August 11th, 2020
What’s in your share?
Sweet Italian Frying Peppers
Spanish Sweet Onions
Porcelain Garlic
Red Norland Potatoes
Head Lettuce
Cherry Tomatoes
Heirloom Slicing Tomatoes
College was not my first choice. Rather, a Zen odyssey around the world following a vow of poverty was - naturally - far more alluring. Sadly, this plan has still yet to unfold. Normalcy’s temptation proved more persuasive; and, more than to the Buddha, I cannot help - first and foremost - being a devout mama’s boy. So, as a morally malleable teenager, and one who could not bear more than a day’s journey from his mama, I turned my back on enlightenment and enrolled in UW-Stevens Point’s philosophy program.
In college I found disturbingly detached, non-consequential discussions of particularities, each class or subject nested neatly into its own distinct concepts and language. A nauseating competition of disciplinary cliques. Never mind, in a new quest for the overlap, the interdisciplinary, the intersectional, and the one essay that could fulfill multiple assignments at once, I realized my calling: Crushing capitalism through the non-hierarchical, democratically coordinated redistribution of wealth and resources back into the control of collectively orchestrated commons each producing society’s quintessentials through environmentally regenerative techniques, while still leaving ample time for leisure and culturally-specific merrymaking... Simply put, farming!
Flash forward 10 or so years, and yes, I do find myself farming, but always surrounded, well within the confines of multiple and multiplying systems of oppression, possession, and excess. Sure, we farmers have drafted some mighty eloquent mission and vision statements, each with honorable commitments to human and environmental wellbeing. And yes, after analyzing consumer behavior, practicing LEAN principles, reacting to enterprise profit margins, not to mention doing the work while sustaining sane and healthy livelihoods… Yes, I’d say we do - to the best of our abilities - uphold the aforementioned principles. However, at the end of the day when all is added up, no single CSA, no farmers market, no organic certification, nor raised bed - alone - will stand up to the Goliathan test ahead.
I have recently begun telling my family, friends, and now, you, about something I like to call “Phase II” (I think I might actually enjoy it when people roll their eyes at my ideas). It’s something that I will be meditating and beginning to strategize on more this fall and winter - during what is adding up to be the most secluded, sedentary, and undistracting time of our lives. Central to “Phase II” is working alongside farmers, food workers, and food-eating people in general to collectively embrace and find paths for physically situating a shared commitment to both the right to food and the right to farm.
Our current agriculture system is mired by the terrible ironies of overproduction and waste alongside hunger; land concentration and environmental degradation alongside displaced landless farmers. Farmers who for generations were stewards to their lands and their communities, are now forced on dangerous migrations seeking work on northern plantations or in overcrowded urban slums. The worlds hungry and impoverished were - by and large - once farmers. Whatever solutions, policies, or methods we propose, we must put these people and their wellbeing centerstage.