Re: [Foodcouncil] blog on agrarian destruction

[Guest guest]

Agrarian destruction is nothing new in history.

 

We could start with the dust bowl.

 

During World War I, American farmers were encouraged to " plow under " their prairie, to supply export wheat crops for feuding European powers.  This was, of course, before the U.S. itself got involved in the war.  The long term result was desertification of the Midwest.  The rest is history.

 

Or we could talk about the " Irish potato famine " which was not a shortage of potatoes at all, but an excess of exported crops -- the people of Ireland grew food for their British masters as they starved themselves.  Once again, the " free-market "  economy made sure that the rich stayed rich and the poor stayed poor.

 

Perhaps a more compelling example is Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, which was the site of the earliest domestication of cereal grains -- barley and wheat. In the not too distant past (at least in ecological time scale) it was a lush green savanna that gave rise to the first human civilizations and empires after the last ice age.

Today it is a war-torn desert, rife with sectarian strife, a foreign occupying military force, and an exploited and demoralized populace. I am of course talking about Iraq.What happened? The clearing of biodiverse natural habitats to raise more and more grain crops for these early civilizations gave rise to competition over resources. With the accumulation of durable wealth (aka cereal grains) to replace natural abundance and feed non-productive classes (priests, armies, bureaucracies, rulers, etc...) these civilizations became polarized into class divisions. In time, soil erosion and desertification because of the agricultural practices caused these civilizations run up against the natural limits of their habitat, and the subsequent scarcity lead to war, class conflict, and eventual collapse.

We in America are going to run up against this natural limit of our civilization within a relatively short time, because of peak oil.This boom and bust pattern of civilization, follows very much in the pattern of an annual grain crop. Rapid growth, total dominance of the landscape, followed by rapid collapse and the storage of all available energy into its seeds (ever wonder why some " libertarian " free-market fundamentalists are so obssessed with investing in Gold?)

 

So how is this applicable to our current situation here in Wisconsin?  In the current American food system, the way we raise animals is dependent upon storing large quantities of durable crops, and moving those feeds to the animals themselves.  Even in Dane County, we have manure digesters on supposedly " family owned " factory farms, to support a huge number of dairy cows.

 

Can you say monoculture?

 

Point being, that raw milk is only part of the solution.  We need diversified farms, modeled after ecological relationships -- in a word PERMACULTURE.

 

The dairy processing industry requires huge amounts of capital, and as a result, huge amounts of inputs (aka factory farmed MILK).  Do you really think America's Dairyland can provide these inputs with our landbase and populace, or are we headed the same way as Kansas, Ireland, and Mesopotamia?

 

If we want to encourage sustainable dairy production in Wisconsin, we must support our most local dairy farmers by buying their milk, while supporting the farmers outside of our locale by encouraging them to produce artisinal value-added products that are durable to be exported to our (relatively) distant marketplace here in the Dane County.

 

Unfortunately, even the current thrust of the raw milk debate will not accomplish this goal.  Why are young raw milk cheeses (under 60s days) not being discussed, or even raw milk butter?  These products are by design safer than fluid raw milk (because of the preservation process) but our so-called " food safety " establishment had them removed from the proposed legislation (which was vetoed by Doyle) and will require a barrage of corporate regulatory compliance for producing such products in licensed dairy plants, even once raw milk is officially legalized.

 

We need to take the long-view on this issue.  Simply legalizing raw milk is not really the solution.  Our dairy industry in this state is fundamentally unsustainable.  Even if we plan on exporting a majority of our dairy to other states, while importing other things (salt, seafoods, certain minerals), we need to make sure that the landscape has the ability to support these agricultural practices.

 

Planting cornfield after cornfield to feed CAFO dairys, with their obligatory manure digester, will only ensure that Wisconsin is a muddy mess unable to support any life.

 

-Bill