Posted May 11, 2007:
Many sustainable agriculture activists have long been concerned
about the fate of family farming. Not as many, however, have
been concerned about the fate of wild nature at the hands
of farming. Furthermore, those who are passionate about protecting
wild nature have often been at odds with farmers passionate
about protecting their crops and livestock from the impositions
of wild nature.
Wendell Berry, the patron saint of family farming, has been
impatient with wild lands advocates, seeing them as lacking
respect for people who earn their living from the land. Dave
Foreman and Reed Noss, forceful defenders of large carnivores
and habitat protection, have offended family farmers and ranchers
with what seems like blanket condemnation of their practices,
particularly cattle grazing.
Yet, both sides know that farming and wildness must co-exist,
however hard that is, and try to meet in a middle area called
resource conservation.
It is appropriate that the first reading in Farming
and the Fate of Wild Nature is a piece by Berry. He challenges
both sides to work together against a common enemy: corporate
totalitarianism. As Berry writes:
"I am a conservationist
and a farmer, a wilderness advocate and an agrarian. I am
in favor of the world’s wildness, not only because
I like it, but also because I think it is necessary to the
world’s life and to our own. For the same reason,
I want to preserve the natural health and integrity of the
world’s economic landscapes, which is to say that
I want the world’s farmers, ranchers and foresters
to live in stable, locally adapted, resource-preserving
communities, and I want them to thrive."
Laura Jackson’s essay “The Farmer as Conservationist?”
questions the ability of farmers to make decisions that result
in resource conservation. As a biology teacher residing in
the American Corn Belt, the “vast ecological wasteland
of northern Iowa,” Jackson knows that neither farmer
nor conservation biologist has any say in the design of the
agricultural system and its impact on the landscape. The industrial
system, she writes, “perpetuates the nostalgic myth
of farmer heroism and responsibility for the land,”
but agribusiness corporations and their government lackeys
are the managers, and it is they who must take responsibility
for the fate of farming and wild nature.
The editors of this book of essays are Dan Imhoff and Jo
Ann Baumgartner, the president and executive director, respectively,
of the Wild Farm Alliance, an organization founded in 2000
to “promote a healthy, viable agriculture that protects
and restores wild nature.” They selected the pieces
in this book to inspire advocates of both sustainable agriculture
and wildness. Readers will recognize several acclaimed writers
in the table of contents—Barbara Kingsolver, Rick Bass,
Richard Manning, Michael Pollan and Gary Nabhan for example—who
have permitted the reprinting of essays published in other
places, which is a laudable kind of resource conservation
in itself.
Only one-third of the essays are newly published in this
book; three are written by members of the Wild Farm Alliance
Board of Directors: Becky Weed, Dan Kent, and John Davis,
as well as one by the executive director, Jo Ann Baumgartner.
In “Grassland Manifesto,” Montana sheep rancher
Becky Weed declares, “It’s all about grass.”
But the “art of grass farming and the wisdom of wild
grasslands” that she sees as key to the fate of both
farming and wild nature are being lost. Set against a background
of the Bridger Mountains, which provide habitat linkages for
wolverines and other threatened species between the Rocky
Mountains to the south and the Canadian Rockies to the north,
Becky’s ranch is “predator friendly.” The
wolves, bears, and coyotes that call this area of Montana
home are not killed on her organically certified Thirteen
Mile Lamb and Wool Company. In other writings, Weed has described
techniques for co-existing with predators, but in this piece
she describes a more serious threat to western ranching: the
corn-bean-feedlot machine of the Midwest. Becky explores how
a vision of grassland restoration could shut down the machine,
but notes that corn ethanol could re-ignite it.
In “Evolution of an Ecolabel,” Dan Kent, executive
director of Salmon Safe, tells how his organization tied together
good farming and wildlife protection in the Pacific Northwest.
To earn the Salmon Safe certification, growers have restored
streamside native vegetation, managed irrigation more efficiently
and employed other erosion control measures that made farms
more productive while protecting wild salmon habitat. Most
Salmon Safe certified land is in vineyards, and this label
identifying wine producers as local land stewards boosts sales
for vintners.
Jo Ann Baumgartner describes the “wilder farm consciousness”
that is emerging among organic certifiers in her essay, “Making
Organic Wild.” Even though the Organic Food Production
Act enacted in 2002 stated that producers must initiate practices
to support biodiversity, inspectors have largely ignored this
mandate. Under Baumgartner’s leadership, the Wild Farm
Alliance worked with the Independent Organic Inspector’s
Association and later the National Organic Standards Board
to develop a set of questions relating to biodiversity conservation
for inspectors, and some certification agencies are beginning
to use them. This essay provides examples of wilder organic
farms and describes basic steps in planning for biodiversity
conservation on an organic farm.
In “Rebuilding after Collapse,” John Davis bluntly
states the thesis of his essay: “I believe forces largely
beyond our control will continue wrecking the natural world,
despite our defensive efforts, until the industrial economy
collapses. We need to extend our efforts, to expand and durably
protect natural areas and other parts of a whole Earth through
cataclysms and beyond.” Though a familiar voice in the
movement to preserve wild lands for biodiversity conservation,
John is unfamiliar in the sustainable agriculture world. I
would like to make this chapter an assigned reading to my
colleagues, to shock us into serious discussion about farming
and the fate of wild nature. 
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