September 26, 2008: In crisis, chose hope and start innovating

Hello: There’s been no shortage of authors trying to prepare us for our current situation with its convergent clashing realities in our economy, energy outlook, transportation system, food security, farming system and climate change status. Even two and three years ago, we had these titles:

• The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
(Richard Heinberg, 2005)
• Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After Gridcrash (Aric McBay, 2006)
• Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
(Steve Solomon, 2006)

James Kuntsler, in his glooms-day book The Long Emergency (2005), predicts desperate times as big systems fall apart and until smaller, more sustainable systems rise from the virtual ashes of excesses he has made a career of decrying. Yet, when he spoke at the 2007 conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), he said he was basically hopeful—not that painful crises could be avoided, but that enough people will create enough viable options quickly enough to matter.

I choose to believe that hope is always the most valuable motivator, though fear gets the more immediate, violent and reckless response. Hope in the midst of real and looming crisis for food and farming means thinking of communities as well as ourselves, both in terms of biological networks and our human neighbors. Desperate hope is at the extreme edge of a belief that things are fixable, but it also pulls on the energy that demands action to pursue the best means possible. The crazy-making rub is that the best answer usually isn’t the quickest or easiest one.

Daily bread is the iconic expression of basic sustenance. Assuring this essential minimum in ecologically sustainable ways is really at the heart of this week’s feature story. It details farmer participatory wheat breeding in dryland areas of Washington state in which grain genetics evolve to match the exact soil, weather and other conditions of where they are being grown. Read more >>

Innovative farmers and bakers on the East Coast are searching for the most resilient varieties in a resurgence of small-scale grain production that takes buying local beyond produce.

Punctuating the nutritional crisis that already exists for America’s poor, a new study documents that an average family’s maximum food stamp benefits fall far short of what families need to afford the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” Robustly sustainable, locally oriented and regeneratively organic food production must be a policy goal everywhere people are hungry, in U.S. cities and countrysides, and around the world. This includes the Philippines, where organic practices are being embraced by farmers economically crippled by debt for chemical inputs.

Lead where you are while you can.

Greg Bowman and the
Rodale Institute editorial team