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MLT Newsletter

March, 1984


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Thomas Bresnau
Kenneth Dahlberg
Albert Huntoon
Maynard Kaufman
Sally Kaufman
Michael Kruk
James Martin
Lisa Johnson P'nillips
Michael Phillips
Jonathan Towne

As I assemble the Newsletter it is obvious that spring is edging in.  In the woods the sap buckets are alternately overflowing and frozen; dark green violet leaves are emerging, only to be tweaked by the frost. A robin bravely hopped across the lawn the other day!

To welcome the first signs of spring we offer you a variety of seeds for thought in the Newsletter.



SOME THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICS OF SMALL DIVERSIFIED FARM SYSTEMS
- Paul Gilk

Several weeks ago Sally asked me to write something for the Michigan Land Trustees newsletter on "the politics of small diversified farm system."  I did write an article- five full pages, single-spaced, and Sally sent it back to me, saying it was too long and wobbly.  It's hard not to hurt a writer's feelings; but they ask for it, as every editor knows.

So, what do I have to say about "the politics of small diversified farm system"?  Here are some assumptions and convictions.  First, the earth is very old.  It was not created six thousand plus years ago out of chaos by a Father God in heaven. (This is not as irrelevant-to the theme as it/may presently appear).  Human life goes back some millions of years, longer than I can comprehend.  There were no cities, no flush toilets, no social security checks, no push carts at the supermarket Whatever the variations in early human culture, it is certainly true that one of the main patterns was keen distinction between women and men and their respective work.

Women grew big with child, gave birth, suckled the infant, kept nearer the hearth, did most of the cooking, made most of the clothes and probably constructed the portable dwelling and gathered.  Men hung around and hunted and made implements for hunting - some of which could be used in conflicts with men of other groups or bands.

I do not wish to speculate very much on the quality of stone age life.  Our present culture contains all kinds of wildly different perspectives on what such life was like - from Thomas Hobbes' sensational portrayal of atomized savagery to the novelist,  Jean Auel's affectionate depiction in her series Earth's Children.  In between, no doubt, arguing among themselves all the while, are the professional anthropologists who try to meticulously reconstruct the mundane reality, whatever it really was. It couldn't have been all grimness, for there is a long history of laughter.

Anyway, whatever this life was like, it went on for an exceedingly long time. By comparison, the transition from gathering and hunting to civilization was, historically speaking, a veritable flash in the pan, a stunning revolution.  What brought it about?

No doubt our analysis lacks much.  But this much seems clear:  women's gathering led to horticulture, and horticulture led (through greater abundance of food grains) to locational stability, greater population density, domesticated food animals, inventions and discoveries of all kinds.  As the roving band settled down and became a village, the wild game within walking distance became more scarce.  Within a reasonably short time, men became stock raisers.  With the invention-of-the plow and the use of the ox to pull the plow, men took to the fields.  This development generated an even greater abundance.  The village grew to the size of a town, the town became a city.  This urban nexus is what we call civilization.

The new division of labor in conjunction with greater distances in social hierarchy resulted in a stratification of social classes.  At the top was the civilized elite,  what we now call the aristocracy.  At the bottom was the peasantry, producing a surplus which was essentially expropriated by the elite.  Over time this process of oppression and exploitation resulted in the despoliation of the resource base, and the decline of the civilization itself.  Many civilizations have since risen and fallen.

Roman civilization was perhaps the most dynamic of all ancient civilizations.  The enforced transition from small-scale farming to estate slavery provided much of the political grease which lubricated the parallel transition from the limited democracy of the Republic to the authoritarian aristocratic rule of the Empire. With the decline of Rome as a civilization, the aristocracy retreated into feudalism; the Roman estate system was the foundation of, and model for the manorial component of the feudal system.

Under the jurisdiction of the manor lord, the peasants farmed the commons, lived in villages, and tended the fields of the lord.  They were also taxed some portion of their own yield and made to stand in the noble's army. This pattern of life was extended throughout Europe and was not fully abolished until the Russian revolution of 1917.

In the United States there was no feudal structure - although the system of plantation slavery was a derivative.  The United States has never had a peasantry in the classical sense, and we therefore lack a cultural recollection of the commons.  Agriculture in this country was quickly based on private ownership, although it was primarily rooted in subsistence production and the household economy.

In Europe, the expansion of commercialism and the subsequent emergence of the industrial revolution resulted in the wholesale eviction of the lower orders of country people from the commons;  the commons was claimed by the nobles as private property for purposes of commercial agriculture.  The displaced rural people survived first by cottage industry (mostly centered around weaving) and then were forced into the new factories, usually at starvation wages. In the United States, the expansion of commercialism came more slowly than, say, in England, but it too forced into being larger and fewer farms based increasingly on commercial production for the market. There was a corresponding abandonment of the household economy as purchased substitutes became available.

We now have a "conventional" agribusiness and an agricultural population of less than two-and-a-half per cent of the national total. (Farm people made up ninety-five per cent of the total in 1790). This agribusiness regime is sustained by intense energy inputs - gasoline, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, deep-well irrigation, corporate "vertical integration", a great concentration of monopoly control at the corporate level (grain companies, meat packers, dairy processors chemical producers, equipment manufacturers), and a speeding treadmill of credit. As with the earliest civilizations, the present urban elite continues to expropriate the wealth of the countryside. But there is a major difference. Now the vast urban and suburban population is as "civilized" as the aristocracy used to be. That is, the vast majority demand and expect cheap food and are not particularly interested in the predicament of rural culture or the deterioration of the resource base in general.

In the last five hundred years, more or less, civilization has expanded to global proportions. The technical developments generated out of the industrial revolution enabled the civilized elite to squeeze rural subsistent folk culture as it had never been squeezed before. What we are witnessing now is nothing less than the enforced liquidation of coherent folk culture. And what we need to grasp is that this development is a fundamentally new reality in human history. That is, the great bulk of our social and evolutionary heritage predates civilization and the social organization peculiar to civilization. The civilized elite always distanced themselves both from the common people and from the vicissitudes of earthy life. They were cleaned and pampered, obeyed and richly fed and clothed and housed. They had enormously expansive egos: they finally thought of themselves as a separate race or species over against the "rabble". (If you think this is an exaggeration or overstatement-only consider - not just the god-kings - but the basic attitude of the European aristocracy up to and including the present day).

When men took over agriculture from women, the peasantry was created. And now civilization, in its advanced industrial global technological organization, has essentially eradicated the peasantry: by the standards of reductionist technological civility, small-scale and subsistence-oriented agriculture is an atavism, outmoded and obsolete. The path of progress leads upwards from the fields to the factories to the computers. We are the "information society" - real estate managers and personnel directors on a global scale. We are a civilized people.
 
I will have to cut this short, I'm afraid. But what are the "politics of a small diversified farm system"? I submit we have to go through the whole history of farming and agriculture to find the appropriate answers. We are still living under a civilization which is characterized by male control of public institutions; it sees itself in a hostile relationship over against nature and is derisive of earthy rural life. On the other hand, the methodology by which to sustain an ample and ecologic agricultural productivity is available. We already have the concept of land trust, although we must learn to see its historic linkage to the village commons. We need farm-based cooperate land trust communities.

What's lacking in our culture are conceptual understanding and political will. Many of us are still under the illusion that a revival of the Jeffersonian family farm is possible. Such a revival, in my opinion, is extremely unlikely. The growth of feminist consciousness raises serious questions about the restoration of traditional  gendered work.  The only was we shall see a reconstruction of rural life with lots of small, diversified farms is through breaking out of our "civilized" conceits and gendered mind-sets.  This involves both a new political order and a new cultural ethos.

Civilization sweeps its arm toward industrialized-agribusiness and smiles in triumph: here is real productivity.  I submit it is a real catastrophe.  And I further submit that we are not ourselves taking seriously enough either the impending dangers or the necessary remedies.


PASSAGE

These are exciting times for the Michigan Land Trustees.  Things are happening which could give us a new lease on life (no, not a new lease on the MLT Homesteading Farm!)  The present managers of the farm. Thom and Jan, are part of a new MLT program that charts a new direction for the homesteading movement, while refining the back-to-the-land action of the seventies.

The new program involves gradual adoption of the permaculture system.  It has applications on any scale.  Permaculture can provide livestock feed for meat-raising farmers as well as edible, yet-attractive, landscapes so that the suburban or even urban home dweller can make better use of whatever land he/she may have.

The challenge for the MLT Homesteading Farm is to incorporate these new methods with traditional gardens and row crops and other related skills into a diverse teaching program.

The MLT Board of Directors and Trustees have been working on the formation of this program and putting it in place.  Work has been going on to obtain the capital needed.  The permaculture committee, made up of Thom Phillips, Maynard Kaufman, Mike Phillips, Norm Bober, and Jon Towne, has made contacts for obtaining donations of seeds and seedlings for the plantings the committee has planned.

In other areas of MLT activity, there has been an increase in community involvement with the city of Bangor, keeping abreast of the situation with the proposed chicken processing plant.  It is a pleasure to see MLT working on these various levels.

In all our activities the primary goal of MLT is to be good stewards of the land. What greater or more all encompassing goal could we have?

Michael Kruk, Chairperson
Board of Directors of MLT


THE PERMACULTURE PLAN

In considering the use of the permaculture system on the Land Trust farm the Board of Directors asked one of its members, Jonathan Towne, to develop a plan.  The following is a summary plus excerpts of the background information Jonathan developed.

"Permaculture is not new.  Areas of Europe for centuries were based on systems of oaks and chestnuts on steep land with livestock grazing the under story.  The nuts were used both for human and livestock consumption.  It is an old idea but it is still in its Infancy.  If we were to devote [the] appropriate amount of attention towards developing varieties and permaculture techniques of traditional agriculture,we would revolutionize our society. Because we are treading new ground, and the results are in the future, our first efforts may seem a little anticlimatic. Complex, stable and productive ecosystems don't happen overnight, especially with a, hopefully temporary, lack of suitable species and varieties. But like the newly planted apple orchard, some returns will come rather quickly and with the fertilizer of human guidance and care, the returns will never stop increasing."

Jonathan then surveys the physical environment of the Bangor area. He includes climate (average minimum temperature of -10° to -20°; rainfall's yearly average of 36", 140 - 160 growing days) and microclimate (slope of the land and effects of trees). Soil types on the farm - ranging from a clay loam to loamy sand, some with a high water table - are also included as important factors in determining a permaculture plan.

Looking for a model for permaculture Jonathan points to the "edge effect" of a forest: "The edge effect is the increased productivity that occurs where two communities interface. The diversity and density of species increase, making use of more ecological niches. Wildlife is abundant in these areas." He points to an extensive community in southwest Michigan - the oak openings. Composed of less than 50% fire resistant trees, the dominant-tree of the canopy layer was the burr oak, replaced by the swamp white oak in wet areas. The under story layer included the American hazelnut with prairie species the ground layer. "...the oak openings occured at the margins between prairies and oak forest and could be considered an edge effect."

In cultivation some of the species that could be used for the canopy layer are the walnuts, sugar maple, hickory, the chestnuts, persimmon, honeylocust; for the understody layer mulberry, serviceberry, stone fruits. Legumes, grasses, brambles, strawberries, currants and gooseberries would serve as ground level species.

The summer issue of the Newsletter will summarize Jonathan's proposal for the Land Trust farm. Anyone wishing to receive a copy of this very complete study can send $1.00 to the MLT address.


Elwood Holton, a member of the Michigan Nutgrowers Association whom we contacted, has offered a variety of trees, English and Black walnut seed, and a demonstration of grafting this spring to Land Trust Farm students and any other interested people. Anyone who would like to attend this demonstration can call the Land Trust Farm for the date and time.  Mr. Holton has been developing English walnuts for many years, and has a variety named for him.

MORE SEEDS —

Mike Phillips is now working with the Legal Aid Bureau in Paw Paw. MLT has been indebted to Janice McAlpine, attorney from that office, for legal advice over the last year.                    

Of possible interest to readers of the newsletter is the cover article by Paul Gilk in the January issue of New Farm (Rodale Press). The article is on the Kaufmans and the School of Homesteading, and includes 'information on MLT.

On March 22 at 7 P.M. Maynard Kaufman will 'present a paper, "Jonathan Schell: The Nuclear Peril and Apocalyptic Thought". The location is 3770 Knauss Hall, Western Michigan University. All interested persons are welcome.

The Newsletter has hit a new peak with this issue - a copy will be flying to Saudi Arabia where one of the "grads" of the School of Homesteading, Sue Cors, is a midwife!

Thom Phillips made his mark on the Organic Growers of Michigan at the February meeting when he demonstrated small engine repair by tearing one down.   

From the March/April issue of New Farm; "...the Agricultural' Productivity Act (HR 2714, formerly known as the Organic Farming Bill) was passed by the House of Representatives 206-184....the legislation would order USDA to finally begin studying non-conventional methods farmers can use to cut production costs and energy dependence while conserving soil and water....the bill would set aside about $2 million of USDA's $430 million annual research budget for each of the next 5 years for 12 on-farm studies on changing from input-intensive to low-input farming practices, and studies on 12 farms across the nation which have been operated organically for at least five years. It would also start a program to help farmers leam to use intercropping to control erosion with a nitrogen-fixing vegetative cover, and direct USDA to search out existing Extension materials of use to organic farmers and to recommend needed new research.

To express your support, write your legislators in Washington.

The next meeting of the MLT will be Sunday, March 25th, at the Land Trust Farm. The meeting is at 3:00 P.M. and a potluck supper will follow at 5:00. Bring a dish to pass and your enthusiasm!

Sally Kaufman, editor
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