ECHO Summary

It’s the holidays and things are getting a little crazy, but I want to bring you, my faithful reader, a report from the ECHO Agricultural Conference in Ft. Myers, FL. First, it was my first time to Florida and it proved that stereotypes all come from some kernel of truth. The weather was ridiculously warm and humid for December and there were numerous AARP members in convertibles.

ECHO is primarily a demonstration farm that trains people for agricultural missions. Many of the organizations that work with ECHO and that were at the conference come at agricultural work overseas from a conservative evangelical perspective. While I believe strongly in holistic ministry that includes the physical, spiritual, political and social aspects of life, I tend to come at it from a more social justice perspective. The farm itself is impressive with so many plants, methods and demonstrations packed into such a small space. ECHO is geared towards tropical agriculture because this is where both most of the world’s poverty and most missionaries are located.

Over the week we had lots of conversations between sessions, over meals and in cars. There’s no way to cover all the territory adequately. So, I’ll try to give you my highlights.

Cross Cultural Communication
This class was probably the most at odds with my own theology (to put it diplomatically). The speaker tried to tackle issues related to worldview, culture, religion and agriculture in one hour. I took an entire semester on this topic in seminary and still have a lot to understand. The speaker claimed that the underlying problem in other countries is one of worldview. It became clear that “they” had an incorrect worldview while the correct worldview was a combination of the scientific and biblical worldview. He also lumped all religions other than Christianity into the category of animism, claiming several times that Islam was essentially animistic. The statement was made several times that the problem was with other culture’s view of nature as something we can’t control. The solution was the biblical worldview, which was to subdue the earth, meaning control and manipulate it. This was a very disturbing workshop to me. I hope to explore this more in an upcoming post on why I think there is no such thing as a biblical worldview.

Third Culture Kids
This was probably the most practical and helpful workshop as a parent. I think there is something helpful in our globalized world about kids who are not at home in any particular culture, but have a real sense of the diversity and unity of humanity across cultures.

Sand Dams
The Mennonite Central Committee has a project in which dams are created in African countries. Initially the dams fill with water during the rainy season. Then the eventually fill with sand as the water settles. This sand is then composed of about 40% water. The water captured in the sand does not evaporate and is easily accessible to local communities. An amazing innovative project. It challenged some of my assumptions and ways of thinking, turning over some of my expectations about water access and solutions.

Natural Medicine
Ralph Wiegand gave an excellent talk on the use of natural medicine, defined as the combining of modern and traditional medicine. In particular he has worked on the use of artemesia tea as a complete treatment for malaria. In contrast to the workshop on cross cultural communication Wiegand gave great weight and value to traditional knowledge.

Nutritional Garden
A graduate from ECHO has developed a Nutritional Kitchen Garden at a hospital in Central African Republic where they teach nutrition, farm experimentation and agricultural knowledge and skills. Definitely one of the best presentations at the conference.

Compost and Soil Biology
I went to a workshop on compost and one on soil biology in the same afternoon. I’m no expert, but I do know some about both of these topics. You may recall the controversy about Soil Foodweb, Inc. in our class on compost tea at the farm. The leader for both of these workshops is sold on a lot of the claims made by Dr. Elaine Ingham and Soil Foodweb folks. Unfortunately I felt like composting was made overly complicated and discouraged people from doing it. They were more technical about the percent Nitrogen and ratio of bacteria to fungi. There are important rules of thumb for good composting, but they don’t need to be so technical in my opinion.

The Soil Food web folks also tout the benefits of Effective Microorganisms (EM). Basically these are anaerobic bacteria, what they called facultative anaerobes, that are beneficial to help compost when it becomes anaerobic. The example given was a poultry barn where the bedding has become anaerobic with that pungent ammonia smell. EM could be used to reverse those negative effects supposedly. It seems to me that the answer to bad management practices is not another product to fix it. That’s the way industrial agriculture solves problems (e.g. antibiotics, irradiation, etc.). Isn’t the answer instead to use better management practices to deal with the waste or bedding and manage composting more closely. I asked how EM were created or manufactured and was told that it’s proprietary. That should always be your first clue that something is bunk. If the answers to our agricultural and ecological problems are not open source they aren’t really answers. They’re just new ways to make money off of disasters (What Naomi Klein calls Disaster Capitalism).

It was a thought provoking and educational trip. I definitely enjoyed their farm and all they had going on. It is important to be in dialogue with people we don’t agree with, particularly those working in the same field, literally and figuratively.

The Original Sin of Agriculture: Religion

I actually just finished My Ishmael, the third book in the trilogy. So, I am far behind in reflecting on my thoughts on The Story of B, the second book, particularly as the ideas and themes come up again and again from other sources. Two recent connections were 1) an interview with Adele Diamond on Speaking of Faith that had a lot of similarities with Quinn’s thoughts on education and 2) Bill Moyers’ interview with Jane Goodall about her work with gorillas and trying to change the way we relate to the natural world.

What can I say? I will try to do better. Here is one attempt.

Of the three books, The Story of B has the most to say about religion. I previously talked about Quinn’s fascinating interpretation of Genesis and the idea of original sin. Quinn sees religion as a complement to totalitarian agriculture. Totalitarian agriculture is a destructive force that creates tremendous suffering and need. Quinn’s thesis is that salvationist religion, religion that is based on the idea that we need to be saved (primarily from ourselves), arose out of the need created by totalitarian agriculture. People look around and say, “Wow! We have totally screwed up the world. There is definitely something wrong with human beings. We need saving. Help!” Therefore we have religions that save us from ourselves.

Narrowly construed I would have to pretty much agree with the author’s take on the matter. When we narrowly define sin only as having to do with the individual human being, then we are responding to a flawed understanding of the world. I see how this thesis fits very neatly with his understanding of the rise of agriculture and civilization. However, when something is tied up so neatly with a pretty red ribbon, it is almost certainly not so simple (I think that could be said for a lot of his ideas). It’s also true that making simplifications and generalizations can help us see things that we miss on the confusion and complexity of reality.

Is Religion Part of the Problem?

Quinn certainly believes that salvationist religion, as he calls it, is part of perpetuating the myth that the problem is something inherent with human beings instead of looking at the destructive ways we have ordered our lives, particularly around agriculture and civilization. I have no beef with anything he says about agriculture or religion’s role in perpetuating myths. I do have a problem with the idea that this is grounds for dismissing religion (or salvationist religion) outright. I find my own Christian tradition robust enough to embrace what he is saying even as some of it undermines many of our traditional and historical ways of thinking about history, sin and salvation. I think he gives religion short shrift in order to prove a point and that’s unfair.

We, Christians and others, must own the ways our tradition has failed and been used destructively. We also must realize that it is a long history full of many ups and downs. The Bible itself is full of violence and mercy, texts of terror and texts of grace, love and hate, disturbing and comforting passages. To try and box this diverse collection of sacred writings into one simple message is reductionistic.

I continue to believe that my tradition, the one I know best, has the seeds within it of offering answers and hope to our deepest questions and longings… including the questions raised by Quinn.

Turkey D-Day

Today is turkey D-Day. About 40 birds will be prepared for the Thanksgiving Day table… in other words butchered. Tomorrow about 40 more will meet their maker and become someone’s dinner. I recently “talked” on facebook with a friend of mine from Fort Hood and shared about my transition to farmatarianism, eating only meat that you know personally. I was a vegetarian for eight years. I wasn’t a really good vegetarian, whatever that means. I was more concerned about the way meat was produced and what was in it. I was also concerned about the effects of excessive meat consumption on our bodies and the planet. I wasn’t concerned that animals should never be killed for food.

Anyway… it was probably strange for my friend to hear that I would be helping slaughter some 80 birds and what’s more I would happily eat them given the chance. I still don’t eat a lot of meat. It’s not often an option at the farm, but when it is I appreciate the life of the animals that we eat. Our turkeys are free range in every sense of that word. They roam free all day, foraging for food and stretching their legs. Our goats and cows also spend the majority of their time in pastures eating their meals straight from the soil. That is worlds apart from how your Big Mac or even grocery store meat is produced.

So, every year Cargill (God bless ‘em!) donates about 100 turkeys to the farm along with their bedding and feed. We raise them and sell them for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We could ruminate on why Cargill would donate these birds to a farm that teaches methods of agriculture directly opposed to large industrial-scale production. Perhaps it’s a form of penance, an attempt at reaching some sort of redemption. Perhaps someone in the company has a subversive ironic streak. Regardless, it is a good things for these birds and the people that buy them.

Clearly, these turkeys have been bred for one thing and one thing only… meat. These are dumb animals. These birds see a large predator (aka me or Edwina, the wayfaring farm dog) and think to themselves, “Hey let’s all go check that out! Guys come over here! Look a predator! Let’s all go say hi!” Needless to say they would not last long in the wild. Unfortunately they also don’t last that long on the farm. One turkey randomly had a heart attack one day and became dinner. It seems they are looking for ways to die. Apparently it is not really true that turkeys can drown from looking up at the rain, but they’re so dumb it seem plausible.

Barbara Kingsolver’s account of trying to get her turkeys to reproduce and hatch eggs is a riot. The reason industrial turkey sex is so funny is because it simply does not happen. Imagine a couple of full grown adults who are supposed to be well versed in the birds and the bees, stumbling over what’s what and what goes where like a couple of pimply teenagers. Add to the lack of knowledge the fact that these guys are bread to be a tub o’ meat on toothpicks. They are no longer physiologically shaped for reproduction. In case this hasn’t been made abundantly clear let me say it. The turkeys you buy in the store do not have sex. They all have to be artificially inseminated in order to reproduce. That in itself is not humane.

There are heritage breed wild turkeys out there that you can buy. Those guys are smart and they know how to have sex. So, think about the life of turkeys this holiday season when you’re sticking that Butterball in the oven or deep fryer. Support turkey sex and happy turkeys this year and buy your bird from a farmer.

Food in the Bible: Exodus 23:14-19

Exodus 23:14-19 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me. You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

No one shall appear before me empty-handed.

16 You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labour, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour. ¹⁷Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

18 You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened, or let the fat of my festival remain until the morning.

19 The choicest of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.

You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Setting aside the weirdo who made sure to cook a baby goat in the milk from its own mother for a second, let’s consider the appointed festivals. This passage appoints three main festivals that the Israelites should celebrate. The feast of unleavened bread, or Passover, commemorated their liberation from slavery in Egypt. This was a springtime feast. The feast of first fruits celebrates the first of the harvest, around August sometime I would guess. The feast of ingathering would then be some time in October when the growing season ended.

I could look up more information on these festivals and their meaning in Jewish ritual religion, but you can use Google as well as I can. What I’m more interested in is how in tune to nature and agriculture the rhythms of these festivals are. They occur at natural times when you would celebrate the first harvest, the end of the growing season and the first planting. If those are already good occasions to celebrate (and they are) why not include God in them? It’s easy for us to miss how close to the land, natural rhythms and agriculture the readers and writers of the Bible were because our lives are so far removed from that connection.

It is often mentioned that the first fruits and sacrifices were to be the best of the harvest and best of the livestock. I’ve often heard this used to say that we shouldn’t hold anything back from God, but give our very best. What we seem to miss is a more agrarian reading. What does it mean for a farmer to give a lamb without blemish or choicest fruits? Since the discovery of evolutionary biology, we know that this is a crazy sacrifice. This means giving up the very best genetics in your herd or crop. Farmers have practiced breeding and seed-saving for centuries and they know how important it is to select the best genetics to save.

By asking for the “choicest first fruits,” God is not trying to keep the farmer down. Instead God reminds us that we are not the authors and creators of those choicest genes. We can trust the Creator of those genetics to continue to provide. Just as in the Sabbath commands, we are reminded that it does not all depend on us.

The Original Sin of Agriculture: Prehistory

The Story of B opened my eyes to a linguistic problem that reveals some truth about the way we read and perceive history. We tell the story of history beginning with the rise of agriculture. Everything before the rise of agriculture is referred to as “prehistory.” That can be taken to mean simply that this was a time before history was recorded or written down. In another more subtle way it belies the way we think about the kind of life and people that existed before agriculture. In a sense this was non-history, non-life and they are therefore non-people.

This was certainly part of what allowed colonizers and religious imperialists to conquer in the name of civilization. Savages and barbarians were not real people. Their ways of life, thinking and relating could not possibly be anything more than animalistic instincts and perhaps demonic deception. They were primitive people who had not yet been blessed by the advances of civilization, progress and technology. There was nothing to learn from these people and everything to teach them.

I don’t mean to romanticize tribal civilizations by any means. There are harsh realities that come with another vision for the way the world works. But this is exactly what they offer in response to the failures of our technocratic society, another vision of the world.

In this other vision of the world, human beings are subject to the same rules and limitations as the rest of creation. The way we order our lives is based on living in harmony with the natural rhythms of the world. This includes the natural process of life and death. We are not as much in control of nature as we are subject to it. As mentioned in the previous post, this means there are tradeoffs concerning the population that the planet can sustain and how we move away from our current destructive practices. What this other vision offers is a refocusing and reorientation of the way we think about the problems we face, their sources and causes.

I don’t know that hunter-gatherer societies offer a viable solution for the near future. What they do offer is an alternative vision and a challenge to the modern myth of progress that has brought us to the brink of disaster. Perhaps they can help us find a path forward, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see.

This is the continuation of a series exploring basic assumptions about agriculture, history and our relationship to creation: The Original Sin of Agriculture Part I, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.