Why I farm, Part IV

~ This article first appeared in the Leader Vindicator newspaper. ~

This is the last installment of a series.

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My office window faces east.  Each morning the sun rises to reveal a landscape I have traversed many times.  Upon close inspection the pasture-field is a rolling mix of grasses, clovers, and forbs, featuring a few shrubs and some water in the low spots.

I experienced a revelation one morning that shifted my perception of the landscape:  The field outside is me.

Grass is the conduit between soil life and solar energy.  Sunlight beams down onto grass leaves, and chlorophyll powers the plant so it is able to collect nutrients and water out of the soil and convert them into vegetative growth. 

A cow eats the grass, and bacteria in its rumen break down cellulose so nutrients in the plant can become the cow.  We have several generations of cattle that were conceived, born, and raised on grasses we manage.  I’ll often stand in awestruck wonder that the animal standing in front of me was pulled from the soil on which we’re standing.  It’s reflexive to separate bovine and terrain, but they are in fact built from the same foundation.

I eat the cow, and the cow becomes me.  There is no doubt that nutrients from outside my office window became a plant, and then a cow, and now reside as functioning contributors in my organs.  Because I eat from that particular field, that particular field is me.  How awesomely weird.

In his book Nourishment, What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom, Fred Provena reveals the powerful bond our subconscious minds form with the terrain from which we eat.  Our physical bodily systems are constantly attempting to establish equilibrium with the outside environment via the food we consume. 

Imagine how confused our bodies are today; few ever come close to the field of origin.  Many people live and work in sterile bubbles that in no way resemble a natural environment.  On a cellular level, bodies ‘know’ that what they’re being fed does not match where they live because feedback from the food never corresponds with the conscious senses of sight, smell, hearing, and touch.  Consciously, people create a home, but their subconscious realizes they don’t belong.

This physical-nutritional mismatch creates feelings of displacement, which manifests in the form of anxiety, depression, loneliness, instability, aggression, and fear.  Here is perhaps the best argument I’ve ever heard for eating directly from a farm instead of buying food through a retailer: From the farm, you and your family will forge a physical connection with a specific, identifiable piece of land.  Periodic visits to the landscape will reinforce nutritional feedback and sensory experiences, thus strengthening mental health.

Beef is unique among the food groups in its ability to enable long-term landscape equilibrium. 

Few people are going to establish a physical connection with the home environment of a fish, for example.  The average fish-eater has absolutely no knowledge of the environment that created the fish, nor is it likely they will ever visit it.

It goes without saying that imitation ‘food’ is not only an abomination of sustenance, but also a dead-end when it comes to food-environment bonds.  There is no way for a consumer’s body to recognize and connect with ingredient solutions.

Fruits and vegetables, though I love them dearly, are fleeting explosions that dot seasonal changes in the north.  A lush vegetable garden in June will be a bare patch of earth through the winter months.  Fresh-picked local cucumbers are a rarity in February.  Nobody is picking apples out of their backyard in May.  A vegetable garden is vital, but productivity is brief.

Beef cattle and the terrain that supports them, however, are steady throughout the seasons.  A grassland environment shifts dramatically from winter to summer and back again, but remains uniquely beautiful and productive throughout each.  People can easily visit a pasture to see where their steak got its start.  Simply enjoying a view of grassland and grazing animals reduces stress.  Cattle create lasting relationships with a landscape like nothing else can.

The new mission of agriculture is not to simply provide calories, but to provide a place for people to assimilate with.  Aiding societal stability via landscape connections is an unfamiliar responsibility for farmers.  To many, the task sounds like a spiritual trip best reserved for communes of people who are not smitten by the hygiene myth, but the reality much more far-reaching.  If we want people to care about the fate of family farms, then family farms must prove to the people their importance by demonstrating measurable value.  We must provide something people long for and don’t want to lose.

Germans refer to feelings of warm, cozy connectedness and belonging as gemutlichkeit.   This is the term I think of when I envision our farm.  It’s all-encompassing, including wholesome food, strong social relationships, and beautiful terrain.  Not coincidentally, beautiful, diverse environments yield food that is dense in nutrients and extraordinary in flavor.  People who share food from the same location are sharing a bond like family, which creates strong feelings of togetherness.  People belong to each other and to the land, which strengthens a community into a pillar of stability no matter what is happening in the world.

Why do I farm?  I farm because I love steak, and the byproduct of steak is a community immune to worldly turmoil.  Oh, how good a t-bone can be!

For previous installments of this series, visit http://www.clarionfarms.com/new-blog.