Live Earth Farm Nwsltr 2007

Greetings from Farmer Tom
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mule team pulling a plow It is Spring of 2015 and I am preparing a 2-acre piece of land that has been resting for three years. The land has been in pasture, grazing chickens, cows, pigs, and then planted to a cereal grain. With its fertility restored, the soil is now ready to be cultivated for growing annual vegetables again. I am slicing through the rich, dark, musky-smelling soil, and a flock of robins follows close behind feasting on earthworms and insects as the walking plow pulled by a team of mules gently turns the soil. I enjoy the view of my rapeseed crop, which is in full bloom. I grow rapeseed for oil in order to belong to the local veggie-oil cooperative, which now presses enough to meet the demand of each member to run their farm machinery.

Last year we couldn't afford to use our delivery truck because the price of biodiesel was over $12 a gallon, and our allotment of rapeseed oil was only sufficient to run the farm machinery.
dead truck and empty diesel tank Thanks to an arrangement with our neighbor, we are still able to haul our produce to Santa Cruz using his electric van, which we were able to charge using our 100 kilowatt array of solar panels. This year I am hoping to increase our production of rapeseed oil to have enough to transport our produce with our converted diesel truck. In Santa Cruz, CSA members have formed a small Food Distribution Co-op of electric-powered, lightweight trucks to haul our produce over the hill. LEF solar array Each drop off location is a miniature food center, where members receive a set share of food items, all grown within 50-100 miles. The food is supplied by a large network of over 200 small-scale organic family farmers. It has really worked well for us to join this network, which started as result of consumers and local farmers teaming up in order to provide an adequate food supply to the Bay Area. More than 100,000 members form this network. As the mules turn to do another pass down the field, I am amazed how much things have changed in the last 8 years.

Debbie, our tireless CSA coordinator, and her husband Ken, who currently spearheads “World Without Oil,” an on-line alternate reality game [www.worldwithoutoil.org], got me thinking about how a shortage of fuel would affect the farm. At first thought it is pretty frightening to imagine such a scenario; it is one of survival. Instead of causing fear, however, the value of this exercise (of playing the game, if you will – Ken’s tagline is “play it before you live it!”), is that it taps into what I consider our most important resource: our creative adaptability. My fictional description of how farming in 2015 might look may just be a nice dream right now, but it may reflect a new reality we need to embrace. Although organic farming does not depend on fertilizers and pesticides derived from oil, fossil fuels and its many derivatives still play a big role in the current operation of our farm. I am not someone who shies away from a challenge, especially one which ultimately aims to create a more sustainable farming environment, however replacing fossil fuels is one challenge that affects the very foundation our civilization is built upon. The energy we harness from fossil fuels has allowed us to enjoy an immensely rich life; so much so, that we are now reaching the limits of nature's tolerance and capacity. With signs of global warming, water shortages, dwindling marine resources, and food and oil shortages, we are at a point where we have to re-invent ourselves in order to live sanely and sustainably on this planet we call Home.

Home for me is a place where I can enjoy the company of family and friends, and it’s high time we "homo sapiens" become more humble and stop acting like a bully trying to dominate nature. It is time to reconnect, listen and learn from our planet-mates who have been here much longer and have done everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting, and jeopardizing our future. Re-learning from nature and doing it her way is both an exciting and urgent moment in the short history of our species.

In farming, the dominant philosophy for the last 50 years has been to continuously get bigger, to the point that now only 1% of the population is involved in growing food. I believe this is our starting point. In order to turn things around we need to not only increase the number of farmers and gardeners who grow food, but to build new linkages which form diverse and cooperative relationships, mimicking the interconnectedness we find in nature. With the price of fuels increasing and fossil fuels becoming more scarce, I am hopeful that the conditions for such a trend are ripe to take shape. I can imagine how, in the future, we will convert millions of acres of farmland now dedicated to monoculture and corporate extractive farming practices into a rich carpet of smaller-scale farms producing an abundant, diverse, seasonal bounty of food. It would bring young people who want to start farming back to the land. It would strengthen our communities, whose skills and resources would in turn contribute to living sustainably in one place. I am optimistic that the act of growing food can serve as a catalyst for us to read and learn from nature's sacred book, and reconnect us with all the living creatures with which we share this Home.