Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Soils and human health are both very complex systems and the systems are dynamic, which means that it is very difficult to establish a direct causality between the use of nitrogen and any, positive or negative, effects on human health.
Making too big a deal about the specific commodity in a given place – such as sheep in upland Wales – risks missing the bigger picture of a general overproduction in the global agricultural and wider economy. But if we really want to name the culprits in these wider economies, pride of place would have to go to fossil fuels, cereal grains and grain legumes.
In his highly readable book, Frerick describes the businesses of barons who dominate seven sectors of the US food industry. In the process he illuminates much in recent American history and goes a long way towards diagnosing environmental ills, socio-economic ills, and the ill health of so many food consumers.
A more than hundred year old focus on easily available nutrients has led farming astray. Instead, nutrient availability is to a large extent an emergent property of healthy soils.
An advantage of the transition to agrarian localism is that it depends very little on new technologies, and almost entirely on politics – hence my subtitle for this post.
To transmit is to empower – as many people as possible to be trained to become farmers; as many people as possible saving and adapting seeds to their own conditions.
While the links and mechanisms are not totally apparent, the introduction of synthetic fertilizers broke most of the links between the land, the animals and the people. This separation has many results and impacts on what we eat.
Nitrogen (N) is on the one hand an essential nutrient for all life forms and the building block for proteins, and on the other hand a pollutant causing many negative environmental and human health impacts.
From the banks of Wounded Knee Creek to the White Earth reservation, this spring, more seeds will be planted for the New Green Revolution. Bringing life back to the soil is work, but these farmers are doing it. Fields of dreams, indeed.
At the Old Growth table, we honor the ingredients as the wisdom keepers they are. And we humbly nod to the Ancestors who have kept our birthrights and lifeways intact.
An immediate halt to chemical fertilizing and returning to the use of compost instead would turn degeneration into regeneration.
Methane belching by grazing ruminants should not be seen as “emissions” that have to be mitigated.
