| Real Food, Naturally: "Sustainable Ag" - Say what?
by Glen Boudreaux, Jolie Vue Farms
My family raises grass-fed Angus beef, forested Berkshire pork, and free range eggs at our 100 acre farm in Washington County. We partner with the Collier Perry family for our pastured poultry. Joan Gundermann's family raises organic vegetables and fruits at Gundermann Organic Farms. Monica Pope's family owns and runs t'afia restaurant in Houston, serving food from the local harvest, and also sponsoring the Midtown Farmers' Market. The Gracie Cavnar family is developing a "Recipes For Success" program in Houston, where children will learn to grow, harvest, cook and eat from their own inner city farms.
We are all members of the sustainable agriculture community. How can this diverse group of people all be members of the same community? Let's examine the history, progression, and each element of the diverse nature of this burgeoning movement called sustainable agriculture.
The roots of sustainable ag
Sustainable agriculture is first a reactionary movement. It started as a questioning and then an outright rejection of the modern food production, processing, distribution, and marketing systems. Someone finally said "enough!" to pesticidal produce, depleted and eroding soils, bankrupt farmers, animal torture, degraded nutrients, and polluted skies, streams, bays and oceans. They have since been joined by millions of others with the same values and concerns about our food and our environment.
The foundation of the movement was poured by dispirited farmers joining up with avant garde entrepreneurs in the grocery and restaurant business to find a way to produce and supply good food for the eaters. In Texas, that was Whole Foods in Austin; on the east coast it was Stone Barn Farm; on the west coast it was Alice Waters' Chez Panisse restaurant.
You know the movement has traction when Wal-Mart announces its plan to sell organic. (But that's actually an adulteration of the movement and another topic altogether.)
Sustainable ag - more than just organic
Organic vegetable production started the movement, but sustainable agriculture goes beyond organic. Here are its principles:
-Sustainable ag must go beyond organic by not only avoiding the use of chemicals on the land, but by enhancing the soil with natural, symbiotic farming and ranching practices which strengthen the soil each year. While organic farming may be satisfied with doing no further harm to the soil, we are not satisfied unless we improve the soil every year. Here's a quick example: an organic producer may plant and harvest her crop without use of chemicals, harvest it, then plant for the next season; a sustainable farmer will work the stubble back into the soil and then plant a clover crop, laying the field out for the remainder of the year, then plow the cover crop back in before re-planting that field next year.
-Sustainable ag must never pollute your environment. Conventional farmers, when they can afford it, will most always add more synthetic fertilizer to the soil than called for, calling it "crop insurance". When that is more than the plant can absorb, the excess is washed off into the nearby watershed. In our part of the country, the excess ends up in our Gulf of Mexico or our underground water sands, sucking the oxygen out of the water, killing the wildlife and turning our babies blue. (That's the truth, folks. You're not hearing this from some wild-eyed radical.) Sustainable ag, because it works in a living, self-perpetuating system that starts with the replenishment of the microbial life in the soil and beneficial insects and works up from there, is always working in harmony with nature.
-Sustainable ag wants happy, not "mad cows". We don't torture animals. Period. It's not right. Our animals live the life they were designed to live while adding their contributions to the soil and their surroundings. Yes, in the end they die and are eaten, nourishing you with clean, wholesome food. But that does not distinguish them from flora, fauna, or humankind, does it?
-Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, sustainable ag must be financially sustainable.
If the farmer and the ag workers cannot live a dignified though modest life, the movement will die. But if they can, the richness of rural life and the spiritual rewards of sustainable farming will be their bonus and their pension. That's where you, the eaters, join the sustainable ag community.
We thank you and welcome you!
Yours in the local harvest,
Glen Boudreaux
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