On a hot June day in the Flowing Wells neighborhood of northeast Tucson, 45 ranchers, farmers, chefs, butchers and range ecologists met to talk about the future of meat production, processing and local distribution in Southern Arizona.  Most of the participants knew that meat prices and demand were at an all-time high in Tucson and North America as a whole, but they also some of the reasons for why that was true: drought had knocked back rangeland cattle numbers; the use of corn for subsidized ethanol production had made it scarce in feedlots; and most of the cattle produced in state is shipped off to be finished someplace else before being butchered, packaged and shipped back into the state at a relatively high cost.  But as Cochise County rancher Dennis Moroney told the group, they were gathered there to discuss more than the economic benefits of relocalizing the meat industry in Southern Arizona: “We are reinventing a way to bring good food to people in our community.” In short, the gathering was as much about values: the importance of sustaining rural livelihoods, human health and land health in the face of climate change as it was about how many pounds of meat from Southern Arizona could get direct-marketed into the Tucson economy.

Co-sponsored by Pima County’s Natural Resources Division, Arizona Land and Water Trust, the Pima County Food Alliance, and the University of Arizona Kellogg Program on Food and Water Security for the Borderlands, the workshop attracted talent from three states and five Arizona counties. It was keynoted by Courtney White, author of Revolution on the Range and Quivira Coalition Founder.  He reminded us that while ranchers in the Southwest have faced climate uncertainty for three centuries, much of the region remains in the “bull’s eye” of long-term drought, and many ranchers are keeping their cattle at stocking rates that are less than half of what they were fifteen years ago. And yet, hite contends that smart ranchers scattered across the region are adapting to climate change through changing the breed s of cattle to smaller, hardier ones, resting some pastures longer than they had in the past, and carefully managing water resources. Even if they have cut back on the numbers of heads they keep, they are making more money by direct-marketing their cattle with eco-labels such as grassfed, animal welfare-certified, or heritage breed-registered. In White’s forthcomingg book, Carbon Country, he expresses hope that these “carbon ranchers” can serve as models for the rest of us in reducing our carbon “foodprints.”

Next came Jim McManus and Tina Bartsch of Walking J Ranch, who took us through the many challenges they face and innovations they have improvised while establishing a  “polyculture farm/ranch” near Arivaca Junction.  In moving detail, they told of the exhausting number of variables which affect their livelihood and family life while trying to bring beef, pork, chicken and vegetable to market each week at four southern Arizona locations. With just 30 irrigated acres among their 72 acres of land along Sopori Wash,  McManus and Bartsch affirmed their commitment to generating healthy soil, a diversity of crops and healthy food to help build a resilient local food system. A the same time, they were brutally honest about the challenges they face: “economies of scale associated with a small land base;, limited availability of working capital; the seasonality of available forage for their  meat supply to meet growing demand;  scarce water resources; sourcing non-GMO feed from mills in the region; distance to slaughter facilities and farmers markets; and lack of easily-accessible cold storage.”

After the Walking J Ranch presentation, range ecologist Mitch McClaran reminded us that over the last fifteen years, local rangelands (in the Santa Ritas) have suffered 10 of the driest years back-to-back since 1940.

Ben Watson:

Gary Nabhan: For starters, we had over 2,200 counties declared national drought disaster areas in 2012, four times more than in 2011. Farmers applied for $13 billion dollars of federal insurance due to crop failures and reduced yields, more than twice the running average per year. Increasingly unprecedented climatic disruption is affecting farmers, ranchers, foragers and fishers more than ever before, and yet big agriculture’s lobbyists like the American Farm Bureau Federation deny that we’re entering a “new normal.” Sadly, that disadvantages its own rank and file members by not developing programs that prevent crop failure, as if crop insurance for more failed farms will be sufficient.

Ben Watson: Can farmers and food producers really do anything significant to combat or even lessen the effects of climate change?

Gary Nabhan: Absolutely. More than any other human activity that both contributes to and is negatively impacted by climate change, farming has tremendous capacity to both reduce its carbon footprint and adapt to changing conditions. Farmers can do so by using a wider range of crop and livestock diversity to buffer themselves from uncertainty, and by adapting and ramping up strategies for reducing the impacts of heat and drought that traditional desert food producers have employed for centuries, if not millennia.

Ben Watson: In writing this book, you’ve drawn upon the traditional knowledge of native and immigrant farmers from around the world — people who have learned how to deal with climate uncertainty. How did you find them?

Gary Nabhan: Since 1978 or so, I have been fortunate enough to occasionally travel on work to nearly every other desert in the world, where I tried to pay keen attention to what indigenous and immigrant farmers were doing to deal with drought, heat, salinization and scarcity of fresh water for irrigation.  When I saw what looked to be an oasis-like mirage in the desert, I sought it out and found remarkably resilient, intelligent farmers there.  Thirty-five years later, I’m humbled by how much they have tried to teach me that perhaps all of us now need to know.

Ben Watson: Is this book primarily for farmers or gardeners? In other words, at what scale are these strategies applicable?

Gary Nabhan: I’d hate to see these strategies relegated only to a backyard garden in some desert region.  I’d like to see farmers and gardeners everywhere—not just in historically arid regions—take stock of these remarkably diverse adaptations to climate uncertainty. They may need to scale them up and adapt them to their own peculiar conditions, but as far as I can see, there will be no silver bullet like a climate-friendly GMO that is going to save us. We need to diversify our strategies and scales for agricultural production if we are to regain some modicum of food security.

Ben Watson:  In your opinion, what is driving climate change more: on-farm carbon “foodprints” or the carbon foodprint of our global supply and distribution system?

Gary Nabhan: The latter—on-farming fossil fuel accounts for less than one-fifth of all energy expenditure in our entire food system, but it’s an expenditure of energy that we can dramatically reduce through creative solutions that will improve rather than harm farmer’s bottom line. And consumers at large should help farmers transition to more energy- and water-efficient practices, as well as dealing with similar problems in the ways they store, process and consume food at home.

Ben Watson: Do you have cause for either hope or despair as we pass beyond the carbon level of 400 parts per million in Earth’s atmosphere?

Gary Nabhan: As the saying goes, I’m an intellectual pessimist but a glandular optimist. Every time I get my hands dirty outside and try to solve the problems in my own orchard and garden, I find hope lurking in the emerging greenery. If we simply sit on our butts all day in an office and wring our hands, not much will get done. So read my book quickly, then compost it, and with what you’ve learned, plant something fresh in it!

Nabhan, an ethnobotanist, cofounder of Native Seeds/SEARCH, and prolific author, draws on his longtime relationships with the land and people of the Southwest U.S., together with wisdom from farmers and gardeners in Egypt, Mexico, and other dry places, to suggest solutions for growing food and developing agricultural resiliency as climate change affects wider swaths of the planet. He discusses using hedge fences (he calls them “fredges”) to minimize flood damage; choosing ancient and traditional methods for water management; soil building using local materials; terracing for fertility and erosion control; creating polycultures with perennials and drought-hardy plants; and attracting and supporting native pollinators. This information, which includes detailed instructions and lists of plants and pollinators, will undoubtedly be useful to farmers and gardeners facing more volatile weather patterns. Their spirits may lift as well with the book’s somber but hopeful poetic tone, exemplified by Moroccan Sufi mystic and farmer Aziz Bousfiha, who is working to transform deserts into living oases: “It’s not just activism I am talking about… I am talking about something larger, deeper: participating in the creation—for that is the… expression of our love.” (June 20)

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

BOULDER, Colo. — “Welcome, pig lovers, and welcome, earthworms!” Woody Tasch bellowed from the stage of the Boulder Theater, where 650 food entrepreneurs and investors had wedged themselves for the opening day of the fourth Slow Money National Gathering.

Mr. Tasch whipped the crowd into a frenzy on Monday morning — shouts of “It’s crazy!” and the random boo and hiss ricocheted through the audience — as he discussed the moral failures of unsustainable corporate farming and financiers struggling to align their urge to buy low and sell high with socially conscious investing.

As venture capitalists increasingly bet on food start-ups, Slow Money, a nonprofit that catalyzes the flow of capital to small and local food enterprises, supports what Mr. Tasch called the heroic grunts: the food producers and their fiduciary counterparts, or “food-ish-iaries,” committed to healing and investing in a broken system, either through manpower or money.

“We’re planting the seeds of nurture capital,” he said, an industry, he acknowledged, “that does not quite exist yet.”

Mr. Tasch, the chairman emeritus of the Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists and foundations, established Slow Money on the heels of his 2008 book “Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered.” Inspired in part by the slow food movement led by the Italian Carlo Petrini, Mr. Tasch envisioned his own movement as an antidote to big agriculture.

Joan Dye Gussow, the eat-locally-think-globally matriarch and a speaker at the gathering, said, “Like me, Woody is someone who took the red pill a long time ago, and it has affected his life.”

Onstage at the theater, which was emblazoned with images of produce, pigs and grinning farmers, were such environmental gurus as Wes Jackson of the Land Institute, a research organization in Salina, Kan.; Mary Berry, the daughter of the writer Wendell Berry and founder of the Berry Center in New Castle, Ky.; Winona LaDuke, executive director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota; and investors like John Fullerton, founder and president of Capital Institute in Greenwich, Conn., which focuses on sustainable resources.

… click here to finish reading the article on the New York Times

At the Slow Money National Gathering, there was a lot of talk about sustainable food systems, local food sheds, healthy soil and healthy people.

There was also a lot of talk about how challenging it is to attain these ideal food systems. Small farmers often run into trouble finding financing. The question is, when traditional financing doesn’t offer support, where do small, local farmers go? How can these farmers grow their businesses and support their families when they only receive six to fifteen cents on the dollar for their products? The drive, passion and aspiration are there, but in so many instances, the money is not.

Enter Gary Nabhan, an author, professor and pioneer in food systems. Dressed in a suit jacket, white button-up shirt, and a cowboy hat, Nabhan argued that the nutritional cliff is the real fiscal cliff, citing that $1.3 trillion are spent every year on band-aid treatments for diabetes, which affects 25.8 million people in the United States.

He spoke of the necessity of structural diversity for food financing so that we can bring fresh, healthy, local, sustainable foods to communities throughout the country. Nabhan gave an example of an organization that he works with – Borderlands Habitat Restoration Initiative. The organization is focusing on food chain restoration, soil fertility and biodiversity restoration in one of the poorest counties along the Mexico – U.S. border. This area is considered a food desert, where people have little or no access to fresh, healthy foods.

Borderlands Habitat Restoration is an L3C (a low profit limited liability company), which is a hybrid organization, somewhere in between non- and for-profit. The goal of an L3C is to acquire a mix of funding from various sources, starting with investments from foundations called Program Related Investments (PRIs). In Borderlands Habitat Restoration’s case, they receive financing for a $2.5 million land deal from non-profit land conservation trusts and foundations, local and angel investors, and government. After completing the deal, the organization will repay loans through co-locating nine green micro-enterprises while creating fifty new jobs. Gary Nabhan is not claiming that L3C’s are the answer, but that they are one way to help diversify the structure of food enterprises and financing.

There are many innovative finance instruments available today. For example, the type of food enterprise that is producing new jobs, producing and providing healthy foods in underserved communities is a prime candidate for social impact bonds (SIBs). SIBs are funded by private investors, generally foundations, who want to invest in a non-profit or for-profit social venture. Over time, the venture is evaluated on how much, if any, impact it has. Investors are then paid back by the government depending on how much impact has been generated. This could work for an organization such as Borderland Restoration that is trying to create jobs, reduce obesity and diabetes, and revitalizing communities. If successful, these initiatives would ultimately save the government and taxpayers money in healthcare costs, unemployment and welfare. Other alternative food financing options could be through community development finance institutions (CDFIs), crowdfunding, community supported lending, the Slow Money lending program, the Whole Foods Local Producer Loan Program or small ag-focused non-profit lending programs like CA FarmLink in Santa Cruz.

The need for diversity in food financing was echoed by many of the speakers, including Tom Philpott, Food and Agriculture Correspondent for Mother Jones. He spoke of a local food movement that is completely underfunded and has huge gaps in infrastructure that are holding back expansion. When farmers can’t get traditional funding, they need to seek out alternative sources. However, most of the time, they either don’t have access to such alternatives, or don’t know where to go. So, if we want our local food movement to grow and expand across the nation, it’s up to all of us to create the opportunities for that to happen. Check out Slow Money’s website for ways that you can get involved in creating a healthier food system.

“Gary Paul Nabhan offers a necessary guide to the ways of plants, and to managing water wisely in an increasingly unpredictable climate. Past civilizations could have used a book like this. And if we ourselves don’t want to become a distant memory, we would do well to heed the hard-won lessons of desert farmers from around the world, and learn the practical earth skills needed to create a permaculture oasis of our own.”

Michael Phillips, author of The Holistic Orchard and The Apple Grower

“Drylands are home to 40 percent of the world’s people: a figure sure to rise in the coming decades as our world grows more parched. That is why Gary Nabhan’s latest book is indispensable.  Everyone who grows food — make that, everyone who eats food — should be grateful he wrote it. An homage to old wisdom and to the latter-day soil magicians who are Nabhan’s living muses, it is a rich herbarium of delicious, hardy sustenance and a manual for our future.”

Alan Weisman, author, The World Without Us and Countdown

“In a world where climate change is the new normal, Gary Nabhan offers a blueprint for food production. Using desert agriculture as a backdrop, Nabhan is the ideal guide for understanding and addressing the challenges of rising temperatures, depleting water resources, and ever-shifting conditions. It is a cautionary book of hope, full of dry-farming wisdom, to-do lists, and Gary Nabhan’s enjoyable combination of insight and humor.”

Dan Imhoff, author of Food Fight, CAFO, and Farming with the Wild

“In Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land Gary Paul Nabhan has crafted a cogent treatise blending his own considerable knowledge and experience with the traditional ecological wisdom of indigenous desert farmers, who have been thriving in the face of climate uncertainty for many generations. The hard-won lessons and innovations described in this book are applicable for farmers cultivating in all changing climates, and inspirational for all people who depend on their survival and success.  A must-have arrow in the quiver for all pragmatic Thrivalists!”

Brock Dolman, director, WATER Institute and Permaculture Design Program, Occidental Arts & Ecology Center

“We face an unprecedented future. The scale and speed of the changes bearing down on us as a consequence of climate uncertainty has no analog in history. Fortunately, we have guides like Gary Paul Nabhan to lead us through the crazy labyrinth in which we find ourselves. By looking to age-old practices and taking lessons from nature, Dr. Nabhan builds a compelling case for a type of resilience that matters whether you are a food producer or eater – which is everyone!”

Courtney White, founder and creative director, Quivira Coalition

“All of Gary Nabhan’s books carry us on deep, enchanting journeys to the hearts of people, plants, and cultures across the world. Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land offers the rich stories and cultural insights we’ve come to expect, but now, when we badly need it, Gary also tells us explicitly how to use the dryland wisdom he’s assembled over a lifetime. Heaped with practical principles, techniques, plant lists, parables, and more, his new book offers important tools for preserving our food and water security on a warmer, stormier planet. I’m inspired and heartened by this timely and important offering from a true desert sage.”

Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

“If the 20th century strove to insulate us from the harsh realities of nature (whilst exacerbating its extremes), Gary Nabhan’s latest book introduces us to the 21st century’s rude reminders that change is here, uncertainty commonplace. With little room for the hand-wringers, Nabhan provides everyone else, from novice gardener to deep ecologist, important food for thought and the practical know-how to address our modern problems with ancient desert wisdom. I couldn’t put it down.”

Richard McCarthy, executive director, Slow Food USA

“Gary Nabhan’s books never fail to inspire and inform me. This book is no exception. After just one read through I’ve dog-eared, highlighted, and noted countless gems, facts, and stories to which I will return again and again. The pattern of the book makes this easy. Each section begins with a Warm-Up problem, followed by a Parable of people or natural systems addressing the problem. Principles and Premises distilled from the problem and parable, along with Planning and Practice tips then help me work cooperatively with the life around me to formulate solutions unique to my site’s conditions and changing climate. Best of all, I feel I’m part of an incredibly diverse, caring community as I do so, thanks to Gary sharing so many engaging examples of different people, cultures, and ecosystems doing likewise. Read this book!”

Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond

]]> http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/2098/feed 0 http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/2094 http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/2094#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:16:33 +0000 Gary http://garynabhan.com/i/?p=2094 By: Gary Nabhan

Our mouths, our hearts, our bellies and brains
have been ruminating for centuries
over the same few simple questions:

Just what exactly is it that we want to have cross our lips,
to roll off our tongues, down our throats,
to fill our nostrils with hardly described fragrances,
to slide to a brief halt within our bellies,
to mix with our own gastric juices
to be transformed into something new
by the myriad microbes cohabitating in our guts,
to migrate across our stomach linings
to surge into our bloodstreams
and to be carried along with insulin
for one last wild ride before being lodged
in the cells of our very own bodies?

My friends and neighbors, I ask you
what do we want to be made of?
What do we claim as our tastes?
And what on earth do we want to taste like
when we in our own turn are eaten?

With climatic uncertainty now “the new normal,” many farmers, gardeners, and orchardists in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt how they grow food in the face of climate change. The solutions may be at our back door.

In Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land, Nabhan, one of the world’s experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands, draws from the knowledge of traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America to offer time-tried strategies, including:

“Emulating and refining these adaptations may help us secure food in the face of climate change,” writes Nabhan.

A certain type of agricultural history was made in 2011 when more than 500 food-producing counties in the continental United States were declared parts of disaster areas because they suffered weather-related crop failures. The searing heat waves and dry conditions suffered across seven-tenths of the United States during the summer of 2012 proved even more devastating: 2,228 counties were designated as federal disaster areas, where crops and livestock were either severely affected or lost to drought.

This practical book is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams showing how to implement desert-adapted practices in your own backyard, orchard, or farm to mitigate the impact of these rapid changes. It also includes colorful “parables from the field” that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward.

This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century, and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West, Great Plains, and Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.

By: Gary Paul Nabhan
Download PDF

Abstract

Folklore regarding (biological) coyotes and (the mythic) Old Man Coyote the Trickster is rich in both hunter-gatherer and farmer-herder societies in Western North America, and apparently not restricted to language group, socioeconomic status, or subsistence strategy. To date, there has yet to be a systematic comparison of hunter-gatherer versus farmer uses of ‘Coyote’ as a modifier in the secondary lexemes used to name plants and invertebrates, or in associated oral narratives. While these folk taxa may be called “coyote’s biota” for shorthand, it is necessary to discern whether they all share some common diagnostic features or characteristic values in the cultures which name them. I propose that the values embedded in any particular culture’s view of coyote’s biota can to some extent be inferred from the rich body of narratives in which other animals and plants have been associated with one of three entities: a) the biological coyote (Canis latrans); b) the mythic Coyote, the Trickster found commonly in the stories of farming cultures, or c) Coyote the Tricked, found more commonly in the stories of hunter-gatherer cultures. This initial comparison of Comcáac (Seri) versus O’odham (Northern Piman) names, morality plays, and narratives suggest that O’odham farmers have traditionally viewed the do- main of Coyote’s plants as those which have been tainted, tricked or corrupted by the lazy, or inattentive behavior of their (Coyote-like) stewards, whereas the Comcáac use of Coyote as a marker in secondary lexemes for miniaturized or other peculiar lifeforms indicate that he has been “tricked” into thinking these lifeforms are as beautiful or useful as others.

Introduction

 The science of ethnoecology (Berkes 1999) does not merely document the species engaged in ecological relationships among cultures, plants, animals and microbes; it also includes narratives which elucidate cultural values and perceptions—symbolic, moral or otherwise—about those relationships (Nabhan 2000). This insight was first brought home to me by my mentor Amadeo M. Rea while we were collaboratively documenting Northern Piman ethnobiological knowledge in the 1970s. Our simultaneous, sometimes co-managed fieldwork resulted in his classic ethnobotany of the Gila River Pima, At the Desert’s Green Edge (Rea 1997), as well as my still-unpublished dissertation (which he advised) and its more readable complement, The Desert Smells Like Rain (Nabhan 1982).

For instance, agricultural societies may “over-classify” certain domesticated plants and animals that they intensively manage. They may name many varieties or ethno-taxa that are economically important to them even though these taxa may be below the level of biological species recognized by Western-trained biosystematists. At the same time, both industrialized and wild-foraging societies may “under-classify” these same domesticated species. Finally, some hunter-gatherer societies overclassify mythically and economically-important organisms like mesquite or sea turtles (Nabhan 2003) at the same time they show less interest in domesticated animals and plants. This insight begs the question that is the subject of this inquiry: Are the values embedded in associating a particular plant with Old Man Coyote in a hunting and gathering culture different than those in a farming culture?

The responses to this question suggest that this arena remains contested. Berlin (1992) in particular has proposed that there are structural similarities among the folk taxonomies of all agricultural peoples, similarities that do not necessarily extend to the folk taxonomies of hunter-gatherers. There remains considerable debate over the universal patterns Berlin has devised to discern hunter-gatherer from agricultural folk taxonomies (Nabhan 2003). Nevertheless, it is clear that the plants or animals essential to the major energy flows coursing through a particular cultural community tend to be overclassified, whether they be wild or domesticated. The more intensively certain biota are managed or utilized as food, the greater the probability is that their cultural stewards notice and mark morphological, ecological, and behavioral distinctions along them. Indigenous agriculturalist’s taxonomies encode these distinctions in names, narratives and “scripts” that guide the management and utilization of these organisms (Al- corn 1989).

Picture taken by: Gary Nabhan

One might wonder whether any 21st century preoccupation with agrarian values, agrarian ecology and agrarian ideals comes as too little, too late.  Less than two percent of the North American public lives in rural areas outside towns, cities and suburbs, and less than half of the world’s population now lives outside cities. But the New Agrarianism which is emerging globally is not restricted to the rural domain, nor is it necessarily a romantic desire to re-enact social behaviors and morays associated with rural populaces in by-gone eras. Instead, a New Agrarianism is emerging within urban as well as rural communities, and may indeed be the set of values and operating principles which can obliterate the rural-urban divide which in many ways characterized and crippled  North American and European cultures during the second half of the Twentieth century. But what exactly does agrarian mean?  Why are the concepts associated with it being used once more as rallying cries, decades after most global citizens have become disenfranchised from the land? Finally, why has “agrarian ecology” become a useful focus for anthropologists, biologists, demographers, geographers, historian and land tenure lawyers that has been applied to solving problems in at least a dozen countries on four continents?

If we return to its entomological roots, agri- can be traced as far back as the proto-Indo-European noun *h₂éǵros, which has cognates not only in Old English, but in Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit as well. As used over the centuries in Europe and England, this term refers to a constellation of activities, values and premises regarding human relationships to cultivated soil or to the land in general. As a prefix in Latin, and then Old, Middle and Modern English, ager- and agri- relates to soil, fields, farms, land, terrain, landscape, territory, and country. In the related term agriculture, based on the Latin ager + colere, we see the relationship between humans and the land circumscribed by the activities and values of cultivating, tilling, stewarding, tending and safeguarding.Agrarian ecology, as articulated by agricultural anthropologist Robert McC. Netting in 1974, is the study of both the social and legal frameworks with guide tenure to and the human uses of cultural “working” landscapes, and the interactions between human communities and their agricultural and ecological resources in the landscapes

Agrarianism, of late, has come to embody a nuanced set of social, political and ecological values which see rural activities, behaviors and ethics as functioning on a higher order than urban or suburban-derived comparables. However, for well over a century, the phrase agrarian reform has had broader recognition in Latin America, Europe and Asia as a movement to keep peasant societies from becoming increasingly landless and in greater servitude to capitalistic institutions by enacting the redistribution of land and other wealth. Agrarian ecologists such as Netting and Ostrum have paid particular attention to how peasant societies resist such extractive institutions and organize themselves to protect, sustain and efficiently use the natural resource base and traditional knowledge upon which their members’ livelihoods depend.

In a very real sense, agrarian values place heightened importance on the daily human commitment to and privilege daily involvement in rural lifeways as God-given responsibilities. Accordingly, Thomas Jefferson is often attributed as the best early articulator of American agrarian values, while Henry Wise Wood, Louis Bromfield, Ralph Borsodi, Robert Swann, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Helen Nearing and Will Allen are granted status as the most elegant contemporary North American defenders of agrarian values in the face of agricultural industrialization and ex-urban growth. However, agrarian values are not exclusively Euro-American or even Christian, for Marxist materialists around the world have come to embrace spome of the same principles and strategies for valuing the work done by peasant farmers. As eloquent as Jefferson and Berry European voices such as Jean Giono and John Berger, Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukouoka and Austrailian permaculturist Bill Mollison.

Because Twentieth Century agrarian proponents such as Canadian Henry Wise Wood, Japanese Masanobu Fukuoka and American Wendell Berryhave often been diagnosed by urban critics as being afflicted with a nostalgia-emitting dysfunction that has symptoms of being “anti-urban,” “luddite,” or “retro,”  some proponents such as Eric Freyfogle and David Walbert call their philosophies  Neo-Agrarian. On his populist website, www.newagrarian.com, Walbert offers a brilliant articulation of the how new agrarianism can be distinguished from other forms of agrarianism that may be flawed by romanticism or nostalgia:

“New Agrarianism, most importantly, is not about preserving a way of life or recreating the past; it is about building the future. [Its] principles draw heavily on past expressions of agrarian thought, from ancient Greece to twentieth-century America, but they are not bound by them. Agrarians have few models but the past, and the past is valuable for the lessons it teaches, but each of us must live in the present and plan for the future.”

“New Agrarianism is about creating a new kind of rural community, one that is genuinely rural but that is fully a part of twenty-first century American society. The old ways don’t work any longer, as mid-size farmers and residents of dying towns have been slowly recognizing for decades. Large-scale commercial farms apply an industrial model to agriculture that is destructive to rural culture and community.”

“Sustainable agriculture is a beginning, but New Agrarianism is about more than agriculture. It is about a search for sustainable community, sustainable culture, sustainable life. A New Agrarian may not be a “family farmer” nor a full-time farmer, or even a farmer at all. Agriculture is not the only possible expression of agrarian values; many forms of craft or community building could be thought of as agrarian.”

“No philosophy can succeed if it applies only to a small minority within a society, and New Agrarianism is about deep, broad, long-term change. We live in a society that is majority urban, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. New Agrarianism, creatively interpreted, could apply equally well to life in the city — to any life, in fact, that values connections with nature, with place, and with community.”

And yet, David Walbert, David Orr, Will Allen and others concur that “an agrarian believes in, if not the primacy, then at least the uniqueness of agriculture among human endeavors.” Activists David Hanson and Eric Marty, co-authors of Breaking Ground: Building an Urban Farm Revival, believes that agrarian values and practices should and can be expressed in urban, suburban and ex-urban settings as well as in rural landscapes. Youth groups such as FarmFolk/CityFolk, the National Young Farmer’s Coalition and Greenhorns are moving such agenda forward as a social movement that now crosses international boundaries. In their view, a foodscape is no longer (and has actually never been) a place beyond the city’s limits, and the quest for just, equitable and sustainable food systems and environmentally healthy foodsheds must engage both rural and urban dwellers of all races, classes and languages with equal strength. The fact that over 2500 acres of Metro Detroit’s 6500 acres of formerly built-upon and abandoned urban lots are once again producing food is testament to the survival of agrarian values in an urban setting.

Finally, it is worth noting that agrarian and neo-agrarian advocates link themselves to an unbroken chain of prophetic voices which have critiqued excessively urban, inward-looking and narcissisitic values of those who have become indifferent to the plight of farmers, fishers, ranchers, and foragers and to the land itself. In theologian Ellen Davis’s finely-researched book, Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agraroan Reading of the Bible, it becomes historically clear that agrarian voices have risen up as prophets, dissidents and agents of change whenever urban hierarchical or industrial societies have become too excessive in their consumption, waste and hegemony over others. Davis deftly links the messages and methods of the Old Testament Prophets with modern-day agrarian voices from many countries.

On the academic or scholarly level, it is surprising that biologically-trained ecologists are among the least engaged in the documentation and application of agrarian ecology (sensu Netting) compared to geographers, anthropologists, agro-ecologists and rural sociologists. There are, of course, exceptions among broad-based natural scientists such as Mexican Victor Toledo, Chilean Miguel Altieri, and Indian Vandana Shiva, who have trained hundreds of students to apply a broader perspective to ecological issues in food producing landscapes. Anyone who still believes that Agrarianism is something of the past should spend a day with “greenhorns,” some of them who are now associated with Via Campesina, Slow Food International, or various young farmers’ coalitions and permaculture guilds. Be assured that you will be both tired and fulfilled at the end of one long but fruitful day with them.

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Gary Paul Nabhan is an Ecumenical Franciscan brother and orchard-keeper of Spanish heirloom fruit and nut varieties on five acres at his home in Patagonia, Arizona. He also serves as the Endowed Chair for Borderlands Food and Water Security of the University of Arizona’s Southwest Center, which recently co-hosted the first-ever Border Food Summit. He is the author of one book of poems (Creatures of Habitat, Tangram Press) and twenty-five books of creative non-fiction, largely about sustainable food and agriculture. His newest book of essays, Desert Terroir, links natural history, agricultural history and food history in the Southwest borderlands.  It is available from the University of Texas Press. See www.garynabhan.com for more of his writing.