Eric's PAEP Reflection

Sustainable Agriculture: Is the Past the Future of Farming?

               For thousands of years a form of agriculture has been practiced that differs from the normally accepted and practiced totalitarian agriculture. This agriculture, called sustainable agriculture, has been used in harmony with the environment to provide humans while conserving the environment. Before the transition to totalitarian agriculture, ten thousand years ago, humans would farm small plots of land in ways which were relatively friendly to the environment. When modern agriculture began to arise thousands of years ago, sustainable agriculture was discarded as rapid farming innovations resulting in higher yields were favored. Today, conventional agriculture has led to lower food prices for consumers resulting in an abundance of inexpensive food. Now, back to description of sustainable agriculture, why do I consider sustainable agriculture to be conservation of the environment rather than preservation of the environment? Let us examine what each of the two words means and then decide which describes sustainable agriculture the best. Preservation is to “keep something as it is” and conservation is “the greatest good for the greatest number under scientific management of what is being conserved” (Williams). Clearly sustainable agriculture is not as simple as maintaining the status quo. Sustainable agriculture still uses some aspects of totalitarian agriculture. For instance, farmers still have to provide water to their crops and look after the crops by intervening in the affairs of nature (ie: removing weeds, raising plants in greenhouses, etc).

Because those that practice sustainable agriculture use less machinery, do not use any pesticides, and limit the amount of fertilizers being used it means that they are taking the utilitarian approach with a scientific view of what is more harmful to the environment due to the use of ecological principles guiding the practice of sustainable agriculture. Instead of using sustainable agriculture In modern times, sustainable agriculture is still around, but in a much smaller capacity than it was during previous millennia. A relatively small, but slowly growing, amount of American farmers now practice sustainable agriculture. And this now leads us to a look at an example of sustainable agriculture. The Intervale Center and its group of partner farms have been practicing and promoting the use of sustainable agriculture for over twenty years. Before its transition to farming, the Intervale was used as a dump. Will Rapp, the founder of Gardener’s Supply Company, and other members of the community wanted to turn the Intervale into a place that could be used for gardening and farming. Ironically, Native Americans had used the Intervale for agriculture purposes long before this. Today the Intervale Center and its partner farms serve to strengthen communities through sustainable community food systems. Community food systems are designed to grow, process, distribute, and consume food in sustainable manners while also enhancing the health of the community through environmental, economic, social, or nutritional ways. The Intervale tries to fulfill these goals by enhancing the viability of farming, promoting the use of sustainable agriculture, and engaging communities in farming.

Farming by conventional means requires the use of large farm machinery and chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides. Sustainable agriculture on the other hand does not make much use of these technologies because they are harmful to the environment. Those practicing sustainable agriculture do sometimes need to use conventional technology in order to counteract the weather and other such factors. They raise plants in greenhouses during cold seasons and then open the greenhouses up when it gets warm enough for the plants to grow. Plants can’t survive well when a dry period is going on so sustainable farms still need to irrigate their crops. This irrigation gets done is sustainable and renewable ways such as harvesting rainwater and not using more water than required. Sustainable agriculture often uses other methods to raise crops in ways which prevent the ground from running out of nutrients. They use crop rotation in order to do this. One year a crop could be planted in some field. The next year the field could be unused or have an entirely different crop planted instead. The practice of crop rotation is not a new tactic; it has been used for a long time in human history. Given how land runs out of nutrients, past farming techniques that did not focus on farming the land to its maximum potential may hold the key to sustainability. The Intervale utilizes greenhouses and protective plant covering in order to raise plants during various seasons during which the plants could not normally grow. Once the climate is right for the plants, they are either taken outside and planted or, in some cases, are kept in the greenhouses but with the greenhouses opened up.

Agricultural policy, at least within the United States, has a very large focus on totalitarian agriculture. Provided that farmers meet certain fairly straightforward guidelines and regulations they are free to do whatever they desire with the farm land. The American farmer has a mission to produce enough food to feed the world. In order to fulfill this mission they must always farm the land at its capacity. Beyond certain quality control requirements, conventional farmers can farm next to rivers, water supplies, and animal habitats without much fear of repercussions from releasing and spreading pollution. Certain doctrines, such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act of granted subsidies to farmers in return for not farming all of their land, but these types of policies do not stop pollution since they merely make the farmers push the capacity of the land which they are farming on to higher levels (Chaney). Policies towards sustainable agriculture do not really occur on a national level. Instead states, counties, or cities are more likely to implement them on a wide scale. Organizations such as the Intervale impose sustainable regulations on their partner farms as well; these farms must fit in with the Intervale’s goals, beliefs, and mission in order to remain partners. There are also larger organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that certify certain foods as organic so long as they meet quality and farming method standards.

Those who practice sustainable agriculture usually try to break away from conventional agriculture for ethical reasoning such as doing their part in reducing pollution and farming waste. Sustainable agriculture acts as a counter to the current convention of totalitarian agriculture since it lessens farming pollution, particularly with regard to fertilizers being released. The release of fertilizers plays a large role in polluting water supplies and the habitats of animals. Non-sustainable agriculture creates point source pollution from the carbon emissions resulting from farm machinery and it also creates nonpoint source pollution as a result of farm runoff containing wastes such as fertilizers and pesticides. Sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, seeks to avoid these issues by utilizing more Earth friendly farming techniques. In most cases of sustainable agriculture, no pesticides or fertilizers are used. Farms practicing sustainable agriculture also often avoid using big, exhaust emitting farming machinery. Because sustainable agriculture does not use the techniques designed for the purpose of reducing farming expenses while still maintaining a large output of produce more human labor is required to grow fewer plants. As a result, food produced by sustainable agriculture ends up being more expensive than that produced via conventional agriculture. This raises the question of whether the practice of products grown in a sustainable manner can be considered as a worthwhile alternative for consumers than conventionally grown products and brings forth the debate whether any restrictions should be placed on those partaking in conventional agriculture to prevent or reduce environmental damages. As James Maroney described the adoption and continuation of conventional agriculture during his presentation, “we are adjusting the Earth to our agriculture, not adjusting our agriculture to the Earth” (Maroney). This is a very adequate description of the Taker lifestyle which promotes how “man was meant to rule the world” (Quinn 80-83). The Leaver ideology, however, fits much more in line with sustainable agriculture as it was with the Leavers that sustainable agriculture was first practiced. Conventional agriculture defies the peace keeping law because Takers “systematically destroy their competitors’ food to make room for their own” (Quinn 127), while sustainable agriculture follows it, at least to a certain extent. Ishmael describes the peace keeping law as “take what you need, and leave the rest along” (Quinn 127). The extent to which sustainable agriculture follows the peace keeping law is debatable since modern sustainable agriculture still uses certain Taker technologies, such as watering methods and greenhouses to alter the environment in which the plants live. In order for it to completely follow the peace keeping law, truely sustainable agriculture would have to place its success “in the hands of the gods” (Quinn 229) and risk some crops failing rather than still enforcing human control over the plants. Sustainable agriculture, without a doubt, follows the peace keeping law much more than totalitarian agriculture does.

Many of the decisions made in regard to making ethical agricultural decisions are shortsighted and express Taker ignorance and an unwillingness to lose control which has been gained over the years. This was another thing which James Maroney discussed. He mentioned how difficult it was for agricultural change to occur because the United States places such a high emphasis on conventional agriculture than it does on sustainable agriculture. Conventional agriculturalists are protected and are often exempted from laws that attempt to protect the environment. This is why instead of attacking the conventional agriculture dilemma directly Maroney instead focused on how conventional agriculture practices are polluting the water supplies. Another reason that I think we often run into issues when trying to fix the problems created by conventional agriculture is because the US government is too conflicted by opposing views to be able to make any decisions. A large portion of those required to enact any large national scale change (ie: Congress) do not know much of anything about the conventional agriculture issue and are focused on other issues instead. Next we must look at how the mission of the American farmer is to feed the world. When feeding the world, there cannot be any smaller scale agriculture that produces less because the farmer’s mission cannot be carried out. Perhaps the last key point related to the issues with tackling conventional agriculture and promoting sustainable agriculture in its place is Mother Culture whispering that more production and a surplus is good in every ones’ ears. Until these misconceptions are cleared it will not be possible for ethical decisions regarding the use of agriculture to be used.

               I found this project to be a good wrap up of the topics we covered in class this semester since it takes them all and ties them together. Overall the project went rather well, but I think perhaps the most complicated part was working in a group. It can be fairly difficult to get a decently sized group of four people to coordinate together due to differing schedules and things going on. We did a good deal of our communication in a Canvas conversation which worked out rather well considering that it was much cleaner than lots of emails would have been. One group member didn’t do as much as the others, but we still managed to get everything done on time. Another issue that we ran into was finding an organization to visit. We were originally going to do VPIRG, but they never answered us so we ended up going with the Intervale instead. In conclusion, I thought that this project tied in nicely with the class and was a good way of concluding and reflecting on what we covered this semester.

Works Cited:

Chaney, Allison. "Agricultural Adjustment Act." Princeton University. Princeton University, 5 Nov 2012. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Agricultural_Adjustment_Act.html>.

Maroney, James. Champlain College. Burlington, Vermont. 17 Oct 2013. Speech.

Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. 80-83, 127, 229. Print.

Williams, Rob. "Ethics and the Environment." Champlain College. Burlington, Vermont. 2013. Lecture.