been reading jared diamond's "collapse". if i had to recommend one book this year, it would have to be this one.it's fascinating - he goes over different of societies, present and past, all of which collapsed, but some of which managed to recover. i'm not done reading yet, but so far a major theme that emerges in every case is soil health. in one way or another, the societies he discusses, including the maya, easter islanders, anasazi, icelanders, etc. over-taxed their environmental resources, and their soils in particular. of course, once the soil is depleted, the capacity to grow food is diminished or gone, people go hungry, and societies collapse. i am oversimplifying - there are other factors, like internal and external conflict, weather events, etc. but in some way or another they all tie in to our fundamental need to feed ourselves.
this book brings up an underlying anxiety i've had for sometime. ever since i've been intimately involved with food production, i realized that, to put it bluntly, people in places with high population densities like cities, who are fully dependent on long distance food production networks, are going to be screwed if anything should impede the functioning of that system. i'm worried about my friends and family in montreal and other cities in the world. their food is being trucked in from who knows where, and what will happen when oil prices go up? or in case of a weather event like the hurricane and snow storm we had here in CT just a few months ago?
i don't mean to panic anyone. but i do feel that i need to say something about this, because maybe i can see it more clearly now that i am so closely involved with farming. i read enough books and heard enough accounts from farmers to know that a soil that is abused will cease to function; and the way most people's food is grown at present is using methods that abuse the soil. the only way an abused soil will keep producing is with ever increasing amounts of oil-based synthetic chemicals. it's always back to oil. GM (Genetically Modified) methods are also being used in producing our food. do your own research on that. i think it's a scam, a very dangerous one. it's banned in europe.
i do have a suggestion. and that is to try to identify and then support your own local, sustainable, networks of food production. in montreal, in particular, i know there's lots of farmland just outside the city. why not shift some of the food production there instead of trucking it in from florida, california, argentina, etc. it's the only thing that makes sense to me, and if i lived in the city i would certainly do that for my own security, if not for any other reason. also, i think it's very important that whoever produces your food be held accountable for their production methods. that's where the sustainable part comes in. because if you're buying from your local farmer, but they're abusing their land, or environment, then you're back to being part of the problem. what does sustainable mean? well, it's a research project to answer that question. at a minimum, i'd say that if the farmer has to put down lots of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides every year, that's not sustainable. that's being oil-dependence. and don't assume that organic is necessarily better. it may be in some ways, but some of the things that organic farmers put down to control pests are no better than conventional, and may actually be worse for the environment. i know that this seems like a lot, but just to ask your farmer or whoever you buy from about their production methods, and to let them know that that's important to you, is a big step. it gives them the message that how they produce their food is important.
to me, right now, sustainable is about soil health, ie you're not mining, or depleting the soil at a greater rate than it can regenerate itself (and to do that is quite an achievement). also, sustainable means that the farmer gets paid a fair wage (which is not what you're used to in the supermarket system), so that they can continue doing what they're doing. but that's a different discussion.
i hope this is worth something to you.
peace
