Bless this food to our service

The whole point of this blog is to keep a careful accounting, which I have failed miserably at. But the reason for the accounting...the reason is... to make an economic argument for something that runs deeper than balance sheets.

As the Veggie Man said to me today, "when my family asks, I try to stay away from the big picture. I don't want them to think I am a conspiracy theorist. I tell them the reason we spend so much effort in the garden is because the food tastes better."

But there is more there. 

He and I both recognize that food, energy and the environment are different parts of the same thing. And that thing is a challenge that cannot be ignored. The time has come to pay the piper. The 20th century was a glorious advance, oblivious of limits. This century we must forge ahead with scarcity as our teacher. 

What we have built uses cheap oil and an undervalued environment as the sand dunes of its foundation. What we must build does not deny the miracle of the 20th century's design, but goes back to the root. Ecosystems are finite. An economy that imagines infinite expansion because our imaginations are limitless, does not credit enough the system that makes our economy possible. What is the value of a soaking rain versus a torrential downpour? What value the small wetland that absorbs the flood?How rich each blade of grass that holds a small clump of soil and keeps it from the sea? The New Testament speaks of an accounting that marks the fall of every sparrow and each hair upon every head. We must marry our wisdom and our technology to that humility. 

Along the lines of this discussion I recommend a book: "The End of Food" by Paul Roberts. There are many points where I disagree with the author, although I sense he may have tamed his argument to reach a broader audience. Nonetheless, it is a broad and compelling argument. The international food system that world economies are based on is in a tenuous position. Looking only at water consumption, or oil use, or the limits of plant and animal chemistry, is enough to prove his point. When political cowardice and basic human incalcatrence ( forgive my spelling, the word I mean implies hardening, an unwillingness to move or change position) are added to his argument, Robert's picture is quite sobering. But here, in a land of deep soil and soaking rains, we need to recognize this crisis as a time of opportunity. We still have relatively compact urban centers surrounded by good farmland. It is time to redevelop our regional agricultural system and begin again to feed ourselves. It's time to turn abandoned land and ignored populations back to the important job of feeding our communities.