In 1700 it took nineteen farmers to feed one nonfarmer, a guarantee that people who minded other people’s business would only be an accent note in general society. One hundred years later England had driven its yeoman farmers almost out of existence, converting a few into an agricultural proletariat to take advantage of machine-age farming practices only sensible in large holdings. By 1900, one farmer could feed nineteen, John Taylor Gatto from The Underground History Of American Education.
Leigh- A lot of my concerns fall back to my belief in the inspired
> > validity of 3-Fold Economics. Allan
>>Now, since those 1000 people exchange money with me, money
that I need to grow the vegetables and provide the things I don't
produce myself for my family, that seems to be an economic
relationship. Leigh Hauter
a threefold quoting.
Hello Leigh.
I hope we farmers and farmers - to - be here in the North Carolina piedmont can approach your success.
Its not that there isn't an economic aspect to what you do. Artists also have to deal with economics. Priests and school teachers too. Every individual does.
Are you farming primarily or merely for economic purpose?
That is the image that pulls agri-business along; that is its purpose (actually in the case of agri-business it is money, which is financial, an embalmed version of economics. enron et al).
It is true that religion, schools and art have been commodified. It shouldn't be. My spiritual life and education and relationship with the soil and wind and rain and cosmos shouldn't be. The commodification of plots of earth has brought the environmental and spiritual need for the heroic pioneering work of csa practitioners.
Its not mere philosophy to see that there are three spheres in all we strive to institute and that, the picture out of which you operate determines the vitality and shape of all relationships - with people, nature, tools and conscience.
The threefold social organism is no more theory than root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit. As Marshal McLuhan instintively understood, what we create is done in our own image: physical, soulful and spiritual. Societal relations are no different. The living reality beyond any social theory or belief is that we have before us a life of meaning, value and conscience; an evolving spiritual self, a uniqueness that we all share in common. That is the 1st sphere and the determining agent of all other economic or political endeavours. This sphere includes the cultivation of life: vegetable, self, child, ecosystems, art... - you know living relationships.
The protection and support for that independent spirit's freedom to cultivate is the second sphere of all social institution - laws and rights and such. "Well", you may say"our government does a poor job of that and what about religious fanatical governments?" In our case the government is largely an economic tool that is used, among many things, to manipulate our children into a devolutionary docility so they will not grow up to think for themselves. This makes for better consumers and a conformative workforce. That is what economics as top priority leads to - that is standardized education with a manufactured history and agriculture that lacks vitality but not poisons so that the whole child can't enter fully into this life. Fanaticism is when the spiritual religious life rolls over the rights and sanctity of personhood. Religious fundamentalists and extremists come to mind.
The economic system knows no boundaries. Mcdonalds in Kuwait. Globalization is like the crazy brother who barges into strangers homes. He knows not what he does. He thinks he does. You follow and try to make peace; you show them that you respect their privacy and maybe you share something of your self and maybe you've made mutually respecting friends.
Economics without a cultural accompaniment crosses bounds into the profane - pro: outside, fanum: temple - Genetic manipulations, chemicals everywhere, standardized testing, financial sham, war for oil...
The reason farming in particular is a spiritual cultural institution is because life is holy. You cultivate life so that the body and earth may be a temple. Not as exxon extracts oil to fuel machinery. Food is living and perpetuates life. Farming is science, which is an art, when not commodified - as we find in conventional institutions.
It is true: I'm not a farmer... yet, nor do I have practical experience with the farming end of a csa. Last year I participated in a new farmer's csa. I work in the retail food industry. I am a manager that strives to work out of a different organizational paradigm that is non-heirarchical. I try to establish, against a powerful mainstream force, everyday, a more self sustaining work soil. This in my experience can only be done through renewing, to the best of my ability, human relationships every day. Retail lives firmly in the economic life of our society. But, if economics dominate our mind-set we will sell anything for as much as possible and build stores with dis-regard for where and how we plant them. A store of strong individuals is, in the short term, harder to run. I can't just give employees a pill to make them conform to the goals of an economic institution. To be self sustaining I need to concentrate my energies on something unseen and unweighable. It is my I and their I and the collective I that informs our what, how and why we sell. It's far from a utopia. But what I, they and we value and imagine as a goal will be reflected in the end result - everyday.
I hope this experience and striving and failing proves fruitful in our quest to farm within the living context of a threefold csa!
warmth,
jeff barney
