BOOK PROFILES: A SMALL FARM FUTURE BY CHRIS SMAJE; LANDRACE GARDENING BY JOSEPH LOFTHOUSE

A SMALL FARM FUTURE:

MAKING THE CASE FOR A SOCIETY BUILT AROUND LOCAL ECONOMIES, SELF-PROVISIONING, AGRICULTURAL DIVERSITY AND A SHARED EARTH

BY CHRIS SMAJE Chelsea Green Publishing, 2020

This is not just a book about farms and farming. It is a well written, thorough examination of the current paradigm for food production, resource use, transportation and global interdependency. And it is an attempt to provide a positive vision of a possible future society. The subtitle makes clear the general outlines of what farmer/social scientist Chris Smaje has in mind.

Smaje argues that organizing society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, sanest and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilization— and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyzes complex forces that make societal change inevitable, explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can successfully confront these changes, and explores pathways for delivering this vision. Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers a rigorous original analysis of entrenched problems and hidden opportunities. Smaje explores what challenges might lie in store if we move toward a world where small-scale, labor-intensive, productive and environmentally friendly farms are commonplace, supplying many of our essential needs as locally as possible. He explains how local farms could intertwine to build up regional communities that could better withstand the coming contraction from the unsustainable system in which we are living. LANDRACE GARDENING: FOOD SECURITY THROUGH BIODIVERSITY AND PROMISCUOUS POLLINATION

BY JOSEPH LOFTHOUSE Part of Landrace Gardening (2 books)

2021, HTTP://LOFTHOUSE.COM Digital version distributed by Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance:

HTTPS://ROCKYMOUNTAINSEEDS.ORG/ Hard copies: HTTPS://WWW.AMAZON.COM

Joseph Lofthouse, landrace seed-keeper, focuses on something that all gardeners should know: The versatility and diversity of landrace plants are the way to sustainability. This book is as much a gardening manual as it is a reframing of our relationship with each other and the world. Landrace Gardening gives us a roadmap to the kind of food security we need. Everything in the book is adaptable for any gardener. No high-level knowledge of botany or chemistry is required. Lofthouse’s books show, in simple terms, how to breed resilience into our favorite food plants, including for short growing seasons. He explains the steps for becoming your own seed breeder and highlights the easiest crops with which to begin. Lofthouse has taught landrace gardening at conferences hosted by the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, National Heirloom Expo, Organic Seed Alliance, Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NY) and Utah Farm & Food Conference.

OP-ED: Daniel W. Schreck

AMERICAN RECOVERY PLAN

The problems besetting people and the environment on the North American continent stem from both poor management and a lack of available deployable labor. At C.H.E. Farms in Chimayó, we are already enacting elements of the Green New Deal. As a newly emerging hemp farm (thanks to the legalization bill signed by the governor, under the watchful gaze of our lobbyist, the late, great, Jerry Fuentes), we are utilizing the acequia, or community-owned irrigation ditch, to water our medicinal plants with a community-based, family and friends’ production cooperative.

The key to the cooperative is that while farm labor gets paid minimum wage for the duration of the growth cycle, at harvest, the workers share a proportional cut of the wholesale price when the product is sold to a retailer, like a dispensary. As an owner/investor of the farm, my cut is the same as theirs, but in my case, it goes to return on investment first. Folks from the cooperative movement, such as the Association of Southern Cooperatives, might agree that breaking the minimum wage threshold is vitally important for establishing labor and capital on an equal footing.

How do we parlay this perspective into a National Recovery Plan (or a national cleanup day that lasts 10 years)? It starts, of course, at the local level. In northern New Mexico, fire suppression policy preventing Native peoples from engaging in traditional fire cleansing practices led to a massive fuel-wood buildup. Fire suppression policy in California stopped Native people from utilizing small fires to cleanse forests as early as the 1850s.

Global warming is also a labor problem. Why not deploy half-a-million people nationwide to clean the forests, restore watersheds, mine landfills and ecologically reclaim old mining and drilling sites? We could also marshal an army of goats to eat the explosive weeds.

Meanwhile, every small farmer will be performing small, restorative acts at the community level. There again, it’s forest, water, seeds, plants, fields and animals, or “Milpa ecology,” more recently called “agroecology,” which is only achievable with a hands-on approach.

Daniel W. Schreck lives and works on his family farm in Chimayó, N.M.