Third Creek
Where the water bends
Below dark and heavy green
The air itself is thick
With cool vapors and grains of pollen
A snake curls along the bank
Birds call sharp and quick
Joggers pass by
And engines roar
Luminous Blue
In the Gila Mountains of New Mexico during monsoon season, the sky is blue in the morning, but always a single white cloud appears and begins to grow.
We’d look up from our work at the diminishing blue every few minutes until the first thunder bolt, and then scatter down the slope, sit low, and wait for the rain to stop.
Then hike back up to work again.
After days of turning, watching and running, the blue became deeper. Luminous.
Serious Eyes
On top of Mt Graham in Arizona, there was good company. People were trying to stop telescopes. We’d hike, talk, sing, and learn. And in the evenings we’d drink beer around a big fire. On the last day, Apache runners came up the mountain from the desert. Maybe 20 miles. When they arrived we all formed a circle. An Apache leader went around the circle of 100 people. He looked every person in the eye. A deep fierce look. Fire. A thank you to the center. A center I hadn’t known.
Do Good Things
My father, Roger Hellwinckel’s, dying words to me were ‘Do good things’. He couldn’t talk anymore and had been in and out of consciousness, but these words were important enough for him to sit up and gesture for pencil and paper. He wrote them down, then satisfied, went back to sleep. He didn’t say any other thing to me before he died a couple of days later.
I am remembering these words more now in these COVID times, and I’m trying to follow the advice. There is a draw to just sit back and watch this all happen; tune in and see what the argument or tragedy of the day is, and wait for it all to be resolved by someone else. After all, we as individuals can’t solve something so big, right?
But it feels good to take small actions; It could be asking a neighbor if they want something from the store, or saving a little rabbit from the lawnmower blades, or putting in a garden, or telling my child how special he is, or calling an old friend, or making a little dam to keep the tadpoles alive.
These long days at home I like to imagine what kind of world would be a great world. For me, a great world would have rich beautiful soil available within reach of everyone wanting to garden, so I’m helping get compost to people. It takes the heaviness off of things. I feel lighter. I advise everyone to follow Roger’s advice. Do Good Things.
Mulberry Place, tools of destruction, and boredom
by Chad Hellwinckel
When I moved to Knoxville in 1994 there were many scattered hobo camps in the green abandoned places along freeways and railroad tracks. These places were covered over with a thick growth of privet, honeysuckle, tree of heaven, mimosa, hackberry and grapevine. In the wet southeast it doesn’t take much time for trees and bushes to grow thick and tangled. But a quarter century later there are now few overgrown patches where hobos can camp. Since 1994 inventions in mowers, wackers, grinders, and herbicides have allowed the city to fairly cheaply keep down the growth. Hobos are now exposed and corralled under freeways. The technology of land control has gotten very good over the past 25 years. The wild places are few, there are less bugs and less critters.
Time passes and we tend to think that the larger world is probably ticking along as always. But the larger global ecosystem has experienced something similar to what I’ve noticed in Knoxville around me; More machines, better herbicides. This technology has been used worldwide, in cities and on farms alike. The rate at which technology can take down a forest has increased exponentially. Its cheap now to keep the undesirables down. The wild edges, the weedy flowers, have diminished quickly, and along with them the larger ecosystem of life and balance.
Time passes and things change. In 1980 China’s carbon emissions were half the U.S. By 2005 China had matched U.S. emissions. Today China emits twice as much carbon as the U.S. (but on a per capita basis, the average Chinese citizen still only emits less than half of the average American) The rest of the world is trying to attain the American standard. Yes you’ve heard it before, if the world attains the American standard, ecosystems will crash. No doubt about it.
Can we change the standard? Can we live in quality without the destroying machines and chemicals? Without the carbon emissions? Yes solar and wind and battery cars and local food will be part of our futures, but our world will not be nurtured without also lowering the flow, slowing down, using and doing less.
It will be nurtured to health by finding beauty in the wild places, in the uncontrolled existence around us, in letting go of the tools of control, in silence, in staying with the unknown.
Wait a bit longer,
feel your boredom,
accept your sorrow,
and see how the colors grow more vibrant.
The Agrarian Alternative
Chad Hellwinckel
Originally printed in AcresUSA September 2019 and reposted here with permission from the editor
On my first day as a graduate student in agricultural economics, one of my new professors sat me down and said that ‘if we are to improve the lives of farmers, step one is to get people off the land’. It shocked me coming from a professor of agriculture, but looking back, I appreciate his bluntness. He laid bare the inevitable result behind the assumptions held by the majority of researchers at agricultural universities – that the future of agriculture will have more technological complexity, fewer people on the land, and larger agri-businesses. These assumed truths about future direction inform decisions on what research is done, and the research then helps to actualize those assumptions, and so forth in a feedback loop. If you ask agricultural researchers about the impending climate catastrophe[1], dead-zones[2], soil loss[3], drug resistant bacterias[4], or the ongoing 6th great extinction event[5], well, they would probably answer that we are getting better at things, and besides, what alternative do we have?
The worldview of today’s agricultural scientist is followed to its logical conclusion by the eco-modernists[6], who say the way to solve the impending biospheric problems is to accelerate the adoption of technology. They state we need to expand genetic engineering of food crops, increase the urbanization of human populations, and bring online a new generation of nuclear power. Through smart design, recycling, and new technologies, city dwellers’ material needs will be met synthetically, with little input needed from the natural world. Cheap plentiful energy will produce more food using much less land or even indoors, sparing most land for wild regeneration.
Yet in the face of mounting real evidence of biospheric breakdown, I find it unsettling to continue waiting for technological solutions to manifest. We act as if there is only one option to get a handle on emerging problems – only through global economic integration, economies of scale, technological innovation, and growth. Yet there are very good critiques covering why this dominant strategy is (a) materially unworkable, (b) more of the same that has been promised for decades, and (c) very risky (by Degrowthers, Clive Hamilton, Chris Smaje, and Stan Cox) [7] [8] [9] [10]. Given the critiques, mounting biospheric problems, and the reliance on grand technological breakthroughs, I think there is a need to take an alternative worldview seriously – that of agrarianism. If not as a replacement worldview, then as an alternative that should be equally acknowledged and funded as a risk aversion strategy.
The goal of an agrarian alternative should be to figure out ways that people can live densely on the land, meet needs in a low material throughput manner, and live fairly content lives who’s existence is beneficial to the functioning of local ecosystem processes. It does not require GDP growth to sustain its actualization. Agrarianism prescribes ramping up smaller geographic circles of economy, which could function more efficiently at energy and material recycling. It would entail a return of many people to small landholdings, using appropriate technologies in conjunction with ecological knowledge to manage landscapes and provide a sufficient living for the landholder, and together with other small landholders, meet the needs of local towns and small cities[11] [12]. What needs? Debatable I am sure, but a list may include good food, comfortable housing, the company of family and friends, meaningful work, clean water and air, beauty, and an equal say in the functioning of government – all things that do not require a global high energy technological interconnected marketplace.
Agrarianism need not be a return to the old practices of the 17th century and before, but a move toward an elegant design where humans are more likened to a conductor – making sure that natural forces are unleashed at the right moments and in the right mix and quantities. The details of an agrarian based future are not certain, but likely agrarian farms would need more ‘eyes per acre’ to know the land, watch, and act at the right time. If the agrarian vision was articulated, the scale was defined, and the priority was established, the ecological and technological knowledge that our culture has accumulated over the past century could be used for the benefit of returning people to the land.
Small agrarian farms could make use of the innovations that were still fairly new (in terms of the history of agriculture) about the time that input intensive methods took off and usurped them in the beginning of the 20th century. Practices like crop rotations (Charles Townshend), green manures (Harlan[13]), soil compost (Sir Albert Howard[14], F.H. King[15]), earthworms and soil biota (Darwin[16]), or crop/animal rotations.
Small farms could also make use of emerging ecological methods and technologies; today, new mobile solar electric fencing enables rotational management-intensive grazing to be implemented easily [17]. New knowledge of soil organisms has led to the use of worm-castings and compost tea to help plants resist disease and insects[18] [19]. Efficient wood-saving clean-burning ‘rocket-stoves’ that use sticks are being used to heat homes and cook. Water-absorbing landforms such as bio-swales are being constructed with fruit and nut trees growing alongside[20]. Rotations of hand-cast seeds are being used to eliminate weeds or the need for tillage[21]. Composting toilets that use worms to crush E. Coli are being developed, where human waste nutrients can be collected, sanitized and used on small farms[22]. In recent years open pollinated perennial grain crops have emerged that do not require annual tillage[23].
A first step in the agrarian alternative should be to put people on the land in geographically tight communities. To be more specific, one way forward could be to establish land trusts centered around hollowed-out rural towns or the peripheries of small to medium sized cities. Graduates from agrarian education programs could apply to these land trusts. If accepted, the new graduates would be granted a small acreage within the community to homestead. The land would be held in 100 year lease which could be passed to living children. Like all land trusts, there would be a covenant of permitable land-uses which are decided upon democratically by trust allotment holders. To jumpstart cooperation and shared learning the density should be substantial, with clusters of a thousand or more agrarian farmers to a region. Funds for trust establishment could come from either government or philanthropic funding.
A turn toward the agrarian could be done. It’s more technically feasible than the eco-modernist future; The agrarian future needs no grand technological breakthrough. Instead it needs foremost a will in the citizenry to degrow, to scale back, to live within limits. An increasing number of younger people want to live agrarian lifestyles[24]. The nation’s agricultural universities would have no problem filling classrooms if an applicable education, land, and a community of neighbors was a possibility at the end.
A serious program of agrarianism could give society a soft landing if things go very badly with the dominant technological strategy. The agrarian alternative could be our backup in the wings that is low tech, resilient and easy to replicate. If things go well with the dominant approach, and technological fixes emerge, then the worst fallout of the agrarian investment may be people living fairly content lives decoupled from the global economy.
As an alternative vision of the future – in 500 years societies may be coupled with the natural world where human wellbeing and ecosystem functioning are intertwined. Where we have technologies of timing and interaction which enable humans to meet needs within smaller geographic circles of economies. The future may be a more creaturely world running on mostly plant-captured solar power [25] with a major part of people’s material needs being grown, harvested, and crafted within a few miles of their homes, and the earth’s biosphere functioning steadily, resilient to impacts, with humans playing a vital part as stewards. Such an agrarian civilization will see no impending ecological doom but instead a future of steady processes and patterns with no need for faith in great technological inventions of salvation. Not a utopian world - surely grappling with problems of their own - but a wise culture; taking the lessons of a past society bent on ever-more for ever-more’s sake to heart and respecting limits.
Citations
[1] Ripple WJ et al. (2017) World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice, BioScience 67(12):1026–1028.
[2] Breitburg D et al. (2018) Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters Science 359 (6371).
[3] Pimentel PM Burgess (2013) Soil erosion threatens food production. Agriculture 3: 443–463.
[4] Karin Hoelzer K et al. (2017) Antimicrobial drug use in food-producing animals and associated human health risks: what, and how strong, is the evidence? BMC Veterinary Research 13:211
[5] Ceballos G, PR Ehrlich and R Dirzo (2017) Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines, PNAS 114 (30).
[6] Asafu-Adjaye, J, L Blomqvist, S Brand, B Brook, R Defries, E Ellis, C Forman, D Keith, M Lewis, M Lynas, T Nordhaus, R Pielke, R Pritzker, J Roy, M Sagoff, M Shellenberger, R Stone, P Teague (2015) Eco-Modernist Manifesto, ecomodernism.org, April.
[7] Jeremy Caradonna, I Borowy, T Green, P Victor, M Cohen, A Gow, A Ignatyeva, M Schmelzer, P Vergragt, J Wangel, J Dempsey, R Orzanna, S Lorek, J Axmann, R Duncan, R Norgaard, H Brown, R Heinberg (2015) A Degrowth Response to an Ecomodernist Manifesto, Resillience.org, May 6. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-05-06/a-degrowth-response-to-an-ecomodernist-manifesto/
[8] Hamilton, C (2015) The Technofix Is In: A critique of “An Ecomodernist Manifesto”, CliveHamilton.com, April 28, https://clivehamilton.com/the-technofix-is-in-a-critique-of-an-ecomodernist-manifesto/
[9] Smaje, C (2015) Dark Thoughts on Ecomodernism, darkmountain.net, August 12, https://dark-mountain.net/dark-thoughts-on-ecomodernism-2/
[10]Cox, S (2011) It’s Always Too Soon for Nuclear Power—and Already Too Late, Synthesis/Regeneration 56(Fall) http://www.greens.org/s-r/56/56-06.html
[11] Ajl, Max (2014) The Hypertrophic City versus the Planet of Fields The hypertrophic city versus the planet of fields, In Implosions/Explosions: towards a study of planetary urbanization, 533-550.
[12] Smaje, Chris (2014) Farming past, farming future, Dark Mountain 6:65-74.
[13] Harlan C (1899) Farming with Green Manures. Published by: A.J. Ferris Philadelphia, PA.
[14] Howard Albert (1945) The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture Published by: The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington.
[15] King FH (1911) Farmers for 40 Centuries: Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan. Published by Carrie Baker King.
[16] Darwin, C., & Thordarson Collection. (1881). The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits. London: John Murray.
[17] Smith-Thomas H (2018) Portable fencing for rotational grazing. Progressive Forage, Published 31 January.
[18] Swaroop R and R Ramawatar (2012) Role of Vermicompost in Crop Production – A Review International Journal of Tropical Agriculture 30: 143-153.
[19] Fritz, J.I. , I.H. Franke-Whittle, S. Haindl, H. Insam, and R. Braun (2012), Microbiological community analysis of vermicompost tea and its influence on the growth of vegetables and cereals, Canadian Journal of Microbiology, Volume 58, Number 7: , 836-847
[20] Kirchner E (2017) Sun-Baked Virginia Farm Blooms Under a Berm and Swale Permaculture System, Southern Region of the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program.
[21] Caldwell Brian, R Maher (2017) No-Till Organic Relay Cropping in Kentucky: Salamander Springs Farm uses powerful cover crop sequences to produce crops, forage and seed. Small farmer program, Cornell University.
[22] Brueck H (2019) A $350 toilet powered by worms may be the ingenious future of sanitation that Bill Gates has been dreaming about, The Business Insider, Jan. 13.
[23] Harlan B (2015) Digging Deep Reveals the Intricate World of Roots, National Geographic, October.
[24] Dewey C (2017) A growing number of young americans are leaving desk jobs to farm. Washington Post, Nov 23.
[25] Jackson W, R Jensen (2019) Let’s Get ‘Creaturely’: a New Worldview Can Help Us Face Ecological Crises, CounterPunch, April 8.
A Wordless Conversation with J.H.
See the whole
and mimic it
in the instant.
A call to bards –
to those connected with the light –
Shake off your sleep
Uncover your wings
Throw out your compasses
of told direction.
For 600 years
You
Have let
Hunger and Power
Create the myth
That is our world.
Now
Connected to the light
Step out
See your hands
and follow them
In the smallest of ways.
Appalachian Walkabout: Down in the Ditches
A trip I took in the summer of 1996
Chad Hellwinckel
“Do you feed that dog?”, yelled a gray haired women out of her store-front in downtown Shelby, North Carolina. She was approaching us quickly, shaming me with her finger and firing questions. “Do you need some money to feed her?”, “When was the last time she had a meal?”, “Are you crazy?”.
‘Maybe’, I thought. Sally, my dog, and I had been on the road walking for 16 days and we both looked a little underfed. This was not the first time someone had questioned my dog-master role and I was ready with the standard answer, “She gets two cans of Alpo a day and all the dry dog food she wants…that’s what she’s carrying in her backpack. She’s part greyhound, that’s why she looks so skinny.” But my answer didn’t satisfy her. Her voice rose, “You should be ashamed of yourself. If you want to live this way, that’s your choice, but she didn’t have any choice. I’m getting her a good meal!” At that she went into the cafe next door and brought out a full southern meal; Roast beef, potatoes and gravy, okra, beans, and corn bread and plopped it all down on the sidewalk for Sally to devour. While I stood there hungrily grinning at Sally, I realized that this was the first time I had ever been envious of a dog’s meal.
Credit: Tracie Hartman
Sally and I began our journey two weeks before. I walked out the front door of my Knoxville, Tennessee home with a forty pound backpack, new shoes and a rope leash for Sally. My heart was pounding with an unknown mixture of fear and wonder. Here I was, actually doing it, taking the first steps toward my destination-the Atlantic Ocean some 600 miles away and a new life of living on the road. I was leaving home to change the pattern my life had become. People would ask me, what terrible thing happened that made you leave home, but I didn’t really have the blues. If I had the blues, I would at least have felt something, but I just felt dull, lifeless, and discontent. Life was railroading me onto those long monotonous tracks of a career. I felt the solution was to give it all up and hit the road. . . at least for awhile.
I planned on taking a few short trails off the road to cut corners, but most of the trip would be walking back highways through the mountains, farm country and small towns of the South. Sally couldn’t believe it either. I think she thought we were just going to the local park, but we passed the park , and she gave me a look I would become familiar with over the next few days. A look that said, “What?. . . Further?”
That first day I walked down the familiar back roads of the Tennessee Valley. Twisting through and foothills toward the Smoky Mountains. It was a Sunday and that afternoon I came upon a baptism in the Little River. I was in need of a rest, so I took off my pack and sat in the back of the congregation who were spread out on the river bank sitting in folding chairs and laying on blankets. We were all watching an older women with hands raised heavenward and eyes closed being held by three large southern men. One of them, probably the minister, was shouting out that the holy spirit was about to enter her body. Then everybody stopped talking and there was a long moment with only the sound of the running river breaking the silence, before the woman was dunked deep and long. When she emerged, the three southern men exchanged “alleluias” and high fives and all the onlookers on the bank cheered. If it weren’t for the lack of orange, I’d had thought I was at a Tennessee Vol’s football game. The next to be baptized was a teenage boy. The ministers were preparing him to go under by reading scriptures while he stood in the waist high water with his eyes closed and arms folded across his heart. Then he took a big gulp of air and the big southern ministers pushed him back into the water. When he came up, he didn’t give the usual alleluia or smile heavenwards. No, his eyes rolled up until only white could be seen, foam came out of his mouth and his body shook like in a seizure. I worried that I may have to use my CPR training, but when I looked around everyone else was happy and singing. It seemed as if they had seen reactions like his before. The kids who gathered around me were starting to make quite a bit of noise by chasing Sally around, so I put on my pack and headed down the road again.
We continued walking until the sun set. I had made it all the way to the foot of the Smoky Mountains that night, and in a state of panic about where to sleep, I wandered through a poison-ivy patch which would plague me for the next week and a half. That night was a fearful sleepless night. I had been on extended camping trips in the wilderness alone before, but the loneliness I felt that night I’d never felt before. I would not wish that empty pain on my worst enemy, well, at least not for very long. I think it was the fear of all the unknowns in front of me and all the love and safety behind me. In the wilderness, I knew what to expect. I had my food packed, I had my path picked, and I knew the precautions to take against animals and the weather. But this trip was on the road, going from Knoxville to the Atlantic in the most direct route. Wilderness served its purpose for peaceful escape, but this time, I wanted to see the reality of the greater wilderness of America in 1996 with all its beauty and ugliness. I lay awake that night worrying about the most dangerous animal, humans, and the millions of them between me, hid away at the western slope of the Appalachians, and those lonely waves breaking into North America on the outer banks of the eastern flood plain.
Because I was bringing Sally, we couldn’t travel through Smoky Mountain National Park, which would have been the most direct route (no dogs allowed!). We took the southern route around the park. The weather turned unusually cold and rainy the next day. After spending the morning hiking up the foothills parkway in the cold rain, I met a park camp-host named Vince, his wife and two grandchildren. They offered Sally some water and me a warm bowl of chicken noodle soup. The soup warmed me from the 50F temperature and Vince and I talked about my trip, his life and retirement plans and loneliness. “Hang in there, the first week will be hell, and then you’ll get used to it.” That afternoon the rain stopped and the clouds broke. I was walking through a place called Happy Valley and was feeling good. The sun warmed my skin and I waved to the people out in their yards in this hidden Appalachian community. I thought about all the stereotypes of inbred country folk with a gun on their lap and a leering eye toward strangers. It seemed comical next to these strong friendly people smiling and waving back at me. Four people that afternoon came out and asked if I was a lost hiker from the park. One elderly man, who couldn’t walk well, drove his car down the driveway just to say ‘hi’ and ask if I needed help. The community of Happy Valley was the epitome of what I hoped just may exist out here on the back roads of America. That night I slept on the only flat ground I could find; an old abandoned cemetery from the last century. I tried not to lay my bag over anyone’s remains, but who knows, I did sleep very soundly that night. Even the sound of a women screaming did not wake me for long (I found out later it was a bird). I had been walking about 25 miles a day those first couple of days out. A speed that began to cause problems.
The next morning I was up early and walking my most painful mile yet. My leg and foot muscles had tightened over night and I was limping badly. Every morning would be somewhat painful for the rest of the trip. The only cure was walking the first couple of miles until the muscles loosened. As we were hiking up highway 129 south of the park, I noticed that Sally was also limping. She had split open a paw, and I decided I’d call a friend to come pick her up. We walked to the nearest phone, which was eleven miles up a 2,500 foot pass on the twistiest road I’ve ever seen. On weekends this road is crawling with crotch-rocket motorcyclists trying to break the unofficial record from “Deals Gap” on the top where the phone was, to Chilhowee Lake on the bottom, were I was. Luckily it was a weekday and there wasn’t too much traffic. By the time I reached the top my feet, too, were blistered and raw. I called my girlfriends brother, Paul, to come and pick Sally up. We had a two hour wait so I stretched out on a picnic table to rest at the “Motorcycle Motel and Gas Station” and watched a few bikes come in and take off around the bend. The owner of the place came out to see Sally. He was an aging man, smelling of Old-Spice and Rum. He was friendly enough at first, though not a very good listener and he lectured mostly on what kind of dog Sally was, which is a favorite topic of Southerners. But his mood swung quickly at some point, possibly linked to the rum-smell. For some reason he thought I was going through the Park with my dog, and the more I tried to tell him that was not my intention, the more emphatic and violent he got about telling me how stupid I was. I got up and left when he said ” Those rangers will shoot your dog and you too! Do you understand what I’m saying boy!” I feared he was going to save the rangers the trouble and shoot me himself. Paul finally arrived and Sally was shuttled off back home to rest and recover and I was left to walk alone.
Over the next few days the loneliness subsided and the pain in my feet grew. Maybe the pain had become a companion and I was no longer alone. I walked down highway 28 to Lake Fontana dam where I stayed in a comfortable Appalachian Trail shelter for a night and took a hot shower in the morning! I met a construction worker at the bath-house who was building condos on the lakeside. We talked for awhile and when I told him what I was up to he said, “those are some wild ways man…wild ways!” Over the next few days of winding myself around the fingers of Lake Fontana, I’d see him pass by on the way to work or getting supplies and he’d honk and yell a few words of encouragement, “Hey Wildman, keep walking!”
The mountains south of Lake Fontana are sparsely populated and I was walking down a practically deserted highway, though the small communities of Tuskeegee, Hidetown, Brock, and Almond. I did not see one open restaurant in three days of walking, so most of my food came from gas stations. I’d spread my gear out on the side of a station and go in and buy one thing at a time (because I didn’t want to be stuck with extra weight). I think this worked well for meeting locals, because very time I’d return for another speck of food the owners would become more friendly. I quickly became a regular and questions were asked and jokes were told, but whenever a ‘new’ stranger would come in to pay for gas, the smiles would disappear and they’d become very quiet with the stranger. It was easy to see how these mountain communities got there reputation. The traffic started to pick up as I approached Bryson City and my feet were really hurting by this point. I just wanted to make it to town and then I’d rest for a day and eat some good food. A warm meal was my main goal heading into Bryson City. I knew my excitement for walking had pushed me too fast and I resolved to slow it down after Bryson City.
I wobbled into town and asked somebody where I could get a lot of hot good food. Ma’ Barker’s was the place to go. I ordered up fried chicken, mashed potatoes, beans, corn bread and iced tea and ate it down smiling at all the faces around me. I felt overjoyed with life and I wanted to share it with others. It was only noon, so I spent the day wandering around this tourist town watching people and talking to whoever I met. I sat for awhile with P.K. Parker, an 88 year old retired railroad worker who had worked on the railroad in Bryson City in the 20’s and wound up moving back after a 60 year absence. Now he works for the same railroad again, only now it takes tourists up a down a small mountain stretch for $17 a pop. He advised me to go into computers, “The future will be in computers.” I sat down at the station and listened to a local Bluegrass band playing songs about walking blues and love. As they played, I sat and looked up at the mountains. My girlfriend, Corey, my friends and home were on the other side of them. I looked at my bone-aching feet that carried me away. Then I looked at a family of bored looking tourists waiting for their train and then over at the 88 year old parking cars. It all mixed together in sad beauty, but it was life and I was seeing it.
I rested for another day in Bryson City, thanks to the gracious help of Mike Harris who helps his aunt run the Rosehill Motel. He stopped me on the way out of town and asked where I was going to sleep that night. When I told him I don’t have the kind of money to stay in a tourist-town, he asked, ” I run that motel you just passed, how much do you want to pay?”
“I’ll give you 25 dollars”
“Done”, said Mike.
I spent that day watching cable TV, repairing my feet, treating my poison ivy and rocking in the front porch chair talking with Mike. He’s a college student in Miami, up for the summer helping his aunt. He had worked in a posh Hotel in Miami, pampering the rich and famous. I think my sore blistered pusing feet were a new one for him. He told me some stories of the arrogance of wealth, “Sting’s an asshole”, he confided.
I felt fresh after my rest in Bryson City and it felt good to be moving again. But my high spirits ran into low wires when I entered the Cherokee reservation. I had been to Pigeon forge, on the other side of the park, and thought that it was the tacky capital of the world, with all its mini-golf coarses, go-cart race tracks and ceramic pigs, but Cherokee took the title away, no contest. I wove my way past the plastic tomahawks, headdresses and totem poles. I accidentally bumped into a Cherokee “chief” with his full formal dress on and a sign advertising, “Get your picture taken with the Chief!” I excused myself for bumping him and he answered “That’s all right, buddy” in a thick southern accent. I decided not to linger long on ‘cultural genocide’ avenue and picked up my pace, making sure to walk a wide circle around the Indian pow-wow in full progress in the Subway parking lot. It was a couple of miles out of the corroded heart of Cherokee, and just when I thought I was out of the worst, when I approached “Santa Land”, a year round Christmas theme park. It took me 20 minutes to walk the length of its Reindeer roller coaster and parking lot with “White Christmas” and “Winter Wonderland” blaring out into the 90 plus degree August heat.
Farther up the road I approached a group of 20-30 guys spending their Saturday afternoon drinking and smoking. They were about 15 yards away and on the other side of a small creek, and I hoped I would pass without them noticing me, but no such luck. Out of the corner of my eye I could see all heads turn toward me and the rock music was turned down. “Oh shit,” I told myself, “Don’t panic”, as I felt in my pocket for the pepper spray. When they started yelling at me, I lifted my eye’s from the road and let them fall on the crowd for one second and waved and said “Howdy!” with a big smile. Walking briskly, I did not look back until my heart had been swallowed again. The encounter spooked me enough so that I didn’t want to just camp off in the woods that night. I walked into “Little John’s” campground for the night. The old couple who ran the campground still spoke their native language to each other and we stood by a small creek talking about my trip. When I offered to help split wood the old women said pointing to her husband, ” oh no, he’ll split it. But it may take a little while, he’s had two strokes, one on each side.” He did swing a little slow, but he hit the logs right on and the wood split clean.
After two days of walking highway 19 over the pass and through Maggie Valley and Lake Junaluska, I was entering Canton, North Carolina. Home of the Champion paper mill which I heard so much about back in Tennessee. It is infamous for it’s long history of polluting the Pigeon River, turning the water black as it leaves Canton on its way to Tennessee. The Pigeon River flows out of North Carolina and into Tennessee to meet up with the Holdson River, eventually reaching the Tennessee River which flows by Knoxville and home. Needless to say, Tennesseans don’t like this paper mill much. Seeing it in person didn’t help my negative bias. It’s a monstrous congregation of steel, smoke stacks, logs and sawdust. The smoke stacks spew foul air into the desolate decaying downtown streets. Canton truly looked and smelled poisoned. It was getting dark and I went into a gas station to get some water and ask directions to a cheap motel. The attendant had a swastika tattooed on his forehead and looked embarrassed about it. For some reason I believed it was a mistake caused by a drunken night years ago, and that he was working in this station to save up money to get it removed. But maybe I tend to assume the best of people. He volunteered, “I ain’t seen nobody ever drink the water here, see, it’s brown.” I decided I wasn’t so thirsty.
“Is there a cheap motel downtown?”, I asked.
“Just that place across the street”, he pointed.
The building was old and falling apart like the rest of downtown. The only indication it was a motel was small lettering in the window that read “ROOMS”. I walked in the front door and into the lobby. “Hello? Is anybody here?” Nobody came. The lobby had the decor of the 1920’s. The old chairs, coffee tables, mirrors, and mantles were covered by a thick layer of dust. It was a dismal place, but just when I was turning around to find a nice school yard to sleep in, a man popped into the room. “Come on back here”, he motioned. I followed him into another room. He was a thin-skinned 60ish man with an “I just swallowed the canary” grin on his face. “Are you the manager?” I asked. “Nope, she is” I followed his boney finger over to a very large women. No, a huge women prostrated in a reclining chair with a blanket over her (it was over 90 degrees!) and eating chicken.
“If you want a room, its $10 a night”, she said.
“Can I see a room first?”
“Bill, show him number 22”, she demanded.
“Number 22? Isn’t that Hank’s room?”, he replied.
“No, THEY took him away this morning”, she explained. “I haven’t had a chance yet to wash the sheets. You need a blanket or something?”, she asked me.
I followed Bill up the stairs to the room. It had a bed, unmade, a sink with stains from the brown water, and a broken mirror. Thoughts of lice and fire rejuvenated my walking feet.
“Bill, no offense, but I think I’m going to try my luck outside tonight, you know, under the stars.”
Bill was not offended and even gave me some advice on walking the roads, ” Always walk facing traffic.”
By now it had turned pretty dark and I still didn’t know where I was going to sleep. I stopped and put my wits together. I learned that the best thing to do when I start to feel panicky is not to think, but just watch closely and trust my eyes lead to me. I began hunting for a safe place to sleep, following the unnamed subtleties.
Up a side street, I saw an open field next to a house with a few people laughing on the porch. I started up the drive toward the house to ask if I could camp in the field. Renee, the owner of the house met me half way up and after giving me the once over to make sure I wasn’t an axe murderer, invited me up to the house for some watermelon. A few couples and their kids where eating and talking up on the porch. They had just gotten done with a Bible study session and seemed to be excited about being a ‘witness’ for me. Their group was called ‘The Way’ and they were thrilled that a ‘pilgrim’ had come to stay with them.
“Do you read the Bible?” a man asked.
‘Oh boy,’ I thought, ‘this day just keeps on going!’
“A little”, I said, and then the group informed me of God’s true message, the powers we can call on god for, Jesus’ purpose, and the coming kingdom for the next hour or so while I ate cake and watermelon and drank iced tea. Usually, I was up for a good religious talk, but these people were out of my league and my dreams and their lecture were getting mixed up.
“Jesus is not God, and should not be worshiped as one…”, someone said.
Then I’d lapse into a momentary dream on the porch… I met Jesus in his sandals on the street and he offered me a smoke and tells me that there factory really stinks…then I jar awake again and node my head. The guests eventually tired themselves and leave, and Renee tells me I can pitch my tent in the backyard. I fall asleep quickly knowing that I’m safe and thankful for kind trusting people that will take in a crazy eyed, smelly ‘pilgrim’.
In the morning she fed me breakfast and after her kids went off to school, we got out the bible and read a little together before I headed out for Asheville. I was anxious to get to Asheville because I was to meet my friend, Corey, there. We planned on spending a day together eating and drinking our way around that hippie town. It had only been two weeks since we’d parted, but the promise of her at the end of the day propelled me to walk those 25 miles at record speed. My feet were getting broken in. She was also bringing Sally to rejoin me.
That day I walked the remaining 25 miles up highway 19 and into Asheville. I struggled through the sprawl of outer Asheville (which, like most urban development built after the 60’s, has no sidewalks) and into the downtown motel where Corey and I planned to meet. Two minutes later Corey drove in. When I saw her, I began to cry. I had been over the loneliness of the road for awhile now, but seeing her brought a swell of emotion up that had been kept very low and hidden away. I believe I suffer from a common human affliction; I’m love-farsighted. I don’t fully comprehend the love of another when I’m with that person. It takes the stress of distance for me to see the love. We spent the next day with each other. Our favorite spot, which we discovered on a previous weekend trip, is Barley’s Taproom, and we spent alot of time drinking Highlander Porter and eating banana pepper and sausage pizza. Sally was out front getting unrelenting attention from a throng of hippies who were feeding her leftover pizza to try to fatten her up (a futile effort). Before I knew it, our time together was at an end. We said sad goodbyes the next morning and Sally and I continued eastward.
I managed to get through the tangle of freeways dividing Asheville from the greater world and got onto Old Highway 74. I was approaching the eastern continental divide, something I did not even know existed before I saw it on my map. A mailman stopped in the little town of Fairview and asked if I needed a ride. I told him thank you, but I was walking, and then he offered to let me camp in a field by his house five miles up the road. His name was Franklin and he gave me directions to the place. It was the best camping spot so far on the trip. I had to walk down small back roads and all the neighbors came out and asked where I was headed. One even suggested I take a bath in his pond. I didn’t know how to take that offer. Franklin’s house was hidden up a little dirt road and over a mountain creek. I pealed off the road as the directions said, hiked a few hundred yards, and found the small meadow with a black walnut tree standing alone in the middle . It was still only 4:00 in the afternoon, so I unrolled my bedroll and spent the remaining hours of the day just watching the meadow; the insects, the flowers, the trees and the birds. There was a small creek running beside the meadow and I listened to its cool water and far away thunder. It was a peaceful time. As the sun was setting, I saw a spider put up its web for the night. I followed by getting out my sleeping bag and falling asleep. Franklin and two of his boys came up sometime after dark to check on me. The kids wanted to know why I was walking so far. I think I mumbled something about seeing stuff. Franklin suggested I take an alternate route in the morning.
Franklin clearly explained, “Follow this stream up to the gap, that’d be the continental divide. Then follow the path and stay on the ridge. Always take right turns. Never go left. Follow that for about 8 miles, then you’ll hit a road that’ll take you back out to the main highway.”
At least that’s what I remember him saying. It wasn’t as simple as Franklin put it. Sally loved being off the leash and I loved being away from cars for awhile. We followed the stream up to the divide and I found the jeep trail Franklin was talking about and hopped right over the ‘No Trespassing’ sign, trusting Franklin’s prediction that I “shouldn’t have any trouble”. A few miles down the path a 4X4 truck passed me with a David Duke sticker on the bumper and two guns in the rack. I waved, but the men inside didn’t return the neighborly gesture. At some point I had made a wrong turn. I knew this because the trail had vanished and I was struggling through thickets and young trees. Eastern forests are tough off the trail. I dreaded the thought of backtracking the hours of trail I had gone, so I pushed on relying on my map and compass. After about an hour of struggling through the forest I broke out into a wide field and those growing worries subsided. Sally loved being free of the pricking bushes and showed her happiness by chasing a couple of Killdeer in circles. I followed the field out to a small road that eventually took me out to old highway 74 again.
I was finally out of the mountains, but with the Piedmonts came something I did not expect; cars. Lots and lots of cars and very narrow roads. I had grown up in Kansas, where even the dirt roads are wide enough for two combines to pass each other. I wrongly expected at least a small median for heavily traveled roads. The next few days were spent struggling through the tall ditch grass, avoiding cars, and trying to keep Sally walking behind me. She’s very persistent about being in front. I walked through the towns of Bat Cave, Greenhill, Spindale, and Forest City.
In this populated area, I found out that rural volunteer fire stations are a great place for wayward travelers. Seemingly by accident, I kept running into volunteer firemen that let me camp in the yards of their stations. One very hot afternoon between Forest City and Ellenboro, Sally was just quitting on me. Every time we passed a patch of shade, she’d lay down panting and giving me a look that was saying, “don’t you dare make me walk any further”. I relented and walked up to a used car dealership for some water and met Reece Hammond. He invited us into the air conditioned office where Sally immediately plopped down on a cooling vent. Reece got Sally some food and I visited with him and the rest of the employees there. Reece is the fire chief in Ellenboro and invited me to sleep in the station yard that night. After a good rest, we hiked into town, ate at the local diner and met Reece at the station. We sat in the station and talked about the history of the volunteer department, the fire trucks and the local community. I spent the night in Ellenboro’s town hall yard under the stars. It seemed like a good place.
Over the next couple of days, I walked along highway 74 to Shelby and then up highway 150 through Cherryville and toward Lincolnton. Although I was warned several times a day about the ‘rattlers’ which, I was told, enjoy laying in the grass on the side of the road, I never did see one. As I was heading out of Boger City the sun was setting on my longest day yet, 35 miles. I saw an open field to camp in and started across the field to hide myself, when a car pulled in the driveway of the house next to the field. Since these people were probably the owners of the property I was about to trespass, I decided to walk over and ask for permission. I stood at the beginning of their long driveway and tried to look nice and say “hello” in as friendly a way as possible. Two older women were getting out of the car. One took a look at me and motioned to the other to hurry it up. The other looked up and I thought her eyes were going to come clean out. She turned pale white and darted for the back door. Naively, I walked up to the front door and rang the bell, thinking that they may just want to put the grocery bags down before talking to me. After a few minutes of silence on their front porch, I realized that they were probably frightened of me! It seemed all too odd. Me? Frightened of me? I had a slight feeling of pride but it was washed away with a fear of my own. They might have a gun on me, or maybe they called the cops! I turned around and got back on the road quickly. Fearful and panicked people are not to be messed with. I had been warned almost daily about the mean vicious people out ‘there’ in the world. These women must have heard about ‘them’ too.
I spent that night beside a gravel pit. Unknown to me at the time, this would be my last night on the road. The next morning I got up and dreaded the idea of another day’s walk along the highway. I got my stuff together, walked a few miles and thought. “I don’t have to do this! I can quit!” Then I thought about all the bad things about stopping now; I told people I was going to walk to the coast and I’m only half way there; I would have alot of explaining to do. What will they think of me? Am I a flake? Am I quitting because of a little onslaught of boredom? What will I think of myself in a day, in a week, in a year? Will I regret not going on? Then I thought about why I began walking. What really propelled me out that front door was hope. The hope of extinguishing the discontentment of my life. I hoped that by gearing down and hitting the road, I would find something in the world, or in myself, that would be new and beautiful. All those blues and bluegrass songs can’t be all wrong. The happy, singing hobo must exist, and I was going to find him. No, I was going to be him.
The futileness of this search overcame me. I walked up to a cabinet factory beside the road, asked to use the phone, called Corey, and asked her to come get me. The trip was over. I put my pack down and waited. It took her four hours to travel the distance it took me 18 days to walk.
Defeated? Victorious? Definitely not victory, but maybe a battle won. The trip did not bring on an enlightened state of mind which persisted. It did not miraculously cure me of the daily discontentment, insecurities, annoyances, and anxieties from which I was escaping. I realized that the road to contentment is a much harder road than any adventure. There are no shortcuts. No worldly accomplishment is going to give lasting contentment, not even walking 600 miles. I realized the pitifulness of my sorry situation in that cabinet factory parking lot. I felt drained and calm, peaceful I guess. I had discovered a terrible truth. Contentment was the real destination and it, like the ocean, remains unreached.
But for those 18 days, I felt that odd sensation which came from concentrating on survival. Everything was uncertain. I was not in control of all that could happen and I found myself relying somewhat on a power that was not in myself. What should I call it, magic, synchronicity, fate, God’s love, delirium? Who knows, thinking about it is a sure way to loose it. All I can say is that I felt something, a power in the world that was illusive and compassionate, and it was real.
I loaded my pack and Sally in the back of the truck and drove home. “Maybe I’ll be a fire lookout for awhile?”, I thought.
Permaculture Priorities in East Tennessee
by Chad Hellwinckel
After practicing permaculture in Knoxville for a decade, I’ve learned to prioritize a few things. This is my list:
Make a water plan, and plan on too much! We can get a lot of rain in East Tennessee. Step out in the yard during an inundation and look at where the water is going. Do you see any water running on the surface? If so, create a plan to ‘slow it, spread it, and sink it’. If you dig swales, make sure you plan for overflow when they get full. Where will the water go after that? The main point here is that with our slopes, water running down a hill can, very quickly, wash away nutrients you may have worked hard to build up. So think like a beaver!
Build Soil. We have very clayey soils. Water tends to run off of clay quickly and not absorb too well. Its best to build organic matter up. Organic matter can act like a sponge; absorbing excess water and releasing it to plants when needed. Organic matter can also absorb excess nutrients. I build soil through composting, using vast amounts of woodchips and straw as mulch, and using chickens to turn woodchips into soil.
Go easy on the annual vegetable garden and plant more bushes and trees. Developing a good plot of fine soil for vegetable gardening can take a lot of time and resources. With our humid summers, there are a myriad of ways your vegetables can meet their demise…slugs, mildew, aphids, fungus. I leave most of it to my CSA farmer, and instead concentrate on bushes and trees. Clay soils aren’t as much of a problem for bushes and trees, though I still increase the organic matter content around them through mulching, companion planting, and cover-cropping.
Winter annual gardening is great! I always plant a fall/winter garden, and I derive much joy from it. With colder temperatures, summer plant-predators go away, and gardening becomes a breeze. I just keep my winter greens under some old windows that act as a greenhouse, and they produce well throughout the winter.
Counting farmers
There are 2.2 million farms in the US, but only 45% of these farms claim ‘farming’ as their principle occupation, or 990,000 farms. And only 25% of these farms gross more than $50K, or 550,000 farms. About 180,000 farms account for 60% of all agricultural sales.
This is down from the peak of 6.8 million farms in 1935 (when the US population was 127 million).
A few people have suggested we try reversing the loss of farmers;
Michael Pollan suggests we should set a goal of creating 20 million new farmers;
http://goodfoodweb.com/ahttps://blog.longnow.org/02015/02/10/michael-pollan-deep-agriculture-02009-seminar-flashback/rticles/michael-pollans-deep-agriculture-at…
Heinberg suggests a campaign to create 50 million new farmers;
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-11-17/fifty-million-farmers#
Being Invaluable
by Chad Hellwinckel
As the recent market convulsions continue, I’ve been thinking about wealth and how to make a living in a changing world. And I realized that really there may not be much difference between a person who goes to work for a multi-national company and a person who decides to enter an eco-village. They both may be simply looking for opportunities to become invaluable.
When I talk to college kids looking out at their future, they are trying to find that place where they are invaluable. They have options laid out before them by their parents, their teachers, and society at large. But the options that they see are quite limited. They become trained as accountants, salesmen, electricians, or business managers, and then go out to find who will pay them. Most will go anywhere in pursuit of the job. “Pay” is only realized by most people today as monetary capital. Yet social capital, environmental capital, spiritual capital, cultural capital, or intellectual capital are rarely considered in their equation.
But a few and growing number are seeing that there are other ways to be ‘paid’. If you make yourself invaluable to people and places that have these other forms of capital, then you could continue to be ‘paid’ even if the monetary capital is not as plentiful and free-flowing. These other payments might be access to things like food, clean water, shelter, security, and entertainment.
These other forms of capital, and how to make yourself invaluable to the holders of these other forms of capital should be considered by anyone looking for a living in a changing world.
My friend Frank brought up how chiefs in tribal arrangements were wealthy not in material possessions, or even their ability to harvest material possessions, but by the web of relationships that made the chief invaluable to many members of the tribe.
How can I make myself invaluable to these other forms of capital and thereby build reserves of them? How can I teach my child to see and value these other forms of capital? I believe monetary capital may not be as forthcoming in the decades to come, and those that take a new look at what being ‘invaluable’ means will find it easier to find a good and meaningful existence.
Source: Ethan Roland & Gregory Landua, A Whole System of Economic Understanding
The Young and New Directions
I interviewed a few friends in the Parkridge neighborhood of Knoxville and asked them 2 questions:
1) What do they do?
2) What about the future?
I showed it to the new Haslem Scholars finalists at the University of Tennessee (really smart driven high-school kids). They loved it!
Metro Pulse, Food, and Ownership
by Chad Hellwinckel
Last week the Metro Pulse was closed down by their corporate owners. The Metro Pulse was a popular weekly paper in Knoxville. If you were cruising through downtown on any particular day, you could probably see several people on benches or in restaurant windows thumbing through the paper. Like most weeklies it had a focus on the city, its people and culture. It really has deepened our communal thought process and image of ourselves. Downtown development, the music scene, and even the local food scene would not be what it is without the Metro Pulse. Overall, it was loved by the people who live, work, and play here. But for reasons of profit, it was shut down without warning or even a ‘for sale’ sign.
The whole ordeal has added up to a very good lesson in where to place your trust. Our community weekly was a dear enterprise of the city. But those who loved it and benefited from it did not possess it. We did not control it. We did not own it.
Now I’m thinking of food. Food is dear. Food is precious. We take it into our bodies. it keeps us alive, it becomes our body and mind. Pretty important stuff! Who owns it? Us? The community? Or the same types of entities that closed the Metro Pulse? Yes, if you buy food in a grocery store it was shipped there by corporate trucking companies, processed and boxed in corporate factories, possibly fed in a corporate CAFO, or maybe grown on a struggling 2000 acre family farm, leveraged in debt, dependent on government subsidized insurance, and selling bulk ‘commodities’ on the marketplace.
This is nothing new. You’ve heard this all before. What is new to me is the insight. Our food supply is at the hands of the same system as the Metro Pulse was. There is no mission beyond the profit…beyond the stock market. If, for some reason, selling us food is not in the strategic interest of maximizing profit….well…it could go away as suddenly as the Metro Pulse was shutdown.
In the crash of 2008, a few box stores folded…like Staples. It got me wondering about Kroger. What if Kroger’s finance system got all clogged up? Things could close quickly. And what about all those financial agreements up the food chain from Kroger back to the farmer? Only money is the ‘glue’ that sticks it all together. If money goes away, or more realistically, gets jammed up real bad for awhile, well, there would be nothing sticking it together.
Once again, this is nothing new. And once again, I want to re-iterate that just witnessing the Metro Pulse’s closing — the devastating rapidness of it–has made me ‘get it’ at a deeper level. It ain’t just theoretical “what if..” scenarios! The reality of our relationships can manifest quickly. And that reality is that we have entrusted our food supply to a global money system beyond the control of individuals who care and know us.
So as we are connecting ourselves to food with other ‘glue’, besides global corporate money, lets make sure we can trust that new glue. Friendship. Human-scaled relationships. Mutual dependence. Lets keep it in the family and within a day’s wagon ride.
One Straw Revolution
We talked about Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka’s book One Straw Revolution at a Knox County Library’s ‘Books Sandwiched In’ series. I talked a bit about despair and how helpful it can be.
Here is the podcast: http://www.knoxlib.org/about/news-and-publications/podcasts/books-s…
The great drought of 2012
by Chad Hellwinckel
As I’m laying here recovering from a back injury, I’ve had time to look into how our nation’s crops are doing this year. Wow! 3/4 of the corn crop is under severe drought. Corn prices are up over 50% in the last month, soybeans are up almost 30%, and the USDA says they are still assessing the damage. No rain in sight yet and we’re probably looking at another record spike in prices. Here’s an article on it : Drought of 2012.
What happens to the crops in the Midwest impacts the world. All grain prices will be up. Meat, milk and egg prices will rise too, because of the animals dependence on these feed commodities. This year grain producing areas of the US have been hit hard. Last year it was the Mexican vegetables and southern US livestock. Since 2007, climate model predictions of increased weather variability are playing out in the real world. We can expect bumper harvests in between the crop failure years.
Farmers also have the extra burden of shouldering the other of the Twin Trends ~ input price increases. As fossil energy production has leveled out since 2005, prices have increased, affecting the prices paid for fertilizers, chemicals, machinery, and seeds (which take energy to make). Along side the Twin Trends of increasing weather variability and increasing energy costs, we will have the Twin Crises of 1) increasing food prices and 2) farmers going broke. Experts on climate and energy see no let-up in these trends.
People are asking,~ How can we keep food affordable (especially healthy food), and keep the business of farming profitable?
The cost of food is bound to increase from historic low costs, but ‘healthy’ food will increase less than ‘unhealthy’ food if we allow market forces to work. By ‘healthy food’ I mean food grown with a low use of fossil energy and grown close to market — which will have the leg up on its ‘unhealthy’ industrial competition. Since 2005, and the sudden escalation of the Twin Trends, the local food movement has been growing steadily. New young farmers are locating in and around our cities, direct marketing to customers through CSAs, farmer’s markets, and restaurants.
These new farmers are struggling, and there are still many logistical problems to solve as the local market grows. Fortunately, local food economies have lots of inefficiency in them. Yes, I’m saying that’s a good thing. It’s good because as energy prices go up, we can make local food more efficient as it grows in market size. For example, local slaughterhouses and crop aggregators are big unfilled niches that can make local healthy food competitive with ever increasing industrial food prices. The industrial system has no such slack in its production efficiency after 80 years of making strides to reduce costs. This study shows that even with the record high prices starting in 2008, higher input costs were shrinking conventional agriculture’s net profit.
There are market forces at play pushing food production to be more decentralized, less fossil fuel intensive, closer to market, and, yes, healthier. BUT there is a countering force resisting movement away from centralized high-input monocultures. We must make sure that the countering forces do not harm the natural course of adaptation that is already emerging.
Smart policy would do three things:
1)Prioritize the growth of local agriculture, which grows vegetables, fruits, nuts, and raises chickens, eggs, beef cattle, goats, and milk cows on land surrounding our urban cores. Smart policy would educate perspective farmers on the efficiencies of permaculture design, subsidize land purchases, make land available for lease, incentivize slaughterhouses, develop food aggregating HUBS, alter city and county codes to make areas more farm and garden friendly, make soil building materials available at the neighborhood level for home-production. All these will help keep food more available and affordable than if we rely strictly on the conventional industrial supply lines. The growth in local low-input agriculture also has the side effect of being healthy.
2) Do not subsidize conventional agriculture unconditionally. Income crises will occur. Instead of giving conventional agriculture a blank check, any subsidization should be tied to conversion of land to practices that make the farm more resilient given the Twin Trends. Subsidies should be tied to practices such as cover crop usage, intercropping, crop/animal integration, conversion to pastures, and increases in soil organic carbon. Research shows that these practices can out-yield conventional practices. Current subsidized crop insurance programs place no conditions on practices. Our current policies are guaranteeing a net return on outdated and inefficient practices.
Local ‘urban perimeter’ agriculture will not likely supply a complete diet to all, and the vast hinterlands of the midwest will have a role. In 100 years, grains and some meat will still be produced far from markets and transported. But if we want such farms to operate without large subsidies, we must transition these farms to operate under lower input use and more resilient to extreme weather variability. A large portion of the land will likely be in pastures instead of grains, producing meat with less inputs. Grains will likely be grown in cover crops and in rotation with pastures.
3) Establish a national grain reserve to assure food in times of extreme emergency. A properly designed grain reserve would not operate as a subsidy, but rather as a market stabilizer by buying grain when its cheap and selling it when its expensive. Farmers of all types and sizes will benefit from relatively stable prices.
These three steps will help assure that our food is more resilient to the Twin Trends. Food will cost more regardless, but these policies will keep the price rises to less than if we continue along the conventional lines.
If conventional practices are kept afloat unaltered, then food prices will be artificially cheap in many years, and very expensive (or unavailable) in years where the system fails. With artificially cheap market prices, the more resilient, more input-efficient, local, urban perimeter agriculture will not scale up as quickly. This will leave our nation vulnerable to periodic food scarcity. And, as a nation as a whole, paying more for our food.
It looks like this year, the majority of people will be paying more for their food in the coming year. Our family will not be. We’ve been buying more local food for a few years. We pay more, but with this drought, our monthly food bill will not be increasing. The narrowing price spread between industrial and local food is propelling more people with every price spike to switch to local.
When the next mega drought (or flood) occurs in say 5 years, will we be ready? Will we have our cities ringed in farms, running off urban waste streams, growing their diverse crops upon an ever increasing sponge of soil organic matter. The deep soils and foliage canopies shielding crops and pastures from the worst impacts of drought and flood alike. Will our meat, eggs, and milk be produced upon pastures, resilient to feed grain price spikes? Will we have a grain reserve in place, assuring people a basic level of calories in extreme emergencies? To push forward, policymakers must keep the long-term trends and a vision in mind, and not fall into the narrow sighted tweaking of farm bill programs.
Interesting Articles:
USDA info on the impacts of the drought
Federally Subsidized Crop Insurance
More on Crop Insurance
Prices Up, Farm income Down
Organic methods as or more productive than large scale monocultures
Small Farms are High Yielding
Commodity Prices
Evolving permaculture solutions: keep it simple!
by Chad Hellwinckel
It’s great to see that permaculture is taking root in institutions of higher learning throughout the world. Groups like Sustainable Learning make up a growing wave of university interest and involvement in permaculture. As declining energy sources become more evident and food emergencies become more commonplace, governments will be looking to universities to find BIG solutions. Along with the hope of BIG solutions comes BIG money. Permaculture may soon be looked upon as a potential big solution. So as we stand today on the threshold of increasing interest in permaculture, let us take a moment to discuss the potential pitfalls that come with the big money. You may think such warnings are a bit premature, but things can change quickly, and in the words of hockey star Wayne Gretzky – it’s always best to “play where the puck is going to be.” Specifically I’d like to communicate lessons I’ve learned from riding the most recent wave of societal hope in a BIGsolution– the emergence and likely failure of the biofuels boom.
I’ve been working in the biofuels boom of academia for the past 12 years. I’ve seen the blossoming of biofuels research go from one researcher across the hall, to including professors from every department on campus through the availability of millions of research dollars. The heart of the biofuels boom was the hope in cellulosic biofuels; of making gasoline out of grass—or ‘grassoline’. We were going to make a new crop, a new industry, and a new fuel, and we approached this endeavor like an Apollo mission. Specialists in grasses, machines, microbes, transportation systems, and economics all divided into designing their own part of the cellulosic biofuel system. As all these well-meaning scientists were working hard to figure out their small part of the whole system, nobody had a handle on how all these parts would fit together into a functioning whole. The agronomists bred high yielding grasses, the agricultural engineers designed machines to compact grass into dense shipping units, and microbiologists created enzymes to turn grass to sugar. My contribution was to estimate where the grass would be grown and at what cost. By necessity, we took data from other scientists on things like costs, yields, and time of microbe development. Because no part of the system actually existed, we had to get by on rough data. We all published papers and built careers. The media played it up, and politicians came around with great interest to talk about our endeavor in biofuels. Everything looked good, but then the first year’s ‘grassoline’ mandate went unmet. As research continued, the second year’s mandate went unmet. Now it looks like a third year’s mandate will not be met, and there’s an uneasy feeling in the air. Could it be that something has gone wrong?
I believe that the biofuels research community is discovering the hard way that when it actually comes to putting it all together, building an energy-agricultural-industrial system is not like building a rocket ship; you can’t just bolt, for example, a densifying technology between the grassy fields and the enzyme vats. Bolts might work well on rocket ships, but they don’t work well in energy-agricultural-industrial systems. Additionally, because the whole point of our endeavor is to create more energy than is used, the process of integrating the parts is vital to the energetic bottom line. The research community may now be discovering that these unwieldy systems cannot be quickly assembled. Yet as we look at alternatives, we see that similar systems have evolved. Our goal of creating a ‘grassoline’ production system may be more like evolving a forest than assembling a rocket ship. Ecologists now know that if we want to create, say, a Smokey Mountains ecosystem, it would not only require the bolting together of species we find in the woods or even a succession of non-extinct species, but likely a succession of species that have gone extinct through the millennia of the forest’s evolution. The creation of a forest, or a cellulosic ethanol system, may not be as simple as a assembling a model but rather more like a dialog; a back-and-forth of trying one thing, seeing how it does, and then reacting in the next step. But when we went bravely into the biofuels endeavor, we did not think of it in such an evolutionary manner. Now after 10 years of research, millions of dollars spent, plus the spent faith of policymakers, we have not delivered.
I tell this story as a warning to the rising number of academics involved with permaculture. Whether we call it permaculture, regenerative agriculture, agro-ecology, sustainability or some other name, I believe the day is quickly approaching where big money will turn its eyes upon us to deliver big solutions. When that day comes, we should not repeat the same mistakes as in the biofuels boom. The problems we propose fixing are big, and our solutions will span systems. We should not simply go about doing what academics and specialists are known for—going into their perspective corners and investigating, experimenting, engineering, and inventing. That would be rocket science, not evolutionary systems science. If we are to be successful, we should realize that we cannot build the solutions. We must evolve the solutions through the analogy of the dialog.
Who is the partner we dialog with? Where do we look to see if real change is taking hold? Where do we get the cues for what needs to be done next? It must be with the farmers and with the households who are using permaculture to meet and beat their bottom line. Truly, if you want to be on the forefront of innovating permaculture systems, the best strategy is to take a permaculture class, buy 20 acres, free up some time, and then try to engineer a living. I’m very serious about the above statement—the forefront of permaculture, which is a design system that I believe has the highest potential of seeing us through the energy descent era, should be on the farm and in the households of people that are constrained by the bottom line.
So what is academia’s role in the dialog? Our highest role as academics in the permaculture endeavor should be to:
Get out there and discover what the best innovators are doing.
Take the best models in terms of monetary, productive, energetic, and ecological success and let others know about them.
Communicate appropriate policies to policymakers that will benefit the innovators.
Train as many people as possible on the basic principles of permaculture and let them loose.
Simple, really! We should allow the innovations to bubble up from the people who practice permaculture, and then communicate these grassroots solutions to others. We should mostly limit our role to one of the communicator, thus assuring that we don’t become the experts. To be successful at evolving complex systems, we need to be clear that the experts are the practitioners, not the academics. If we approach our work with this humble belief at its heart, we can avoid constructing a new system but help in evolving a new system. As Bill Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, elegantly stated, “Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”
Agriculture after peak oil: The role of policy
by Chad Hellwinckel
Problem
Agriculture, like all other industries over the past century, has taken great advantage of the extraction and refining of plentiful, energy-dense, fossil fuels. Today, agriculture has evolved into a net energy user for the first time in 10,000 years, where, instead of being a means of converting free solar energy into metabolizable energy, it is now a means of transforming finite fossil energy into metabolizable energy. The system has allowed for the cheap production of plentiful food to feed a growing population, but as the total annual quantity of oil physically capable of being extracted from the earth begins to decline over the next several years, agriculture may find itself dependent upon a scarce and expensive resource. Due to the global economy’s inelastic demand for energy, relatively small drops in annual oil and gas output could induce rapid rises in agricultural production input prices. The question must be asked now, how will our agricultural system work at energy prices equivalent to $250 per barrel and higher? How will the system deal with sporadic scarcity? And, most importantly, how will agriculture transition into a system less dependent upon these declining energy sources?
Framing of Discussion
The implications of peak oil could be so profound that it will be helpful to bring in concepts from complex dynamic systems theory when describing what is occurring—and what must be done to move agriculture in a more sustainable direction. This post will frame the discussion in terms of agriculture being a complex adaptive system within a fitness landscape.
In evolutionary biology, the relative fitness of a species can be likened to a landscape with high peaks, representing the adapted abilities of the more fit species for that environment, and lower peaks, representing the adapted abilities of the less fit species. This is called the fitness landscape of a particular environment (figure 1). Analogously, agriculture, in general, can be viewed as a fitness landscape, with particular agricultural systems resting at the peaks of this landscape.
Over the past 80 years there has been a rapid evolution of modern agriculture to take advantage of cheap readily available inputs. This has resulted in industrial agriculture resting upon the highest peak in the fitness landscape. What complex systems theory teaches is that when the environment changes and the peaks adjust accordingly, individual species (or agricultural systems) cannot jump from one descending peak to another ascending. Species (or agricultural systems) become stuck at a sub-optimal solution only inching up their smaller peak.
As peak oil changes the landscape facing competing agricultural production systems, industrial agriculture may find itself stuck upon a sinking peak. This is a significant dynamic to understand when analyzing post-peak oil agriculture. The free market is often looked to for correcting market inefficiencies, yet when faced with a changing fitness landscape, the free market may deliver minute changes upon a sub-optimal peak. Additionally, looking to fine-tune industrial agriculture to respond to the changing landscape may also strand us upon a sub-optimal peak while leaving the emerging higher peaks untouched.
Figure 1. Example of a fitness landscape with optimal and suboptimal peaks. Individual systems can evolve and climb peaks, but as the landscape changes, the systems cannot ‘jump’ from one peak to another without going down in fitness first.
Transition in the Fitness Landscape
What complex adaptive systems also teach us is that when the environment changes, there will be new fitness peaks that have emerged and may be hereunto unexplored. As we enter the peak oil era we should be mindful of the full spectrum of possibilities.
As we look to the future, we can see that at some point on the long slide down from peak oil, agriculture will, once again, have to become a net energy source. The transition to a more ‘fit’ system does not come through the evolution of the old system, but by the rising of other systems that emerge to find themselves at the base of optimal peaks. Unfortunately, in complex evolving systems, we do not know what the ‘most fit’ systems will be.
In order to uncover the new landscape and find the emerging peaks, alternative agricultural systems must be encouraged to take root and grow. This does not have to be a completely blind endeavor. We do know what some of the qualities of a successful system (or systems) will look like in a post peak oil future. There are three criteria that can help identify successful agricultural systems:
1) The systems will be net energy sources instead of net energy users.
2) The systems will be highly productive per unit of area.
3) The systems will improve soils over their initial state.
The Role of Policy
High input agriculture will not disappear overnight, nor would we want it to. By definition, peak oil means we are roughly halfway through global deposits. Fossil fuels and high input agriculture will still have a place in coming decades at supplying enough metabolizable energy to sustain seven billion humans. Global agricultural policy must facilitate a stable environment for the new systems to evolve and propagate. Rising energy prices will eventually reward the low-input innovators over industrial agriculture, but too volatile of a marketplace can stifle change. Additionally, volatility could lead to more rapid consolidation of agriculture, which is contrary to the policy goal.
To foster the emerging systems, global agricultural policy should:
1) Provide extension of systems that meet the three criteria. Particularly extension work must be done in;
i. Developing countries where energy and food scarcity will first be felt.
ii. Urban areas, where local production of fruits, vegetables and meats close to market can be profitable.
2) Institute an international grain reserve to even price volatility and avoid a crisis situation of food scarcity.
3) Use bioenergy policies to accomplish two goals;
i. Provide some alternative to fossil fuels (albeit small).
ii. Use the excess agricultural demand to keep prices high enough to allow investments in alternative systems.
4) Allow regions to have the right to food sovereignty and set their own unique food policy strategies.
Milton Freedman once said, “In times of crisis, people pick up whatever ideas are handy”. As we descend from peak oil, we need to investigate and populate the landscape with many alternative low-energy high-productivity ‘ideas’ as we can. These can be the seeds out of which agriculture can evolve into a system that feeds the large global population, does not need energy subsidies and also improves the environment.
Newly Emerging Alternative Systems
Agriculture has long been thought of as a degrader of land from its natural conditions. At best, agriculture-done-right can reduce erosion and soil degradation, but it is part of conventional thinking that agriculture cannot improve soils over their natural undisturbed state while being highly productive.
This post will list only a few systems within a growing body of work that shows that agricultural production systems can, in fact, meet the three criteria of successful future systems. Unlike the Green Revolution, where one system was implemented on many unique ecosystems, the next revolution will likely consist of diverse agricultural systems uniquely adapted for individual ecosystems. Examples of proven emerging systems include;
a) Short rotation grazing systems first championed by Allan Savory,
b) The use of swales, rock lines and zai methods in the Sahel of Africa.
c) The traditional VAC system of Vietnam which integrates aquaculture, garden, livestock and forest agriculture within small plots.
d) The no-till rice-legume-rye system developed by Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan.
In addition to the many existing systems which can meet the three criteria, there is ongoing research into new systems that may radically change the face of agriculture. Examples include;
e) The perennial polyculture system being developed by Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.
f) The use of biochar in agricultural fields to simultaneously increase soil fertility and sequester carbon long term. This new endeavor has come out of recent investigation into terra preta soils of the Amazon basin which indicates that indigenous populations use of biochar allowed them to intensively farm fields for thousands of years while building soil health.
g) The development of a blight resistant American Chestnut and the designing of edible forests adapted to the eastern US.
Final Remarks
The occurrence of peak oil will be the most significant event in agriculture in the past 80 years. In describing its influence, one must go beyond a conventional description of cost increases or a discussion of novel industrial agricultural practices. A framework must be laid out that will enable people to grasp the scope of the problems we will soon be facing. With the framework of seeing agriculture as a fitness landscape, people may more easily understand the logic and importance of adopting the four policy points.
To borrow another term from complex adaptive systems theory, punctuated equilibrium states that species genetic makeup will be quite stable for long periods of time, but when change does occur, it happens quickly through a rapid branching of events. As one system begins to break down, there is vast potential for others to emerge. The evolution of new systems can occur quickly. It is our role to feed production methods that meet the three criteria and provide an environment that will not stifle their propagation.