Ethics, Esthetics & Ecology: Why I Farm Organically

Originally Published by Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance

By Amy Newday Since the last MOFFA newsletter, which included several great articles on the “what” of organic agriculture, I’ve been pondering the “why.” For me and most of the farmers I know who use organic growing practices, certified or not, the reasons are more complicated than a market-driven response to consumer demand. After all, there are a lot of easier ways to make a buck. I farm organically because before she married my dairyman grandfather, my grandmother taught nature studies. My primary babysitter when I was too young to help with farm chores, she introduced me to many farm residents who I still count among my friends: the bullfrogs that moo in the duck pond on warm spring evenings, the thrushes whose bell-choir holds the ravine rapt in summer. On clear nights she’d spread a blanket in the hay field so I could learn constellations and ponder my small place in the nature of things. It seems to me that “conventional” agriculture as it is currently practiced has its root in a fallacy that runs through our culture—that the human place in the nature of things is one of inherent opposition: Humans vs Nature. Which also seems to me to be a really weird way of thinking about ourselves. We don’t talk about other species this way. To think about “bears vs nature” would be absurd. We might even say that bearsare nature, or part of it. Certainly, their lives depend upon it—for bears to thrive, they need functioning ecosystems within which they play vital roles. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we are the only species to whom this doesn’t apply. And so we pollute air as if it does not constantly pass through our lungs, spread poisons in water as if our bodies were not over fifty percent composed of it, strip life from soil as if it were not the source of our own living energy, and diminish the diversity of our ecosystems as if we didn’t know that other threads plucked from the ecological web tremble our own. To counter these acts, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer calls for “acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.” She encourages us “to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink ... to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.” For three quarters of my life, this piece of farmland has fed me and I have drunk from the stream beneath it that feeds my well. Organic farming is my act of restoration, of giving back to this land and my community. Though since my farm isn’t certified, perhaps I should find a different term for what I do. I like “ecological farming” because it reminds me of Aldo Leopold’s call to recognize that I am a “plain member and citizen” of an ecosystem community that includes “soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.” When it comes to the “whats” of ecological farming, I follow NOP guidelines, but I also measure my decisions against Leopold’s prescription for cultivating an ethical relationship to land: “Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Of course, my ability to live up to this ethical ideal (and to do so without engaging in practices that degrade and destabilize ecosystems other than my own) is constrained, in part, by the socio-economic structures built by my human community. It’s hard to farm ecologically within a culture that doesn’t recognize the inextricable ties between human well-being and ecological health and that doesn’t include downstream and long-term consequences when factoring value. I’ve got some work to do before my farm is able to sustain a truly reciprocally supportive relationship with the biotic community in which I live while also remaining economically and energetically sustainable. Pursuing that goal means both refining my farming practices and working to increase ecological awareness and sustainability within my human culture and community. When my grandmother let nettles grow tall in the corner of her yard and taught me to peek between their folded leaves to find Red Admiral caterpillars, I learned more than butterfly identification. I learned that I have the ability and responsibility to nurture beauty and diversity in this world. Each year I farm I realize a little more of what that means. Sometimes the lessons are hard, reminding me of just how much more I have to learn. I’m grateful to be a part of this organic community, which inspires, supports, and teaches me. Together I hope we are moving toward a cultural change that will enable all of us to live with more integrity and beauty in relationship to each other and our ecosystems. Works Referenced Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.Milkweed Editions, 2013. Leopold, Aldo. Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press, 1949. Amy Newday is a professor at Kalamazoo College and operates Harvest of Joy Farm in Shelbyville, Michigan. She currently serves on MOFFA's Board of Directors.