I live in a dense urban environment. I have a house with a backyard like many others. In Ontario, we can't use pesticides any longer to maintain our lawns and landscaping. Once every two weeks, I do what my father always did. I use an old steak knife I keep in the garage and walk around my yard cutting out whatever weed, mainly dandelions, that I can find. I have a composter at the back of the property which I clear out every spring to feed my perennial plants and trees. I've planted loads of hostas and indigenous flowering plants that attract and feed bees and other insects. I've built several birdhouses that I've placed around my yard. It's become my backyard oasis. It doesn't take much to make a little difference.
60
@Trento Cloz Good for you.
I've got backyard chickens and they love my yard's dandelions. I also let some be for the honeybees and other pollinators. I sometimes wonder how dandelions got to be known as a "weed." Probably the pesticide companies. I think dandelions are actually pretty. I work at an elementary school and the children collect bouquets of dandelions from our backfield to give to their mothers each Spring.
22
@Innisfree I was just going to make the same point. I encourage dandelions as they are one of the first to bloom in the spring and the bees love them.
14
@Trento Cloz
Congrats, you did a lot of hard work, which many homeowners don't have the patience for. FYI: Digging out a weed is better than instant gratification chemicals, but organic vinegar works like a charm. Some weeds reproduce when disturbed, especially if you don't get ALL the root out.
We love all critters and also have numerous bird feeders and houses, particularly for the fragile bluebirds. That does result in some weeds from the seed, but industrious squirrels often dig up those for us in their intensely focused hunt for free food.
Our yearlong return to nature project to rejuvenate our yard and lessen the human footprint led us to some effective 100% organics. We went organic for our turf (grass), after years of ineffective big box DIY products and landscape company chemical treatments. It was a leap of faith that paid off.
The front and back were thin and weedy. Ten months passed for a noticeable turnaround. Key was the root of the problem, pun intended: *soil conditioning*.
Turf transformation took a full 12 months of liquid aeration, humic acid, organic weed killer (corn gluten), lime and organic fertilizer (manure pellets), then manual aeration, over seeding and top dressing.
The island shrubs, trees, annuals and perennials get a yearly deep layer of long leaf pinestraw that repels weeds and insects while feeding the plants as it decomposes throughout the year. Fall leaves are gathered in a non-turf corner to compact and compost over the year.
6
Biodynamic grown food is by far the best tasting food there is! My brother is a German Famer and has used biodynamic methods since the 80ies. Yes it is expensive, but we are spending (wasting) lots of money on electronics, big houses, big new cars etc and if we would spend less there we would have money to spend on food! We are so used to subsidized food that spending more for better and healthier food feels not possible. We need to rethink and rearrange our priorities on what it is worth spending money on.
65
@Nina Jacobs . . . agreed. We spend vast amounts on our outer appearance and get quite miserly on what we choose to put inside out bodies. Without good health, all the cars and expensive watches won't do us much good.
16
@Nina Jacobs And those who don't have the price of fancy food?
5
@Des Johnson . . . I don't think responsibly grown food has to be considered "fancy." Our local grocery store offers locally grown organic produce that is the same price, or less, in season, than produce shipped in. What you might consider"fancy food" isn't necessarily more expensive. What we need to solve are Food Deserts where the only food available comes from a quick stop type gas station and where people have no low-cost Mass Transportation available to shop anywhere else. People with some access to soil, even a back yard pot on the porch, can have an organic tomato crop. And many schools are teaching students to grow crops at wasted lands near school and take that food home for low income families. We are making a little progress in this way.
12
What is not mentioned here is that any kind of non-industrial farming is very labor intensive, or to put it colloquially, takes a lot of hard physical work. Industrial agriculture is moving in the other direction, larger fields, bigger computer driven machinery, fewer farmers, larger yields,and very thin margins. The only folks willing to do physical work these days are migrants, so I would suggest a government program to buy large farms, split them up into 120 acre parcels, and invite in the families from Honduras!
122
@RPB . . . we could start cultivating respect for physical labor, and the dignity of self sufficiency in the next generations. And we could invite any people at all who want to live in harmony together with peace and dignity. Oh wait, we did that. It was historically called the Westward Expansion.
22
@mouseone Westward Expansion: The destruction of the great grasslands and original forests of North America, the draining of the aquifers, the eventual chaos of The Dust Bowl era and the the replacement of native bison adapted to the landscape with introduced Cattle.
23
@D. Hall
Having recently driven from North Carolina to Colorado and Arizona, I was really struck by the sight in Missouri and Kansas of corn and sorghum.
In places the crops ran out to the horizon in every direction, like 15 or more miles on a side!
I could not help but marvel at the effort and machinery needed to bring that all in.
And that was just what I could see from the Expressway.
7
Why is 10 billion an acceptable population for humans? The earth would have to be 10 times its size—or humans one tenth their size.
7
The global collapse of agriculture is a very real threat and national security issue as long as our agriculture is industrialized and optimized for yields. Large-scale agriculture is fully dependent on vast energy, water or petrochemical resources. If these become unavailable for any reason we'll be in a very bad way. IMO, farming is itself a resource important to our cultural heritage. The EU subsidizes its agricultural largely for culturally reasons. We subsidize ours to promote profit for corporate agribusinesses that destroy our agrarian traditions and culture.
New, trendy techniques for sustainable farming can be helpful. But they are not necessary for turning our agriculture around and can be distractions. Reducing the scale of production is the simple key. There are many great examples among our thriving Amish and Mennonite communities. Moderation, good (not great) yields, and a degree of Ludditism is the way to go, imo. Suboptimality is underrated.
Surely your state too has something like this to help protect our nation's food security and farming heritage:
https://morural.org/
The word "Biodynamic" seems to have magical properties, even though many (most?) Of its practices are based on mystical philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, including burying manure in a cowhorn at a certain phase of the moon. It is so magical that people accept it uncritically - it's "better than organic". Try reading Steiner. He was nuts, and it's doubtful that he ever did any serious farming.
2
Given the concern expressed about overpopulation, I am surprised that no one has looked specifically at the U.S. In this country, the birth rate is declining and so is life expectancy. This country no longer has a problem with overpopulation.
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-a-32-year-low-in-2018-cdc-says-birthrate-is-at-record-level
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-again-a-dismal-trend-not-seen-since-world-war-i/2018/11/28/ae58bc8c-f28c-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html
Darn it Margaret, you left us hanging, only because we're always waiting for Monday mornings!
Food crisis solution: eat less, get healthier.
2
The whole discussion about agricultural possibilities in this article is crippled by the author’s meek acceptance of continued massive population growth.
A world of 10 billion people will be a polluted and depauperate world. It won’t have room for “sustainable agriculture “ or sustainable anything else.
3
As E.O. Wilson has stated, this planet is meant to sustain 3 billion humans, which would allow biodiversity to flourish. Until that dictum takes place, the rest is fantasy.
3
What struck me visually was the unconventional way in which the fields were laid out, as if they almost were meant to be art. The aerial shots were quite beautiful. There must have been some method to that madness, which is so different from straight line farming. The fields wound over and around gentle hills, almost like a farm you’d see in a children’s book, and no crop was so extensive that it took over too large an area, and indeed, it is the crop diversity that seemed to save them. They didn’t put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, while the other farms in the area were kneecapped by floods and fire. I think I’ll have to go back and watch this again, too, like the author.
5
Lovely story, and a couple things occurred to me. It takes several years of farming before a farm is allowed to call its products “organic.” John and Molly Chester might have substantial savings in order to get this operation going and make a success of it. Also, their proximity to Los Angeles means they are able to sell their produce, meat, etc., to high-end restaurants and expensive farmers’ markets. Farms in the middle of Nebraska or Iowa do not have these advantages, so no, this model cannot be replicated on a large scale. What I want to know more about is emerging farm technology: Hydroponic, for example.
1
I enjoyed this well-made film, but it seemed to me that Apricot Lane has more in common with the Walt Disney Company than a practical farm. It is classified as a small farm, which means that it "grows and sells between $1,000 and $250,000 per year in agricultural products". I read there are about 60 people working on the farm (34 are shown in the group photo on their homepage), which works out to annual sales of only between $16 and $4166 per person. Would this level of production feed everyone who works on the farm, let alone cover overhead? But they make money in other ways. Along with making films, they give tours at $30 for the general public and $100 for a "farmer's VIP tour".
5
@Joe, I looked at the website as well, and noticed that they are heavily monetized. It’s sounds almost like a farm theme park. But the truth is marketing like that is pretty common in boutique farming. I’ve seen it in other parts of California, and in other states (Hawaii comes to mind). Farms like this offer expensive tours, run snack shops, sell jams and honey, tote bags and tee shirts, gardening tools and seed packets. They may have a petting yard full of cute baby goats and lambs and miniature donkeys, accessed for a fee. Some picturesque boutique farms even offer overnight accommodation, in the form of quaint cabins or plush “glamping” tents. I know of a few such operations near my rural home. Another source of income is farm dinners, hosted by lauded chefs and local winemakers. And etc.
As for the large number of workers, it’s probable that some life on the property and trade labor for lodging. That’s pretty common. Sometimes younger people will work on a biodynamic farm as students or apprentices.
In the end, it's all just business, and it’s all legal and straightforward. But to present this place as anything more than a kind of living diorama demonstration farm is nonsense.
8
I loved this film. Yes, it is stirring and heart-warming; it is also full of death. What is most compelling about it is how it chronicles the unpredictable inside out unfolding of cause and effect, and puts humans in the mix -- making us, as we should be, just one equally vulnerable element within the miraculous living Earth-system. The improbability and surprise throughout call us to deep listening and humility.
4
There are too many of us to be fed from small farms. Big farms will ruin the environment. Therefore, our population must fall in order to insure environmental stability. Malthus was correct.
17
This story reminds me of the time that the chicken and the pig wanted to thank the farmer for his efforts by cooking breakfast. The chicken offered to lay the eggs, but the pig, after giving it some thought, said to the chicken "I can't do this, as you are asking me to be committed, while you are only a participant."
5
It is replicable on a scale that will feed 10 billion people. current broad acre agribusiness will not feed 10 billion people, at some point it will have a catastrophic failure. The Potato famine is the prime example. Building true strength into the soil and the land is the only way to prevent catastrophic failure and it will provide the sustenance. the space is there to produce the pounds of food per square foot needed. We just need to decide what we will give up to achieve what is needed.
2
"True, it’s not replicable on a scale that will feed 10 billion people affordably, and it’s not accessible — either geographically or financially — to the vast majority of people."
-------
The real question is why no one seems to be talking much about reducing that number. And when they do, it's always seen as a negative: no more workers, no one to pay social security taxes, etc.
We need to find a better way.
10
Thank you so much. Your editorials first caught my eye about the birds. And I have done in my spare time as a civilian volunteer both bird and coral reef studies. The condition of the planet is beyond alarming.
15
Thanks for such an informative article. I got the book The Fate of Food and am looking forward to reading it.
5
I didn't realize worm composting facilities were a traditional method of producing fertilizer.
5
I’m scratching my head at this statement: “ What the Chesters have learned is how to integrate all the different kinds of food production with one another, and with the specific environmental conditions of the farm’s location, in a way that is very nearly self-sustaining.” How can that be, when their farm is in a spot that is in drought from March to November? Moorpark reports an average 18 inches of rainfall per year, but like most of California (and where I live), all of that falls in a few big storms over the winter. California is very poor at caching its rainfall. Most of Southern California relies on water stolen from the north. Sure, you can drill down into an aquifer, but the water tables are dropping. I suggest reading the wonderful book, The Dreamt Land, by Mark Arax. You will learn the truth about water and agriculture “sustainability” in California.
9
I don't know how many times I read an article like this and think, this is interesting but the problem with (fill in the blank) is over population.
Then I wonder, how come no one, and I mean NO ONE even mentions the idea that perhaps over-population just might be an issue to address. We read about the worries that we aren't flooding the planet with more people so our growth based economy may stumble but nothing about the truly existential problem of over-population.
What gives?
22
@Davym, it’s not true that no one mentions it. I often see discussions about that subject.
I have read opinion pieces elsewhere claiming that on a global scale the earth is not really overpopulated, and that the problem is really just localized density. So the matter is debatable. I think we will reach a tipping point where a pandemic or massive famine will naturally adjust the global population downward, and that this my even happen in my lifetime. But that’s just me talking.
7
@Davym I could not agree more. Over population is at the base of nearly all the environmental problems we face, yet no one will even mention it. Not one word from the Democrats in these primary debates, or at any other time. All these things we must do to combat climate change, but nothing about birth control! Why? If anyone will make this an issue in their campaign they will have my vote and support.
11
@Davym Bingo. Over population combined with over / wasteful consumption will bring the human species and many others to their knees. One of your commenters mentions that perhaps we are not over populated but over concentrated. Maybe if everyone rode bicycles or took mass transportation, ate food and not processed products, owned two or three pair of shoes not fifty... etc
Capitalism and greed feed us on consumption and never ending "growth". Until we revise what we value most to community from material things, I don't have much hope.
8
Nice article. A great example of thinking globally, acting locally. The only long-term solution for salvaging the sustainability of Earth is a significantly reduced human population. With people around the globe producing more and more babies, their ecological footprint will only spread further and further, converting our more productive soils and landscapes into housing and other infrastructure and continuing to adversely affect the planet. It would be nice to think there will be a profusion of Apricot Lane Farms in the future, and there may well be. The challenge is going to be finding a way to keep human population growth from outstripping their production capability. That message needs to come across, too.
7
Feel good stories are important. But agriculture is ruthlessly practical. Farmers have razor-thin margins. Crops grow over months then sell in days. Credit is essential, futures a must. Farmers fail when rain doesn't fall. Governments fall when crops fail (the Arab spring's trigger.)
Support feel-good solutions. But support practical steps, too. Herbicides are less toxic than pesticides. No-till farming preserves soil, keeps nutrients from rivers, but needs herbicides. Don't let perfection reject the good.
Land-grant programs were hotbeds of agricultural research and innovation but that's dwindling. Their funding is down, and fewer are interested. They need a new generation to work for farmer's needs, so they can thrive without using antibiotics or so many chemicals.
Biodynamic agriculture is fun. But we need scientific discoveries to feed the world. Support lovely stories, but don't assume all genetic modification is bad.
8
“ Its value is in what it teaches us about both moral responsibility and ecological possibility.” That is completely at the opposite of the unmoral thinking and acting of Trump.
8
I saw the film and it was sweet and lovely. However, where did this couple get all the money to lease or purchase this land and the labor that goes into such an endeavor? Was it family money? Did they have backers?
Because getting a farm up and running is expensive. I know. I trained as an apprentice at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Living at the University of California Santa Cruz. I know a lot of young farmers and I've never known anyone to start a farm like the one in the movie unless they had money from family.
And nothing was said about it in the film, not that I can remember.
21
@Innisfree The subject was directly addressed in the film. They looked for investors, and almost gave up on the idea because they couldn't find enough to subsidize the endeavor. Then they got lucky and connected with one single investor who funded the entire enterprise. Not exactly a reproducible model...
9
@Innisfree
Absolutely. 200 acres! (And 40 miles from LA!) There's no way that the farm's revenue would exceed dividends from its sale value. It's no model farm of sustainability (besides its excessive water and energy needs).
That said, from the picture they look to be a model couple of sustainability.
4
@Fotogringa Ok, thanks. I watched it in the theater, not on DVD, so only watched it once. I must have missed that.
Why not practical? How is anything that's a solution to extinction not practical?
3
As Nassim Taleb said about a book, the way you can tell how much you liked it was by counting how many times you read it. It appears, based on your column, that equation holds true for movies, as well.
Let's be clear: when you talk about greenhouse gases from agriculture, methane in particular, you're not talking about vegetation, you're talking cows.
And when you state that the land can't sustain 10 billion people, you might be right, but it takes 10 times the amount of land to raise a pound of meat than a pound of vegetable.
I'm not a vegan, but I think I should be. Certainly, eating less meat improves the health of the planet and we can all improve our own health by trading the occasional steak for a salad.
32
@Elissa F As if all land was of the same value for the same foods. As if vast organic vegetable monocrops were better for the land than diversified agriculture including ruminants. It's not as simple as you would like it to be.
1
@Elissa F Please read up on Joel Salatin's mob grazing approach, it stores carbon back in the ground to rotate cows to fresh pasture every day. Wait, it's in the movie too, did you watch it?
I'm sorry, but some of the comments here are just ridiculous What some people seem to be saying is that because the Chesters do not have all the answers, do not have a method that will work every place, every time, for everybody, let's ignore and ridicule their very real accomplishments. Its like the commenters think we should ignore urban farms because they can't feed a million people because their being a local source for fresh green just isn't good enough.
44
Permiculture!!!! It will open your mind to a better way to farm.
Weve been doing too much work. We should work with nature not against it. The more I learn, the more I get hope.
7
Malthus was far ahead of his time, but absolutely correct. Open your eyes.
Seriously.
13
@Phyliss Dalmatian
If Darwin didn't so fully embrace Malthus we might not be so fixated with competition, instead of cooperation, today.
This is a wonderful story. But, I disagree that this can't be a larger solution to failing agriculture. The Rodale Institute has been working to prove that these methods can work on a larger scale for decades and has the science to prove it. Regenerative organic practices, which the film highlights, can be the real future of agriculture. See what they are doing:
https://rodaleinstitute.org/education/
11
@John F.
Thanks for that link!
Biodynamics can work. The problem is whether climate change causes one of the few global breadbaskets to ecologically collapse before a new one is established. America's farmland might find itself situated in Canada long after Iowa becomes a wasteland. However, that optimism doesn't really help with the transition.
There are three things essential to specialized agriculture. By specialized, I mean more than subsistence based agriculture. Families growing only what the family needs as opposed to full time farmers growing everything the community needs.
1) Productivity. Caloric output per energy input.
2) Distribution. The food isn't commonly produced where the food is mostly consumed.
3) Storage. Refrigeration, dehydration, canning, jarring provided ways for the individual family to accumulate surplus.
So the essential questions become: How do you produce enough calories to feed 10 billion people, store the calories for later consumption, and distribute them equitably across the world? All of this in light of increasing environmental uncertainty.
Pre-modern cultures have gone extinct with fewer challenges.
@Andy
Forget the scary 10 billion number. IMO, we need to concern ourselves with our own sustainability and lead/follow by example, wherever it's appropriate.
Suffice it to say, we're not ready for a single, world government/socioeconomic system. And since open systems are not sustainable, by definition, our socioeconomic system needs to be at least semi-closed to adaptively organize itself in a way that could result in long-term stability. How we achieve it may not be the same as how other socioeconomic systems on the planet would. Our current economic system depends on growth, i.e. non-sustainability, and wastefulness. This of course needs to change. When our agriculture, industry and government return to human scales again we will, imo, recover large amounts of waste intrinsic to our large-scale institutions and economic systems that are optimized for resource exploitation, as opposed to conservation (as most human and animal communities are). In my opinion, the recoverable waste in resources (associated with comparable goods and services) of a traditional society village is much less than similar waste of a modern American community of the same size.
7
If you like this kind of film genre then you should take a look at some previous efforts, notably 'The Real Dirt on Farmer John' which has much more depth than what I see here. Especially since his place is about 10 miles down the road from me. He's run one of more innovative community supported agriculture farms to say the least. This current documentary is more selling a fantasy and not being fully open about how they really do things. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439774/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt
2
"The value of “The Biggest Little Farm” is not merely in the way it warms our hearts with its adorable cast of animal characters (the sick mama pig, the orphaned lamb, the lonely rooster) and its idealistic farmers, determined to do the right thing under very difficult conditions. Its value is in what it teaches us about both moral responsibility and ecological possibility. "
Meanwhile we have a president and his appointed environment killers:
Who have the moral and ecological values of a swarm of locusts.
AND tens of millions of Americans whose moral compasses point to Me-Mine-Now!
Just like trump and his appointed incompetent political hacks.
14
"True, it’s not replicable on a scale that will feed 10 billion people affordably, and it’s not accessible — either geographically or financially — to the vast majority of people."
Um... yeah. Perhaps the author should read her own sentence ten or twenty times.
8
@Alex Renkl really phoned this one in.
And now Gohmert is blathering in ways that appear to confuse himself. He latches onto the word "kangaroo court" so many times he's bouncing.
Where are the serious, informed, logical, sane GOP members. If this is what is on offer, we're really in more trouble than I thought, which is saying something.
5
Please stay on this, Margaret, as your perspective is right on target. Broaden the already existing systems perspective, adding more elements, such as other actors (farmworkers, retailers, chefs, ag extension, eaters); carbon sequestration; anything new with gmos; animal welfare; set asides for wildlife; gleaning; Agro-tourism; city farming. Surprise us even more with new sustainable farming developments, the good and the bad, as we move further into the climate change era (which reminds me, add politics to that list).
7
My dairy farmer husband and I saw the film this weekend. Beautiful photography. Impressive outcome. Yes, everyone we spoke to wondered where the investment came from to buy the land and pay for the necessary inputs. Not to mention to support the Chesters until they produced something. When I looked more into the farm, I did turn up a reference to $15 for a dozen eggs! More in all this than meets the eye.
20
@Patricia
You can get that price in some farmers markets in CA
6
I have also seen and enjoyed "The Biggest Little Farm". As someone who has farmed part time, and currently owns a working farm, I can say that I am positive about agriculture's future, both here in the U.S. as well as globally. I am not positive about agriculture here in Middle Tennessee, however, as we have "created the perfect habitat for the next pest", developers, unbridled growth, mixed use developments and such, who move in and destroy once productive farm land. Aside from that, I look back to my days in FFA and recall the words "I believe in the future of farming..." Over 30 years later, I still believe in those words.
8
Not to be cynical, the failure to vaccinate against measles lead to over 100,000 deaths worldwide. Just wait until chickenpox, diphtheria, polio, small pox etc. do their ravaging through the poorly vaccinated population, putting everyone at risk. Add lack of food followed by wars/civil unrest ( look at Syria) and down comes the number of people living on this Earth.
Nature will recover, but we may not.
3
@Montreal Moe. Appreciate the optimism. Right now Americans are looking to Canada for sanity, or possible refuge. However, your facts are a bit too optimistic. No, population is not ‘leveling off’, just the growth rate, which peaked dramatically in our own time, resulting in population doubling in only 37 years. The rate has declined mostly away from Africa, where it has become very large, at the same time climate change is starting to have serious effect there, as well as South Asia and Australia. Also, if there are technological solutions to anthropogenic carbon dioxide growth, there is little or no evidence that implementation has had any effect. We are still on track for a rapid, and irreversible change in climate over vast portions of the globe. Population; well perhaps we can do something about this, but zero growth is not in anyone’s prediction.
So, keep encouraging homesteading in those vast reaches; we’re coming north pretty soon.
8
"True, it’s not replicable on a scale that will feed 10 billion people affordably, and it’s not accessible — either geographically or financially — to the vast majority of people. "
Therein lies the rub, over population of the planet. Who knows, with a collapse of agriculture "Soylent Green" may become a reality.
10
Every real estate and insurance broker and everyone in the health and wellness industries needs to know how to put this in the hands of their clients. Not a bad banana.
1
Let's face cold facts.
Human overpopulation and economic 'growth' is completely trashing the air, water and earth.
Large corporate farmers appear uninterested in preserving and protecting Mother Nature.
We need to hit the emergency brake on human procreation.
7.7 billion humans on the planet, increasing each year by 80 million, is a demographic and environmental catastrophe.
The least that serious humans can do is to demand and vote for serious candidates that support free contraception for all, female sovereignty, and an end the destructive influences of the 'be fruitful and multiply' religious fanatics that fight against modern birth control and that oppress women.
The world needs a lot less babies and a lot more contraception if we expect Mother Earth to be able to feed humanity.
156
@Socrates
Thank you for your insightful comment, much admired by many of us. The world needs to shrink in size so that future generations will have a chance of survival. Years ago, before chemical fertilizers were put to use, we never thought that farmers would produce enough food to feed over five million humans, and here we are feeding almost eight million, but at what price to the future of the world. The present path is not sustainable.
8
@Socrates
Listen – good for the Chesters. But they offer a small solution for a HUGE problem – a problem that is growing exponentially in comparison to the solution. Over-population, too many religions telling people to create more people, too many Koch brothers, too many military-industrial complexes, too many Monsantoes, too much free-market ethos etc. etc. Fat chance a 200 acre organic farm has.
The Chesters sell their produce at upscale California farmer’s markets – and probably to upscale restaurants. If you can afford to pay up to $5 a pound for organic tomatoes then your biggest worry isn’t how to pay for self-indulgent food, it’s the California wildfires that may threaten your $2 million home.
It’s a long way from the problems of thousands of people pressed up against our southern border, driven there by drought and violence in their home countries. They can’t afford $5 a lb. let alone the cost of 200 acres and to hire Alan York. Nor can the people in the food deserts on the South Side of Chicago.
And how many people who shop at those upscale farmer’s markets work at companies that contribute to the larger problem? Buying organic food is an easy way to make yourself feel good and to think you are doing something about the problem – and then get into your gas-guzzling Hummer and drive home.
I think the Chesters are setting an admirable example (maybe that’s the best we can hope for), but it will take a few billion Chesters to make a real difference.
6
@Socrates
I agree with your statement that we need fewer people over all on this Earth and that religions do not promote contraception, just the opposite in fact.
But I hope that you do not mean to blame the countries where this overpopulation is taking place, namely the poor and developing countries. You are well aware I am sure that fertility rate falls when women are assured that their children will live and be healthy.
In fact, scientific articles talk about declining populations in the 2100s as the whole world, not just the Western nations, have access to basics like clean water, adequate food, basic health care and literacy.
So rather than go on a blame game and use a coercive approach to contraception, I would encourage world leaders to use resources to bring the above four items to places where they are needed the most.
For anyone looking to stream The Biggest Little Farm, it's available on Hulu (where I watched it a couple of weeks ago).
Another wonderful environmental-parable-documentary is the more-difficult-to-find-but-worth-the-effort Honeyland, which may be the most gorgeous documentary I've ever seen. If you can't find it now, look for it at Oscar time.
16
@D Price
It is also available on DVD/BluRay at Amazon, starting December 11.
3
Yes, organic farms tend to be smaller--and generate smaller incomes.
It may be that responsible farming will attract more couples to this lifestyle compared to becoming telemarketers. To really make it work would require keeping hospitals, schools, libraries, high-speed internet and other "frills" routine for city dwellers and unavailable in much of farm country.
Having more people on the land seems like a worthy goal for any government--Democrats or Republicans. Unfortunately, Democrats are urban dominated, and Republicans are uber-rich and criminal dominated in their policies and practices, if not their rhetoric.
4
Thank you for writing a column in NYT that has nothing to do with politics or putdowns of people. It was a really nice informative article and I will watch the movie and probably buy the book based on how i enjoyed your article.
76
How can you say this has nothing to do with politics? The current administration is rolling back protections against poisonous pesticides. The EPA is allowing proven bee killing products to continue to be used. The Department of Agriculture favors huge, soil-killing, monocultural farms and allows pig farmers to dump huge amounts of waste into streams. I could go on, but you get the picture. Unfortunately, at this time, everything is political.
25
I think Jacob was referring to the fact that the Creature was not named, or quoted.
It WAS nice.
9
@Coopmindy Everything is political only because you have made it so. Everything you described was happening from 2008 to 2016, but you didn't mind because you preferred Obama over Trump.
Jacob is correct, in that by making everything political you are also making politics meaningless. It has become an identity for you rather than a means to an end.
1
The 200 acres of the Chester's farm is probably a poor model for sustainable farming, despite all their "biodynamism", because of its water limitations and energy needs. The inputs needed for and strains on their southern Californian farm probably put it at high risk for pests, invasive species and other disruptions.
Though I haven't read Ms. Little's book, it sounds mistaken to me. Truck farming around our (non-desert) metropolitan areas and its distribution through a system of urban markets could once again meet much our produce and meat needs. Reducing waste and changes to our food preferences, i.e. away from grain-fed meat and toward cool weather produce, could offset our growing population's needs. The population density of Europe, for example, was higher than ours is now while it sustained itself without using industrialized agriculture. Ms. Little's book sounds more concerned with food quantity than with food quality - and, if true, this is a huge mistake, imo.
6
California? The bottomless sink for all the present and past water of the Southwest? Water for people versus water for farms isn’t some future tipping point. It’s now.
Combine climate change, ten billion people, and medicine-enhanced longevity, and we don’t need to even make guesses about the future of personal farming fantasies.
In its own success, the green revolution that staves off global starvation right now, and makes Malthus look like bad arithmetic, is on track to define the suddenness of crises to come. Too many people, mass migration from failed, overheated lands. War, instead of technology.
The enormous loss of smaller farms in the last decade didn’t happen because people wanted to give up 4 to 7 generations of working the land. Small farms, most operating with intelligence and commitment, can not break even or bridge over bad years. No matter what we might imagine as a idyllic future, food, water and stomachs indicate something far different.
21
I'm finding it difficult to figure out how they maintain the well manicured grass, ploughed and tilled fields and more since they show virtually no photos of tractors, implements, mowers and so forth. It's all like magic! No awful power equipment required.
@jgury
Watch the film. They put animals (sheep) in the orchard to eat the grass. They were very smart in having one animal after another take care of problems. When they were over run with snails (you would not believe how many snails there were), they move their ducks in to the area to eat the snails. When gophers were killing their fruit trees, they put up nesting boxes for hawks and barn owls. Eventually, they got about 80 pairs which ate the gophers.
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@sjs That's interesting, since they must be really special sheep to make neatly mowed rows just like a power mower. The same for tilling and they must be really good with chainsaws too. https://www.apricotlanefarms.com/essential_grid/the-beginning-of-apricot-lane-farms/
1
@jgury Unidirectional rectilinear grazing sheep? Preposterous! It’s really the app-controlled sheepdog that’s directing them. The tilling, though, depends on magnetic fields and earthworms. No kidding.
1
"The Biggest Little Farm" is part of the problem when it comes to incoherence in the media regarding the nation's food system. It is a two-hour long Instagram post made specifically for people with no connection to agriculture. It is an overrated, sentimentalized fantasy about people with massive financial investors and teams of interns growing what it appears amounts to a few dozen eggs. Money doesn't seem to be an issue--I guess that is why they made the film, to sell the fantasy of farming to gullible urbanites and suburbanites.
It makes no mention as far as I could tell of the role of migrant workers in California's (and the nation's) agricultural landscape. In short, it is not reflective of the way most responsible small farmers in America operate. That anyone could watch that self-indulgent film and think they learned something about farming is beyond me. I never miss a column by Ms. Renkl but I am mystified by this one.
28
@D. Hall
Did you actually see the film? The farm is successful, they have volunteers and hired workers. You don't seem to be aware that there is a quiet revolution going on. Read Kristin Kimball's books The Dirty Life and Good Husbandry. Try Lentil Underground: Renegade Farmers and the Future of Food in America by Liz Carlisle or Dirt to Soil: One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture by Brown. The world is changing, try to keep up. Remember that organic food was once a fringe thing, now its a billion dollar business.
12
You have to respect their crowdfunding success but the reality of organic farming or conventional farming for that matter isn’t this idyllic....At least in my experience in farming. Urban dwellers will be drawn into a false narrative after seeing this film
7
@sjs “They have volunteers and hired workers.” I don’t know how familiar you are with farming communities or if you just read books and watch films about it, but financial pressure is a constant presence, causing many small farms to rely on off-farm incomes to make ends meet. How much do you think that 200 acres an hour north of LA goes for? It’s hard enough for determined young people who want to farm to acquire land to do so in New England, let alone Southern California.
10
Unfortunately people conflate outcomes when considering the impact of climate change and population. The earth will survive whatever we do to it. True, it won't be the same and many other life forms will also be lost. But eventually it will make a recovery. No other species appears as self destructive as ours.
14
One thing missing from this article’s advocacy for an agrarian ethic (and the dismissal of such philosophy in the comments section) is the lifestyle it creates. These farmers build a life connected to a place, the seasons, and the natural ecosystem processes around them. They remove themselves from consumer culture, support fewer corporations, increase the capacity of local economies, and build stronger relationships with their community and neighbors. All of which are essential in the fight against climate change.
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@Claire
The better understood this is, the greater chance we have of actually developing policies that can be applied and understood en masse, at this critical time.
Thanks for this post.
1
I think the humanist and cultural side of this story deserves much more emphasis. In addition to the idea of a land ethic, there is an emerging idea of ecological literacy in indigenous studies. Simply put, people (myself included) who do not know about the plants and animals and complex ecological relationships in their homelands are illiterate. This should be a very basic part of our education, and it can help connect elders to the youth and all of us to particular places.
3
Sadly there is a myth that "natural" farming processes are generally better for the environment but there's very little evidence of that. There are two big problems with "natural" farming:
1) It takes up a lot more land than industrial farming for the output.
2) Fertilizer in particular tends to run off more with rainfall (and contaminate water sources) than industrial fertilizers. Main reason for this is that industrial fertilizers have been designed to be "stickier" so that their use (and associated expense) can be reduced.
1
@Andres Hannah ~ Don't be ridiculous...."industrial" fertilizers, which are made from chemicals, absolutely ruin natural alluvial soil, and destroy ecological balance. One only has to drive through the Central Valley of California to see this. I also know from personal experience. My family has been working on restoring the ecological balance to our damaged land, adding organic nutrients, for a long time now. There is plenty of evidence that natural, organic, ecologically balanced farming practices produce healthy water, healthy soil, healthy bees, insects, mycelium, and all the other interdependent organisms needed for ecological balance, required for healthy crops and healthy people. We certainly do NOT need more dangerous chemical fertilizers.
33
@Andres Hannah
... but the eggs taste better, and so do the vegetables (compare a store-bought tomato with those you grew in your backyard), and they are healthier too.
6
Where on earth are any facts to support your assertions? You sound like an agrochemical salesman.
8
This fall we could see more Monarch Butterflies in two hours than we had in the last ten years. Everybody in Quebec is growing milkweed and our farmers reserve a portion of every field for milkweed. Milkweed is toxic to almost everything that isn't a Monarch caterpillar.
The world population is stabilizing and about to start to decline. We have the technology to start reversing many of the most destructive parts of Global Warming. We can have the efficiencies to do what we must do. It is only about the economy and that is strictly a political decision.
We how many young new organic farmers in my region because that is what we have been voting for for three decades. We invest in our farmers and their families.
Voltaire said; "Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
America believes too many absurdities
34
@Montreal Moe . . . come on down and talk sense into our politicians!
10
@Montreal Moe
And milkweed will reseed itself. Start with one plant; in a couple of years you will have a patch (however, I still have to see a monarch butterfly on mine; it may be the location: southeast Michigan).
2
@mouseone
The politicians are not the problem. How do you deprogram the voters.
I am so old I remember when America understood voting was about a better future not a "better?" past.
9
Agriculture is doing just fine. Worldwide there are bumper crops of almost everything. Ask a farmer, and he'll complain that prices are too low (meaning too much is being produced).
Going "organic" won't make it rain more in California's dry climate.
4
@Jonathan Katz . . . explain please, if food is so abundant, why we still have hungry people trying to move from deserts to more fertile lands. Explain please, if farmers have too many food products why people, on the streets of any city stand in line for a simple bowl of soup. Explain please where all this abundance is going. Me thinks all that possible food to feed the hungry in this world is going into gas tanks, high fructose cereals, soda and other non-food items. Me thinks farmers are feeding all that soy and corn to cows to make steak that only the rich can afford. What do you think?
8
@Jonathan Katz
Watch the movie. What they did grabs and holds the moisture in the soil.
7
@mouseone The problem has more to do with distribution. For example, ag subsidies in rich countries can make it uneconomical for small farmers in developing countries to grow food. Dictatorial regimes often control societies by holding food back from all but a select few. USDA is planning to cut food stamp eligibility. I agree that there are hungry people in many places, but we need to elect politicians who will support food security at home and abroad.
3
I enjoy my garden, 6 raised organic beds - and I tolerate the front lawn. It is hard work, and I lose 5+ pounds every summer. We’re not all nature people, or so we think. I wasn’t. Then slowly I got more in tune. Delicious heirloom tomatoes after a few failures like blossom end rot. And what’s especially cool is how the birds, bumblebees and other beneficials keep coming back every year - must grow sunflowers! I don’t think I could convince many to undertake the commitment.
But why not start a campaign to get rid of lawns? Wasted water, weekly crews that cut the grass too short, spewing fumes, creating noise pollution too, not to mention the chemicals - and more water to compensate. Those resources can be redirected to shrubs, ground cover and other plants to help the shrinking bird and bee populations. Jobs could shift from grass killing to nature tending. Imagine!
147
@Donna My vegetable garden takes up the entire sunny spot in my FRONT yard. A "Food Not Lawns" sign sits in a commanding position next to the street. The balance of the front is planted artistically with shade plants native to this area, which means no turf grass. My neighbors approve, the code enforcement people approve and so does law enforcement. The best part is that it is all organic, and requires far less annual maintenance than lawns. After initial installation, all I have to pay for each year are vegetable seeds!
2
@Donna My Grandma lived in an apart building in the Bronx, but she had a plot in a communal “victory garden” in the 1940’s when the government urged Americans to grow food for home consumption so that the military would have access to more commercially grown food for the troops. It’s hard for me to believe we would be that civic minded today. And with a president who ripped out Michelle Obama’s garden and wants to rid us of low flow toilets, I don’t think we can depend on the MAGA crowd to actually, you know, make America better if it inconveniences anyone
I enjoy my garden, 6 raised organic beds - and I tolerate the front lawn. It is hard work, and I lose 5+ pounds every summer. We’re not all nature people, or so we think. I wasn’t. Then slowly I got more in tune. Delicious heirloom tomatoes after a few failures like blossom end rot. And what’s especially cool is how the birds, bumblebees and other beneficials keep coming back every year - must grow sunflowers! I don’t think I could convince many to undertake the commitment.
But why not start a campaign to get rid of lawns? Wasted water, weekly crews that cut the grass too short, spewing fumes, creating noise pollution too, not to mention the chemicals - and more water to compensate. Those resources can be redirected to shrubs, ground cover and other plants to help the shrinking bird and bee populations. Jobs could shift from grass killing to nature tending.
I dream a lot.
3
Cities are already doing that, getting rid of lawns. My California town has gone all out and pays people to replace lawns with succulents, natural grasses, stones, etc. A lawn was always nothing more than a status symbol and could never have existed without loads of water anyway.
13
Margaret, I adore your writing, and your most excellent intentions. That said, when will this publication do the right and responsible thing, and start discussing Overpopulation ? All the best farming practices and even sound environmental practices mean nothing, when the Planet is so completely overflowing with Humans. So go ahead and have that third, fourth or even fifth Child, Folks. You are dooming them, and ALL of us, to a slow, hot, gasping Death.
Just saying.
101
@Phyliss Dalmatian Your argument traces back to at least the turn of the 18th century, when Thomas Malthus made it. It’s been trotted out regularly ever since.
The world’s population when Malthus made his prediction was approximately 1billion. It’s now 7 billion.
In other words, this argument has been spectacularly wrong for at least two centuries. And given the massive improvements in technology and science in the intervening centuries, it’s almost certainly wrong now as well.
6
To Phyllis, Decades of evidence demonstrates that family size decreases as quality of life increases - especially when women have access to health care (including birth control) and education. Women who can control their fertility (which is a complex of medical, social and educational factors) usually choose smaller families. So let’s educate more women, invest more in health clinics, and subsidize birth control.
24
@Shiv No, it's not wrong. Human overpopulation is destroying the planet. Just think: is the environment better/worse/the same since the 18th century? Any review of the facts shows the environment has been in decline since the industrial revolution provided the springboard for massive population growth. And boy or boy, are things about to get a lot worse, fast.
16
I've seen the movie twice. When you consider what they started with and what they accomplished, it gives me hope for the rest of the world.
30
@sjs What they accomplished...is what exactly? Selling a few eggs at the farmer's market is not farming. You are clearly in the target demographic for the distributors of this film Most farmers have to deal with the daily issue of making money off their farm without the help of unnamed "investors".
17
@D. Hall
I keep reading these comments by people who I can't believe actually watched the film. In the beginning the land they bought was dry, dead and could barely grow weed and scrub. By the end they had about 80 varieties of fruit trees and a fully functional farm, raise chicken, ducks, pigs, sheep, etc.and land that could withstand drought and floods. Watch the film before you comment again.
8
@sjs I’ve seen the film. Putting aside the highly problematic aesthetic and narrative choices of the film itself (the dreadful animated sequences, the lack of separation between subject and the filmmaker) I am sure you will find that people who actually have experience in agriculture—in the real world—are highly critical of the myth that this film perpetuates.
3
I’ve always lived a kind of do it yourself lifestyle learning about how nature and things cohabitate. You can’t beat nature but you can bend it.
Nature will never capitulate and will eventually win. Nature doesn’t require biology but the reverse isn’t true. Biology does require nature.
This goes back to the endless growth mantra,how long before we realize cancer is uncontrolled growth too?
8
The essential calories of our existence primarily come from grains and legumes, so CA is probably not the best state to use to study or evaluate how we can encourage sustainable agriculture that can sustain about 7.5 billion people and counting.
Synthetic nitrogen is an essential component of the agricultural revolution that hugely boosted productivity over traditional crop rotations methods to hugely increase per-acre productivity.
What humanity has done with this huge increase in productivity is increased its population- tripling it in the last 70 years.
How we back down from this with some kind of soft landing will not be achieved by biodynamic methods (whose founder developed his techniques from faith and not science).
Probably the first thing we need to do is reduce global population growth to at least neutral.
44
Feeding 10 billion people is not a sustainable proposition. Our economic model is basically a ponzi scheme that assumes unending natural bounty and ever increasing younger population to fund and support the infrastructure. There should be immediate economic incentives to have less or no children especially in first world economies where the majority of consumption happens.
In the near future, farming within an enclosed climate controlled environment may be the only way to ensure the success of crops. The younger generation understands these things at an increasing pace. They have a lot of incentive; they want to eat in the future.
25
"Moral responsibility" is such a scare resource. Let's cultivate it properly and dutifully to change the world with our politics, our finances, our treatment of others, every possible way we can.
Moral responsibility is the key to peace and prosperity.
Thank you for this article of hope in these desperate times.
9
"True, it’s not replicable on a scale that will feed 10 billion people affordably, and it’s not accessible — either geographically or financially — to the vast majority of people."
Herein lies the problem. Using these farming methods from the era of Thomas Malthus, while sustainable, cannot support 10 billion people.
25
@Ken
Agreed, this same sentence jumped out at me, too. I enjoyed the film but couldn't avoid the feeling that it was the tours that they were running that kept the Chesters alive financially because they could not turn a profit on the produce they were selling. Therein lies the problem.
12
@Ken Very well said, I had the same thought (including even the connection to Malthus) when I read that line in the article. I will add that I think that humankind’s ability to find solutions gives me tremendous hope for the future. As Stephen Pinker pointed out in his recent book “Enlightenment Now”, the world today is better fed and housed than at any time in recorded history, violence is lower, healthcare is better.... the metrics are all positive, even in just the past few decades. All this happened because enlightenment values - particularly the primacy of rationality and the scientific method over feelings - supported problem solving on a level never previously achieved.
The concern I have is that people see feel-good films like “The biggest little farm” and conclude that unsustainable small-scale farming will solve the problem. Even this article does a poor job of making that point. I applaud Ms. Renkl for acknowledging that what she hopes for - essentially, pre-industrial family farms - won’t work at scale, but she does so halfheartedly. That approach could well result in resistance to data- and science-based solutions. Witness the widespread knee-kerk condemnation of genetically modified organisms.
6
@Shiv The "metrics" are not all positive, as you say. The destruction of our natural world goes apace. The extinction of many species has already occurred. If you are satisfied to live in a congested world with little contact with nature, and eat meat which has been produced under horrific conditions, and plants which have been raised with little regard for the sustainability of the natural world, then go on and live that life, but there are many of us who think that the paving over of the natural world, or perhaps spraying it with petroleum produced chemicals is not the best way to go.
3
Good article and I am looking forward to seeing the film, but perhaps we should not simply accept the projected rise in world population as given. Perhaps we need to ignore irrational constructed taboos and consider how we might on strongly encouraging responsible reproduction (or not) based on understanding our finite Earth's carrying capacity, climate change and the harm we are doing ourselves, future generations and what remains of other species without whom we will live in an age of loneliness and ecological poverty, if we live at all.
45
@Jillian While reducing the projected population would likely reduce the impact of climate change, it's a much more nuanced issue than that. A reduced projected population would create other problems, though it would take someone more informed than me to weigh those against the benefits. What I can say, however, is that the practice of not recommending that people have fewer children is not an "irrational constructed taboo." Eugenics has a long, terrible, and shockingly recent history in this country and around the world, and we should tread extremely lightly around anything remotely resembling it.
6
@Meagan I would argue that it is an "irrational constructed taboo". We humans are animals subject to the same force of selection as the dairy cow or hybrid corn. Some people are more capable of contributing to this particular society than others. This is what "designer babies" is about and we might as well acknowledge it as well as be aware of the diversity we lose if we exercise it.
1
While I liked some elements of the movie, I had a hard time watching a pig suffer when a round of antibiotics would have been a quick road to recovery. I doubt that John Chester would have hesitated if his wife Molly had needed antibiotics to save her when she had their child. And it was also very difficult to watch them so lovingly raise animals for slaughter.
12
@Linda Sain "And it was also very difficult to watch them so lovingly raise animals for slaughter." I know people tend to have a hard time with this. But unless everyone plans on going vegetarian, I'd say it's better than raising them in an unloving fashion.
38
@Linda Sain . .basing a diet on plant foods, or on foods that do not require any killing of the animal would solve that problem. We don't have to kill the chicken for eggs. We don't have to kill the cow for milk and cheese. As the animals age, then the natural cycle of life will provide the very occasional meat products, knowing the animal has been loved and well cared for. Basing a life on slaughter, only adds to the violence in the world. And makes pigs rather non-essential.
5
@Linda Sain
I think he did give the pig antibiotics.
3