Happy New Year. Now that the holidays are over, my thoughts have turned from rest and celebration to the work that lies before us this year.
I’m speaking this week from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is home to the Collective Heritage Institute. Few people are familiar with the Collective Heritage Institute, but we are all in their debt. The institute is dedicated to the preservation of indigenous agricultural diversity. Now that’s a fifteen-dollar phrase that describes a healthy relationship between people and the land. It means organic farming, but it also means Native American farming techniques and plant varieties that sustained a continent for centuries.
One of the hazards of industrial farming is its reliance on monoculture. One kind of corn, one kind of cow. We replace mixed forests with hectare upon hectare of southern pine or eucalyptus.
In the Soviet Union, agricultural production was centralized by the state. All food passed through Moscow. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the food distribution system. Generations had grown up and grown old without knowing how to farm, or even garden. The lack of that most basic of human folklore still reaches as hunger pangs from the stomachs of citizens of the former Soviet state.
In the west, we have centralized out food production not through the state, but through corporations – Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. NAFTA and GATT will only accelerate this process.
What happens when – not if, but when – a blight strikes our primary variety of corn, of cow, of tree? What happens in the case of another Great Depression, when our corporate food distribution system breaks down?
The Collective Heritage Institute acts as a bank, a seed bank and a knowledge bank and the day is easy to foresee when we will all need to draw upon its capital.
As the environmental community looks ahead to its work in 1997, the Collective Heritage Institute is not just a good idea, but a good example. The poet William Carlos Williams once wrote, “No ideas but in things.” That is as good a new year’s resolution as I can imagine for the environmental community in 1997. The Collective Heritage Institute puts ideas into things. It helps keep real tools in the hands of real farmers and connects them to real markets and restaurants to put real food into real bellies.
In 1997, I’d like to see the environmental community put more ideas into action. I’d like to see more renewable energy technology come off the drawing boards and go into the houses. Let’s get the Rocky Mountain Institute together with Habitat for Humanity.
Let’s save a few family farms through subscription agriculture programs and let’s make sure that food reaches a cross-section of society – not just the wealthy and not just the enlightened. Let’s help communities, large and small, replace chlorinated water treatment with ozonated water treatment.
Let’s ask environmental organizations to empty their filing cabinets of good ideas and let’s ask grantmaking organizations for the funds to make them real.
No Ideas But In Things
Happy New Year. Now that the holidays are over, my thoughts have turned from rest and celebration to the work that lies before us this year.
I’m speaking this week from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is home to the Collective Heritage Institute. Few people are familiar with the Collective Heritage Institute, but we are all in their debt. The institute is dedicated to the preservation of indigenous agricultural diversity. Now that’s a fifteen-dollar phrase that describes a healthy relationship between people and the land. It means organic farming, but it also means Native American farming techniques and plant varieties that sustained a continent for centuries.
One of the hazards of industrial farming is its reliance on monoculture. One kind of corn, one kind of cow. We replace mixed forests with hectare upon hectare of southern pine or eucalyptus.
In the Soviet Union, agricultural production was centralized by the state. All food passed through Moscow. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the food distribution system. Generations had grown up and grown old without knowing how to farm, or even garden. The lack of that most basic of human folklore still reaches as hunger pangs from the stomachs of citizens of the former Soviet state.
In the west, we have centralized out food production not through the state, but through corporations – Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. NAFTA and GATT will only accelerate this process.
What happens when – not if, but when – a blight strikes our primary variety of corn, of cow, of tree? What happens in the case of another Great Depression, when our corporate food distribution system breaks down?
The Collective Heritage Institute acts as a bank, a seed bank and a knowledge bank and the day is easy to foresee when we will all need to draw upon its capital.
As the environmental community looks ahead to its work in 1997, the Collective Heritage Institute is not just a good idea, but a good example. The poet William Carlos Williams once wrote, “No ideas but in things.” That is as good a new year’s resolution as I can imagine for the environmental community in 1997. The Collective Heritage Institute puts ideas into things. It helps keep real tools in the hands of real farmers and connects them to real markets and restaurants to put real food into real bellies.
In 1997, I’d like to see the environmental community put more ideas into action. I’d like to see more renewable energy technology come off the drawing boards and go into the houses. Let’s get the Rocky Mountain Institute together with Habitat for Humanity.
Let’s save a few family farms through subscription agriculture programs and let’s make sure that food reaches a cross-section of society – not just the wealthy and not just the enlightened. Let’s help communities, large and small, replace chlorinated water treatment with ozonated water treatment.
Let’s ask environmental organizations to empty their filing cabinets of good ideas and let’s ask grantmaking organizations for the funds to make them real.
No ideas but in things. Happy New Year.