But, as one of my fellow volunteers pointed out to me, fads often lead to something bigger. If you think about it, most cultural/literature/artistic revolutions probably began as fads. The Renaissance. Big fad.
In any case, I find myself using the word "sustainable" regularly these days. It happens to feature very prominently into the tours that I have to give. Several aspects of the farm are aimed towards sustainability. We have an organic garden, a gigantic compost mountain, composting toilets, low-flow shower heads, etc. We also rotationally graze our sheep and goats, which allows our pastures to regenerate and keeps our soil healthy. Several of our Global Village sites demonstrate sustainable technology, like a methane converter that collects methane from composted manure.
As I give tours and educate kids more about sustainability, my attitude towards it is changing. (I'm still wary of preaching about it, and definitely don't preach when I give tours.) It was my boss Todd who changed my mind, when he described sustainability as "taking care of the present to protect the future". I think that's what he said. For those of us with some privilege and luxury, the future is not of great concern. We will have access to food, we will have good health (or medicine at the least), and we don't care that much about what we leave our children. Dammit!
But, as I'm starting to understand, if you're a subsistence farmer in the highlands of Guatemala, your worldview is a little different. The future is precarious. You barely have access to food as it is. Health is limited by malnourishment, and determined almost solely by what you eat (whereas I hardly ever link my health to the food I eat). You have a little land, the rest being taken up by agri-businesses like Dole and Chiquita, and your land will be divided among your children. If you want to promise them a future, you need to leave them good land. When you live like this, it is unbelievably important that you sustain. That you take care of your resources. Because when they run out, you run out of options.
Does it make sense to use organic fertilizer (and not chemical fertilizers) if you're a subsistence farmer? Yes. Does it make sense to buy into sustainable practices (that are culturally appropriate)? Yes. Is it a fad? No. Not to them.
I am not playing a pity angle here. I don't pity the Guatemalan subsistence farmer. Actually, one of my favorite parts of giving tours in the Global Village is leading the kids to the realization that living in a bamboo hut in Thailand is not necessarily miserable, or that the point of the Global Village is not to take a poverty tour. Different cultures, not worse-off cultures.
Anyway, I don't pity the subsistence farmer, but I do recognize that help is needed. And that there are solutions. Like sustainability. To shrug it off because it's a fad is bordering on arrogant. You might say that I'm thinking in a different person's worldview. You might say it's part of my job. So it is.
Excellent thoughts! Thanks for sharing them.
ReplyDeleteHey brother. Of all the fad buzzwords "sustainability" is, i think, the most pragmatic. It just makes sense that you would do things in a manner that would still work generations down the line. That being said, I'm not going to quit my job to farm in the yard and raise animals and can food and plant and harvest and plant and harvest and milk and plant and weeds and ugh just so my family practices "sustainability." Moderation . . . I reccommend that you read these publications: "Biomimicry" which is about adjusting modern practices to biological models and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver about the year she took off and did a lot of farming etc. and her family only ate food that came from their land. Just suggestions . . . i like books. You're a good boy!
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that you were ever not for sustainability. What were your qualms with it, other than it being a fad?
ReplyDeleteAlso, what do you think about GMOs, particularly from gene splicing? I am not quite sure what I think of them anymore. I am very skeptical but I do think that they help people out. especially the poor independent farmers that are trying to compete with the larger chiquita and dole type industrial farms. On the one hand, you have the small farmers wanting to create higher yields using GMOs which will increase their quality of life for the time being; and on the other they will not be able to sustain that growth forever. Which do you think is more important?