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.

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.

Of Trees and Tattoos

I’ve been interested in getting a tattoo for a while. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Piercings and tattoos mark rites of passage for a lot of people my age. The main things holding me back have been the price and finding the right tattoo. Since my wife recently got her nose pierced, I’ve been thinking more seriously about it.

Tattoos are an interesting phenomenon. Some happen on a whim. Some are intensely thought out and designed. Some are just meant to be cool or project an image. Some have deep meaning and significance. Some are ridiculous and silly. Some are thought provoking and intense. Some will need modification later on. Some will stand the test of time.

That last one is the one that interests me. What would I be willing to permanently etch in my flesh? What would I not regret 30 years from now? What will stand the test of time?

For me I think I’ve settled on a tree. It combines the things that I try to combine here on this blog, a love for God, a love for the earth and a love of real food. The tree as a symbol has a long history in the Christian tradition. The editors of the Green Bible put a tree on the cover, explaining that this is actually an ancient tradition in the church. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are central to the creation narrative. Psalm 1:3 says,

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in season,
and their leaves do not wither.

I haven’t found the perfect tree yet or exactly where I want it. The one pictured is close, but I definitely want there to be color involved signifying life. I’ve never had any piercings or other tattoos and I’m not eager to get just anything. I do think that this is a mark I would always want and would never regret, a permanent reminder of my connection to the earth, to God and to my food.

The Original Sin of Agriculture: Population Control Revisited

In the initial series I summarized the argument in Ishmael by saying

The expansion of agriculture to feed the population serves to enlarge the population necessitating the continued expansion of agriculture to feed an ever-growing population. The result of the ongoing “progression” and evolution of agriculture has not actually resulted in fewer people going hungry.

The Story of B goes further in exploring some of the implications of this idea. He uses the analogy of mice in a cage. If you feed the mice a certain amount of food they will reproduce and grow in population size as long as the amount of food is able to sustain the number of mice. If you then increase the amount of food the population will continue to increase. If you stop increasing the food the population will level off and remain basically static. If you incrementally decrease the ration of food the population will decrease. When that idea is translated to human beings it sounds very unnerving, callous and disturbing.

The productivists argue that agricultural production has continued to increase and keep pace with world population. There is no real conversation about the relationship or correlation between production and population. We know that the world hunger problem is not a production problem, but a distribution problem. The world now produces enough food for every human being on the planet to have 3,500 calories per day, which is more than the recommended amount. So, why do we continue to push for higher production and greater yield to solve the population problem? Are we in fact fueling the population crisis by continually increasing our production?

Some will question how this can be true when population growth is correlated to other factors like income or education. The character B’s response in the book is over and over again to ask what people are made of if they are not made of food. If the population continues to increase, then the larger population must sustain itself somehow and the only way that is possible is by eating something. That certainly doesn’t mean the larger population is eating well, but they are eating enough to survive.

Whether production increases or decreases, distribution is the real problem. Either way inequality will continue as long as food is not distributed equitably. The underlying question concerning population growth is whether we can actually deal with the problem if we are continuing to fuel it by producing more and more food. When I mention the possibility of decreasing production as a way of dealing with the population problem, it sounds like I’m recommending starving the marginal brown people of the world. As the system currently stands that would certainly be the case if we simply decreased production overall. A decrease in production would have to go hand in hand with an overhaul of how our food system functions. This is a long term problem that requires long term thinking and solutions.

The planet we live on has a limit to the amount of life it can sustain. Like an elevator or bridge that is only built to handle a certain weight, the earth has certain limits built into the ecosystems. We can push those boundaries with technology and science, but eventually they will break. For many in the world they have already broken, and they suffer the consequences of our over extension of the planet’s resources.

We don’t like to think that we are responsible or in control of other people dying. The truth is we already are responsible for that. Our (American) culture has an uneasy and unnatural relationship with death. Death is a natural part of life. Decreasing food production (in concert with reorganizing our food system) may in fact be the most ethical and just choice given the trajectory of human society. This would, of course, be a long gradual process in which the reduction of food production and slowing of population growth would happen naturally over many decades, if not centuries.

Please share your thoughts and objections. I know this probably sounds scary and crazy to some, but a lot of it makes sense to me. I would appreciate thinking it through more thoroughly with your help.

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.

The Gospel of Compost Tea

In our recent class on compost tea we looked at the benefits and the mystery of this microbial brew. Many claims are made about the benefits of compost tea. A while back our executive director had heard so much about it that he decided to look into it himself. He went to the library and did a thorough literature review to see which claims had merit and which were not backed by any evidence. What he found was that there was strong evidence for suppression and control of soil-borne and foliar fungal diseases, both when added to the soil and sprayed on the foliage of plants.

The Compost Tea Brewing Manual (which I have not read) makes claims about compost tea “adding biology” to the soil. Some people use compost tea by broadcasting it on a field to jump start the biology in the soil. Using the numbers in the book, it is clear that this claim is ridiculous. The amount of microbes in the compost tea is so miniscule that it is silly to claim it can boost the biology in an entire field. You’re better off using a broad range of holistic practices to improve your soil health and fertility overall. This is a slow process and anyone that tells you they can jump start is likely a card carrying member of the agricultural Amway. Run the other direction.

This same manual gives recipes for compost tea targeted at bacteria or fungal problems. This is where the gospel of compost tea rises to the surface. This way of thinking applies a modern scientific approach to agriculture while trying to use a holistic method. It’s new wine in old wineskins and you know what happens there right?

The whole point of compost tea is NOT that you are targeting a specific problem. In fact it should be a preventative measure applied before you have a problem. It can help with specific problems, but the benefit is the well-rounded additions to the soil that come from brewing up a mysterious batch of good bugs and microbes. The good microbes will out compete the bad ones, some of them actually parasitize the bad microbes. The brew also creates some compounds that have anti-microbial (antibiotic) properties.

Don’t we do the same thing in the church, for many of the same reasons? We target specific problems and think if we just apply the right complex of programming we will emerge victorious. Meanwhile, the whole system is deteriorating around us because we have not cared for the health of the soil and paid attention to the important things. The gospel of compost tea tells us that we should be brewing up people who look like Jesus, whose hearts beat for the things his does. Then those problems will resolve themselves. Healthy soil is made up of people who are being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

In the same way that the large scale of agricultural forces farmers to practice agriculture in ways that are fundamentally opposed to nature, mega churches and the large-scale thinking that goes on in churches forces people into practicing their faith in ways that are fundamentally opposed to the kingdom of God. The beauty is that we can take our decomposing methods and programs and pile them together until we get some good finished compost. Then we can brew up some sweet tea out of our old crappy ways.

photo from flickr user badalley.