Now…
just what is this “post industrial agriculture” nonsense?
I don’t
even have a voice in my mind that uttered that previous question. Sometimes
writing these Tales of Idyllia I hear an English voice, a nasally voice, etc.,
but I hear none in my own mind at the moment. Nonetheless, in this
introduction, I hope to relay what “post industrial agriculture” may someday
come to be… if we should be so lucky… (Oh, and I don’t “believe” in luck, by
the way.)
Today’s
news relayed how a two mile wide tornado ripped through Oklahoma. We, that is,
if you are a member of the United States collective, oops, society, and care
for the other members of the country aforementioned, have been “afflicted” by
MANY “super-sized” storms of late. Whether it was last year with Super Storm
Sandy or way back when with Hurricane Katrina or the two mile wide tornado
mentioned above, the weather extremes have indeed graduated to a level that is
quite… EXTREME. And this has nothing to do with the focus of this entry! Well…
maybe a little… Okay, actually it has a lot to do with this entry, but one must
put on one’s wide vision glasses to understand what is actually involved. The
scope of those glasses must be fine tuned to clearly see our current malaise,
as well as the history, in all its aspects, on how…”we”… arrived in our current
situation.
How to
relay this will not be easy. That is my first thought, as I think about how
needlessly fast paced our “society” currently is, which requires “fast food” to
be available at any given moment on any given street corner. But here I feel
that I am preaching. Enough said. The point is, it has not always been this
way. So I will continue in a vein that will require some thought… that actually
reveals, to a degree, that it has always been this way… Egads but I am writing
in riddles!
To
start, I agree with the devil. More succinctly, I agree with Mephistopheles…
Even more succinctly, I agree with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s depiction of
Mephistopheles in his classic work of literature, Faust, (as translated by
Peter Salm in my Bantam book edition of 1988, but I digress.) In reference to
humans, Mephistopheles states, “He would have had an easier time of it had
you…” (I guess I should have mentioned that Mephistopheles was talking to the
Lord…) “not let him glimpse celestial light; he calls it reason and he only
uses it to be more bestial than the beasts.” I love reading historical analysis’
on the human character that reveals the ultimate stupidity the species
undertakes… endlessly. Unfortunately, the current stupidity of the species has
led ALL species on the planet to the brink... (And by the way, Faust Part I was
written is 1808.)
I read
recently that the first supermarket was started in 1946. This was not the
beginning of industrialized agriculture, but the first nail in the coffin for
“real” food. (And that coffin has not been buried… yet.) But just what am I
saying with all this? Human beastiality… well, for the most part, it reached
its zenith, at least for the food chain, in industrialized agriculture. To be
sure, I quoted from Goethe above, merely to relay that the warning signs of the
climate/agricultural/societal catastrophe before us has been well documented in
the past. Over two hundred years ago, Goethe relayed the imbecilic patterns of
human activity, which is easily matched to our current day. But I have
digressed too greatly! Nonetheless, that circle continues…
Once
the entirety of the nation currently known as the United States of America had
removed/destroyed/etc. the surface of
their portion of North America of every foe, even the buffalo, which were not
really foe…
Anyway,
the government looked upon the terrain, the vast, mighty and incredibly diverse
terrain of the United States of America… and decided that certain regions were
the ideal area to grow certain crops. Idaho would be perfect for potatoes, for
example… And I have to stop here. Idaho is NOT perfect for potatoes. The season
is too short for those tubers to grow to full size and maintain their flavor,
aka. Health value. It was a simplistic analysis that at the time, late 19th/early
20th century, was deemed quite scientific.
And time
passed. Less and less analysis was spent on how crops can thrive in almost any
environment. No, more and more thought was put on how to grow as much as
possible with as little effort as possible. Instead of farmer’s raising cattle,
growing their own grain for those cattle and also growing tomatoes, etc… It led
to a situation that became…industrialized.
A
couple of hundred years ago, one did not have to concern oneself over the term
“Made in China”. The tools of any trade were created, manufactured, etc. in
each town by a craftsman of learned skill. The tools were quality, and many
still exist as “antiques” that are most assuredly still useable to this day.
When I was younger, we used to see “Made in Japan”, then it switched to “Made
in Taiwan”, and now it is “Made in China”. Also, when I was young, there was a
memorable clamor to “buy American”, which faded once the 80s… well, I’ll stop
there… ugh.
The
same sort of situation arose around agriculture. Fresh, local vegetables became
a rarity, and corn was soon grown ubiquitously. The healthy aspects of food
were soon forgotten or ignored in favor of uniform shape and color and ship-ability.
And then the corn… Processing. Eating real food became a thing of the past and
the new ingredients made through chemical processes that turned corn, and soy
beans into a myriad of ingredients that are often hard to pronounce. And no
thought was given to the health of the product. And that is industrial
agriculture. It “manufactures” food on an incredibly large scale with the only
true power behind its activities being profit… money.
As a
result, chicken farms went from having coops the might fit a hundred birds to
houses that fit tens of thousands. The same chickens never see the light of day
and are fed a myriad of antibiotics and other “preventative medicines” due to
the high disease rate in such unnatural “manufacturing” buildings. And
industrialized “manufacturing” of food products treat all parts of the
agricultural situation in a similar manner, whether the “product” is beef,
pork, eggs, high fructose corn syrup or carrageenan.
Today,
after about a hundred years of industrial agriculture, (to be sure back in 1913
it did not resemble the mighty machine it now is, but that was about the time
the machine was first constructed), we are left with a food system that none of
our ancestors from a hundred years ago and before would even remotely
recognize. Cardboard boxes of “food”, frozen packages of “food”, and vegetables
with no flavor that resist rot due to genetic modification. But that is where
we are. And now that scientific studies are more and more able to show that the
side effects of most of the chemically and genetically engineered foods are at
the least detrimental, and some downright poisonous… there is new hope.
Yes,
that is right. After all of the idiotic manipulation of our “food” into
poisons, there is new hope. I am happy to announce that industrial agriculture
has reached its end… I hope. Okay, let me pause, industrial agriculture is
incredibly powerful in its ability to lobby lawmakers into creating laws
essentially requiring us citizens to intake their poisons whether we want to or
not. These are no sleeping giants… but they are extremely short sighted. Over
the past decade plus, I have witnessed an awareness growing over the truth
about the nefarious food stuffs “manufactured” through industrial agriculture
that has been staggering. The amount of people seeking out my fresh, local
organic produce grows substantially every year. You see, while Big Agriculture,
that is, industrial agriculture can sway the legislature, it cannot control the
individual’s, that is, the informed individual’s choice for where they buy
their food.
So
here, we are. Should the citizens continue to become informed and demand
healthy food again, that demand will be met. It is refreshing to me to hear
from so many people who have become aware of how their food from industrial
agriculture is not really “food”. And this leads to the next level of food
production in the history of our species’ development (or demise)… Post
Industrial Agriculture.
This is
merely an introduction and more concrete examples of what will be involved in
Post Industrial Agriculture (PIA, for short) will be included in future
entries. But as an example, when I first started into my organic farming
situation, my intention was to avoid all chemicals, to, as it were, return to
how food was raised prior to herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers.
Many people think, whether they are in the organic movement or not, that that
is the ideal. And that is by no means the “ideal”. It is through science that
the path to PIA has been made, but not the science of chemicals and genetic
modification. That science is “naïve” science and is yet another example of how
reason has led us to be more bestial than the beasts. ONLY our species has
developed the power to poison ourselves through our own ingenuity, or truly lack
there of, but I digress. The “science” that has been used to date has been only
simplistic and short sighted in nature. The “science” of the future, of Post
Industrial Agriculture, will be complex, and surely make some people’s head hurt.
The point is, not backwards, but forward.
Anyway,
this is the start. To the horizon, a horizon of Post Industrial Agriculture…
