"Farmers who do not steward [lack the sense of the future] required to build a republican nation."--Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth
From this opening quotation, Holthaus's From the Farm to the Table was filled with words that promise to ignite my agriculture policy passion: farmers, stewardship, republican nation. Land-grant institutions. County extension educators. Farmers' markets. Experiment in Rural Cooperation. Minnesota state legislature. History. Values. Politics. Ag economists. Hunger and food security. Sustainable community.
The "fundamentals" of agriculture are complex, interdependent, and spiritual. The first two chapters unfold farming from ancient cultures' "soil, air, sunlight, and water" myths to the twentieth century. The stories in the second chapter come from Goodhue County, where I spent my middle and high school years. They're the same old stories: biodiversity falls and productivity rises with technological advance. The quest for more, better, newer everything leads to big farms vulnerable to accusations of secular materialism. The same old stories.
Holthaus, Gary. From the Farm to the Table: What All Americans Need to Know About Agriculture. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment