Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
From my vantage point — which is sitting in the chicken yard, eating just-harvested mulberries, my fingers all blue — farming within an ecosystem can be joyful and meaningful, life-affirming. It should be an integral part of the way we feed the world and revitalize our degraded land.
A return to mixed farming would bring with it numerous blessings: reduced water pollution, greater agricultural biodiversity, healthier soils, reduced reliance on pesticides and herbicides, more farm jobs and more varied and interesting work.
Chickens in a small-scale food production system, whether that’s a suburban backyard or a bit of acreage, are valuable first for the services they provide. In nature, scavenging omnivorous birds form a symbiosis with large mammals.
Brian tells the story of one early morning on the farm.
Why do we have such a seemingly illogical food system? This is the question at the heart of Graham Harvey’s recently published book, Grass-Fed Nation, a manifesto for grazing livestock and the extensive benefits of mixed farming.
So can farmers, especially ones who operate on a small scale, make enough money at farmers’ markets to make it worth their while?
Regardless of the “when,” a careful harvest, with work and planning, is renewable, an object lesson in resource use we would all be wise to learn and relearn.
The world’s global strategy of food and farming is founded on three great untruths – lies, in effect — which between them are threatening to kill us all, and in practice are well on the way to doing so.
