate from or above the rest of the biosphere is deeply ingrained. It’s a core belief of Western Civilization and it has been reinforced over the last 3 centuries as tapping into the concentrated energy sources of fossil fuels has allowed us to insulate ourselves from the hazards of ordinary existence in the wild world.
The special status we have assigned ourselves is not an idea that can easily dismissed. In the last several generations we have almost escaped natural selection.1 We have effectively eliminated all our natural predators. Modern sanitation has dramatically reduced the communicable diseases that used to regularly cut down the oldest and youngest among us. Industrial medicine produces daily miracles of cures and repairs unimaginable to previous generations.
The fact that industrial civilization is still completely imbedded in and dependant on the biosphere2 isn’t easy to see. We are surrounded by the built environment and the sprinkling parks and green spaces within that environment are carefully manicured. The necessities of life are conveniently packaged and readily available at the nearest store or delivered to your door if you prefer. It easy to spend all of your time in a completely urban setting and live a full life untouched by the messiness of the natural world.
What’s more, even in decline, industrial civ still has a lot to offer in terms of convenience and comfort. Clinging to old belief systems is a natural response to uncertainty. Seeing the truth requires us to be willing to face up to the precarious nature of our situation. The good news is that the Long Descent3 is a slow uneven process and Grow Food Everywhere is one of the best things we can do to buffer the worst of it.
Grow Food Everywhere is more than an adaptive response to stuttering supply chains fragile industrial food systems. The small steps we take in learning to feed ourselves may very well be the first stages of a succession that could completely reconfigure our interactions with the world around us. Grow Food Everywhere is the beginning of weaving ourselves back into the web.
Industrial Ag is inherently destructive. It displaces all the other plants and animals that inhabit the space. It poisons the air and water and exhausts the land. Industrial food production is an energy sink.4 It’s just as extractive as strip mining5 and clearcut logging and the scale is ming boggling. Turning all these resources into global commodities serves the few at the expense of everyone and everything else.
The alternative, Large Scale Extensive Systems (LSES) of production, are naturally human scale and local. They are essentially restoration projects that include foraging systems for human necessities (food-ibre-fuel). LSES can be used to restore the land and the waterways. They can provide for us and enrich the habitat for all the other creatures who share our space. It’s the difference between clear cutting and selective logging.5 Between cattle feedlots and wholistic range management.6 Between fish farms and clean vibrant estuaries that support wild fish stocks.7
These systems are spreading because they are successful. Producers on private land are embracing restoration and biodiversity because it is more productive and more profitable.8 As fabulous as this is it still doesn’t get us all the way. Grow Food Everywhere is about the reintegration of people into their ecosystem. Grow food everywhere strikes right at the heart of the “food as a commodity” paradigm.
Much has been written about the “Tragedy of the Commons”10 but I can’t think of a better way to describe being an equal partner in an ecosystem that supports a diversity species. Any intact ecosystem is a commons for the plants and animals that live there. It’s a shared space each individual of each species draws on for the necessities of life and where each contributes to the dynamic balance that keeps everything working.
The Commons, the human commons we know about from medieval history, was a tightly controlled arrangement of traditional usage rights and hereditary obligations. Access was collectively managed and abuses were collectively punished. It worked imperfectly, as all human systems do, but adequately for 100’s of years. Medieval peasant worked fewer hours and had more holidays than modern cubical workers. They also ate better than most people in today’s wage class.
Good Food Everywhere is a radical act. Weaving ourselves back into the web is a fundamental change in our thinking. Considering ourselves equal partners means our needs are not paramount and neither should they be ignored. Restoration projects could produce food for people as well as habitat for wildlife. Unfortunately the idea of “pristine wilderness”11 and “humans are separate” is just as deeply ingrained into the thinking of the environmentalists as anyone else.12
Even if there was widespread agreement that this is a viable way forward we cannot recreate the Commons. Social systems are emergent; they evolve over time. Grow Food Everywhere isn’t about recreating the Commons. It’s about making some of the small changes that might result in a commons emerging over the next several generations.
The small changes matter. Most of us are not farmers and don’t have access to the land needed for LSES projects. Micro-remediation projects and Small Scale Intensive System (SSIS) are the place to start.
Next Grow Food Everywhere: The First Steps in a Great Quest
Permaculture Principles “Work with Nature Not Against It.” “Observe and Reflect.” “Start Small; Stay Close.”“Plant Seeds Where They Will Grow.” “Get A Yield.”
1 Natural Selection is individuals or groups who are more capable and better adapted to their environment outliving out reproducing those that are less capable and less effective in adapting. There are as many different successful adaptation as there are life forms in the ecosystem. The process is ongoing. Changes in the environment will impact which characteristics and behaviours are successful.
2 See https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/what-are-ecosystem-services for the definition and scope of the ecosystem services we all rely on. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041624000123 for a synopsis of numerous studies that have tried to calculate the monetary value of these supports.
3 John Michael Greer The Long Descent (2008) First edition New Society Publishers; Tenth Anniversary Edition (2019) Founders House. Very prescient and still the best explanation of the slow stepwise pattern of a civilization coming apart.
4 It takes c.7 calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food to your plate. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Energy-expended-in-producing-and-delivering-one-food-calorie-Approximately-73-calories_fig1_303895662
5 An estimated 75 giga-tonnes of topsoil is dislodged from cropland every year. https://doi.org/10.1130/B25899.1 Every meal we eat costs about 10kg of soil.
6 Merv Wilkinson started selective logging on his property near Cedar BC in 1945. When he retired some time in the 1990’s the property had more and better quality timber on it than when he started. https://www.ecoforestry.ca/the-legacy-of-merv-wilkinson
7 Allan Savory https://savory.global/ https://www.holisticmanagement.org/
8 https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_how_i_fell_in_love_with_a_fish
9 The fish “farm” in Dan Barber’s Ted talk is the largest private bird sanctuary in Southern Europe and apparently has a lucrative secondary income from bird watching tourism. There are also many potential secondary products in a selective logging operation: https://evs.institute/sustainable-natural-resource-management/value-of-non-timber-forest-products/
10 Everything we “know” about the commons and the tragedy of the commons has been told to us by the people who profited from its destruction.
11 We are mesmerized by the snapshot of places as they existed when we first found them. Restoration projects typically focus on trying to restore that picture and hold the ecosystem in a kind a stasis based on it.
12 It may be worth having the conversation about including our needs in restoration projects but don’t bust yourself. “Plant Seeds Where They Will Grow.” You are more likely to be successful in getting a food forest project or something similar going at your community garden.
