Natural cycle of growth and sustainability

[Carl Russell]

As we consider sustainable farming practices, we need to consider the natural processes of growth. In a natural process energy is accumulated by the organisms as they consume other organisms, nutrients, and solar energy. Even at a molecular level, the chemical bond that holds particles together represents stored energy. There is in this system room for a diversity of participants to add to their own growth, not by robbing energy from the system, but by being a natural participant.
Modern culture has learned that there is energy stored in natural resources and we have devised ways to mine that energy by breaking apart, and interfering in the relationships between natural components of those systems. In this way we are not participants.
As we look to the future needs for energy to fuel our motive power for farming and logging, animal-power is our most sustainable choice, because our the natural fit into energy relationships based on accumulation of energy. Using internal combustion, even Bio-fuel, only contributes to the habit of using energy as it escapes from the destruction of the bonds of natural energy relationships.

[goodcompanion]

Carl,

Who was it who said the only way forward is backward? Your thoughts are well-put. However the culture’s appetite for an easy answer that entails little change of lifestyle is such that we’re loath to consider it. Biofuel is an easy answer. Or electric cars. Or something. Just let it be such that everything can keep going more or less as it has been going with no disruptive or inconvenient changes.

As an advocate for animal-powered farming in my area (my own difficulties getting off the ground notwithstanding) I have noted that some folks understand why we do what we do on our farm in a cerebral kind of way, but can’t imagine how animal power could every have any application in their own lives. Whereas the same people could imagine driving an ethanol-powered car, or heating their home with a corncob-burning furnace.

I find myself very worried by ideas that are entertained or even embraced with regard to biofuel by people literate in what peak oil will mean in the coming years. For instance, the idea that we will all be cropping oilseeds or switchgrass to create a liquid combustible. Such people, seems to me, are seldom farmers themselves and have no notion of how massive region-wide mining of carbon even through a relatively benign crop such as switchgrass will affect our croplands. There are also no animals in these systems, just plants that we can cut and burn.

Looking around in vermont today I still see many, many tracts of good land that are neglected and growing up to brush. So part of me thinks, hey self, why be so down on the biofuel crowd? What the hell, why shouldn’t someone crop something for fuel there? Answer, because it won’t be just there. If it’ll prop up our habit, the whole region will be planted in switchgrass until the soil is totally destroyed, for the second time in history.

We have a real problem with that balance thing.

[Carl Russell]

Eric,
Great to see your up early!! I say we were running down a hallway so enthused by our success we thought all of our choices were fantastic, we grabbed a door handle for the next choice, opened, entered and slammed it shut behind us. And here we are in a closet. No lights. No way out. We keep looking for something in here to solve the problem, to turn it into the next long hallway. We’re so convinced of our rightness that we refuse to go back. The handle is the only thing in here that we know will allow us to move in any direction, but it seems to be backward. Humility is a huge pill to swallow. Even harder is ignorance (in the good naive sense). We have really big cultural emotional issues to face before we all can embrace the changes. The facts are that we are who we were. We always will be. We are where we are now because of the successes of those who came BEFORE, not those to come, which is what seems to be the expectation now. Someone brighter than us will come to solve the whole mess. Well I have no problem stepping back to find those more archaic lifestyle choices, because I can clearly see that they represent the way forward. It is a true sign of adolescence to reject the guidance of your elders. Our past is full of wisdom if we can mature enough to embrace it. Living within the existing processes of energy flow, not only is a good choice for sustainable farming, it is one of the natural laws that we knew about instinctively, and now we’re going to learn about it cerebrally.
Keep up the good work on your place. I have gotten a lot of work done over the years with my animals on my small farm, but not without being creative about how to make ends meet. Sometimes the tractor is the way, sometimes it’s substitute teaching, but we can get nowhere with the animals if we don’t keep working at it. I have found my profit in places where money doesn’t count, and the processes of using the animals are fantastic for providing those rewards. An old ox-teamster from Nova Scotia told me that there is a difference between making a living, and making a livelihood. Of all the examples that we are choosing to set as we attempt this turn-around, I see this one to be one of the more important ones. Money, as important as it is, is our most powerful artificial representation of energy. It is our modern objective to turn time, food, fiber, soil into money. Robbing from the energy stream to spend it on things that require energy systems that further erode our resources. We absolutely need more food like Good Companion Bread, and I hope that these endeavors that we are involved with now will help the efforts people like yourself. Chore time!! Carl

[goodcompanion]

As regards our cultural predicament, I am reminded of a line in an Incredible String Band (one of those psychedelic/folk bands from the 60s) song, sung from the point of view of the minotaur in the labyrinth:

“I’m the original discriminating buffalo man
and I’ll do what’s wrong for as long as I can.”

[Carl Russell]

There are many ways to look any term. Sustainability is very much that way. To me, sustainable practices are different than the sustainability of a particular farming enterprise. Obviously, if certain practices reduce the effectiveness of an enterprise then the choice to use that practice could be seen as unsustainable, regardless of how “sustainable” the practice truly is. With so many things there is an ideal that we may never achieve, but that ideal is still the consolidation of the philosophy that drives us.

[CRTreeDude]

I think something that has been lost is the American Dream. It used to be that people wanted a modest home with a white picket fence. Now that has morphed into a 5,000 square foot mansionette with 3 cars.

What people don’t realize is that traps you into a certain way of working. Why is it the Amish can do just fine with animal power? Two words – no debt. And you might add to that, contentment with what they have.

Sustainable practices also include a sustainable standard of living. It is unrealistic for those of us who were fortunate enough to be born in the USA to assume we can forever live at a standard of live several times higher than the rest of the world.

[Anonymous]

@Carl Russell 19 wrote:

Someone brighter than us will come to solve the whole mess. Well I have no problem stepping back to find those more archaic lifestyle choices, because I can clearly see that they represent the way forward….Our past is full of wisdom if we can mature enough to embrace it….I have gotten a lot of work done over the years with my animals on my small farm, but not without being creative about how to make ends meet. Sometimes the tractor is the way, sometimes it’s substitute teaching, but we can get nowhere with the animals if we don’t keep working at it. I have found my profit in places where money doesn’t count, and the processes of using the animals are fantastic for providing those rewards. An old ox-teamster from Nova Scotia told me that there is a difference between making a living, and making a livelihood….It is our modern objective to turn time, food, fiber, soil into money. Robbing from the energy stream to spend it on things that require energy systems that further erode our resources.

Whoa, that’s deep! Much more philosohical than I expected from a forum on draft animals. I agree it is sad that we now expect someone else to deal with the mess we are creating in some distant future. Since it won’t happen in our lifetime it isn’t worth worrying about.

Past wisdom is what I hope to embrace in the not too distant future. And since I will be pensioned profit won’t be a factor. Rather it is more about the quality of life that we are seeking. 25 years ago, when I first started in the feds I picked up a part-time gig at a local horse farm. It was a tax write-off for some rich guy who liked to play with race horses. All I did was muck stalls, brush down a couple of boarder horses, and help bring the baled hay in. It surprised me how much I enjoyed it and how it took me back to times that didn’t seem so great originally but seem to have grown on me through the fog of nostalgia. I’ve spent 30 years making a livelihood, now it’s time to make a living.

@Carl Russell 162 wrote:

Obviously, if certain practices reduce the effectiveness of an enterprise then the choice to use that practice could be seen as unsustainable, regardless of how “sustainable” the practice truly is. With so many things there is an ideal that we may never achieve, but that ideal is still the consolidation of the philosophy that drives us.

Fortunately for me, this farm won’t be an enterprise. It’s meant to be therapeutic. There was a boarder at those stables that never got ridden. Never could figure out why the owner didn’t just sell him. They said he was too mean to be ridden, just plain vicious. I’d like to say I proved them wrong but I never dared try it. I’ll tell you one thing though, that horse surely did love to be brushed. And I could spend an hour just brushing him down and talking to him about my job. I think it was good therapy for both of us. That slower pace and more intimate relationship is why I am looking at horses in the first place.

@CRTreeDude 168 wrote:

I think something that has been lost is the American Dream….Sustainable practices also include a sustainable standard of living. It is unrealistic for those of us who were fortunate enough to be born in the USA to assume we can forever live at a standard of live several times higher than the rest of the world.

Madison Avenue, television, and the media are largely to blame for that. And the really said part of it is that for every 1 American who finally gets smart and starts to curtail his spendthrift ways there are at least 10 Chinese and/or Indians trying to emulate his old consumeristic lifestyle with total disregard for the very consequences that caused him to change his lifestyle.

[Carl Russell]

This week, as it was pouring rain and quite soggy on the land, I decided to attend a conference on Sustainable Agriculture at the Vermont Law School, entitled Food, Fuel, & the Future of Farming. As you might imagine there were many well-informed panelists speaking about global and national trends and challenges, experts in economics, policy, agricultural/social activism,and law. There were a few farmers (and loggers) in the audience, but in minority.

Because CAFO’s and industrial Ag control so much of our food, this is where most people focus their attention, making statements like “Animal husbandry no longer exists in this country”, “The production of livestock is extremely detrimental to our global environment”. However there were some very clear minds like an economist who is brave enough to see the shifting of costs that goes on in huge industrial ag so that society at large has to pick up the tab, and he presented excellent arguments to show how biological systems can not provide “economy of scale” required from the huge capital investments made in infrastructure.

I was glad to have sat through the two days. It was really good for me to hear how the high-brow see this situation from desk and paper. It also made me feel really good about what is happening in the community that I know.

When we as a culture, centralize our food system to attain some theoretical level of efficiency, that efficiency has to come from the human systems that are represented by financial capital, technology, and infrastructure. The centralization has driven the growth of volume production and wholesale marketing, which has necessitated the investment in infrastructure.

Because land-use has a magical feature of producing resources from natural processes, we have been depending in a lot of ways on that natural capital as one of the sources of surplus, or profit, to cover the cost, and that has led to so much degradation of ecosystems world-wide.

By operating under this front loaded, capital intensive, technologically burdensome system we (as a culture) have lost site of the importance of the biological system that is literally squeezed in the middle.

By developing relational markets for farm fresh food like raw milk, on-farm slaughtered meat, local grains, CSA veggies, etc. farmers can have much more control over their markets. With that kind control there is more room for diversification and low volume production.

But this is not enough without a reduction in consumption. Relational marketing significantly reduces distribution costs, or at least it lets the consumer absorb it directly. But there is still a large cultural acceptance of the heavy use of energy that characterizes so much of our food production system. By tying up energy and resources in equipment and infrastructure, we create an economic expectation from the Earth to be able to cover that cost.

However, when we practice land-uses that restore the biological processes, and employ low energy or live power (draft animals, hand labor), or non-energy (gravity fed water) systems that reduce the investment and consumption, while increasing the return through relational marketing of a diversity of products, we can have lower expectations from our natural capital, and we can leave that capital alone just like money in the bank only better, and gain a truly sustainable food system.

So when I told people at this conference that I know people who actually are doing this, that they are everywhere, even though they don’t hit the radar screen that they are looking at, many were very intrigued. Who knows if they can actually break down their preconceptions.

But it really doesn’t matter to me, because I was re-energized by my recognition of all the incredible work that is being done at the ground level by real people with real vision and understanding, and I’m proud to be a part of that community.

Thank you all, Carl

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 2287 wrote:

By developing relational markets for farm fresh food like raw milk, on-farm slaughtered meat, local grains, CSA veggies, etc. farmers can have much more control over their markets. With that kind control there is more room for diversification and low volume production.

But this is not enough without a reduction in consumption. Relational marketing significantly reduces distribution costs, or at least it lets the consumer absorb it directly. But there is still a large cultural acceptance of the heavy use of energy that characterizes so much of our food production system. By tying up energy and resources in equipment and infrastructure, we create an economic expectation from the Earth to be able to cover that cost.

Thanks for being my voice.

On the note of low volume production, I have to say that that’s right on the mark. It’s impressed me during the learning curve of the first year and a half of running the bakery just how little we need to do to make ends meet so long as we can eliminate waste. It is astonishing how much waste of all kinds is inherent in most bakery operations, in driving, packaging, but most significantly, loaves left unsold go in the dumpster, or perhaps if someone really goes the extra mile, to the food shelf. 33% is not unusual.

I couldn’t bring myself to pitch so much bread having worked so hard to bring it to that point. So we’re using non-conventional sales techniques instead, and it’s working great so far. Far better to bake 60 loaves and sell them all than 90 and throw 30 away.

Sustainably managed natural systems just don’t yield all that much. But if we all farmed or logged to meet the basic needs of people around us rather than to make a living on the sloped playing field of globalized business, maybe they wouldn’t have to.

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