“We need to tell you up front that we are not here to serve this American culture that surrounds us, but to transform it—little by little —across the region we live in, and other places we can afford to reach or influence.” That is the opening sentence of a proposal our little nonprofit, the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society (NPSAS), sent to a foundation recently. I wrote that with my heart in my fingers and some fear in my heart. Most nonprofits and foundations are about service of some kind. Churchgoing Christian friends desire to transform the culture as well, to save it and all of us for heaven. Since I am not a churchgoing person and find visions of heaven and hell equally unattractive, I do not have much interest in salvation and am therefore free to ask some of the questions that Jesus raised, such as, Who is my neighbor? One has to take such a question personally, locally. I have to give my answer every day in my response to people around me, yes, but also to other creatures, the nearby lakes, streams, fields, forests, and their inhabitants. Whatever exists in my neighborhood is my neighbor—even that fool woodpecker I saw this morning, stabbing away frenetically at a tall, silver light pole, raising a metallic din that clobbered the morning stillness like a jackhammer. What did she expect to find? Didn’t her momma teach her right? Regardless of her poor upbringing, she is my neighbor, although there is not much I can do about her beak, which must surely be blunted and benumbed by her fruitless, hammering search, except to chase her away, hopefully to something more rewarding, like a tree. But maybe she was a percussionist come back, and the resounding clang was music to her feathered ears.
At the moment my real work is as an administrator with NPSAS. We have more than four hundred members in twenty-some states and are out to transform the culture for the very reason that Prescott Bergh challenged us with in the introduction: “There’s not much point in talking about sustainable agriculture if you don’t have a sustainable culture to back it up.” We do not expect to make huge strides with a task so daunting, even with willing and more powerful colleagues with whom we can collaborate. So we have been asking ourselves some questions. For example, How can a nonprofit that operates according to the culture’s values ever hope to change that culture? Our conclusion is that it cannot. If we exhibit our culture’s primary values in our own behavior, we can never have a transforming effect on the culture.
Considering this has led to another question: since growth and speed are two of our culture’s greatest and least sustainable values, we have to ask ourselves what it means for us to “grow.” We do not believe, as our culture seems to, that it means growing in size, adding staff , expanding offices, and increasing budgets. We no longer believe in the values that a culture of growth and speed represents, and we do not want to participate in it by getting much bigger ourselves. Mere growth in size does not represent a model for a sustainable future; growth in insight, understanding, and influence might. We are not saying that we should never add another staff person or seek more funds. We are saying that our growth should be like our best farming—sustainable. Sustainable growth that emerges naturally, organically, in due season can teach us not only how to farm but also how to run a nonprofit and how to grow a sustainable culture. One of the core values of a sustainable agriculture is neighborliness. Who is our neighbor, indeed? If NPSAS can learn to operate in sustainable, neighborly ways, we will have a healthy nonprofit. We may not be rich or famous or have thousands of members, but we will continue to meet one of the great benchmarks for integrity: the story we tell the world and our behavior will match.
Our first task in transforming the culture is to transform ourselves, growing in our understanding of how the world really works at levels beneath the political, corporate, and public relations gloss that has been laid upon it. That is only a veneer beneath which we can see the losses that scar an unsustainable culture: loss of topsoil, loss of fertility in the soil that is left, loss of groundwater, loss of drinking water, loss of pollinators, loss of plant and animal diversity, loss of nutritional value in the plants and animals we still have, loss of small farms, loss of small towns, loss of our sense of community, a discernible decline in compassion and empowerment. I could go on here, but you know these things in your own experience. Getting bigger and bigger would not be a sign of our success but would indicate that we have succumbed to our culture’s more destructive fantasies and lost the discernment necessary to change it.
The healthy story NPSAS and our nonprofit allies now have to tell is about sustainable and organic agriculture. If there still is an America in 2050, it will exist, partly at least, because the culture has finally adopted a new story that there is a healthier way to farm and that we can create healthier food systems that are environmentally sound, socially just, and economically viable. Those agrarian principles we practice will also work to create a healthy society and a healthy economy for all of us, not just a few.
NPSAS probably can’t “accomplish” that, but that does not mean that it is a fool’s errand to try. What we can do is make our contribution to the creation of a sustainable culture, and we can collaborate with others who have the same goal. Our strategy is a bit different from that of many others who are out for cultural change. Our task is not to get big or create huge, “successful” projects whose every aspect is measurable but to intentionally multiply smallnesses, to generate enough sustainable smallnesses that they begin to connect with others in relationships that are sustainable. In fact we no longer have the luxury of working on “projects.” Projects are but fragments, and we have Humpty Dumpty on our hands. The fragments won’t restore Mr. Dumpty. We have to develop more holistic strategies to get ahead of the forces that are converging upon us: global warming, oil depletion, the loss of local food systems, water depletion, increasing violence around the globe, increasing hunger . . .
Our agribusiness giants brag about feeding the world. Their advertisements feature that success in brilliant color and describe it using the finest PR blurbs that money can buy. That colorful, full-page ad is deceit of the most dangerous kind: self-deceit deliberately designed to deceive the rest of us. We know that we do not even feed our own citizens very well, let alone others in the world. Estimates of the number of children without food security in the United States range from 12.5 million to 13.2 million to who knows how many who have not been identified but will go hungry this week. That’s millions, yes. There is a lot of talk these days, at last, about local food, and like many others I cherish that as another sign of hope. And I hear talk about farmers finally getting paid a fair price for their produce, and I can only applaud that. But I do not hear much talk about how to match local food with local hunger. If a local food system feeds only high-end restaurants and middle- and upper-class families, how is it superior to the system we have, which leaves hungry children out of its equations? I do hear that when there are left overs, some farmers’ markets take their food to charitable organizations that do serve hungry citizens. That is fine but inadequate; we need to make the hungry a priority, the first receivers of local food. The rest of us can do with their left overs.
It is not just the increasing number of hungry children we should think about but the increasing amount of food lacking in nutritional value, with the evidence mounting that the vegetables we used to rely upon to nourish our bodies are less effective than they were fifty years ago, and less pleasing to our palates. So now I have to eat two or three times the amount of brussels sprouts and broccoli to stay healthy? What kind of nutritional world is that?
Think how different our rural countryside would appear today if over the last half century we had been multiplying smallnesses rather than stimulating bigness. There would be flourishing small farms, prosperous small communities, healthier food on the table, and a means by which to feed ourselves and the world.
As partners in a concerted effort, NPSAS can yet increase farmers’, teachers’, social workers’, civil servants’, custodians’, waitresses’, bankers’, and businesspeople’s understanding of what it might take to create a sustainable society, and help it grow toward that sustainability. That NPSAS is small is no sign that our understanding or our vision is therefore small or that we cannot tackle big tasks and contribute to their accomplishment, working with others in a common cause.
We believe that our family farm members, and those colleagues in other sustainable and organic agricultural nonprofits, are a saving remnant akin to Isaiah’s, buried under our culture’s preoccupations with growth and power, speed and quick fixes. We do not need Madison Avenue’s blaring horns or a full symphony to announce our message of sustainability; we can organize quiet conversations around small tables in our libraries in small towns and urban centers where everyone is welcome and the coffee is ready. We are here for the long haul, not for the quick fix; we aim for the incremental shifts in worldview that may not be immediately visible or make a noticeable splash but that testimony from participants in our programs will document for us. We did sixteen such meetings in 2007, including a series of four small conversations in the libraries in Fosston, Ada, and Pelican Rapids, Minnesota. One participant’s evaluation read in part, “We need to continue and spread this discussion. It deals with our whole being and relations to all in the community and the world. This is a pivotal area in the life of people and creation—we need as much support, discussion and direction as possible to see how to go.” Another participant wrote, “I’d like to have an ongoing dialogue with this group—maybe one time per month. I’d also like to have this same opportunity offered in more communities in northwest Minnesota. I’d like to have the next sessions be specifically designed to teach others to replicate.” A third reported, “The program has rejuvenated my juices on this topic. I learned a few things along the way.” But perhaps the best evaluation we’ll ever get was this one from an organic sheep grower: “I came looking for ‘how to’ info and left with more questions than I came with. I’m pleased. I got what I needed instead of what I wanted.”
Diverse small groups in intense discussions on related agrarian themes benefit from a kind of cultural osmosis. The first thing we want to do after we’ve heard something stirring, seen something beautiful, or read something important is tell somebody about it. The word spreads; the influence of those conversations seeps through the membranes and spills across the walls that often separate us. I believe it spreads best from small groups like these, small nodes of conversation and influence in which participants’ lives and thoughts are changed by engaged and frequently intense conversation, good reading, and expanding ideas and understandings. They happen best as they occur in the little library groups we met with in February and March 2007. We’d rather reach a hundred folks a dozen at a time with transforming conversations than reach a thousand who experience a brief, virtual high via television, and whose interest shifts immediately with the next commercial. The kind of smallnesses we have in mind will allow NPSAS to, bit by bit, story by story, as best we can in the small ways open to us, transform the culture.
By multiplying such smallnesses, we can change the stories our culture tells itself. Our stories are more important agents of change than information and argument. We have known about climate change and oil depletion for decades and have not changed our behavior. Argument further divides us and creates defensiveness and aggression. But with the story NPSAS is telling, it can become one of those five smooth stones that will bring down the swaggering transnational Goliaths our culture idolizes and increase the odds for our children’s and grandchildren’s survival.
We believe that enough of the smaller cultural transformations toward greater sustainability NPSAS has to offer will ultimately increase the number of viable small farms, increase the biodiversity of our plants and pollinators, and result in smaller acreages with a greater variety of crops and fewer acres devoted to monocultured commodities. Finally such small events, sharing the stories we can tell through NPSAS, will increase the control over our own destiny that individual farmers deserve but have largely lost to the pressures of farming for the farm bill or the dictates of a corporate contract.
These questions and understandings grow, in part at least, out of pondering our mission statement: “We are committed to the development of a more sustainable society through the promotion of ecologically sound, socially just, and economically viable food systems.” That might seem to be task enough, but we have learned over the past quarter century that our real mission lies even deeper. Bergh’s comment still lingers. So the mission behind the mission has become to create a sustainable culture, not just a sustainable agriculture or sustainable communities or sustainable economies. We are all in this together, and our urban companions and rural families have to reconnect with one another and with the land to reflect on our environment, our present circumstances, our history, our policies, and our actions so that we have the means to experience the earth and our role on it from a new perspective.
The difference between a culture of exploitation and a sustainable culture lies more in worldview than in practice. Practice always follows on worldview; change the worldview and a change in practice is soon to follow. Our real worldview is most often expressed in the story we tell ourselves about who we are and what we are about in the world. Our culture needs a new story, one that will lead to that new worldview, and NPSAS has one—a story of sustainability that our farm friends already know by heart.
In light of that, we renewed our participation in advocacy for sustainable and organic agriculture, monitored legislation and policy as the language of the 2007 farm bill emerged, and increased our communication among staff and board and constituents about the new policy as it unfolded. We published Handbook and Field Guide to the 2007 Farm Bill and distributed it to our members and friends, alerting them to changes that would better serve agriculture and the whole culture. We have resumed our collaborations with the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and the Center for Rural Affairs.
We provide education through our summer symposium that puts participants, we hope some of them urban, in direct contact with the land and with those who are creating sustainable practices that work to give us all a sustainable future. We make field day visits to farms to educate us all, and we will also support the field days of other sustainable agriculture associations. We also educate our members through our winter conference, with its outstanding keynote speakers and multiple small workshops led by knowledgeable experts in livestock, grains, vegetables, marketing, seed saving, weed control, certification requirements, federal policy, and junkyard forages for our kids’ artwork. With our quarterly newsletter, The Germinator, we keep our constituents in touch with the news about one another, new events, discoveries and ideas in agriculture, and emerging policy issues.
Our Farm Breeder Club (FBC), having grown out a new drought-and fusarium-tolerant strain of wheat (FBC-Dylan), will register the strain in the public domain, an activity that seems to put our land grant university and transnational corporate teeth on edge. It apparently makes them wonder what trade-related intellectual patents are for if not profit. We had 1,650 bushels of seed available in 2007, and we had requests for more than 2,500 from farmers who were willing to help us grow out more. We are continuing our experiments with emmer, will grow out new seed enough for field trials and taste tests, and will eventually register it in the public domain and win state certification. Our plan then is to move to winter triticale, rye, buckwheat, and oats—seeds that are now considered specialty grains in the United States but are seen as among the world’s great grains elsewhere. Putting competitive grains in the public domain gives every farmer access to seed, offers independent farmers a way to get around Monsanto, and increases plant diversity throughout the northern plains. A 10 percent royalty on the net from that seed will be split evenly between FBC and NPSAS—a small step toward sustainability for both.
My Neighbor’s Acre is an NPSAS fund built on our desire to practice being good neighbors by assisting those who are suffering economically because of drought, flood, fire, tornado, or other calamity. Members who wish to can contribute to the fund, which people in difficulty can tap either by nomination or by their own request. Aside from the nominator, no one needs to know the name of the recipient, who can receive up to $2,500 in emergency cash without filling out an application or signing any papers. There is no requirement that recipients pay the money back. If they get back on their feet and so desire, they can contribute to My Neighbor’s Acre and help someone else. Last year the fund sent checks to a family whose house burned down, a rancher besieged by drought, and another rancher who through a series of bad breaks could not pay the taxes on his farm.
We will educate and enlist new urban friends for sustainability with a series of programs in our urban centers in the Great Plains: “Why Should I Care? Agriculture for Urbanites.” Alas, one hundred letters from urban allies in Fargo and Bismarck have greater impact than three hundred letters from farmers scattered across three states— but the four hundred letters combined have still greater effect. We cannot change the policy or the culture alone; we need each other, knowledgeable farmers and all the urban friends we can recruit and educate. Thus we will also extend our small discussion groups to other small town and urban libraries in other states. We call these gatherings “Up for Discussion: Conversations for the Fearless and the Not-So-Fearless.”
We are only one of a number of nonprofits seeking the same ends. By multiplying such smallnesses, we gain another means to get a new story out to small town and urban folks, many of whom have been away from the farm so long they may no longer have a clue about how healthy food is grown or what concepts, ideas, and policies might support a sustainable future for all our citizens. We are making some friends and reminding folks who may have forgotten that without small farms we lose our small towns and add another blight to our rural landscape.
We believe all these activities have the same focus: creating a sustainable culture and creating an environmentally sound, socially just, and economically sustainable agriculture and food system, beginning with educating and transforming ourselves. We believe these activities give us a coherent approach across a variety of cultural fronts to create social justice, increase public health, create or maintain local food systems that will help us survive the end of cheap oil, ease up on our water pollution and depletion, and restore our small communities’ economic health at the same time. These are not special “projects,” created to entice funds out of some foundation. This is who we are, a diverse group of plain folks with a common mission that unites us, and this is what our efforts have become—a way of life. This little institution has been engaged in this worthy task for almost three decades now.
This effort has not become our way of life by accident but because we have been thinking about it, deliberately trying to create a coherent, holistic, comprehensive set of activities that are anchored in the daily pragmatics of farm life and yet address the larger policy issues that ultimately affect us as producers and consumers. We are trying to make some contribution—modest though it is—toward the transformation of the culture. We believe all these activities are inextricably interrelated. The sum of these activities is a new, alternative story we are trying to live out ourselves and share with the larger culture. It is a story of cooperation instead of competition, of connections rather than fragments, of respect instead of condescension, of openness instead of secrecy, of good health and advantage for all instead of extravagant profit for a few. It is a story that creates a worldview that can lead us toward a sustainable society. We have children. We have grandchildren. Some of us have great-grandchildren. We need to share this new story with each other and with them. If we do not, they will have no future at all.
At NPSAS we pursue this way of life not because we think we will prevail; we can never be assured of that. We live this effort because, successful or not, it seems like the right thing to do. So we, all of us together, do it.