Is America on the Brink of a Food Crisis?

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted January 29, 2009.

WJ: You're right that it's not just about plants and science; it's also about people and society. We think that protecting the soil is not only an ecological imperative but an opportunity for positive economic and cultural change as well. The proposals we're discussing would increase employment opportunities in agriculture -- sustainable farming will require more "eyes per acre," and replacing fossil-fuel energy with human energy and ecological knowledge makes good economic sense. With the reduced need for the hoe or plow, and land management relying more on fire and grazing, we draw on the naturalist instinct in nearly all of us, rather than presenting farm work as nothing but the "sweat of the brow" amid "thistles and thorns." This will be necessary to counter the longstanding denigration of the countryside and rural communities, which has been a feature of our so-called cosmopolitan culture.  

We're seeing that on a small scale now, with more young farmers staying on the land, with creative new endeavors in community-supported agriculture. People recognize that life is more than working in a small cubicle and consuming in a big-box store. People are hungry for good food, and they're also hungry for a good life. People are ready to explore what it would mean to come home, not to a romanticized vision of the past but to a sustainable future.  

RJ: How would a farm bill that you and Wendell might write differ from what we see today?  

WJ: The farm bills we've had largely address exports, commodity problems, subsidies and food programs. They all involve here-and-now concerns. A 50-year farm bill represents a vision that stresses the need to protect soil from erosion, cut the wastefulness of water, cut fossil-fuel dependence, eliminate toxins in soil and water, manage carefully the nitrogen of the soil, reduce dead zones, restore an agrarian way of life and preserve farmland from development. The best way to accomplish most of these goals is to gradually increase the number of acres with perennial vegetation, first of all through rotations and increase in the number of grass-fed dairies sprinkled about the countryside, and second, through progress toward perennializing the major crops. A good bill could help farmers accomplish those things.  

RJ: It's also likely that many people reading this will dismiss you as idealistic, as unrealistic. How would you answer that?  

WJ: These are the same people who believe it's realistic to continue practices they know to be unsustainable. The basic choice is simple: Do we want to work at coming up with a system that can produce healthful food and healthy communities, one that is economically and ecologically viable? Or do we want to continue to contaminate our soil and water as we watch that soil continue to be eroded by that water? That contamination and erosion are both material reality and metaphor for our cultural and economic condition.  

Look, I'm a scientist from the countryside, which means I have spent my life dealing with reality in research and on the farm. These are necessary and possible goals. Without the necessity, it may be considered grandiose. Without the possibility, it could be regarded as grandiose. The test for grandiosity, in my view, fails. As a nation, we are blessed with some of the world's best soils. Increasingly, city people want healthier and safer food. And we're at a political moment when everybody and his dog is talking about the need for change. So, let's get to it.

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Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007).

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