RECONNECTING TO THE SOIL
A Dialogue About Sustainable Agriculture

Kent, Roy, and Dave, friends since college, got together (via e-mail) to discuss the ideals and realities of sustainable agriculture and the value of connecting churches to farmers, rural communities, food production, and the land.

Kent Davis Sensenig, Cedar Falls, Iowa: The patriarch of the Sensenig clan in America bought a plot of Lancaster County land from the sons of William Penn in the early 1700s. His farmstead has stayed in the family for seven generations. Yet I grew up as a “town kid” with no experience of farm life, no cultural rooting in the land. Even so, I always loved the outdoors and spent many youthful days wandering in the woods and meadows around Akron, Pennsylvania.

Following college, I hooked up “by chance” with Roy’s family’s organic vegetable farm in central Pennsylvania. That was the beginning of nine consecutive growing seasons with my hands in the dirt. The past two years I’ve managed my own little vegetable farm on an acre of rented land.

The other major undertaking of my twenties was going to seminary and developing a vocation as a lay theologian/ethicist in Mennonite church settimgs. Throughout the journey I’ve sought to integrate my concerns for sustainable living in the postmodern world with the ancient Hebrew and Christian traditions which testify to this world’s Creator and Redeemer. I’ve found it fertile ground indeed!

Roy Brubaker, East Waterford, Pennsylvania: By age six, I knew I wanted to be a cowboy. Admonished that this was not what Christians did, by the time I was eight I settled by default on being a farmer. When I was twelve, my family moved from the mission field in East Africa to central, rural Pennsylvania. We raised produce to supplement Dad’s income as part-time pastor—continuing my grandfather’s practice of organic production methods.

In college—though not in class—I encountered such thinkers as Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, and Aldo Leopold. These agrarian environmentalists provided intellectual and ethical affirmation of my innate agricultural yearnings. In fact, such affirmation suddenly appeared dysfunctionally absent in what I dubbed the “anthropocentric neurosis” of the socially concerned but ecologically and agriculturally illiterate Mennonite church of my day.

I concluded, then, that living out a regenerative and redemptive human economy—one blended integrally into the fabric of creation’s ecological processes and limits—formed the most intriguing and imperative puzzle of our time. This puzzle desperately begged the church’s serious corporate and practical engagement. This “moral imperative” (after all, don’t we need to gain a secure sense of self-righteousness before becoming active?) deeply affected my emerging sense of vocation.

After college, I returned to farming for three years. I now work as a forester for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry and together with my spouse, Julie Hurst, and two new babies, Frances and Jacob, raise beef cattle, sheep, laying hens, and honeybees on rotationally grazed pastures.

Dave Hockman-Wert, Huntingdon, Pennsylvnia: Unlike my two esteemed colleagues, I have no real farming experience (except for when Roy has let me harvest his grain). I’m an analyst and an activist, not a practitioner. My day job is in environmental planning and river/watershed conservation.

Three years ago I wrote my master’s thesis comparing the agricultural practices and environmental attitudes of Mennonites, Amish, and “English” in Big Valley (Belleville, Pa.), where my grandpa used to farm. In talking to 75 farmers, my appreciation for the challenges they face as they tried to survive while caring for their little piece of Creation grew considerably.

I come to this realm well-versed in the literature and interested in sustainable agriculture as a theoretical example of Creation Care, stewardship, and healthy communities. But I still wonder sometimes, How do we know what sustainable agriculture is in the real world?

Roy: My seat-of-the-pants answer is that we know sustainable agriculture when we see it, because it’ll still be around six thousand years from now. Since that is obviously flippant and unhelpful, my second knee-jerk response would be—because it’s been around for thousands of years in the same place it is now. Which is maybe just as unhelpful in our present context, since I’m not an anthropologist.

Still, the common theme of these two gut-level responses points us in the right direction, I think—which is that sustainable agriculture needs to be geared for the long haul, both ecologically and culturally, within some area with a sense of definable “place.” It has to be composed of methods, species, and processes appropriate to the ecology of the place in which it is occurring and which provide for the sustenance of human life both biologically and culturally within that setting. A sustainable agriculture in an arid region will look very different from one in a temperate region, and so will the lifestyles and culture of the human communities that agriculture supports.

Kent: But how does this help us differentiate between the types of agriculture we see around us? Perhaps exploring words we often use as synonyms for “sustainable” could help us clarify what sustainable agriculture is and is not.

Dave: “Local” means that produce wasn’t shipped thousands of miles, using oil and causing air pollution. The produce is probably fresher and tastier. Buying locally means you are more likely to support a vibrant local economy. Some produce in grocery stores is labeled as local, but farmer’s markets are a better place to find truly local produce (from your own county or watershed). Be sure to ask persons at their stands whether they grew the food, though, because not all farmer’s markets sell local produce.

Roy: But note that just because some products may originate locally doesn’t mean they are local in character. In our area, for example, farmers ship in seed made from grains grown in the Midwest, then send their chickens to Hatfield or Longacres over one hundred miles away, or to Empire Kosher which has a local plant full of minimum-wage jobs but ships its product around the world.

Organic agriculture started out as an alternative to the 1940s and 1950s rage for high levels of chemical inputs into farming. Organic farming focused on soil-building properties that used natural materials rather than the synthetic chemicals being pushed by the big military/industrial corporations.

Dave: “Organic” also means that hormones and antibiotics were not fed to the animals and that genetically modified organisms are not present.

Roy: Yet the organic movement hasn’t asked careful enough questions about fitting agriculture into a greater ecological context and has at times used very conventional methods, rather than doing the hard work of radically redesigning the whole system of energy and nutrient inputs into farming. If you look at many organic vegetable farms, you would be hard pressed to find real “design” differences between them and conventional vegetable farms.

Also, the problem of shipping is as bad as with conventional agriculture. That organic lettuce in the supermarket is probably from California. “Natural” fertilizers might include gypsum mined in Louisiana or seagull guano from the Galapagos Islands. And what’s organic about the acres of black plastic used to control weeds in organic agriculture?

Dave: When meat and milk is labeled “grassfed,” this indicates that animals were raised mostly on pasture. Because cows and sheep are biologically created to eat grass rather than grains, this is a healthier process for the animal, the human consumer, and the overall ecosystem than feedlots or confined dairies. (For more information or to find producers near you, go to www.eatwild.com.)

“Amish-raised” means that the produce is probably local, that the farm probably uses horses in the fields, and that its acreage is relatively modest (50-100 acres). While this marketing term plays on society’s idyllic view of the Amish as a uniform group, Amish farmers these days differ widely in their practices. Some practice organic and grassfed agriculture, whereas others use as many chemicals and machines and gasoline as a conventional farm.

Roy: In general, I think we need to seek to support farmers who recognize the drawbacks in their farming methods and are actively working to get away from them—whether they be organic, local, or conventional.

Dave: In what I find a helpful conceptual framework, two rural sociologists identified several key elements of what they called “alternative” agriculture :

• independence, decentralization, community (as opposed to competition);

• harmony with nature (as opposed to domination of nature);

• diversity (as opposed to specialization);

• restraint (as opposed to exploitation).

And in a follow-up paper, two female sociologists added two other elements that women involved in sustainable agriculture identified as important: quality family life and spirituality.

Kent: Another essential element is required to make agriculture truly sustainable—social justice. Patricia Allen and Carolyn Sachs, in an article on “The Poverty of Sustainability,” call for a sustainable agriculture that does not simply reproduce the social domination and economic exploitation found in society at large when developing new alternative lines of food production. What is being sustained in sustainable agriculture should not be simply a status quo that empowers land-owners, wealthy consumers, and commercial growers in the developed world at the expense of farm workers, people of color, low-income groups, and the developing world.

They suggest the key questions should be, “What is produced, how is it produced, and for whom is it produced?” Thus in addition to maintaining the ecological conditions of production, their vision of sustainable agriculture is based on three precepts: (1) provision of enough food and fiber for everyone—production for need, not only effective demand; (2) non-exploitation in terms of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and species; and (3) greater access to decision-making in all aspects of food production.

Roy: On top of the obvious ecological benefits of sustainable agriculture, I believe there’s a positive cultural product as well. Sustainable agriculture can help produce scholars, saints, and poets as well as food, clean water, wildlife habitats, and healthy human communities. What I mean is that sustainable agriculture will be involved in developing symbol, language, metaphor, meaning, and ethic that will make human culture a fit companion for the land in which it lives.

Kent: I like that. Working attentively with the dynamic energies of Creation will indeed enrich the spirit, mind, and imagination in ways that profoundly illumine our collective consciousness.

Dave: So how can we help support sustainable agriculture? I think the first step is to always keep in mind Wendell Berry’s notable quote: “Eating is an agricultural act.” Every time we prepare a meal or order a pizza or pull out a frozen dinner or go out to a restaurant, we are supporting an agricultural system. But which system are we supporting?

We may claim we support sustainable agriculture. But our real choices show up at mealtime. Take a quick inventory each time you begin to eat: Do you know where the food was grown? Where it was processed? How the animals were treated? How farm workers were treated? If you don’t know, it would be worth finding out.

Kent: But if we just remain super-sophisticated consumers, we miss a crucial link in the chain. Whenever we can meet our own needs with our own hands, that primal link is partly restored. Even if only in small ways, we would do well to become producers as well as consumers—growing, preparing, and preserving some of household food from scratch in a suburban backyard, urban rooftop, or community garden. It’s free therapy, good exercise, and might even generate some nice tans!

Dave: That’s fine, but most of us will only grow a fraction of the food we eat. What else can we do?

Kent: One important way to support local farmers is through a new marketing innovation known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)—or, sometimes, congregationally supported agriculture. For example, I now manage my own one-acre organic vegetable plot. Most of my shareholders are members of my church, Cedar Falls Mennonite.

CSA shareholders (customers) buy a season-long share at the beginning of the growing season. This provides the farmer with guaranteed income up front and a loyal local market willing to share some of the risk of farming. In exchange, shareholders receive a weekly delivery of a wide range of fresh-from-the-field produce. CSAs come in all shapes and sizes. Some have branched out beyond vegetables to meat, eggs, fruit, bread, flowers, and dairy products.

Dave: A related idea with potential application in churches is the rural-urban partnership. Farmers can usually do better economically if they sell directly to an end-consumer, be it a restaurant or an individual. Rural churches could help their farmers by nurturing connections with urban churches and marketing their farmers’ produce. Urban churches would benefit in this relationship by reconnecting with sources of their food. In fact, urban churches with much energy could even put their own entrepreneurial spin on this connection, developing cafés, soup kitchens, food banks, and more. At the very least, developing such relationships would strengthen the larger church and create more understanding among different types of congregations.

Roy: What you’ve described then, Dave, is an example of thinking beyond the individual level of consumption—which is how we can help to create much broader-based cultural support for sustainable agriculture. Here’s another example: Get involved in your local school board as an advocate for serving locally grown foods in your children’s lunches instead of inflicting on them the institutionalized offal schools are presently purchasing from corporate America.

Dave: Fundamentally, I think what churches need to do is deal with the nitty-gritty economic realities farmers face. Preaching sustainability at farmers won’t help if they are in debt, working 14-hour days, and barely making it as it is. The church and congregations could help develop organizations to help farmers, such as marketing co-ops, butcher shops, processing factories, and more.

Or church members could act as partner-stewards, working with farmers to plan and carry out the conservation aspects of land management that a busy farmer may not have time for: putting in stream fencing, planting forested buffers along streams, researching how other farmers are able to cut back on using fertilizers and pesticides. Obviously, this would have to be done in full partnership with the farmers to make sure it wasn’t being imposed in an unwelcome way.

Roy: We also can work to improve the chances of there being sustainably produced food to consume in the first place. For instance, you could start a group to lobby for changing restrictive local ordinances that disallow backyard gardening and animal husbandry in our suburban areas. You could get involved in land use decision-making processes at your local conservation district or planning board.

The church can serve as a rallying ground for political and economic reform of our food system and society. I believe it will be necessary at some point for the church to flex its muscles and engage the big political issues surrounding agriculture much more forthrightly than has so far happened!

Kent: But what will sustain the church, and individual followers of Christ, in this quest for sustainability?

Could a life bathed in prayer fill the emptiness that drives us to overconsume? Could a life immersed in Scripture redirect our compulsion to overproduce? What if tithing taught us generosity in all things, fasting revealed to us our dependence on God alone, and Sabbath-keeping cultivated our care for all God’s creatures?

We are all sinful and wounded people. It is in our nature to seek security and even salvation through an idolatrous drive to (over) produce and consume. That’s what’s destroying God’s earth. And that’s why we need the Holy Spirit.

Postmodern capitalism seeks to banish Sabbath from our lives. Economic growth demands we produce and consume more and more rapidly. Living sustainably means swimming upstream against a strong cultural current. Without the fellowship, support, and accountability of a counter-community, we will burn out or, more likely, never even get started. That’s why we need the church.

Without the Spirit working through her disciplines and her church, there is no hope for the redemption of either our souls or the groaning Creation. In biblical terms, there can really be no separation of the two.